Nora Kay: 10 books

Fiery Agnes Boyd and quiet, motherless Rachel Donaldson have been best friends since their Dundee schooldays. Both girls are determined to escape from the poverty their families endure. Thwarted in her ambition to become a teacher, Rachel goes to work as a maid - in the Perthshire home of her mother's...

Growing up in the idyllic seaside town of Sandyneuk on Scotland's east coast, Beth Brown and Caroline Parker-Munro become best friends despite the difference in their backgrounds. And when Beth is abandoned by her missionary parents, it is Caroline's family that takes her in, and Caroline who protects...

Jenny Richardson believes that marriage is for ever. Her life centres around her husband Paul, her daughters - fifteen-year-old Wilma and ten-year-old Katy - and their Perthshire home. Then one day Paul destroys it all. He has fallen in love with glamorous Vera Cuthbertson, and nothing will ever be...

Susan MacFarlane had only a few months with David Cameron, but in tht time he taught her the power of passionate love - its rewards and its punishments. Then she returned to her duty: marriage to a man who could run the family's paper mill, the mill she loved and understood but could not have for...

When her mother dies, Laura Morrison is forced to give up her place at univerity to care for her father and her young brother Ronnie. She dreams of escape from the unending housework that now fills her days. But worse is to come. When her father decides to re-marry and to leave Scotland behind, he...

Dark-haired and slender, Lois Pringle has always known that she's the odd one out in her family. Her mother makes it only too plain that she prefers Lois's two plump, flaxen-haired sisters. But Lois manages to escape a life of household drudgery by going to work as a secretary for wealthy John Latimer....

Annie Fullerton is only a housemaid, but when her master's pampered daughter needs help, it's Annie she turns to. Emily is going to have a baby, and in Victorian Perthshire there is no worse disgrace for an unmarried girl. The two girls go into hiding in a charming Kincardineshire village and before...

When Kate McPherson is only ten years old, she loses both her mother and her home. The man she knew as 'Uncle Edwin' has no place in his heart or life for his dead mistress's little girl. Kate becomes the ward of her aunt Sarah, her father's sister - a stern woman who tells Kate the full story...

When Linda Chalmers hears her best friend from college has died her whole life changes forever. She finds herself the guardian of precocious fifteen-year old Jennifer. Ignoring her mother Kirsty's warnings and her family's reluctance Linda brings the young girl back with her to Dundee to prevent her...

Tim Morrison seems to be a model of respectability - until the day he comes home to tell his devoted wife Felicity that he is no longer the trusted partner in a solicitors' firm. He has been fired - and may go to jail - because he has been caught 'borrowing' the money his clients trusted him with....