Originally published in 1945, The Green Years is one of A J Cronin's best-loved novels. It tells the story of Robert Shannon, a young Irish Catholic boy, who, orphaned at the age of seven, is brought to live with his mother's estranged family in Scotland. As he grows up in a dour Presbyterian town, only his great-grandfather, an incorrigible, swaggering, charming, larger-than-life character, seems able to rescue him from the narrow interests of the people who try to shape his life in their own image.
Disappointed in love and in his burning ambition to study medicine, the eighteen-year-old...

Knowing his father's profoundest wish, that his son should succeed him as Rector of Stillwater, Stephen Desmonde tried to be worthy. But the siren call of art was too overwhelming; he felt driven as though by demons to pursue his vision of the world's beauty. He must put on canvas the truth as he saw it, whatever the cost might be, whether it was the blank misunderstanding of his family or the ridicule of the public. Few artists could have survived the scandal and mockery he had to endure in the sensational trial that stirred all England.
Indeed, Stephen Desmonde himself could not have...

Robert Shannon was a devoted scientist on the brink of a medical discovery of great importance. He had no time or inclination for women . . . or for any of the world outside his laboratory. But Jean Law had other plans for him. Strictly brought up by narrow-minded parents, confined by her hospital lectures and her dingy boarding-house, she hardly knew the fires that burned beneath her calm exterior . . . except that they burned for Robert Shannon. She knew she had to have him for herself, and, despite her family's religious beliefs, their shocked disapproval, and all she had been taught was...

In the heat of late afternoon, a young boy waits at the station for his father. A plume of steam, white against the purple-heathered hills, marks the train. Beyond, blooming along the shoreline, the flowers of high summer, as a tall-funnelled paddle steamer beats and froths down the wide Clyde estuary . . .
A narrative in the great Cronin tradition, this is the stirring chronicle of Laurence Carroll as he grows from childhood to adult years in Scotland. The tale of his struggles - early illness, a widowed mother, poverty, the uncles who try to help him, and the women who have such...

Gracie Lindsay's return to Levenford arouses mixed feelings: to her uncle Daniel she is the daughter he never had; to David Murray she is the woman he still loves though he is now engaged to another; and to the townspeople she is the girl who seven years earlier left Levenford pregnant and in disgrace. Now at 25 Gracie is more lovely than ever and just as careless of propriety as before . . . This is the poignant and moving story of Gracie's struggle to win self-respect and the regard of the town.
In the magnificent narrative tradition of The Citadel, The Stars Look Down and...

Paul Mathry, a student about to graduate and embark upon a teaching career, finds out that his father was convicted for murder, a secret that his mother had hidden from him since his childhood.
Driven by an intense desire to see his father, Paul sets out to visit him in prison, only to find out that visitors are never allowed there.
From there, he meets the primary witnesses in the case that convicted his father, not all of whom are supportive to Paul's cause. He encounters several dead ends but he persists, with the help of a store girl named Lena and a news reporter.
His...

In a story of wide and fascinating detail A. J. Cronin tells of Dr. David Morey who tries to atone for his desertion of the woman he loved.
Beguiled by the prospect of riches he goes on to marry Dottie, a spoiled but beautiful neurotic who brings him almost constant misery, until a chance remark makes him seek retribution in memories of the past and a return to his native Scotland.
In the magnificent narrative tradition of The Citadel, The Stars Look Down and Cronin's other classic novels, The Judas Tree is a great book by a much-loved author.

The Keys of the Kingdom is the unforgettable story of the Reverend Francis Chisholm and his fight against the snares of the world he has given up . . . his forbidden attraction to women . . . his struggle with his superiors...
One of Cronin's most famous characters, he strives for humility and strength to follow the path he sees as the true one for himself and the Church.
From the pen of the author of The Citadel, Hatter's Castle, The Stars Look Down, Shannon's Way and The Spanish Gardener comes this compelling tale of an ordinary man of the...

A. J. Cronin's famous story is a soul-stirring novel of pride and greed, and its terrible retribution.
When her father forced her to leave school, and cut off all her contact with the past and future, Mary Brodie's whole life became the narrow compass of her family's cold, comfortless house in a small Scottish town.
Her mean and ambitious father tyrannised over his timid, obliging wife, his cowed, overworked younger daughter and his spineless son. Four people were held in Brodie's merciless grip until, like a breath of the outside world Brodie so much despised, came the young Irishman...

Three Loves is yet another Cronin masterpiece. A powerful and moving novel which draws the reader into a passionate and tragic world of intense relationships.
Lucy Moore, a happy and loving wife, suddenly finds her family security shattered by the arrival of another woman. Although she weathers this storm, cruel Fate has a further twist of the knife for her. Yet she heroically pursues her search for a great love amid hardships which inspire any reader with real sympathy - a sympathy which deepens as Lucy moves towards her final and most tragic discovery.
In the magnificent narrative...