Val Wood

When Polly Anna's mother died when she was just three years old, it seemed the workhouse was the only place for her to go. But with the help of Jonty - a young misfit who soon became her best friend - she managed to escape, running away with the fairground folk. She became a horserider and...

When Lucy's parents are killed in a train crash, her kindly uncle steps in to look after the little girl - to the initial apprehension of his wife and her son. However, Lucy's sweet, spirited charm slowly wins over her new family, and as she overcomes the trauma of her childhood, she grows up...

Holderness, 1846.For reliable, thirteen-year-old Bella, life isn’t turning out quite as she’d hoped. She lives at the Woodman Inn – an ancient hostelry run by her family in the Yorkshire countryside – surrounded by two older brothers who never pull their weight and a flighty younger...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of A Place to Call Home by Val Wood, read by Anne Dover. Ellen thought she’d always live in the remote, pretty coastal village where she grew up. After all, her husband, Harry, works on a farm where he’s guaranteed a job and home for life. But when...

Can two friends find hope in hard times? Ruby and Grace have grown up in the poorest slums of Hull. Friends since early childhood, they have supported each other in bad times and good. But their families are bound together by more than friendship, and secrets from the past threaten to make their...

Brought to you by Penguin. Hull, 1852. Matty has had to care for her three younger sisters ever since their mother’s death 10 years ago. She and the girls’ beloved father have worked hard to keep the family together, and now it’s time to celebrate as Matty turns 18 . But their joy is...

Rosa grew up an orphan in a remote, watery island fastness on the wild east coast of Yorkshire. Taken in as a small child by the motherly Mrs Drew, she realised as she grew up that this large and seemingly close farming family contained many troubled souls: Mr Drew, whose religious fervour held...

Sarah Foster's parents have been fighting a constant battle with poverty, disease and crime. When her father, Will, is involved in a terrible accident at work, their lives became even harder. But Will's good deeds of the past pay off as John Rayner decides to rescue the Fosters. John provides...

It is the late 1850s and a tired woman holding a baby walks from Hull to one of the big houses in Anlaby – the home of the wealthy Rayners. She knocks at the door, and shoves the baby at young James Rayner. The father was ‘young Mr Rayner’, and the mother is dead. Then she vanishes. The...

Margriet grew up as a lonely child in the old town of Hull. Her adored father often travelled by sea to the Netherlands, leaving her with an unaffectionate mother and only her imagination of a little Dutch girl to keep her company. When tragedy struck and her father's ship went down in a storm...

1860: Harriet Miles is trying to take care of her seriously ill mother, and just when she thinks things couldn’t get any worse she is fired from her job at the hostelry. The last thing she expects after her mother dies is a marriage proposal from a man she barely knows, but her only...

Brought to you by Penguin. With her trademark warmth and powerful characters, Winter's Daughter is a stunning new Victorian saga - about a young child separated from her mother, and the family who bring her in from the cold. Hull, 1856. James Ripley and his wife Moira have always looked out for...

Random House presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of Emily by Val Wood, read by Anne Dover. Emily was only five years old when she was sent away from her ma and pa and her brother, Joe, to go and live with old Granny Edwards. A loving and hardworking child, she goes into...

Brought to you by Penguin. 1864: following the untimely death of her cold-hearted husband, Beatrix and her three children are finally free. While Ambrose has already determined his path in life, eldest son Laurie's future is less certain. With the responsibility of the family estate on his...

Random House presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of Going Home by Val Wood, read by Anne Dover. For Amelia and her brothers and sisters, the grim past which their mother, Emily, had endured seemed very far away. As pretty as a picture and now learning to be a teacher in York...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of A Mother's Choice by Val Wood, read by Anne Dover. For 10 years Delia has had to fend for herself and her son, Jack, and as a young unmarried mother, life has never been easy. Every new coat and pair of shoes was bought with what little money she...

Brought to you by Penguin. Scarborough, 1880. Young Jeannie spends her days watching her mother and the other harbour girls sitting at the water's edge - mending nets, gutting herring - and waiting for her friend Ethan Wharton to come in on his father's fishing smack. As she was growing up...

Brought to you by Penguin. Don't miss the unforgettable new story of one woman's grit and perseverance from Sunday Times bestselling author, Val Wood. In 1860’s Yorkshire, a woman’s fortune belongs to her husband – regardless of a so-called-gentleman’s character… When Lydia Mercer’s...

Brought to you by Penguin. Holderness, 1988. Elizabeth Foster has lived in Tillington all her life. She knows everything about the local community… Everything except why another family, the Reedbarrows, now live in her ancestral home, Foster's Mill. When Christopher, a man from 'down south'...

Harriet and Fletcher Tuke have worked hard to raise their children well. Daniel, the eldest son, has always accepted that his birth father died soon after he was born, and Fletcher has raised Daniel as his own. But as Daniel comes of age and begins to fall in love with childhood friend Beatrice...