Kate Hannigan , Catherine Cookson's first published novel, has been in print since it first appeared in 1950. Now, over fifty years later, here is its sequel , Kate Hannigan's Girl .

It is the early 1920s and Kate is happily married to Dr Rodney Prince, who has willingly accepted her illegitimate daughter Annie as the eldest child of their household. But there is a serpent in every Eden, and spiteful rumours about Kate and Annie's past abound — reviving memories of the poverty and indignities they have suffered in the Fifteen Streets district they have so recently left behind them.

Annie is torn between the comfortable middle-class existence offered by Brian Stannard and the uncertain prospects of Terence Macbane, a brilliant mathematician, who comes from the underprivileged world that Annie knew as a child.

Like Kate Hannigan, Annie must find the strength and maturity that will enable her to overcome the troubles that threaten to engulf her…