Showing results by narrator "Jilly Bond" in All Categories

Eve was just eight years old when, as a Jewish girl in a Berlin school, the rumblings of the Nazis' rise to power began to threaten everything she knew. Fortunately, her parents managed to get the family out of Germany and start a new life in London. The horrors of war were just a part of the past - until the day when Eve inherited a treasured family notebook that hid an amazing secret.

Tina returns for her brother's wedding to the Fenland village where she grew up. A moment of panic about her 10-year-old daughter triggers a vision of her best friend, Mandy Baker, who went missing without a trace at the same age three decades ago. The more Tina replays events and relives her tempestuous upbringing, the more she believes she knows what happened to Mandy and who was responsible.

WW1 is over. As a nurse at the front, Clementine has found and lost love but has settled for middle-class marriage. Vincent had half his face blown off and wants more than life offers now. Drawn together by their shared experiences at the Front, they have a compulsive relationship, magnetic and parasitic, played out with blackmail and ending in disaster for one of them.

Organised. Neat. Lonely. Kathy Simmonds is alone at Christmas this year, after her beloved husband John passed away a few months ago. She keeps her home spick and span, struggling with her grief for a family she has lost or lost touch with. But a chance phone call from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home opens the door to something new. She meets Scruff, a messy Jack Russell with a heart of gold who has been left for dead on the streets of London.

Voices from the Blue tells the story of the hundred years of service of female police officers within the Metropolitan Police through the voices of the women who fought their way towards equality and won the respect of both their colleagues and the public. The authors have interviewed hundreds of former and serving policewomen and with the co-operation of the Metropolitan Police and the Women's Police Association now have access to the files and stories of thousands of former officers who served over the past hundred years.

Norah Thornby can no longer afford to live in her grand family home - unless she can find a respectable lodger. But Nurse Lettie Quick is not nearly as respectable as she seems. Meanwhile the beautiful Rae Grainger is staying in an isolated house miles away from the town. It’s certainly rather creepy, but Rae knows that all she has to do is stay out of sight until paid-professional others take her little problem away.

When Bea Bishop slips while walking down the aisle on her wedding day, she is momentarily knocked unconscious. And in a flash, her world splits and two separate parallel lives take her on two very different journeys. In one, Bea flees back down the aisle and out of the church. In the other, she glides blissfully towards Adam, her intended. Which story will lead to her happy-ever-after?

Ever been talked into buying a camel? Or become a burglar by mistake? Or accidentally drugged a friend on a blind date? Keggie Carew has an unerring instinct for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of putting her foot in it, and making a hash of things. From the repercussions of a missing purse, to boiling a frog, or the holiday when the last thing you could possibly imagine happens, Keggie has been there. She also has an enviable talent for recycling awfulness and turning embarrassment into gold. In prose that will make you laugh, wince and curl your toes, Keggie Carew shares her most embarrassing, awkward, uncomfortable, funny, true, terrible and all-too-relatable moments. You will be glad none of it happened to you.

She’s a deliciously scandalous woman who is no man’s bride.... He’s a black sheep, forced to return home. Together, they enter a make-believe betrothal that shocks London society....

A powerful, posthumous novel from bestselling author Mario Reading. Relegated to an isolated provincial town in France after years spent fighting on the Eastern Front, German commander Maximilian von Aschau finds unexpected distraction in the form of beautiful and reserved Lucie Léré. He’s seen every horror of the human experience. She’s never left her village. Opposites in every way, Max and Lucie manage to find common ground. But love is the most dangerous element of war. It makes you vulnerable... and careless.

Just before D-Day in 1944, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, an elderly woman walks into a police station. She has information, she says, about human remains recently discovered nearby. The bodies could have stayed buried for ever - like the pain and passion that put them there. But Mary Holmes is finally ready to tell the truth. The young constable sent to take her statement is still suffering from the injuries that ended his army career. As he tries to make sense of her tale, William finds himself increasingly distracted.

Binny Cornwallis has lost something. Something that wasn’t really hers in the first place. With her best enemy Gareth and her beloved dog Max she turns detective to track it down, but the Cornwallis family are anything but helpful. Little brother James and his friend Dill are having an adventure of their own and big sister Clem is acting very strangely. And on top of all this, Binny suspects their next-door neighbour may be a witch....

With her awful secondhand uniform and stuck-up classmates, Binny's new school is horrible. And life gets even worse when a storm damages the roof of her house, forcing Binny and her family to move to the countryside whilst it's being fixed. Binny; her sensible older sister, Clem; and her rambunctious brother, James (and his chickens) begin adjusting to life in the country. Then one of James' beloved chickens vanishes, and Binny finds strange footprints in the mud. What kind of creature is lurking in the undergrowth?

Food writer Claudia has sampled dishes by the world's greatest chefs. But when she hears about a remarkable pastry shop operated out of a convent in a sleepy Italian hillside town, she wants to write a book featuring their desserts and their creator - Sorella Agata. Sorella tells of the young woman who inspired her: Rosalia, who was kidnapped and separated from her family. Claudia discovers a deep, fascinating story - one that affirms food can do more than nourish the body....

Violet Dimond, the Holy Terror, has delivered many of the town children in her capacity as handywoman. But Violet’s calling is dying out with medicine’s advances. Grace, Violet’s adopted daughter, is a symbol of change herself. In the place where she has grown up and everyone knows her, she is accepted, though most of the locals never before saw a girl with skin that colour. For Violet and Grace the coming war will bring more upheaval: can they endure it, or will they be swept aside by history’s tide?

It was the night that shattered his life. One year ago, Rina’s dear friend Detective Mac McGregor witnessed something unspeakable: the murder of a child on a golden sandy beach. The girl died in his arms while her killer fled into the night, never to be seen again. But then, out of the blue, Mac gets a call that changes everything. His old adversary is back in town, and this could be Mac’s final chance to put him away.

Sisters-in-law Kate, Heather, and Olivia are all hiding something. It's not easy being part of the high-achieving Fox family: the expectations and demands of their husbands and children; the jealousies and rivalries; and the endless Sunday lunches. So when mysterious Sasha enters their lives, bloodied from a painful divorce, buried frustrations rush to the surface. Three sisters-in-law. One devastating divorcee. Whose husband is about to play with fire?

Stick and Fetch are on holiday, but even in a rickety old seaside hotel there are plenty of crimes to solve and mysteries to unravel. Such as, who is Major Mayhem? Why is that door frightened? And where could the small-bottle-of-shampoo robbers be hiding? This lovable pair is on the case and undeterred despite plenty of mishaps, misdeeds and misunderstandings along the way. A fun-filled adventure featuring two hapless investigators with a lot of hair.

Agreeing to a fake betrothal should suit both society dressmaker Belle Marchmain and landowner Adam Davenant fittingly - clearing Belle's debts and keeping Adam's husband-hunters at bay. Even if blue-blooded Belle, with her extravagant clothes and razor-sharp tongue, despises the very air that nouveau riche Adam breathes! If Adam wants an agreeable wife he has his work cut out.

Can a reclusive and distrustful lord, scarred by betrayal, learn to trust a pampered society beauty who seems to have the whole world at her feet? When Alexander Forthin, Earl of Calvercombe, clashes with Persephone Seaborne it seems not... But a series of mysterious disappearances links their two families, forcing the embittered soldier and the toast of St James into an unlikely alliance.