Valerie Wood

Click on picture to go to Amazon.co.uk

'Rich Girl, Poor Girl'

Christmas 1860. Polly, already living in grinding poverty, finds herself alone on the streets of Hull when her mother dies in childbirth. Rosalie, brought up in affluence and comfort on the other side of town, loses her own mother in similar circumstances and on the same day. Polly takes a job as scullery maid in Rosalie's lonely house, and the two girls form an unlikely friendship. Travelling together to the North Yorkshire Moors they discover a new kind of life and find unexpected joy and fulfilment.

Review of Valerie's previous novel, 'The Long Walk Home':

'Valerie Wood is simply superb! She writes with such assurance, élan and confidence that readers will be gripped from the very first page. Deftly blending pathos, emotion, drama, romance and humour, The Long Walk Home is an exceptional Victorian saga from this talented storyteller whose novels rival Catherine Cookson’s finest works. Heartbreaking, engrossing and captivating from start to finish, The Long Walk Home is a spellbinding story you will not easily forget!'

Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "The Long Walk Home"   "The Long Walk Home" tells the story of young Mikey Quinn who, scavenging on the streets of Hull, is thrown into prison for stealing a rabbit from the butchers. His chief accuser, a well-to-do lawyer, has a daughter, Eleanor, whom he badly mistreats. When Mikey is released he finds that his mother has died and his brothers taken into the workhouse - determined to find a better life for his family, he takes the long walk all the way to London to seek his fortune. There he finds the grim realities of city life are even worse than they were in Hull, and comes under the evil patronage of the sinister Tully, first encountered when he was in prison. But he also meets Eleanor again, and between them they face the dangers of London and gradually make a new life for themselves, eventually making the journey back to their home town - the long walk home.	Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "The Hungry Tide" As John Rayner, heir to the family lands and ships, watched Sarah grow into a serene and lovely woman, he became increasingly aware of his love for her, a love that was hopeless, for the gulf of wealth and social standing between them made marriage impossible. Against the background of the sea, the wide skies of Holderness, and the frightening crumbling of the land that meant so much to them, their love story was played out to its final climax.
Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "The Children of the Tide" The third in "The Hunary Tide" series. Set in the late 1850s, a baby is bought to the Rayner family home. The family assume the child is James's, not Gilbert's, who is on the verge of marriage. This signals a family furore and disaster begins to fall on the Rayners.	Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "The Songbird"   The choice was hers - fame and fortune or true love. Poppy Mazzini, born in Hull over her father's grocery shop, lives up to the promise of her fiery red hair and Italian ancestry. Her lovely singing voice and good looks lead her to her great ambition - to go on the stage and see her name top of the bill. She becomes a music hall star both in her native town and in the south, after an appearance in the theatre at Brighton - she even performs in Paris, to tremendous acclaim. But when her first love, an ambitious shoemaker in her home town, becomes engaged to someone else, Poppy is devastated. She disappears, believing that she will never return to her life of stardom. But her fame cannot be kept a secret...
Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "The Romany Girl" Polly Anna could not remember her father, and after her mother died, in poverty, when Polly Anna was just three, the workhouse was the only place for her. Helped by Jonty, a young misfit who became her best friend, she ran away with the fairground folk and became a horserider and acrobat. Meanwhile, in a great house in the Yorkshire Wolds, old Mrs Winthrop had never given up hope of finding her daughter, who eloped with a handsome Romany and was never seen again.	Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "Emily" Betrayed, imprisoned, tried and transported to Australia, Emily's life seems finished until she is reunited with the one man who can save her from her misery and bring her wealth and happiness.
Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "The Doorstep Girls"   Ruby and Grace had grown up in the slums of Middle Court, the poorest place in Hull. Friends since early childhood, they had supported each other in bad times and good. Ruby's ma, Bess, addicted to the opium which dulled the pain of her miserable existence, tried hard to be a good mother, but without too much success, while Grace's parents, Bob and Lizzie, looked after the girl as well as their own family as best they could. But the two families were bound together by more than friendship, and secrets from the past threatened to make their hard lives even more difficult.	Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "Going Home" As a striking and independent young woman studying to be a teacher in York, Amelia is looking for a purpose in life, and hopes to get to know the two young gentlemen who have travelled from Australia to meet her family. However, she soon finds that their family history is inextricably linked.
Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "The Kitchen Maid"   Jenny Graham leaves her home in Hull and applies for work as a kitchen maid at the home of the Ingram family in the East Yorkshire town of Beverley. Here, she meets and falls in love with Christy, the only son of the family, whose parents have high hopes of him marrying well in order to save their own impoverished livelihood. Christy wants them to run away together, and hatches a secret, dangerous plan which goes tragically wrong and leaves Jenny on a charge of murder. Many difficulties confront Jenny before she can return to the place where once she was happy and where she can at last make her peace.	Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "Far from Home"   When Georgiana Gregory and her maid, Kitty, make the long sea journey from their native Hull for New York, they are expecting to begin a new life in the freedom of the newly formed United States of America. But in New York, the women discover that the dangers and passions of this new country and its people threaten to overwhelm them.
Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "Rosa's Island"   An orphaned child from an island on the east coast of Yorkshire grows up to discover the secrets and tragedies of her past.	Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "Nobody's Child"   When Laura Page returns to the remote Holderness village of Welwick, it is to try and discover the mystery of her mother Susannah's early life. Now a prosperous businesswoman in Hull, Susannah never speaks of her childhood, when she was brought up with the terrible stigma of bastardy - of being nobody's child. Susannah's own mother, Mary-Ellen, born into poverty and living in a labourer's cottage, had the misfortune to fall in love with a local landowner's son. She was his one and only great love, but was unable to acknowledge their child and had to watch her growing up in hardship. As the years passed and Laura began to be curious about her mother's past, so too did she become aware of the mystery about her own father.
Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "Fallen Angels"   After her dastardly husband Billy tries to sell her at a wife sale, Lily Fowler finds herself alone, frightened and heavily pregnant on the streets of Hull. Her brave attempts to find work are futile and when she is turned away from the workhouse and other such establishments for women in her "condition", Lily is forced to swallow her last iota of respectability and work in a brothel in Leadenhall Square. Unexpectedly, things begin to look up. Lily sees potential where others can only see destitution and ruin and soon forges strong relationships with the other women there. They are all good-hearted women who have fallen on hard times and together Lily and her "fallen angels" outwit the low-life brothel-keeper and work to turn the house in Leadenhall Square into something altogether more respectable.	Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com "Annie" Set in the countryside of the Yorkshire Wolds and the River Humber, this is a companion volume to "The Hungry Tide", which won the first Catherine Cookson Prize. Annie has killed a man in the slums of Hull, and now she flees along the paths of the Humber, to unfamiliar territory and a new life.