Molly Bowes by Val Scully

For Molly Bowes, growing up in debtors’ prison as the daughter of the notorious Stoney Bowes, her only book is a window on a world she can barely imagine: Bewick’s Tyneside is where she hopes her future lies.

Fiercely independent and determined to evade the fate that had befallen her mother, Molly sets out for freedom in a world fraught with dangers. When her baby vanishes at the Peterloo Massacre, she must turn for help to the family who put her father in prison.

Molly’s search through nineteenth century England takes her from am London prison to radical Tyneside; from medieval Newcastle to the City of Palaces; from Bewick’s woodcuts to the finest European art and literature; from the criminal underworld to the glories of Gibside and the Bowes Museum.

www.valscully.co.uk

Front cover image: A Young Beauty with Flowers in her hair by Albert Lynch