Showing results by author "Catrin Collier" in All Categories

‘Tony’s wife wasn’t cold before tongues started wagging about me and him,' Anna complained. 'If only I could . . . ’ ‘What?’ Megan picked up Ann’s bag. ‘Shout the truth from the rooftops.’ ‘Do that,' Megan warned, 'you’ll lose your job and there’ll be two more widows scrubbing the Graig workhouse yard and three more children taken into Maesycoed orphanage. Forget the gossips. Think of the dinner we’ll have tomorrow.’

Collection of six stories, some have been published in magazines, Poppies at the Well, Last Orders, Christmas Eve in the Workhouse, The Night Before Christmas, The Ghost before Christmas, Not Quite Leningrad

Stateless and destitute after the Second World War, Magda Janek built a new life for herself and her baby daughter, Helena in Pontypridd. Magda gave Helena the ambitions she once cherished for herself and at twenty-one, Magda's daughter has a university degree, a coveted teaching post, and marriage to the love of her life, Dr Ned John, to look forward to, Helena couldn't have been happier. Until tragedy strikes and robs Helena of the only family she has ever known and everything she believes when she uncovers a bitter secret, so explosive that her mother carried it to the grave.

In the Middle East tension is escalating between the British and the Arabs. Misfit Lieutenant Harry Downe is sent to negotiate a treaty with a renegade Bedouin Sheikh, Ibn Shalan, whose tribe is attacking enemy patrols in Iraq and cutting oil pipelines. Greedy for arms, Shalan accepts British weapons, but, in return, Harry must take his daughter Furja to be his bride. The secret marriage leads to a deep love, to the anger of Shalan and the disgust of Harry's fellow officers. But war is looming.

FOR ELISE BASED ON A TRUE STORY 1938. The British Ambassador hosts a lavish reception in the Berlin Embassy. Rittmeister Wolfgang von Mau is commanded to seduce newly arrived Welsh diplomat, Elise de Clare. What he and his commanding officers don’t know, is their meeting is no coincidence. Her name isn’t Elise, she works for British intelligence and has been ordered to spy on the Rittmeister. As Wolf and Elise meet the demands of their paymasters and negotiate the whirl of Berlin high society, war clouds gather on the horizon bringing the “Gotterdammerung” the twilight of the Gods, ...

The Tsar's Dragons series follows the epic tale of 19th-century industrialist John Hughes, who founded a city on the Russian steppe. For people like Hughes' right-hand man, Glyn Edwards, who has found love in a new country, and Anna Parry, a Welsh orphan who has found fulfilment working in Hughesovka's hospital, the city is a chance to build a new life, but fresh arrivals from their hometown threaten the peace and stability of that new existence. Meanwhile, for ambitious Russians like Alexei Beletsky, the city offers a chance to change their homeland for the better.

When Tsar Alexander II decided to drag Russia into the industrial age, he began by inviting Welsh businessman John Hughes to build an ironworks. A charismatic visionary, John persuades influential people to invest in his venture while concealing his greatest secret: he couldn't even write his own name. John recruited adventurers prepared to sacrifice everything to ensure the success of Hughesovka (Donetsk, Ukraine).

Mesopotamia, 1916. The Turks order prisoners from the siege of Kut to march the hundreds of miles to Baghdad. The men are weak from starvation after the five-month siege, with many suffering from dysentery, scabies, and malaria. They have no medical supplies. And then the hot weather begins.... Hundreds of men die on the march, the stragglers killed by Arab tribesmen; those too ill to move are left behind to die.

Following heavy casualties, General Townsend withdraws his exhausted troops to the town of Kut Al Amara, Iraq. His orders - to engage as many Turkish troops as possible in a siege situation. A relief force is hastily assembled, among them Charles Reid, Tom Mason and Michael Downe, for each of whom the advance is personal. Charles returns to the country where he lost the love of his life.

Saturday night and the Pier Ballroom in Swansea is the place to be. For Lily, an evacuee unclaimed by her family at the end of the war; for Judy, taught independence by her war widow mother; for Katie, the product of a marriage between a drunken, violent father and a cowed, beaten mother; and for the spoiled, wilful Helen. It is an evening that fuels jealousies and sows the seeds for friendships, confidences, and life-changing romance . . .

America 1968. Protests against the Vietnam War, for Civil Rights, sit-ins, love-ins, happenings - youth pitted against the establishment, hoping to create a better world. Everyone has one special summer. For British students Penny and Kate, and Americans Bobby and Sandy, it was that summer on Cape Cod. Warm languid days filled with love, laughter and music. Until the night Bobby's car crashed and burst into flames, and a bitter old woman took control, changing the survivors' lives for ever. One of the four was killed, another damaged; a third disappeared never to be seen by family or ...

The first historical novel in a meticulously researched series chronicling the life of the man behind the legend of Welsh hero, Owain Glyndŵr, who fought so valiantly for Welsh Independence. 'In our eagerness to lead the English away from our headquarters and families, we appear to have walked into a trap, boys. We cab see the enemy looking up at us. They do not fight for the love of a land, a family, friends and freedom. Driven by greed they kill to sate the bloodlust of tyrants who enslave them with silver. 'We fight for our wives, our children, our people and Hiraeth. The sense of home ...

A HIDDEN PAST A DANGEROUS LOVE AND A VOICE TO REACH ACROSS THE AGESAllenstein, East Prussia, 1939 - Charlotte von Datski's parents host a glittering ball to celebrate her eighteenth birthday and announce her engagement to a Prussian Count. But Hitler is about to plunge the world into a war that will wipe East Prussia from the map. 1946 Charlotte and her son seek refuge in England and struggle to adapt to their new life. Decades later, Charlotte's granddaughter, Laura, stumbles across Charlotte's history and persuades her to embark on a journey into her past. As Charlotte recalls the one ...

Ronnie Ronconi, the eldest son of a large, Italian/Welsh cafe-owning family is as ruthless in his private life as he is in business. He demands that Ronconi business affairs to take precedence over all else - and his sisters to marry Catholics. Right up until the moment he falls in love with Welsh, chapel-going, consumptive Maud who has been sent home from her post in Cardiff Infirmary to die. And for the first time hard-hearted Ronnie finds himself wanting the impossible - he wants Maud

Orphaned at eight raised by a sadistic brother, Rhian, dreams of love. Handsome, charming Joey Evans has never met a woman who could refuse him anything. It takes time, tenderness and persistence to win Rhian's trust but just when she confesses her love, Joey's womanising past returns to shatter their happiness. Wanting to hurt Joey as deeply as he has her, Rhian turns to her employer. Unhappily married, Edward offers to keep her as his mistress. Her choice is simple. To forgo love, reputation and respectability for financial security. But Rhian cannot forget the man she loved who betrayed ...

When Harry was five his mother married a coal miner. Loved by his new family, Harry embraced their socialism and considered rejecting his inheritance from the father he'd never known. He graduated Oxford with dreams of becoming an artist but when his beloved 'step-grandfather', ex-miner Billy Evans succumbed to TB Harry volunteered to accompany him to a sanatorium. There he met Diana, a beautiful, feminist medical student; and Mary, an illiterate, farmer's daughter fighting to keep her family together. Harry falls in love - suffers rejection - and finds out about life and the responsibility...

Tonypandy, South Wales, 1911, starving miners fight soldiers and police on the picket lines for the right to earn a wage that will clothe and feed their families, while Irish labourers are brought in to take their jobs for half their pay. Handsome 'Big' Tom Kelly, an Irish worker, believes he has found a future worth living when he falls in love with Amy Watkins, the daughter of a strike leader, but under cover of night, the Welsh miners search out the Irish men, drag them from their beds, beat them and hang them from the street lamp posts. Can Amy and Tom keep their love a secret? All they...

January 1957, Helen's husband Jack returns from National Service. Happy, reunited, they slip back into life together with their friends; Lily, pregnant and married to Jack's brother Martin, Katie, pregnant and married to Helen's father John, and Judy, engaged to policeman Sam. Their idyll ends the night Jack confesses a fling with a sergeant's widow has left the woman pregnant. Helen is barren, handling her friends' pregnancies was difficult; but Jack's revelation is shattering. Still loving Jack, she starts divorce proceedings until life offers a choice which might save their marriage if ...

1910 Rhondda Valley. Poverty and hardship bite as troops are brought in to control the striking miners. Megan Williams is eighteen and in love with striker, Victor Evans, but the only work she is offered is in the lodging house catering for police and soldiers. Shunned by friends and neighbours, for working for the enemy and disowned by her father who would rather see her dead than married to a Catholic, whose father and brother are strike ringleaders. Victor and Megan find themselves fighting for the right to love one another, remain together and build a future.

Rhondda 1905: Coal is king and no colliery owner wealthier or more generous than Harry Watkin Jones. His daughter Sali is about to marry her childhood sweetheart, when tragedy strikes. Four years later Sali is a penniless outcast, fleeing from a violent husband. She finds sanctuary and work in the home of colliers. But unrest and violence blight the valleys. Caught in the conflict, Sali finds herself denying her roots, her class, and even sacrifices her son's future, for the sake of the people she has grown to love and the cause they are prepared to die for.