Libby Ashworth Books In Order

Publication Order of Lancashire Girls Books

Publication Order of Mill Town Lasses Books

Libby Ashworth is a Sagas and historical fiction author who also writes historical fiction as Elizabeth Ashworth.

The author was born and brought up in Lancashire County and has always been fascinated by its history. In fact, she can trace her ancestry right back to the Middle Ages village of Whalley in the 1600s.
Many of Ashworths’s ancestors were employed in the cotton industry. They started out as home-based handloom weavers and spinners, and would later work in the cotton mills of Blackburn after the Industrial Revolution.
It was from the history and stories of her ancestors which she gleaned from local interest books and Lancashire history, that she is inspired to pen her very popular novels.
Her ancestors had to live with radical changes in work and lifestyle, which resulted in a lot of uncertainty.

Libby penned “The Cotton Spinner,” her debut novel and the first of the “Mill Town Lasses” series of novels in 2020 and has never looked back since.
She now has at least half a dozen works of fiction spread across the “Mill Town Lasses,” and the “Lancashire Girls” series of novels.

It was while Libby Ashworth was doing some research about her family that she came to the realization that there were so many stories about Lancashire that needed to be told.
This was not her first rodeo though as she has been a published author ever since “Pony Annual” bought her first short story when she was just a teenager.

Since then, her work has been published in several magazines such as Take a Break Fiction Feast, Lancashire Magazine, People’s Friend, Lancashire Life, My Weekly, and The Lady.
Libby is also the author of several local interest books such as “Lancashire – Who Lies Beneath,” “Tales of Old Lancashire,” and “Champion Lancastrians.”

She published her first historical fiction novel “The de Lacy Inheritance” in 2010 and has also published other historical fiction under Sigma Press and Countryside Books.

Given her love for Lancashire history, she loves to share it with her fans and readers on her website. This is where you can find blogs on interesting things that she comes across in her research.

In addition to this, there are the first chapters of her short stories and some of her novels that you can read for free. Sometimes she will also interact with her fans on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Libby Ashworth currently makes her home in Lancashire and remains just as passionate about its history as ever.

Libby Ashworth is an intriguing historical fiction work that follows the life and times of Titus and Jennet Eastwood. The two are hoping to begin a brand new life in the Blackburn suburb of Paradise Lane where they just got a new terraced house.
Both are used to weaving from home but they have decided that they would be better off working in the large cotton mill in town.

Since they are looking after a young kid, Titus is the only one that can work outside the house and hence he becomes the family breadwinner. But things begin turning complicated when he starts attending some controversial reform meetings.
What then follows is an authentic and beautiful historical fiction work that takes us from the Industrial West with its grim streets to the factory floors with so much dust and noise from the huge weaving and spinning machines.
To Titus who is newly arrived from the countryside, it is the epitome of hell on Earth.

Libby makes use of the history and stories of her ancestors to inspire the story as she bridges the different time periods and provides insights into themes of decent wages and the Victorian penal system.

“A Lancashire Lass” is another interesting work by Libby Ashworth that follows Hannah and Mary. The two are employed at the Sudell’s home as maids but things are just about to turn really bad.

What they did not know was that their employer’s cotton mill business had taken a hit. They wake up one morning to find the Sudells have gone away in the night and Hannah and Mary are jobless with nowhere to sleep.
Mary has no one to turn to and seeks lodgings at the Star Inn, where she intends to pay by helping run the inn alongside Mrs. Hall the proprietor. Hannah leaves to go stay with Titus her brother-in-law and Jennet her sister.
Mary is soon asked to provide other services to the clientele as her life takes a massive downturn. On the other hand, Hannah is once again employed as a maid by the Fielden family.
But Hannah’s employment destroys the friendship the two girls had as Mary believed the job opportunity was rightly hers.

Set in Lancashire in 1832, the work delves into the challenges that women in the industrial north had to deal with.

They had to deal with a lot of difficulties, even as they were constrained by the few choices available to the female gender.

Libby Ashworth’s novel “A Family Secret” opens with the Eastwood family bracing for trouble up ahead. Mill production is being threatened as working hours are set to be cut following changes to working conditions.
These are some significant changes for those who are fighting and working for fair days work for fair pay.

These changes are inevitable and for Bessie Eastwood and Titus her dad both of who work at a mill, they cannot help but feel uneasy about their livelihoods.

In the meantime, Margaret who is Bessie’s older sister has to deal with her own challenges. In trying to make things better for herself she finds her life going in a very different direction.

When old family secrets begin threatening the family, things begin looking even more uncertain. Similar to her other novels, Ashworth writes a novel full of camaraderie and warmth, a real sense of community spirit, and the no-nonsense northern spirit.
She captures the Victorian mill town very accurately and lets the characters’ lives and actions fill you in on how life was during this very difficult and challenging era.