Clara Haydock had the voice of an angel - but she had the devil's own will to live ...Lancashire in the early 1900s was a place of poverty and hardship, where singing was for church and life was for getting on with. But Clara's unbreakable spirit and passion for music made her shine against the bleakness of that life.For she knew where her destiny lay ... and that destiny would lead her to love.

It was a small Lancashire town on the eve of the General Strike. A town where the gap between the rich and poor was about to erupt into a bloody field of battle.Libby and Carrie were more than sisters. Mirror images, they were different sides of the same heart, impossible to separate or divide. Until they both fell in love with Tom.

She was a woman of unbreakable spirit and quiet pride, and nothing - neither the drabness of her life nor the boredom of her job - could stop her from reaching for the stars ... But Emma's happiness lay with Simon Martin, and Simon was the boss's son. Between them stood the differences of class and background - a huge gulf that threatened to destroy Emma's one chance for a true and lasting love.

Polly married Harry pilgrim out of love. A love, she believed, that would meet every test that life could make. But a girl in love cannot always see what the future will bring ... She had never had an easy life. But then when it seemed that the worst must be over, Harry lost his job and was forced to move down south to look for work. Leaving Polly to discover that loneliness and poverty could drive her into the arms of another man ...

SynopsisIn a small Lancashire cotton town in the 1930s, Daisy Bell dreams her life away. At twenty-six, still a spinster and heiress to her mother's potato pie shop, she's resigned to a lonely old age. But toiling over the bake-house fire she dreams of a better world - a world of glamour and romance as seen on the silver screen.Then she meets Sam a dashing Clark Gable look-alike and chauffeur to a wealthy London businessman - and suddenly her life is changed forever...

On a bombing mission over Germany, David Turner's thoughts are with Sally Barnes in Liverpool. Deaf since childhood, Sally is young and vulnerable and David wishes he could be with her to protect her from the horrors of war. But to Sally, David is just the boy from down the road. It is Lee, the young carefree American airman, who has won her heart.

It is New Year's Eve 1936 when Wesley Battersby leaves his pretty wife Amy to go and live with Clara Marsden. Ashamed and frightened, Amy struggles with loneliness and hardship while Wesley is spending his money on buying the love of the flighty Clara. But Amy's warmth and vitality win her friends who give her renewed courage and confidence. And when the frivolous Clara leaves Wesley in search of a wealthier replacement, he realizes his foolish mistake and returns home, but to a woman changed almost beyond recognition ...

At the turn of the century, the North of England was a hard, bleak world. A world where joy and love were the words in someone else's book - where men were resigned and women oppressed.Strong-willed and spirited, rebellious and beautiful, Maggie Craig flew in the face of the harshness of that world ... and found her passion was to cost her dearly all her life.

Lisa Logan was still a girl when she learned that it was a man's world ... A man's world and no place for the weak. When her beloved father deserted them, she and her mother were left with nothing. Her mother could not cope with this new and harsh reality, but Lisa swore her revenge.

They lived worlds apart. Jenny was the girl from the cat-meat shop, born into squalor and defeat. Paul Tunstall was a soldier and a gentleman, arrogant and charming, with his silver-light eyes and boyish smile. And yet from the moment they met there was a spark between them - and their separate lives of pain and loneliness seemed to beckon to each other.

A Collection of Short StoriesThis is a collection of Marie Joseph's most outstanding short stories, previously published in magazines in the 1960s and 1970s. There is the young mother who eventually discovers nothing can compare with Christmas at home with her husband and children; a couple who are brought together again with unexpected help from a feline source; and a younger sister's wedding which brings faint misgivings and memories from the past. With compassion, insight and humour these stories explore the themes of love - its hopes, joys, disappointments and reconciliations. All are told through the sepia of nostalgia and tinged with the irony that is Marie Joseph's Hallmarks. **

SynopsisWhen the exotic stranger walked into the loveless Clancy household, he brought a gift to innocent seventeen-year-old Annie that neither her five brothers, nor her brutal father, had ever given her ... tenderness. And, like many before her, Annie pays the price for its sweetness. An outcast from her home and adrift in a harsh world, it would take a long time for Annie to trust a man again ... Inspired by Marie Joseph's storytelling magic, and set in the wild and sweeping Lancashire countryside, The Travelling Man is another of her gripping, page-turning sagas.

The Lancashire town was divided between the haves and the have-nots, between mill-owning Boltons and mill-working Armstrongs. But Dorothy Bolton was determined to cross the chasm and risk everything for the love of Stanley Armstrong ...