Bill Bailey - Hardcover

THREE MAGNIFICENT NOVELS IN ONE VOLUME:

BILL BAILEY - BILL BAILEY'S LOT - BILL BAILEY'S DAUGHTER

Catherine Cookson's novels are about hardship, the intractability of life and of individuals, the struggle first to survive and next to make sense of one's survival. Humour, toughness, resolution and generosity are Cookson virtues, in a world which she often depicts as cold and violent. Her novels are weighted and driven by her own early experiences of illegitimacy and poverty. This is what gives them power. In the specialised world of women's popular fiction, Cookson has created her own territory' - Helen Dunmore, The Times

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 a local grammar-school master. At the age of forty she began writing about the lives of the working-class people with whom she had grown up, using the place of her birth as the background to many of her novels.

Although 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 soon began to spread throughout the world. Her novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages and more than 5o,ooo,ooo copies* of her books have been sold in Corgi alone. Thirteen of her novels have been made into successful television dramas, and more are planned.

Catherine Cookson's many bestselling novels have 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 and her husband Tom now live near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.