Catherine Cookson Cup Entries - 2nd November, 2015

On 2^nd November, we read out our entries for the annual Catherine Cookson Cup. This year, our judge is Sarah O'Halloran, talent scout with the Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency, and everyone had really pulled out the stops. There was a dazzling array of genres, styles and characters. There was a granny who had left the narrator a mysterious heirloom, an old dear who'd decided gambling might be a solution to her money problems, an Italian contessa, whose survival depended on the efforts of a faithful retainer and another woman who had discovered a talent for teleporting. There was an 8-year-old boy street whose family lived in a factory doorway and an 18-year-old with a secret. There was a tunnel under an apocalyptic world, another in which a husband was busy burrowing under his own street and strange goings on in a hollowed out yew tree. There was a 19th century priest awaiting execution, a young woman who'd escaped her past and a wife who'd got away with murder.