Part of Series
Thomas Mallen of High Banks Hall had many sons, most of them bastards. But to all of them he passed on his marka distinctive flash of white hair running to the left temple, known as the Mallen Streak. It was said that those who bore the Streak seldom reached old age or died in bed, and that nothing good ever came of a Mallen. Nor did it. In 1851, Thomas Mallen found himself a ruined man, forced amid scandal and disgrace, to sell the Hall and adjust to a new and very different mode of living. With him went his two young wards and their indomitable governess. Then, into their lives came the Radlet brothers of Wilbur Farm, one of whom bore the unmistakable Mallen Streak. THE MALLEN STREAK is the first in a trilogy of novels following the fortunes of the Mallens through succeeding generations.
Author
Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, who Catherine believed was her older sister. Catherine began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular contemporary woman novelist. She received an OBE in 1985, was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993, and was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne.
