Janine Birkett

Fifty years ago, a group of teenagers spent a weekend on Holy Island, forging a bond that has lasted a lifetime. Now, they still return every five years to celebrate their friendship, and remember the friend they lost to the rising waters of the causeway at the first reunion. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the...

A hot summer on the Northumberland coast, and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers. This stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team intrigued.

Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter, a young ecologist named Patrick, to look after the place while they're away. But Patrick is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley - a beautiful, lonely place to die. DI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene, with her detectives Holly and Joe. When they look...

At the isolated Baikie's Cottage, three very different women come together to complete an environmental survey. The three women each know the meaning of betrayal. So when people begin to mysteriously die, DI Vera Stanhope is sent to investigate.

Millions of viewers of 'Our Yorkshire Farm' watched Amanda Owen, husband Clive and their nine children share their daily lives at Ravenseat, one of the most remote hill farms in the country. It's a beautiful place, high in the Dales, and a rewarding existence close to nature. But Ravenseat is a tenant farm and may not stay in the family, so when Amanda saw a nearby farmhouse up for sale, she knew it was her chance to create roots for the next generation....

As an only child, 15-year-old Angeline Stewart is heartbroken when her beloved parents are killed in a coaching accident and she is given into the care of her uncle. Naive and innocent, Angeline is easy prey for the handsome and ruthless Oswald Golding who is looking for a rich heiress to solve the money troubles his womanizing has caused. On her wedding night, Angeline enters a nightmare from which there is no awakening. Oswald proves to be more...

'She's not worth more than tuppence, that child!' Those are the words that haunt Sadie Linthorpe. She is the talk of Ryhope when she arrives there, aged seventeen, alone, seeking work and a home in the pit village. But Sadie is keeping a secret - she is searching for her baby girl who was taken from her at birth a year ago and cruelly sold by the child's grandmother. All that Sadie knows about the family who took her daughter is that they live in...

After the fall of France, Hazel, Irene and Carol are sent from the east end of Newcastle to the safety of a country village. Billeted in a grand house with a spinster and her niece, the three young evacuees' futures will be irrevocably changed by their new lives. When peace is declared, and Hazel and Irene return to the families they were forced to leave, they find Newcastle very different to the home they remembered. Mourning the people they loved,...

'Any rag and bone!' Everyone recognises the cry of Meg Sutcliffe as she plies her trade along the back streets of Ryhope. She learnt the ropes from her dad when he returned from the War. But when tragedy struck, Meg had no choice but to continue alone. Now the meagre money she earns is the only thing that stands between her family's safety and a predatory rent collector...Many say it's no job for a woman - especially a beauty like Meg. When she catches...