Chief's daughter, the fiery Mairi Lismore is in love with Douglas Roskill, heir to Duntorin Castle, but they are wrenched apart by the zealous witch-hunts of Zechariah Black and the jealousy of her step-sister. Sent to the Royal Court of James VI in Edinburgh, Mairi discovers that its gaiety and glitter hide dark treachery and the ruthless ambition of Robert Boswell who determines to have her for himself at any cost. With treason, betrayal and revenge thwarting Mairi and Douglas's attempts to be reunited, this is a gripping historical love story which moves from the embattled fringes of the...

Featured on BBC Home Truths, this is the delightful memoir of a Beatle-mad, ex-pat Scot growing up in the north-east of England in the 1960s. The only girl in a family of boys, Janet was brought up in the 'Land of Boy' - a boarding school in Durham where her father Norman was housemaster. Every year, these seven MacLeods would cram into a Ford Zephyr for the two day journey back to the ancestral home on the Isle of Skye. Beatlemania, the Girls from U.N.C.L.E, suffragette great-aunts, real chiefs, Donovan-spotting, a pastry scandal and a dash of blood-thirsty clan history - Janet's tales are...

When Carol Shannon, the unruly daughter of Brassbank's pit manager, falls for young miner, Mick Todd, their defiant relationship causes a storm in the close-knit mining village. For the bitterness between their families runs as deep as the coal seams that are Brassbank's lifeblood. But the hardest battles are still to come for rebellious Carol. With 1984 dawns the year long Miner's Strike that divides the nation and sets communities at war. Hardship not only threatens Brassbank's survival, but pushes Carol and Mick's passionate union to breaking point, leaving tragedy in its wake. Set against...

An enthralling story of dark secrets and lost love on the hippy trail by a best-selling British author. 1976: friends, Marcus and Ruth, go missing in Afghanistan during an overland bus trip to Kathmandu. A generation later, Ruth's niece Amber, haunted by the disintegration of her family, determines to get at the truth of their disappearance. Was it murder, as her father suspected, or a suicide pact as the police believed? Tracking down the trip's bus driver, Cassidy, Amber starts to piece together a lost world - the mystical vibrant hippy trail to India - and colourful characters like Juliet,...

Brought up on her parents' smallholding in Jarrow in the harsh years of the 1870s, selling vegetables to poverty-struck Irish labourers such as the unruly McMullens, Rose dreams of the world beyond the grime of the town, a world she glimpsed at a fairytale wedding on the Ravensworth Estate as a child. Capturing the heart of handsome and respectable steelworker William Fawcett, it seems her wish for a better life is finally within reach. But tragedy strikes, and to save her young family from destitution, Rose must turn to wild John McMullen. A powerful tale of passion and heartache, and a...

To escape her possessive and drunken step-father, Kate is sent away from teaming Jarrow to work on the Ravensworth Estate. She is soon attracting the attention of charming, headstrong Alexander and dares to dream of a future with him. But when Kate discovers herself pregnant and alone she must return to face the wrath of her step-father.

Catherine (Kitty) McMullen, is seventeen, restless and rebellious. Resentful of her mother Kate's new husband, she yearns for stories of the father she never knew and when her gossipy aunt divulges that he was a wealthy gentleman, Catherine's discontent with grimy, impoverished Jarrow grows. Taking a job at the workhouse laundry, her young eyes are further confronted with the horrors and indignities of poverty, and she becomes even more determined to rise above her wretched surroundings by educating herself. Braving the ridicule of fellow staff, Catherine embarks on a quest for knowledge....

Warm-hearted, fun-loving Jo Elliot grows up on Tyneside in the 1960's with her widowed father and older brother Colin and his friends. She has a special bond with the lively but rebellious Mark Duggan who is rejected by his violent father and ignored by his hostile brother Gordon, to whom he can never measure up. Mark longs for acceptance, but it is mature and masculine Gordon for whom Jo falls dangerously in love. Tragedy unfolds that leaves Jo outcast from her old friends. As she forges an acting career and tries to rebuild her life, war breaks out in the Falklands and both Colin and Mark...

1946: far out in the Atlantic a boatload of men returning from war are shipwrecked within sight of their homes on the remote Scottish island of Kulah - and the wailing of the women could be heard across the sea on neighbouring Battersay. But the women are also hiding a shameful secret... Present Day: When journalist Ally Niven escapes to the remote Scottish island of Battersay after a failed love affair, all she is looking for is a quiet life and a catering job for the summer. But from the outset someone is trying to scare her off and Ally soon discovers that the beautiful surroundings mask...

Scotland, 1722: on a remote and windswept Scottish island an enigmatic poetess foretells tragedy for the proud Macdonalds of Clanranald and the birth of an extraordinary child. That child is the passionate and free-spirited Flora, daughter of Marion. Flora's early years are spent roaming around her father's cattle farm, running wild and free with her brother and his friends. From early on she adores fair Neil MacEachen. But when her father dies suddenly, Flora and her mother are plunged into poverty and it seems beautiful Flora is destined to skivvy in the kitchen and dairy for her harsh...