Faith Aycliffe is a woman born before her time. She knows what she needs and refuses to substitute social success for personal happiness. It is Faith, forging her loyalties and utterly unforgettable, who stands at the centre of Flint and Roses – Brenda Jagger's second Barforth novel. The place is Yorkshire in the mid-19th century with its conflict between a new-born middle class and the old landed gentry. The family, the Barforths, woollen manufacturers and mill-owners. Their lives, full of love, hatred and struggle, interweave with Faith's own adventurous spirit in this rich, exciting tapestry of a novel that holds to the very end.

In a world of mill barons and railway kings, two sisters Oriel and Kate share the same uncaring father. But whereas Kate is legitimate, Oriel is not. Oriel learns from an ambitious mother to be cool, to calm the fire in her heart. Kate, with emotions untamed and no mother at all, yearns to break free form her loveless life. Drawn together by fate as well as birth, the two sisters are friends. And then squire Francis Ashington, poet and explorer, comes back to live in the Gore Valley . . .

At sixteen Verity becomes sole heiress to a fortune founded on the wool mills of Yorkshire and realises for the first time that she is no more than a pawn in the games of ambitious men. Obedient to the conventions of the Victorian age, she accepts a marriage of convenience and cloaks her proud spirit in the silks and satins of a society hostess. But for Verity Barforth convention is not enough. When at last she falls in love it is not with her husband, and she becomes the centre of a powerful drama of infidelity, jealousy and revenge, played out against the magnificent landscapes of the Yorkshire moors and the brutal poverty of the mills. 'A vast exciting tapestry of love, hate and death . . . held me to the end' James Herriot 'A touching and ultimately satisfying love story.' Jilly Cooper

At the height of the Industrial Revolution, two women struggle to break free of the conventions that bind them. Cara, poor and beautiful, dreams of evading the menacing shadow of the workhouse, of becoming both financially independent and free of her protector, the ruthless Captain Christie. Gemma, daughter of Victorian luxury, marries to oblige her family and struggles to escape the smothering constraints of 'good' society, where a woman is valued purely for her charm and her childbearing. And both women, from very different backgrounds, find the political idealist and man of fortune Daniel Carey, irresistible . . .

Grace Agbrigg has ambitions beyond merely ornamenting the home of a rich husband. But high Victorian England is still almost wholly a man's world in which women – rich or poor – must do the bidding of father, husband or employer. Attracted against her will to the ambitious and ruthless Gideon Chard, Grace instead makes the marriage that is expected of her. But eventually she breaks free of a relationship that is a sham to become the only divorcee in Cullingford – and a social outcast. Set against a background of change and unrest, of dazzling wealth cheek by jowl with bitter poverty, The Sleeping Sword, which concludes the magnificent Barforth saga, is an unforgettable portrait of an age as well as a compelling story of love between two strong and determined people.

The war was over, and Jeremy Swanfield's family were eager to include his young widow in their prosperous, comfortable life. But between the demure bride, who had waved her husband of three days to the front, and the woman with three years of nursing behind her, lay an impassable gulf of experience. Clare Swanfield was fiercely determined to maintain her independence in the post-war world. Taking a job in the smart new hotel run by Kit Hardie – once the Swanfield's boot-boy, now part of the new elite – was the first of many acts that would bring her into conflict with her husband's family – especially the coolly conventional Benedict.