The Bailey Chronicles [Hardcover]

Catherine Cookson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her first contemporary romance, Cookson ( The Parson's Daughter ) introduces a thoroughly delightful extended family. Fiona Nelson is a 28-year-old widow with three children when Bill Bailey enters her Tyneside home as a paying guest. Although the children are immediately taken by brash and demonstrative "Mr. Bill," who heads a construction crew, it takes time for proper and reserved Fiona to thaw to the self-described "middle-of-the-road man." When Bill and Fiona marry, he adopts not only her three "lovable bairns," but also the orphan daughter of a co-worker. As we follow the lively family over a span of 10 years, we meet quirky and endearing characters, Cookson's forte. Among them are Fiona's man-chasing, disagreeable mother; young Sammy Love and his Irish father from rough Bog's End; Nell, the helpful neighbor who gets a second chance at marriage; and those of more genteel background who find the Baileys irresistible. Although the Baileys do not escape the pain of life, they triumph through love and laughter. Skirting the pitfall of sentimentality, Cookson spins an attractive tale, and gives her fans a treat in Bill Bailey, "a Liverpudlian by birth, but a Geordie by inclination." Doubleday Book Club main selection; Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 559 pages
• Publisher: Summit Books; First Printing edition (April 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671623877
• ISBN-13: 978-0671623876
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,630,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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.