Allie Cresswell

The McKay family gathers for a week-long holiday at a rambling old house to celebrate the fiftieth wedding anniversary of Robert and Mary. In recent years only funerals and sudden, severe illnesses have been able to draw them together and as they gather in the splendid rooms of Hunting Manor, their differences are soon uncomfortably apparent. For all their history, their traditions, the connective strands of DNA, they are relative strangers. There are truths unspoken, but the question is: how much truth can a family really stand? The family holiday mushrooms, drawing in sundry relatives both estranged and deranged. The machinations of an appalling, uninvited aunt threaten the holiday - and the family - with irreparable damage. This book will make you question your own family situation. What does it really mean to be 'family'?

Relative Strangers

The final instalment of the Highbury trilogy, Dear Jane narrates the history of Jane Fairfax, recounting the events hinted at but never actually described in Jane Austen's Emma. Orphaned Jane seems likely to be brought up in parochial Highbury until adoption by her papa's old friend Colonel Campbell opens to her all the excitement and opportunities of London. The velvet path of her early years is finite, however and tarnished by the knowledge that she must earn her own independence one day. Frank Weston is also transplanted from Highbury, adopted as heir to the wealthy Churchills and taken to their drear and inhospitable Yorkshire estate. The glimmer of the prize which will one day be his is all but obliterated by the stony path he must walk to claim it. Their paths meet at Weymouth and readers of Emma will be familiar with the finale of Jane and Frank's story. Dear Jane pulls back the veil which Jane Austen drew over their early lives, their meeting in Weymouth and the agony of their secret engagement.

The Final Book in the Highbury Trilogy Inspired by Jane Austen's 'emma'

Dear Jane

A novel by Amazon #1 best-selling author Allie Cresswell Kenny is AWOL, off on a protracted binge on alcohol and profligate spending. Michael is lost on the road to wild and unfrequented places. Teenager Matt is sucked into the murky underworld of a lawless estate. John is a recluse, Skinner is missing, Guy is hiding, Ryan doesn't call. Then there is little Mikey, swept away by a river in spate. These are the lost boys and this is their story, told through the lives of the women they leave behind.

Lost Boys

From the author of the Amazon #1 best-selling anthology 'The Book' comes a new collection of journal entries, original short stories, excerpts, reviews and articles. Contents include: Genesis; Saved; Tea-Drinking in America; Mrs Baggitt's Shop; Being Mandy Broadhead; The Last Passenger; The French Lieutenant's Woman; No-one Was Saved; Moving In 'Genesis' a writer begins a new work from scratch. It is to be her signature work and the main character will go down as one of literature's greatest. But the character has other ideas about the way the plot should go, and the writer has to decide whether to consign the whole manuscript to the bin or just let the story unfold. 'Being Mandy Broadhead' is a memoire of the writer's teenage years. The agony of being plain and not particularly popular crystallises into a fixation with the prettiest and most popular girl in her school. 'No-One Was Saved' is the outworking of the lyrics of a popular song. Who was Eleanor Rigby and why did she collect rice from the church grounds? What was the face she kept in a jar, and who was it for? 'Moving' includes excerpts from a diary written when the writer moved with her family from suburban Cheshire to rural Cumbria in 2000.

The New Book

What secrets hide beneath the veil? When her mother departs for a tour of the continent, Georgina is sent from the rural backwaters to stay with her cousin, George Talbot, in London. The 1835 season is at its height, but Georgina is determined to attend neither balls nor plays, and to eschew Society. She hides her face beneath an impenetrable veil. Her extraordinary appearance only sets off gossip and speculation as to her identity. Who is the mysterious lady beneath the veil? Amory Balfour attracts the same kind of unwelcome attention. The son of slaves, adopted and educated by a wealthy white couple, he is now a prosperous businessman, respected by his peers but still distrusted because of the colour of his skin. Can Georgina and Amory help each other to overcome the stigma of being different? The Lady in the Veil continues the story of the Talbots in The House in the Hollow, but stands equally well alone.

The Lady in the Veil

Who knows what secrets are trapped, like caged tigers, behind our neighbours' doors?When Molly and Stan move into a new housing development, Molly becomes a one-woman social committee, throwing herself into a frantic round of communal do-gooding and pot-luck suppers. She is blinded to what goes on behind those respectable facades by her desire to make the neighbourhood, and the neighbours, into all she has dreamed, all she needs them to be.Twenty years later, Molly looks back on the ruin of the Combe Close years, at the waste and destruction wrought by the escaping tigers: adultery, betrayal, tragedy, desertion, death. But now Molly has her own guilty secret, her own pet tiger, and it is all she can do to keep it in its cage.

Tiger in a Cage

A. Lady

Jane Bates has left Highbury to become the companion of the invalid widow Mrs Sealy in Brighton. Life in the new, fashionable seaside resort is exciting indeed. A wide circle of interesting acquaintance and a rich tapestry of new experiences make her new life all Jane had hoped for. While Jane's sister Hetty can be a tiresome conversationalist she proves to be a surprisingly good correspondent and Jane is kept minutely up-to-date with developments in Highbury, particularly the tragic news from Donwell Abbey.When the handsome Lieutenant Weston returns to Brighton Jane expects their attachment to pick up where it left off in Highbury the previous Christmas, but the determined Miss Louisa Churchill, newly arrived with her brother and sister-in-law from Enscombe in Yorkshire, seems to have a different plan in mind.

The Second Book in the Highbury Trilogy, Inspired by Jane Austen's 'Emma'

The Other Miss Bates

**The new novel by the best-selling author Allie Cresswell****A prequel to the award-winning Tall Chimneys**The Talbots are wealthy. But their wealth is from 'trade'. With neither ancient lineage nor title, they struggle for entrance into elite Regency society. Finally, aided by an impecunious viscount, they gain access to the drawing rooms of England's most illustrious houses.Mrs Talbot intends her daughter Jocelyn to marry well, to eliminate the stain of the family's ignoble beginnings. But the young men Jocelyn meets are vacuous, seeing Jocelyn as merely a substantial dowry. Only Lieutenant Barnaby Willow sees the real Jocelyn, but he is deployed to war. The hypocrisy of fashionable society repulses Jocelyn-beneath the courtly manners she finds deceit, dissipation and vice. She stumbles upon and then is embroiled in a sordid scandal which threatens utter disgrace for the Talbot family. Humiliated and dishonoured, she is sent to a remote house hidden in a hollow of the Yorkshire moors, irrevocably separated from family, friends and any hope of hearing about the lieutenant's fate.

A Regency Family Saga

The House in the Hollow

The Talbots are wealthy. But their wealth is from 'trade'. With neither ancient lineage nor title, they struggle for entrance into elite Regency society. Finally, aided by an impecunious viscount, they gain access to the drawing rooms of England's most illustrious houses. Mrs Talbot intends her daughter Jocelyn to marry well, to eliminate the stain of the family's ignoble beginnings. But the young men Jocelyn meets are vacuous, seeing Jocelyn as merely a substantial dowry. Only Lieutenant Barnaby Willow sees the real Jocelyn, but he is deployed to war. The hypocrisy of fashionable society repulses Jocelyn-beneath the courtly manners she finds deceit, dissipation and vice. She stumbles upon and then is embroiled in a sordid scandal which threatens utter disgrace for the Talbot family. Humiliated and dishonoured, she is sent to a remote house hidden in a hollow of the Yorkshire moors, irrevocably separated from family, friends and any hope of hearing about the lieutenant's fate. Jocelyn's incarceration in the mysterious old mansion forces her to reassess her values - and the values of the society she was so anxious to be part of.

Considered a troublesome burden, Evelyn Talbot is banished by her family to their remote country house. Tall Chimneys is hidden in a damp and gloomy hollow. It is outmoded and inconvenient but Evelyn is determined to save it from the fate of so many stately homes at the time - abandonment or demolition. Occasional echoes of tumult in the wider world reach their sequestered backwater - the strident cries of political extremists, a furore of royal scandal, rumblings of the European war machine. But their isolated spot seems largely untouched. At times life is hard - little more than survival. At times it feels enchanted, almost outside of time itself. The woman and the house shore each other up - until love comes calling, threatening to pull them asunder. Her desertion will spell its demise, but saving Tall Chimneys could mean sacrificing her hope for happiness, even sacrificing herself. A century later, a distant relative crosses the globe to find the house of his ancestors. What he finds in the strange depression of the moor could change the course of his life forever. One woman, one house, one hundred years.

Allie Cresswell

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