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The Weather Door is Martyn Halsall's second full collection of poetry. The poems explore the tidal margins of the British Isles, the liminal space between earth and ocean, where weather can change from fair to foul in an instant. There are poems of shipwreck, poems that explore the lives of those who live near the sea or get their living from it, and poems that are an elegy for a disappearing way of life and wild creatures on the edge of extinction.

Christina was the youngest of the four Rossetti children, born in England to Italian parents. Although she and her brother, the artist Dante Gabriel, were known as the 'two storms', Christina's passionate nature was curbed in a way that her brother's was not, as she submitted to the social and religious pressures that lay so heavily on Victorian women. Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she suffered the tyranny of a loving family. Her sister Maria's influence was described as 'a species of police surveillance', and Christina was always careful never to write anything that would hurt her mother. Often referred to as the 'High Priestess of Pre-Raphaelitism' Christina had a genuine lyric gift that could articulate both the joy of being alive and the bitterness of loss. Her desire for poetic excellence and moral excellence were continually in conflict and her poetry betrays the corrosive effect of this struggle. Christina's deliberate self-effacement, Dante Gabriel's portrayal of her as the meek virgin and William Rossetti's subjective role as editor and interpreter of her work have gradually blotted out the passionate lively spirit who wrote 'Goblin Market' - one of the most complex and disturbing poems ever written. Kathleen Jones looks at Christina's life alongside that of other nineteenth-century women writers - notably Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson.

Catherine Cookson was an illegitimate child brought up in one of the poorest places in the western world. She left school at 13 to become a domestic servant and was later employed in a workhouse laundry. Yet she became one of the best selling novelists of all time and one of the richest women in Britain. Her story is as fascinating as any of her novels, with a plot that includes abandonment, abuse, alcoholism, extreme poverty, and a love affair that almost wrecked Catherine's life and her marriage. She survived it all because she was driven by an ambition so strong it overcame everything to make her a household name. Drawing on tapes recorded by Catherine Cookson herself, personal testimony and original research, Kathleen Jones tells the story of Catherine Cookson's life and goes on a quest to find her absent father - the enigmatic 'Alexander Davies'.

Twelve characters, twelve stories, a year in the life of a small Italian town. What will happen to Pia, the young Greek barista, who is in love with the son of the town's leading fascist? And how is her fate connected to the sisters who run the shoe shop - Olimpia and Marina? They've shared the same bed since they were children, but they have secrets. Clara, the midwife, knows everyone's secrets, but not the fate of her absent son. Living alone, she extends her hospitality to illegal migrants and refugees.Times are hard in Italy. Among the buskers and tourists that crowd the piazza, the residents make a precarious living. In the pizzeria on the corner, Franco is trying to save his marriage and his business. Rose Umber, a young Canadian sculptor, is desperate to remain in Italy when her visa runs out, but that might depend on a decision taken by the elegant Milanese woman, Anastasia, who walks her badly-behaved dog, Fidel, through the piazza every day. Separate but connected, their lives - like their stories - are intertwined within the walls of this historic town.