Charity Blackstock

Author Information
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  • Bibliography:
    25 Books
  • First Book:
    January 1956
  • Latest Book:
    January 1981
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About the Author

Ursula Joyce Torday was born on 19 February 1912 (some sources say his birth in 1888 or 1914) in London, England, UK, daughter of mixed parents, her mother, Gaia Rose Macdonald, was Scottish, and her father Emil Torday (1875-1931) was an Hungarian anthropologist, they married on 17 March 1910. She studied at Kensington High School in London, before went to the Oxford University, where she obtained a BA in English at Lady Margaret Hall College, and later a Social Science Certificate at London School of Economics.

In 1930s, she published her first three novels with her real name, Ursula Torday. During the World War II she worked as a probation officer for the Citizen's Advice Bureau, and during the next seven years afterwars, she also running a refugee scheme for Jewish children, inspiration for several of her future novels like, The Briar Patch (aka Young Lucifer) and The Children (aka Wednesday's Children) as Charity Blackstock. She worked as a typist at the National Central Library in London, inspiration for her future novel Dewey Death as Charity Blackstock. She also teaching English to adult students. She returned to publishing in early 1950s, using the pseudonyms of Paula Allardyce, Charity Blackstock (in some cases reedited as Lee Blackstock in USA), to sign her gothic romance and mistery novels, later she also used the pseudonym of Charlotte Keppel. Her novel Miss Fenny (aka The Woman in the Woods) as Charity or Lee Blackstock was nominated for Edgar Award. In 1961, her novel Witches' Sabbath won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association. She passed away 6 March 1997, at 85.

Book List in Order: 25 titles

  • The Foggy, Foggy Dew

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    Andrew Mallory, an anthropologist, is home from his work in the Pacific Islands. At a gathering he overhears the obscure language of the Islands; it's being used as a code. A young girl is killed for having heard it as well. He had no idea who had mu...

  • Miss Fenny // The Woman in the Woods

    Original title: Miss Fenny. She had been an odd little woman, but harmless and quite delightful. Why would anyone want to kill her?...

  • The Shadow of Murder // All Men Are Murderers

    Original title: The Shadow of Murder. Andrew Mallory, an anthropologist, is home from his work in the Pacific Islands. At a gathering he overhears the obscure language of the Islands; it's being used as a code. A young girl is killed for having he...

  • The Bitter Conquest

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    Scotland in 1750.... Four years had passed since Culloden. Yet hatred still descended on the conquerors like the mist from the hills. The rebel Jamie MacDonald still lurked in the heather, evading capture despite the price on his head, his broken ...

  • Dewey Death

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    The Inter-Libraries Despatch Association is a librarians' library... it should be a model of propriety and impersonal efficiency. But impersonal it is not. Everyone knows that handsome, demonic Mark Allan is in thrall to the resident blond bombshell ...

  • The Briar Patch // Young Lucifer

    Original title: The Briar Patch. The world of the English Young Ladies of Miss Pelham's finishing school was a world of decorum, a neat, beautifully mannered, well-ordered world. But in the France of 1949, the world of the Jewish orphan boys at th...

  • The Exorcism // A House Possessed

    Original title: The Exorcism. Collie Lodge is an ancient house situated on the banks of Loch Ness in the north of Scotland. It is inhabited by several paying guests--and a ghost, a lively spirit named Margaret, whose short and tragic life ended ne...

  • The Gallant

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    Ross Macleod needs money -- which makes him undertake an unpleasant job, to follow Alice, Sir Arthur Haley-White's rebellious, tawny-haired daughter, to France where she has eloped to marry an unscrupulous gigolo. Young Alice is not the "little rich ...

  • Mr. Christopoulos

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    The blood of his hands was old - more would make no difference......



  • The Factor's Wife // The English Wife

    Original title: The Factor's Wife. Bored by the proper nineteenth-century dandies who courted her, Meg Rowlands fell in love with Ringan Kerr, overseer of the Duke of Sutherland's acreage. She was delighted with her rough-hewn, moody husband - and...

  • When the Sun Goes Down // Monkey on a Chain

    Original title: When the Sun Goes Down. Revenge of hate? She didn't know which - but something irresistible was drawing her to Bangkok to confront another killer. The journey in search of her brother's murderer, leads her to a strange, searing rel...

  • The Children // Wednesday's Children

  • The Knock at Midnight

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    A spellbinding novel of suspense, romance, jealousy, and betrayal in wartime Europe. Attractive, spirited and far from ready to accept her spinster state, Maggie Ramsay resolves to escape the confines of her dreary life in London for one carefree ...

  • The Party in Dolly Creek // The Widow

    Journey Into The Past Sheila and Tom Armstrong lived a crowded, frenetic life. Deeply in love, essentially they remained strangers. Then Tom was dead, and for Sheila time came to a stop. Memories crowded in on her and she knew that her only hope ...

  • The Melon in the Cornfield // The Lemmings

    Original title: The Melon in the Cornfield. A lovely and beautiful, aristocratic black student and a liberal white teacher confront emotional and racial conflict, and encounter racial intolerance and hatred....

  • The Encounter

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    Set against a backdrop of sharp mountain crags and jagged human emotions, THE ENCOUNTER is a compelling story of a lonely, introspective young woman and a driven man bent on enacting a long postponed drama of revenge....

  • The Jungle

    Set in the steaming wilderness of South Africa, this story probes deep into the torrid passageways of the human heart, as six travelers, on safari through a vast game preserve, find themselves caught in an ever-tightening web of passion and intrigue....

  • The Lonely Strangers

    On the mid-18th century, Coll Macdonell and Scots in exile in Paris after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie. ...

  • People in Glass Houses

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    Two strangers, by chance, are brought together for a moment out of time. Both in the midst of acute personal crises, they draw the strength from this brief encounter to reconstruct their shattered lives. The woman is Rose Menusier, attractive midthir...



  • Ghost Town

    • / Contemporary Romance
    • Buy Buy

  • I Met Murder on the Way // The Shirt Front

    Original title: I Met Murder on the Way. A novel of love, scandal/ and triple murder. The house was large and venerable - as was the family to which is belonged. There were many Pomeroys, they all bore the aristocratic stamp, and, although few ...

  • Miss Charley

    • / Contemporary Romance
    • Buy Buy

  • With Fondest Thoughts

    • / Contemporary Romance
    • Buy Buy

  • The Daughter

    Emma Clarke, a successful and attractive novelist in her 40's, survives a long, fierce duel of wills with her domineering mother only to feel that, like her mother, she is destined to destroy everything she touches. Sensing Emma's troubles, her frien...

  • Dream Towers

    • / Contemporary Romance
    • Buy Buy

    When Barbara and her husband decide to part company for awhile, she heads to the country to think about this course of events. But instead she gets caught up by a curious house which stands alone, hidden by trees. She sets off to seek enlightenment,...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Charity Blackstock has published 25 books.

Charity Blackstock does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Dream Towers, was published in January 1981.

The first book by Charity Blackstock, The Foggy, Foggy Dew, was published in January 1956.

No. Charity Blackstock does not write books in series.
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