A Woman's Ruin

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One mistake will cost her everything...The powerful story of love and loss from the multi-million copy bestselling author.

In the poverty-stricken Tyneside of the 1930s, Mary Walton is the light of her father Alec’s life. Ground down by years of unemployment and an unhappy marriage, he is determined that his daughter will escape the hardship that has trapped their family for so long.

When Mary begins working for local shopkeeper Ben Tollett, she catches her first glimpse of a different future. But as the two grow closer, a secret threatens everything Alec has hoped for his daughter.

As the years bring war, love and loss, Mary must find the strength to build a life from the wreckage of those early dreams. But the choices made in one generation will reach far beyond her own, shaping the family for decades to come...

‘Catherine Cookson soars above her rivals’ Mail on Sunday
‘The queen of raw family romances’ Telegraph
‘Her characters have the grit of real life’ Sunday Times

About Catherine Cookson

Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.

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