Cath Staincliffe

AGENT: Rebecca Watson

PRODUCER:

How far would you go to protect your child? Can you really keep them safe? What if who they are puts them at risk? And what if they have blood on their hands? Teenager Allie Kennaway heads off for prom night, cheered on by her dad Steve and little sister Teagan. But Allie never comes home, beaten to death in an apparent hate crime because of her transgender identity. As police investigate the brutal murder, a crime that has appalled the country, one parent is at her wit's end with her son's behaviour. Are his outbursts and silences hiding something much darker than adolescent mood swings? And if her suspicions are correct, then what does she do? Another parent will fight tooth and nail to save his boy from the full force of the law. After all, blood is thicker than water and everyone should look after their own. But if he succeeds then Allie and her family will never get the justice they deserve

AGENT: Rebecca Watson

PRODUCER:

Grandmother Ruth Sutton writes to the man she hates more than anyone else on the planet: the man who she believes killed her daughter Lizzie in a brutal attack four years earlier. Ruth's burden of grief and hatred, has only grown heavier with the passing of time, her avid desire for vengeance ever stronger. In writing to him Ruth hopes to exorcise the corrosive emotions that are destroying her life, to find the truth and with it release and a way forward. Whether she can ever truly forgive him is another matter - but the letters are her last, best hope.

AGENT: Rebecca Watson

PRODUCER:

Four bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time. Witnesses to the shocking shooting of a teenage boy. A moment that changes their lives forever.

Fiona, a midwife, is plagued by panic attacks and unable to work. Has she the strength to testify?

Mike, a delivery driver and family man, faces an impossible decision when his frightened wife forces him to choose - us or the court case.

Cheryl, a single-mother, doesn't want her child to grow up in the same climate of fear. Dare she speak out and risk her own life?

Zak, a homeless man, offers to talk in exchange for witness protection and the chance of a new start. Ordinary people in an extraordinary situation.

Will the witnesses stand firm or be prevented from giving evidence? How will they cope with the emotional trauma of reliving the murder under pitiless cross-examination? This is a compassionate, suspenseful and illuminating story exploring the real human cost of bearing witness.

AGENT: Rebecca Watson

PRODUCER:

Newly graduated photography student Lori Maddox spends the year after university travelling and visits China where she finds work as a private English tutor. Back in Manchester, her parents Jo and Tom, who separated when Lori was a toddler, follow her adventures on her blog, 'Lori In The Orient'. Suddenly communication stops and when the silence persists a frantic Jo and Tom report her missing. It is impossible to find out anything from 5,000 miles away so they travel out to Chengdu, a city in the south-western province of Sichuan, to search for their daughter. Landing in a totally unfamiliar country, with no knowledge of the customs or language, and receiving scant help from the local authorities, Jo and Tom are forced to turn detective, following in their daughter's footsteps, tracing the people she mentioned in her posts, interviewing her friends, colleagues and students. It's an unbearably difficult challenge and, as the days pass, the fear that Lori is lost for good grows ever larger.

AGENT: REBECCA WATSON

PRODUCER:

What if the child you have longed for ends up hurting those you love?

Lydia and Bel have been best friends for years, from wild teenage days all the way through to motherhood. Bel becomes pregnant by accident and has a fraught relationship with daughter Freya, while Lydia and love-of-her-life Mac, after failed fertility treatment, choose to adopt.

Gorgeous toddler Chloe challenges them more than either of them had ever expected … and as a teenager her behaviour escalates increasingly out of control, pushing their marriage, and Lydia and Bel’s relationship, to breaking point.

A modern tragedy. A harrowing and heart-breaking story of the splinters that can tear mothers and daughters, husbands and wives – and friends – apart.

AGENT: REBECCA WATSON

PRODUCER:

A dead baby. A missing mother. A cradle of secrets.

Has the woman killed her child? Is she a risk to herself? Someone in the neighbourhood of old terraced streets has the answers. But detectives Donna Bell and Jade Bradshaw find lies and obstruction at every turn, in a community living on the edge, ground down by austerity. A place of broken dreams. Of desperation. And murder.

When a stranger crashes into Jade’s life, her past comes hurtling back, threatening to destroy her and the world she has carved out for herself.

Donna struggles to juggle everything: work, marriage, kids. It’s a precarious balancing act, and the rug is about to be pulled from under her.

AGENT: REBECCA WATSON

PRODUCER:

An utterly heartbreaking and gripping family saga.

Manchester, 1960.
When you’re young, unmarried and pregnant, in a shaming society that will never understand, there’s only one place left to go. St Ann’s mother and baby home. That’s how restless Joan, who dreams of a glamorous new life in the Big Smoke, finds herself shut away with two unlikely new roommates: spirited Megan and timid country-girl Caroline, who fell pregnant on her first time. Abandoned by their families, they have no one to rely on but each other, as they wait out the days before they birth their babies — only to be parted from them forever. On a sultry May night, before the stroke of midnight, three baby girls are born — and given away to three eagerly waiting families. But for Joan, Megan and Caroline, birth is just the beginning. Try as they might to move on with life beyond the convent walls, their mistakes have a way of catching up with them.
When the past comes knocking, the three women are forced to confront the choices they made. Will they ever be reunited with their lost daughters?

Previously published as TRIO.

AGENT: REBECCA WATSON

PRODUCER:

A missing woman. A cold case. A dark secret, buried deep beneath the Yorkshire Dales.

Summer 1997. Vicky Mott slips out the door of the remote holiday cottage, and into the pale dawn light. She won’t wake her friends. Not after the night they just had. She scrawls a note, Gone to see the sun rise. V xxx That’s the last anyone ever hears from vibrant twenty-year-old Vicky.

Everyone warned her. Of the predator stalking the lush green fells, the Fellside Strangler who had already claimed the lives of three hikers.

2019. A human skeleton is discovered, in a dark and treacherous cave beneath the Dales. The final resting place of Vicky Mott? Detectives Leo Donovan and Shan Young think they’ve found the key to this decades-old mystery. But every answer they unearth only leads to more questions. And if the Fellside Strangler didn’t do this, then who did?

The first in the Donovan & Young series.

AGENT: REBECCA WATSON

PRODUCER:

Shortlisted for CrimeFest eDUNNIT AWARD for best 2021 crime ebook!

A missing schoolgirl, a middle-aged recluse, an exploited teenager. Lives thrown into chaos and set on collision course. With the police in hot pursuit.

Scarlett is dancing in the school talent competition tomorrow. Except Scarlett doesn’t make it home from school. She’s abducted by a man she never imagined she’d see again. A man on the police’s most wanted list. Her dad.

A race against time, played out in the brooding wilderness, the limestone gorges and gritstone edges of the Derbyshire Peaks.