Showing results by author "Rosie Swan" in All Categories

Motherless Ten-year-old Milcah Fox lives with her father and six younger siblings, collecting dropped scraps of coal in order to feed her poor and hungry family. Life for the Fox household is difficult, but the family hold themselves together with faith, love and their shared joy for stories.

A cruel Christmas tragedy. A soldier saved by the actions of a little girl. One woman’s determined journey from helpless rags to the rich arms of love.

Meeting the farmhand Lawrence Trent, a man robbed of his childhood by the misdeeds of a renegade father, seemed at first a doorway to happiness. Instead, it was one leading to desperation and deprivations that overshadowed even the brightness of their love for one another.

Baby Sophie. Forced to dance for her dinner. Used and abused to feed the greed of those who should have been her carers. Her tiny gypsy feet sore with blisters, until they are big enough to run away and find the love she has lost. Perhaps young Byron Adams, her childhood friend and protector, will seek her out. Their secret childish love, so tragically torn apart, leaves little chance that this could ever happen.

Dora Wentworth is born out of wedlock in one of the poorest parts of Liverpool. Abandoned by her family, she is brought by God into the arms of a childless fisherman and his wife. But life is cruel, and when an accident prevents the fisherman from working, they are forced to give her up to the orphanage. As Dora grows, neglected and alone, she almost gives up on her dreams of one day having a home and a love she can call her own. Then, through the kindness of a stranger, Dora discovers that there is always hope and embarks on a path that might finally lead her to the family she has dreamed of.

The year is 1888. Sisters Eliza and Rebecca Moss work in the notorious match factory in London’s East End, where they are plagued by extortionate fines, cruel foremen and deadly phosphorus fumes. When the factory owner’s philandering son takes an interest in Eliza, Rebecca fears that her sister’s romantic nature may lead to disaster. But the winds of change are in the air. Strident voices begin to champion the matchgirls’ cause.

Life is hard for a plain, unloved, urchin like Ruby Brandon. Alone in the world with little to bring her joy other than the occasional orphanage outings to Wood Horse Farm, Ruby has nothing but her dreams to hold on to.

All alone in the world, Amelia Baxter is forced to flee her childhood home. The world outside for an orphan teen on dark Victorian streets is not a kind one.