SYNOPSIS Algie Stokes, the only son of a lock-keeper, has ambition and ideas enough to make his way honestly in the world. To begin, there is one girl in his life, Harriet Meese, plain but a very good catch. Then he meets Marigold Bingham, the exact opposite, astonishingly pretty and adorable, but resigned to living and working in poverty with her family on a canal narrowboat. Yet it is a love match. However, the waters are muddied when Algie meets Aurelia, elegant, sensitive and utterly beautiful but, unhappily, the wife of Algie’s callous employer, Benjamin Sampson. There are two other women in Algie’s life: his mother, a beauty of her generation and devoted wife of Will Stokes, and Kate, Algie's flighty and ruthlessly ambitious sister. Kate loves only herself and has her own ideas of how to make her mark, with disastrous consequences for everybody. Always in the background is the enigmatic Murdoch Osborne, widower, established local trader, amateur thespian, ladies’ man, and old enough to be Algie’s father . . . A Country Girl (title changed from the proposed The Lock- Keeper’s Son) tells the story of five very different women and four very significant men . . . Each plays a major role in Algie’s and Marigold’s lives. All contribute in their very different ways to their traumas, their triumphs and their emotions, which are tested to the absolute limit. SERIES INFORMATION: A Country Girl introduces the Stokes, the Meeses, the Froggatts and the Sampsons, as well as the heroine Marigold Bingham and her family. A Fallen Woman is the explosive sequel and conclusion of this potent saga. Published 8 February 2018 in e-book only.

A Country Girl

Set in the Black Country of the 1890s. The story tells of the

intense romance between Algie Stokes and Marigold Bingham,

and how some people deliberately, and others unwittingly,

have a monumental effect on their lives.

THE BLACK COUNTRY CHRONICLES

NANCY CARSON

HISTORICAL NOTE A Country Girl features a pub called the Bottle and Glass, which once stood at Buckpool in Brierley Hill, and which has now been authentically rebuilt at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley (location for Peaky Blinders, Laurel & Hardy, and many other filmed series). There, the pub is presented as it was in 1910, little different to how it would have been in the 1890s, sawdust, spittoons and all, when frequented by our hero, Algie Stokes. Today, it still serves real Black Country ale as well as tasty traditional local food.

PUBLISHING INFO: e-book and paperback from 10 August 2017 ISBN: 978-0008260286 Amazon UK Amazon USA Amazon Australia Kobo Books Barnes & Noble