Showing results by narrator "Helen Duff" in All Categories

When Detective Jackie Cooke is called out to the scene, she’s expecting a routine check. The bottle of pills on the kitchen table, next to the note with the single word SORRY written in a shaky hand, make it seem obvious what’s happened. But Jackie is shocked when she recognises her old schoolfriend Claire--and she is convinced Claire would never take her own life.

Seventeen-year-old Chloe Smedley walks out of the school gates and waves to the person waiting for her across the road. She smiles and hurries towards them… and is never seen alive again. Detective Jackie Cooke is first on the scene when Chloe’s body is found, posed upright at a garden table. In her gut, Jackie knows she’s searching for a monster and it’s only a matter of time before they strike again, but no one will listen.

Lara Feigel's first novel, The Group, is a fiercely intelligent, revealing novel about a group of female friends turning 40. Who has children and who doesn't? Whose marriages are working, whose aren't and who has embarked on completely different models of sexuality and relationships? Who has managed to fulfil their promise, whose life has foundered and what do they think about it, either way?

In a freezing, isolated farmhouse with ice on its windows, Flora is looking after her sick mother. Since she was a little girl, Flora has been frightened of her mother. And when she discovers a photo of a smiling baby girl she doesn’t recognize, hidden at the bottom of a drawer, her mother grows even more remote, and refuses to talk about it. So, when a visitor arrives from a paradise island of sapphire coves and white sand beaches, and confirms that the baby in the picture is her sister, she should feel joy. But, he also brings the news that Flora’s sister is dying.

Rebecca Bray has moved on from a childhood she wants to forget. She has the dream fiancé, a loving stepdaughter and a career she's proud of. But with a move back to her hometown of Cornwall, everything she wanted to bury starts to surface. And when her stepdaughter goes missing at a New Year's Eve party, Rebecca must finally face the ghosts of her past - or Ava might never come home safely.

The moment my husband showed me Cliffside - a sleek and modern glass home perched on the edge of the jagged Big Sur clifftops - I fell in love. And right there and then I made a pact with myself. I am never leaving this house. But when my husband was killed on the perilous roads leading up to the house, weeks after we moved in, I had a decision to make - leave the home I love and start a new life or stay and shut myself off from the world? I am never leaving this house.

After solving a string of murders and getting used to living with a snarky ghost, Gethsemane Brown tries to rest easy. But in this second book in the series, her roomie disappears, her landlord decides to sell her cottage to a developer, and her brother-in-law comes to visit. The ever-resourceful African American musician and expatriate scrambles to call her spectral roomie back from beyond and to find a way to save the cottage from destruction, but those concerns take a backseat when her brother-in-law is accused of stealing a valuable antique.

It’s a beautiful day for a wedding. White roses scent the air and the summer sunlight streams in. A spoon chimes against a champagne flute and the room falls silent. And there he is - my husband - getting to his feet to propose a toast. He’s still handsome. His new wife is next to him, gazing upwards, oblivious. I’m not supposed to be here. All these years in the same town and I had no idea until I saw his name on the seating plan. He lived with me, once. Loved me. Small-town memories are long, but the people in this room don’t want to remember.

Nobody talks about my mother. Absolutely nobody. I have no idea what she was like. I’d always thought they kept quiet about her because they were sad. But what if it was because they were guilty?

In the Full Light of the Sun follows the fortunes of three Berliners caught up in a devastating scandal of 1930s Germany. It tells the story of Emmeline, a wayward young art student; Julius, an anxious middle-aged art expert; and a mysterious art dealer named Rachmann, who are at the heart of Weimar Berlin at its hedonistic, politically turbulent apogee and are whipped up into excitement over the surprising discovery of 32 previously unknown paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

1832. The morning after her father's funeral, Prudence Merryfield wakes to the liberating thought that this is the first day of her new life. At thirty-five and unmarried, she is now mistress of her own fate. But a cruel revelation at the reading of her father's will forces Prudence to realise that taking only the most drastic action will set her free. Present day. Eliza is gifted a family heirloom by her aunt—a Georgian pocket book, belonging to her ancestor, Prudence Merryfield, whose existence reverberates through the lives of generations of Eliza's family, the Ambroses.

Stella follows her handsome husband Rob to the beautifully laid-out table in the restaurant he’s chosen specially for her 40th birthday lunch. Stella knows how they must look to anyone watching. Two people very much in love, with the perfect marriage and the perfect life. But Rob is about to drop a bombshell on Stella. He wants a divorce. If she doesn’t agree to his plan - to sell the house, divide the money, and award him full custody of 14-year-old Georgie - he will tell their innocent daughter the one secret he promised to keep.

There are two little girls in the photo. I instantly recognize myself as the small, dark-haired child in the purple dress. But who is the girl with the long, blonde hair laughing at the camera? And why is the photograph here, in a stranger’s house? When I find the tattered picture hidden away at the back of a dusty cupboard in Amy’s house, my mouth goes dry with shock. Though I haven’t known Amy for very long, I love looking after her young children, in her picture-perfect hilltop house with its sprawling wildflower garden and bright, airy kitchen.

Before he is called to bless the body of a woman at the nearby asylum, Father Gabriel receives a strange, troubling confession: hidden under the woman's dress, he will find the notebooks in which she confided the abuses she suffered and the twisted motivations behind them. And so Rose's terrible story comes to light: sold as a teenage girl to a rich man, hidden away in an old manor house deep in the woods and caught in a perverse web, manipulated by those society considers her betters.

Single-mom Samantha moves with her daughter to a quiet village in the Peak District. The post as matron at Hallow Croft, now an exclusive residential home, seems to offer the escape she needs. But away from the TV room and afternoon activities, one of the residents is kept locked out of sight "for their own safety." And nobody will talk about the previous matron. She disappeared, leaving behind only a scuffed diary. Forty years ago, a girl was killed on the grounds of Hallow Croft Manor. Some people even say that began a curse on the home and the family who owned it.

In its three-hundred-year history, there has never once been a scandal at Mullings, ancestral home of the decent but dull Stodmarsh family—until, that is, Edward Stodmarsh makes an ill-advised second marriage to the scheming Regina Stapleton, who insists on bringing her family's “ornamental hermit” to live on the estate.

March 1933, Dovecote Hatch, England. Florence Norris knows she has found a good man in George 'Birdie' Bird, the landlord of the local pub, The Dog & Whistle. They are set to marry in a understated service at the parish church in their beloved village, Dovecote Hatch. But when a mysterious stranger seeks out George, sharing family secrets and talks of an illegal burial years ago, an ominous dread falls over the happy couple. Soon they are pulled reluctantly into this mystery that uncovers unpleasant truths in this idyllic English village.

Fresh from solving her third mystery, Gethsemane Brown is ready to relax and enjoy her summer. Her plans include nothing more dangerous than performing in the opening ceremony of the annual rose and garden show and cheering on Frankie Grennan, who has entered his hybrid rose into the competition. But when a mysterious stalker starts leaving Frankie floral bouquets as coded messages, Gethsemane fears a copycat may be planning to recreate the still-unsolved murders of the infamous Flower Shop Killer.

It's 1831. Assigned to a good family in Sydney town and now learning the art of tattoo, convict girl Harrie Clarke is still haunted by the horror of the brutal murder she, Friday Woolfe and Sarah Morgan committed the previous year. Powerful and vindictive criminal Bella Jackson continues to demand money in exchange for her silence regarding their crime. And when things go from bad to much, much worse for Harrie, she is left teetering on the brink.

England, 1918. As war ends, across the world people are trying to heal and recover. But Eleanor still feels broken. The loss of her beloved brother, killed just days before the Armistice was signed, feels impossibly unjust. Spending her time in the neglected garden behind their house, she fears her heart will never recover. Then her father hires a man to help restore the garden to its former glory.