Hardfell

by Maria Bell, Anthony Scott (Editor), . McGoohan (Illustrator)

It will soon be 1840. Maria Bell walks on the hills and moors of the Yorkshire Pennines where her father is vicar of the local church. She, her sisters and her brother long to be authors, yet seem doomed to the drudgery of life as schoolteachers and governesses. Into this world comes John Spark, newly installed Lord of Hardfell House, a drear, ramshackle pile half-hidden in these same hills. Maria, taken on as teacher to his two children discovers new emotions she thought never to feel, feelings she hopes will be reciprocated. But John Spark has dark secrets of his own. Did he inherit the house, win it in a bet or swindle the rightful heir? What was the cause of the fire which destroyed half the house?And just who is living in the attic?Hardfell is an autobiographical account of how love, faith and devotion can overcome the greatest obstacles, even class, illness, death and fiction and also contains within it Miss Bell’s early work The Mermaid of Loch Drummond.Reader, you may find within these pages something familiar, something perhaps reminiscent of the works of the acclaimed literary family of Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell. Indeed, the author is the elder sibling of these esteemed writers. For those who have followed the work of Currer, Ellis and Acton, this new volume is humbly submitted.

199 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 8, 2011