Elizabeth Gill

After a childhood of poverty, can they change their fates? After a traumatic incident, a woman gives birth to a child and is persuaded by her husband to give him up to a local couple. On the same dark and stormy night, a local pit owner turns his wife out on to the bleak moors, telling her son she is evil. The woman is never seen again. Twenty years later, these seemingly unrelated childhood events have shaped the characters of these two unloved boys....

When hope is lost, can she rebuild her home? After her daughter Arabella passes away, leaving a poor, motherless child in her wake, Nell Almond doesn't think her life can get any worse. But then tragedy strikes a second time and she finds herself widowed, with her husband's quarry to manage. But it's baby Frederick, her grandson, who troubles her most. Being cared for by one of the local families, he lives in hand-me-down clothes in a cramped and...

Alice Lee, middle-aged and unmarried, is the only volunteer when the minister asks his congregation to help young Zebediah Bailey. Zeb is in prison for a ghastly crime, and the townspeople would rather forget than forgive this local lad who lost his way. Alice dutifully writes to him every week, sending him sweets from her shop: Alice Lee's Confectionary. She won't admit she's lonely, but since her parents deaths, making and selling sweets has become...

North East England, 1906. Emma's arrival in Tow Law Town from New England after the death of her father offers Mick Castle a lifeline. His days are spent running the Black Diamond pub, but his marriage to Isabel is increasingly troubled and his daughter Connie is running wild. As Emma opens an academy, she sets herself up in competition with the local school, provoking a savage response from the community. But she will not be deterred - even when...

After Ruth Dixon's mother deserts her on Christmas Eve, her father comes home drunk and commits an unthinkable act. Without money or friends she has nowhere to go, but when he hurts her a second time, she knows what she must do. She is rescued by Jay, a businessman, who takes her to the convent where she meets sister Madeline. Along with the rest of the nuns, Maddy provides food, shelter and education for orphans. Ruth comes to look on her new friends...

As a child Blake is taken in by neighbours after the death of his grandparents and works for his keep. As a young man he falls in love with his employer's daughter, Annie, and is forced to leave the farm and seek work in the shipyards of Sunderland.