The final instalment of the locally-set  “Berringden Brow” saga is now out!

“Life's Rich Tapestry”, the fourth in the popular series, sees middle-aged heroine Jess working on a university research project, collecting the life histories of a disparate group of Care Home residents. These include a melancholic mariner, a disillusioned cleric, and the Yorkshire Ripper's newsagent, (to say nothing of Nell, proud to style herself the 'Resident from Hell'). Meanwhile, Jess reflects on how her own life has led her from the childhood ritual of running around the Wishing Tree to chasing errant peacocks down the back streets of Berringden Brow.

• Then she finds herself at a Folk Festival chaperoning a troupe of 46 Koreans . . . But will there be a happy ending for Jess?


• Berringden Brow devotees and new readers alike will discover further small town oddness from the author of “A Place Like This” and “Sons and Lodgers."

Special Offer: buy all four Berringden Brow books for £25

Meet Jess and her friends, Bridget Jones' elder sisters, the struggling but still optimistic middle-aged women of Berringden Brow.

Good degrees, poor employment prospects, having to cope with bizarre job interviews, stroppy teenage kids, ageism, sexism, lookism, sizeism... scanning the personal columns in search of a rare eligible man without hypochondria, a live-in mother, multiple allergies, objections to snoring, a preference for playing with toy soldiers, the inability to keep a date, or a penchant for sex in public places.

But whenever it all gets too much for Jess, she can at least escape into the library...

Berringden Brow by Jill Robinson is published by Pennine Pens.

• HB Times review
• The North Guide review
• Halifax Courier review
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• See larger version of cover

Continuing the everyday story of life in Berringden Brow by Jill Robinson

Jess feels her serenity slipping, as she struggles with teenage tantrums, men's mid-life crises, dope, dogs, refugees, rampant plants, rough sleepers in the shed, bureaucrats on the dorstep plus of course Nick - and she is rapidly running out of floor space

The long-awaited third volume of Mytholmroyd writer Jill Robinson's Berringden Brow trilogy, a sequel to the popular Memoirs of a Single Parent with a Crush and Sons and Lodgers, which was featured on BBC 4's Women's Hour. Readers who enjoyed the previous two books will no doubt relish A Place Like This, although no knowledge of the previous books is required, and new readers can start here.... As with all Jill Robinson's writing, this book is a mixture of laugh-out-loud humour and sometimes unsettling truth.

A Place Like This details the comings and goings at the centre, where heroine Jess and her colleague Nick attempt to deal with a variety of problems, including evil spirits in someone's cellar, a pensioner's outlandishly large utility bills, and finding safe refuge for a trafficked young woman from Moldova. There is also the case of the missing aspidistra and the urgent need to re-house widowed Norah, at present living in a dog kennel, since her benefits were stopped. Jess meanwhile, has problems of her own, owing to the erratic life-style of her son, who has plastered Hebden Bridge with graffiti and is wanted by the police. An assortment of friends also need her support- but will anyone be there for Jess?