Showing results by narrator "Clare Corbett" in All Categories

What if the villain of your childhood turned out to be someone really rather extraordinary? Disgraced politician Sir James Hastings is resigned to living out his retirement in a secluded village in the Surrey Hills. He is unmoved when he learns his mother has died at the age of 108. In his mind, he buried her when she abandoned him as a child. Brought up by his father, a charismatic war-hero turned racing driver, the young James, torn between self-blame and longing, eventually dismissed her.

A fresh, witty, accessible life of Queen Victoria. Not since Lytton Strachey has the irony, contradictions and influence of this Queen been treated with such flourish or biographical insight. Reigning over a lifetime, Queen Victoria embodied the spirit of the contradictory era to which she lent her name.

Some love stories never end. Sophie Brady is funny, beautiful, a force of nature. One January evening she kisses her adored husband and young son goodbye, closes the door of number 33. At 10 PM she's with her best friend Jenny in Soho, polishing off a second bottle of wine. By midnight, she's dead. Except she doesn't feel dead. And she isn't going anywhere until she helps Ollie find love again.

A Bev Morriss crime novel. A good police officer doesn't get emotional, but some cases just make you want to cry.... Taken off a high-profile rape investigation to lead the hunt for a missing baby, Detective Sergeant Bev Morriss is torn professionally and personally. When the baby-snatching turns into something more sinister, it forces Bev to face uncomfortable feelings of her own, and when she takes her eye off the ball for a split second, she finds herself in serious trouble.

Carol married young - to philandering Phil - and became a mother young to highly-strung Jaz. Carol put up with Phil’s infidelities: suffer in silence and keep the family together was her mantra.Not so Jaz. The moment she discovers her own husband’s errant ways - with a woman he barely knew - she throws him out of the house, changes the locks and bans him from seeing their toddler son Matty...

London, 1853. Annie Stride has nothing left to live for - she is a penniless prostitute, newly evicted from her home and pregnant. On the night she plans to cast herself from Waterloo Bridge into the icy waters of the Thames, her life is saved by Francis Maybrick Gill, a talented pre-Raphaelite painter - and her world is changed forever. Francis takes Annie as his artist's muse, elevating her from fallen woman to society's darling. With her otherworldly beauty now the toast of London, her dark past is left far behind.

It is opening night of Miss Patel's Nativity play. The children have been rehearsing all December, and the audience are taking their seats for this year's hilarious school performance. Mary is getting her costume on, the Star is putting on his face paint, and everyone is very excited. Wait. Who brought that live donkey into the school? Why are both ends of the cow arguing? The Star is picking his nose! Nothing else could possibly go wrong...could it?

The laugh-out-loud funny girl series returns - and Nat is more embarrassed than ever! From TV and radio comedy writing talent Nigel Smith. For some girls the chance to be a bridesmaid is a dream come true. But for Nathalia it's a total nightmare. From the hideous fairy princess bridesmaid dresses to the disastrous bridal shower, everything about the wedding of her cousin, Tiffannee, leaves Nat feeling completely ridiculous!

Swallowing Grandma traces the struggles of 18-year-old Katherine as she attempts to break free from her demanding grandmother and discover the truth about her dead father and absent mother.

The laugh-out-loud funny girl series returns - and Nat is more embarrassed than ever! From TV and radio comedy writing talent Nigel Smith. Nat's class is going on a weeklong field trip to hunt for fossils. Cue mouldy log cabins, potholing, map reading and other totally boring geography-related stuff - all the things that Nat hates...and Dad loves! Of course he volunteers to come along with the class as a parent helper.

Alex, Lucy, River and Bridget. Four people with one thing in common: they are all being stalked. Their lives are filled with daily terror. Always watching. Always waiting. And never knowing what – or who – is hiding in the shadows. But this group of four used to be five, until the terrible day their friend Nat was followed home by her stalker. Coming together for Nat’s funeral, they are handed a wreath saying RIP. However, this isn’t a wreath in memory of Nat – it’s for them, with a card dated in ten days’ time. It’s a clear message: in ten days, one of them will die.

When baby bunny Letty discovers that her mummy is the real-life Easter Bunny, she follows her, secretly, through the forest as she hides her special deliveries. But seeing all the choccylicious Easter eggs is much too tempting. Letty nibbles one here and there...and soon, the eggs are gone! Will mummy have enough eggs left for Letty’s forest friends?

Veronica Britton is a Victorian private detective, a specialist in untangling tricky situations that occur in time as well as space. Working alongside her young apprentice Gabrielle Pendleton, she's very much in demand: if a necklace goes missing and you suspect that someone is selling it off in the future as a valuable antique, or you find yourself being blackmailed by someone who knows a little too much about your past, she's your woman.

Whatever happened to British protest? For a nation that brought the world Chartism, the Suffragettes, the Tolpuddle Martyrs and so many other grassroots social movements, Britain rarely celebrates its long, great tradition of people power. In this timely and evocative collection, 20 authors have assembled to reimagine key moments of British protest, from the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 to the anti-Iraq War demo of 2003.

When Charlie falls off a stepping stone in the woods, her whole world suddenly changes. She stumbles in the 21st century, and picks herself up in the middle of the 20th. She's a pupil at a weird outdoor school. Can she get back to her own time?

Cora carries secrets her daughter can't know. Freya is frightened by what her mother leaves unsaid. Angel will only bury the past if it means putting her abusers into the ground. One act of violence sets three women on a collision course, each desperate to find the truth, when the people they love are not what they seem.

Eighteen-year-old Emma has loving parents and a promising future ahead of her. So why, one morning, does she leave home without a trace? Her parents, Cath and Jim, are devastated. They have no idea why Emma left or even whether she is still alive. A year later, Cath and Jim are still tormented by the unanswered questions Emma left behind and clinging desperately to the hope of finding her. Meanwhile, tantalisingly close to home, Emma is also struggling with her new existence—and with the trauma that shattered her life. For all of them, reconciliation seems an impossible dream.

"My aunt wrote down the story of her life with depression. She didn't share it, so I’m sharing it for her.” A true story spoken from a sufferer of depression. The ugly truths and the painful battles. Combined with the story from someone who loved them, how they tried to support, and the painful process of losing them. All shared with the hope to help others and encourage support.

The satirical novel What Not was published in 1918. Foreshadowing Orwell’s 1984, it is set in a futuristic England where a government agency, known as the Ministry of Brains, is responsible for regulating and controlling relationships and marriages based on intelligence and eugenics.

One ordinary morning, Norah walked out of her house on Willoughby Street and never looked back. Six years later, she returns to the home she walked away from only to find another woman in her place. Fay held Norah's family together after she disappeared, she shares a bed with Norah's husband, and Norah's youngest daughter calls Fay 'Mummy'. Now that Norah has returned, everyone has questions. Where has she been? Why did she leave? And why is she back?