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Categories Bibliophile publications and eBooks Aileen Armitage, our Editor Annie Quigley's mot...
Aileen Armitage, our Editor Annie Quigley's mother
Winning Woman of the Year for writing 34 novels despite her blindness.
See Author page on Amazon Aileen Armitage
Watch a video of Aileen inspiring budding writers in 2014 at Swanwick Writers Summer School.
All eBooks are available on both Amazon Kindle and Kobo editions.
All Kindle books are Text-to-Speech Enabled
Aileen Armitage researches all her historical novels for local knowledge, authentic dialogue and dialect. She won Woman of the Year in 1988 for having published 34 novels despite failing sight which eventual led to blindness.
Aileen was brought up in Huddersfield where her father's family have lived for the past 400 years.
As a child her father would take her to Lindley Moor, near Huddersfield, to show her the old family house and tell her stories about her grandfather who had owned a mill in the area. After studying German at Hull University she became a teacher. Unfortunately she had to give this up as she developed serious problems with her eye sight. Married with four young children, Helen, David, Paul and Annie. she started writing late at night on a jotter with a felt tip pen. Aileen began writing and had many magazine articles and short stories published before she turned to longer fiction. Her first novel was accepted by a publisher and she was asked to write more books. She has since been widely published in the UK and in the USA. Aileen also lectures on novel writing for writers' seminars and is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio. She is a frequent guest speaker, especially since winning UK Woman of the Year award in 1988.
In 2002 she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Huddersfield for her contribution to literature. Aileen has four grown-up children from her first marriage. She happily remarried the writer Deric Longden. He died in 2013.
‘‘Hawksmoor’ is the fictional name for the industrial Yorkshire town of Huddersfield where I grew up,’ says the author Aileen Armitage.
‘I was captivated by its history and the curious fact that the town was owned by one family right up until the 1920’s. My dad used to tell me tales as we walked on the surrounding moors about our family’s climb from rags to riches and their subsequent decline. Can I help it if my passion for the West Riding and its history shows a story of love and hatred, tragedy and triumph?’
The series of Hawksmoor novels comprise:
Hawksmoor
Touchstone
Hawkrise
The Dark Arches
Hunter’s Moon
A Dark Moon Raging
Cedar Street
Hawksmoor Buy from Amazon :£3.27 In the year 1811, Hawksmoor is a growing town surrounded by all the splendour of the northern moorland. This is the dramatic story of the people who helped it grow. The Hardcastles are the wealthy mill-owners – the landed gentry who rule the town with an iron hand. The Scotts belong to the poor but indomitable class of men and women who labour in the factories and scrape a living from their small plots of land. In rivalry and co-operation, love and ambition, their lives touch – yet remain separate. As always, new ideas clash with the ancient values. ‘‘Hawksmoor’ is the fictional name for the industrial Yorkshire town of Huddersfield where I grew up,’ says the author Aileen Armitage. ‘I was captivated by its history and the curious fact that the town was owned by one family right up until the 1920’s. My dad used to tell me tales as we walked on the surrounding moors about our family’s climb from rags to riches and their subsequent decline. Can I help it if my passion for the West Riding and its history shows a story of love and hatred, tragedy and triumph?’ Hawksmoor is a magnificent epic set in Yorkshire during the hardship and excitement of the Industrial Revolution. It spans more than fifty years of England’s most turbulent history and its pages are filled with staunch North Country spirit of the time. The whole idea is preposterous. One can’t marry a first cousin!’Particularly for cousins whose mothers have ignored each other for the best part of twenty years. Yet Amy Mallinson is bewildered by her deep feelings for her handsome cousin Charles – far above her in the social scale – and by the emotions he and his family stir in her. Amy is not the only one to be affected by Aunt Charlotte’s malice her mother Violet has suffered and Amy herself has witnessed the destruction of her brother Lionel’s dreams. Proud of her heritage, yet determined to win her independence, Amy sees the moors above Hawksmoor and Jericho Farm as a refuge and an escape. But it may also let her discover what she really wants from life… On the wild Yorkshire moors she finds a refuge from heartache and a haven of love. Crime Fiction based on fact... Hawksmoor is set amid the brooding splendour of the Yorkshire moors, a prosperous Victorian town, its throbbing mills weaving wealth for the few. Cedric Moorhouse, its new and ambitious mayor, is anxious to impress the town’s most influential families. But his spirited daughter Violet refuses to fall in with his plans and instead conspires with his assistant, Tom Mallinson, to thwart and dishonour him. Moorhouse turns his back on her, forcing her to live in Hunter’s Yard, a squalid and close knit community. Desperate to escape, Violet finds solace while Tom plans revenge, discovering on the way that it is possible to love two women at the same time… but that liberty can be found with only one. When charismatic Vincent Gregg becomes the valley’s first socialist MP it is the realisation of the Pearson family’s dream. But his philandering ways soon lose him his seat. Given a second chance by the Great War, Gregg enlists as a private, but once again finds himself torn between greed and socialist principles. The war is a testing time for the young men of Hawksmoor too. Robert Hardcastle, pampered and effeminate son of the town’s landowner, has to face the horror of Flanders. Conscientious objector Hal Pearson has to endure the scorn of the entire community, while his brother Eddie, too young to fight, follows his father to the mill and tastes the bittersweet pangs of first love… ‘‘Hawksmoor’ is the fictional name for the industrial Yorkshire town of Huddersfield where I grew up,’ says the author Aileen Armitage. ‘I was captivated by its history and the curious fact that the town was owned by one family right up until the 1920’s. My dad used to tell me tales as we walked on the surrounding moors about our family’s climb from rags to riches and their subsequent decline. Can I help it if my passion for the West Riding and its history shows a story of love and hatred, tragedy and triumph?’ In the far-off 1950s, Irishshop girl Rosa Sheridan is seduced under the arches of Clondarra's village bridge. To escape from the stigma of being a fallen woman, she escapes to England, where she makes a new life for herself in Hawksmoor. But she can never forget the baby which she was persuaded to give up for adoption – particularly when her happy marriage does not bring her the children she longs for. Twenty years later Rosa is a successful businesswoman, but her life becomes interwoven with three women from her past: Greta Holyoak, childless wife of a prominent local man, who had arranged the adoption of her child all those years ago; Dorothy Challis, who had adopted the child, only to have longed for a son of her own; and Lucy, the child herself. As these women work out their destinies, the dark arches once more cast a shadow over their lives. ‘‘Hawksmoor’ is the fictional name for the industrial Yorkshire town of Huddersfield where I grew up,’ says the author Aileen Armitage. ‘I was captivated by its history and the curious fact that the town was owned by one family right up until the 1920’s. My dad used to tell me tales as we walked on the surrounding moors about our family’s climb from rags to riches and their subsequent decline. £3.80 ‘‘Hawksmoor’ is the fictional name for the industrial Yorkshire town of Huddersfield where I grew up,’ says the author Aileen Armitage. ‘I was captivated by its history and the curious fact that the town was owned by one family right up until the 1920’s. My dad used to tell me tales as we walked on the surrounding moors about our family’s climb from rags to riches and their subsequent decline. Can I help it if my passion for the West Riding and its history shows a story of love and hatred, tragedy and triumph? £3.80 Buy from Kobo £3.28 Two lonely children, neglected in their Victorian nursery form a tragic bond on the wild Yorkshire moors. While the dramas of life, death and madness swirl around their family, like smoke from the mill chimneys nearby, Constance and William cling together and swear a pact in blood that they will forever share their hopes and fears and sins. Then their little half-brother is mysteriously killed and a shadow of guilt falls over their family. The two remain silent about the tragedy throughout the years - until Constance finally decides to seek peace as a nun. But then comes the moment when the truth must be told...and the darkness may turn to light. This novel was based on a true crime involving two children. May Turnbull had been born and raised in Cedar Street. When the chance came for her to better herself in Rose’s soft furnishing workroom, she seized it with everything she had. At home with her father crippled in a mine accident, a mother who kept the family together by taking in laundry and two sisters, May was determined that she was going to succeed. When Aaron Rose, wealthy young heir to Rose’s Furniture Emporium, saw May for the first time, he realised she was different, special. Adroitly, with all the skills of an experienced charmer, he set out to win her, half promising a lifetime’s love and marriage. It was - almost - to be the end of May’s dreams. But through the cruel times that followed, May and her family drew on all the gutsy strength of Cedar Street to go forward to their new life. The Jericho Years £3.88 In the Hawsmoor saga,a series set in the author's beloved Yorkshire. Jericho Farm, high in the Pennines, had been in the Hemingway family for generations. Life was hard, and James was thinking of selling up. Then David, his beloved son the artist, was struck by a fatal illness after his mother had tragically died and came back to the farm with his wife-to-be Lisa. An entirely unexpected and unconventional relationship exploded into their lives that offered each one hope and hope for Jericho Farm. ‘‘Hawksmoor’ is the fictional name for the industrial Yorkshire town of Huddersfield where I grew up,’ says the author Aileen Armitage. ‘I was captivated by its history and the curious fact that the town was owned by one family right up until the 1920’s. My dad used to tell me tales as we walked on the surrounding moors about our family’s climb from rags to riches and their subsequent decline. Can I help it if my passion for the West Riding and its history shows a story of love and hatred, tragedy and triumph. ‘It was then she became aware that Mrs Blackstock was eyeing her with a thoughtful, faraway look, Joanna had a weird sensation that was being mentally taken apart and examined, bit by bit….’ Suddenly left alone in the world, Joanna Forrest and her younger sister slowly come to terms with their new life. But their routine is shattered one day by the arrival of a charming yet totally unpredictable poet. Both women become increasingly obsessed with this man who seems to take over their beautiful riverside house and gradually their lives. Then violence and tragedy reach out and the dream is shattered… Some years later, Joanna moves to a faraway Yorkshire moorland village with her foster-child, little red-haired Maggie, who knows nothing about her sinister heritage. Perhaps Joanna should now feel secure in this remote community, though eccentric Mrs Blackstock, the local medium, has detected the dark shadows in her past… and senses dangers yet to come. Meanwhile Maggie herself has begun to notice a mysterious stranger hanging around the playground of the village school, quietly waiting and watching… But for whom? And all Joanna’s deepest fears and forebodings are about to erupt in violence and terror.
The Chapters Series Chapter of Innocence £3.82 Maddie Renshaw is 20 and lives a lonely life working with James her harshly domineering father on their crumbling, isolated sheep farm Scapegoat, high on the Yorkshire moors. Maddie’s only joy is Duster her mare and the long, exhilarating rides they both enjoy across the wild and treacherous moors. In 1939, Max Bower, an Austrian refugee and a Jew, arrives having been sent by the Ministry of Agriculture to labour on the farm. Tall, attractively dark and enigmatic, Max eases the workload for Maddie, while suffering in silence the blind prejudice of James Renshaw and other villagers. As the Second World War gathers momentum evacuees arrive from the bomb torn city. The Renshaws take in Eva, a sharp tongued but irresistible nine year old who is immune to James Renshaw’s rigorous discipline. And then Ronnie an army deserter brings menace and fear to all the inhabitants of Scapegoat… Beginning in a world which seems unchanging and unchangeable, Aileen Armitage’s stirring novel moves into a time of war and tension when Maddie becomes a woman and matures through her chapter of innocence. After the funeral of Max and Maddie Bower, twenty-two year old Leah decides the time has come to seek her independence. She refuses to work any longer in her mother’s business and needing both a job and a place to stay she approaches Clay Richards – an old family acquaintance and now arch enemy. Clay is only too pleased to help, seeing Leah as a useful link to her parents’ business empires. Leah soon discovers that the world of big business is a jungle where ruthless enemies lurk in the shadows. Nothing and no one are as they first seem and that in her quest for independence she may lose her life… Against a backcloth that sweeps from the Yorkshire Moors to the deserts of Dubai, Aileen Armitage continues the story from Chapter of Innocence and Chapter of Echoes. She tells a magnificent and skilful tale of romance and suspense and in Leah has created a courageous and unforgettable heroine. This sequel to "Chapter of Innocence", which continues the story of Eva Bowe. |
| Now with new jackets:  Hawksmoor by Aileen Armitage (22 Jun 2012) - Kindle eBook
 CEDAR STREET by Aileen Armitage (22 Jun 2012) - Kindle eBook
 The Jericho Years by Aileen Armitage (13 Jun 2012) - Kindle eBook
 A MIDNIGHT SMILE by Aileen Armitage (19 Jun 2012) - Kindle eBook
 Chapter of Echoes by Aileen Armitage (16 Aug 2012) - Kindle eBook
 Chapter of Innocence by Aileen Armitage (14 Aug 2012) - Kindle eBook
 Touchstone by Aileen Armitage (24 Jun 2012) - Kindle eBook
 A Dark Moon Raging by Aileen Armitage (2 Aug 2012) - Kindle eBook
 CHAPTER OF SHADOWS by Aileen Armitage (22 Jun 2012) - Kindle eBook
 HUNTER'S MOON by Aileen Armitage (31 Jul 2012) - Kindle eBook
 THE DARK ARCHES by Aileen Armitage (31 Jul 2012) - Kindle eBook
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