Catherine Cookson is a well-known and respected bestselling author in England, and her readership today is worldwide. She is one of the most popular and best-loved writers of romance fiction, and her spellbinding novels are memorable stories of love, tragedy, and courage. Mnay have been made into mini series for BBC and shown on PBS here in the US. She crates vivid backgrounds in many of her novels, and gives the feeling of real people and real events with great attention to period details in her historical fiction.