Kay Brellend
Agent: Megan Carroll
Kay Brellend was born in north London and her first saga, based in the early twentieth century slums of Islington, was published in 2011 by HarperCollins. She drew inspiration for the Campbell Road series of books from her grandmother’s reminiscences about growing up in ‘the Bunk’ as the notorious road was known.
The opening novel in the Bittersweet Legacy trilogy came out in 2017. Published by Piatkus, this series was set in a London sweet factory and on the Somme battlefields.
Afterwards came the Workhouse to War trilogy, also set during the Great War, beginning in the Whitechapel Union Workhouse and moving to the bustling markets of East London.
A new Piatkus trilogy began in 2023 with the publication of A Daughter’s Heartbreak, inspired by true wartime events, it follows the lives of the Cooper family in the Silvertown area of East London. The sequel is set amongst the same family’s gang of London shoplifters, and the series finishes during the Second World War with an Anglo-French female member of the Cooper family working for the SOE.
