Showing results by narrator "Maggie Mash" in All Categories

1960. Having been friends ever since they met in a Blackpool boardinghouse five years before, Val, Cissie and Janice are all now happily married, preoccupied with their growing families. But the new decade will bring change for all. Val and Sam's son's behaviour is causing concern, and Val finds it hard at times to love him as she should. Running a thriving café in Harrogate, Janice and her husband, Phil, decide to expand into the restaurant business: have they bitten off more than they can chew? Meanwhile Cissie's life is thrown into jeopardy when she encounters an old flame....

"Not for the faint of heart! Shocking and terrifying, it will chill you to the bone." Tess Gerritsen Perfect for fans of Karen Rose and Karin Slaughter, this is an atmospheric and nerve-jangling crime thriller. Lovers of CSI, this one is for you.Ella, sweet Ella, I dream of you at night and wake in a cold sweat. You were meant to be mine. You can't even begin to imagine all the things I want to do to you. When the time is right, I will come for you. And that is only the beginning of my revenge.

Nancy de Freitas is the glue that holds her family together. Caught between her ageing, ailing mother, Frances, and her struggling daughter, Louise, a frequent user of Nancy's babysitting services, it seems Nancy's fate is to quietly go on shouldering the burden of responsibility for all four generations. Her divorce four years ago put paid to any thoughts of a partner to share her later years with. Now it looks like her family is all she has. Then she meets Jim.

On a cold winter's day, a preschool teacher is shot to death in front of parents and children at the Jewish Congregation in Stockholm. Just a few hours later, two Jewish boys go missing on their way to tennis practice. A heavy snowstorm hits Stockholm, and the traces of the perpetrator are few and far between. Fredrika Bergman and Alex Recht are faced with one of their toughest challenges ever as they hunt for a killer who seems as merciless as he is effective.

The spy novel that anticipated the Snowden revelations. Carina Dymek is on a fast track for promotion at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when she is approached by a stranger and given a USB stick containing a report to circulate in her department. Unwittingly, she delivers a time bomb of classified information that sends her career up in flames and puts her on the radar of the security service,

Bryony and Hannah are sisters, but they couldn't be more different, and war has brought even more of a rift between them. Bryony is happiest at Combe Lodge, the family home, while young, headstrong Hannah has fled to Jersey. At Combe Lodge, everyone else is pitching in with the war effort. The family home fills with evacuees, and Bryony is doing her bit, flying planes at the nearby Combe Lodge Airlines. But Bryony knows that she needs to reach out to Hannah. Only she will be able to keep her flighty younger sister's feet on the ground. But is Bryony too late to help her? Will Hannah ever come home?

A man, wearing his daughter’s wedding ring, is found in front of his fireplace, a bullet hole in his chest. A funeral director searches desperately for his brother - a man who doesn’t seem to be missed. A woman struggles to protect her children and her life as her husband turns ever more dangerous. Fredrika Bergman and Alex Recht believe that these three cases are totally unrelated...until they uncover a connection between these three people that changes everything.

July 1942, and 23-year-old nightclub singer Kate Watson has made a home for herself in bomb-blitzed London. A motley crew of friends has replaced the family she's not spoken to in years. Until Kate's sister Sarah walks back into her life, asking her to return home to Dorset for one month to look after her daughter, Lizzie. Reluctantly Kate agrees, though it means facing the troubled past she hoped she'd escaped.

Polly Flint was the kind of girl who was always "seeing" mysterious things. So it was hardly a surprise when she began to pick up odd echoes and reflections after she moved into her aunt's house. But it soon becomes clear that the inhabitants of a nether world were asking Polly for help... As soon as she arrives in Wellow, Polly Flint knows there is magic in the place. And she should know because she is an unusual girl who can see things others can't.

New Year's Eve, 1940: Evie Chase, determined to make a difference to the war effort, joins the ATA, the civilian pilots who ferry Tiger Moths and Spitfires to bases across Britain. Two other women nervously join up: Stella Grainger and Megan Jones. Billeted in a tiny cottage, they must learn to live and work together. Brave, beautiful and fiercely independent, they find romance, confront loss, and forge friendships that will last a lifetime.

It is 1956, and Lizzy is working in Soho when Peace comes to stay. Peace is a beautiful 16-year-old part-Chinese girl, the daughter - it turns out - of her employer Bandy Bunion's estranged sister. Peace has been at a boarding school in the country - but, tired of feeling lonely and of being bullied, she has run away, and does not intend to go back. Lizzy, who lives above the nightclub run by Bandy and Sugarplum Flaherty, offers to take her in; she lost her own daughter - Rosie's best friend - to leukaemia two years previously and she feels a special bond with Peace.

January 1945, West London: Sylvia Simpson has become an invaluable member of the Marigold's crew - but as the V-I and V-2 rockets draw closer, someone from her past is about to rock the boat. Now Sylvia must choose between keeping the promises she has made and remaining loyal to the people she loves the most. Polly and Verity are waiting for their sweethearts' safe return and have their own battles to fight on the home front. It will take all their resolve to keep their heads above water, but as long as they stick together there will always be hope.

In the early days of the 19th-century, Whitby is a thriving port. Both the Coulson and the Campion families make a living by the sea. Sam Coulson has three sons: Martin, Ben, and Eric. He has grand plans for expanding his whaling business; and as Seaton Campion has no sons, a marriage between Martin and Campion's eldest daughter, Alicia, will aid the fortunes of both families. Ben Coulson, Sam's middle son, has turned his back on whaling to follow other pursuits.

Shortly after a crowded New York-bound flight takes off from Stockholm, a bomb threat is found onboard. Anonymous hijackers demand that the Swedish government revoke its decision to deport a Moroccan man. If their demands are not met, the plane will explode if it attempts to land. The US and Swedish governments must choose between negotiating with terrorists in order to save the 400 passengers held hostage at 30,000 feet or to stand their ground and pursue the deportation of a possibly innocent man.

Barby Keel is used to all manner of creatures arriving at the door of the Barby Keel Animal Sanctuary where she lives and works. Nothing can prepare her for the arrival of Teddy, however, a neglected, traumatised puppy who is dumped at the gates of the sanctuary in a filthy box, terrified and desperate for someone to love. Despite his scruffy appearance, Barby can't help but feel a spark of affection for the overgrown puppy. But with Barby living in a caravan along with her four other dogs, she knows in her heart of hearts that Teddy deserves a more stable forever home.

They loved. They lost. They lived. In the small Yorkshire town of Cottenly - dominated by the steel works and surrounded by beautiful countryside - Isaac Stanford lives with his wife Emily and their three lovely daughters, known locally as the Stanford lasses. Alice, the eldest, lives only for her work as a secretary and chapel on Sunday.

The body of a young woman is found carved up and buried in a forest glade in an innocuous Swedish suburb. Alex Recht and his team in the Stockholm Police soon identify the body as belonging to missing student Rebecca Trolle, but as his team continues to excavate the site, they soon find that someone has been returning to the same spot to bury their victims year after year, decade after decade.

Annie Delancey is happily married with three grown children. But she guards a secret. Aged eighteen she had a baby boy, and gave him up for adoption. Out of the blue, she receives an official-looking letter from Social Services. Herson wants to make contact. As the son she has never known comes back into her life, his presence begins to expose the cracks in the family that Annie now has to try, desperately, to hold together.

Lucy Gabbitas has just left school and is excited about joining her sisters at the local umbrella factory. But then her beloved father dies of lung disease leaving Lucy and her brothers and sisters broken-hearted. With barely enough to make ends meet, the family receive no sympathy from their tyrannical mother, Annie, and their first Christmas without him holds little comfort and joy. Things seem to be looking brighter for Lucy when she meets John Grey and falls in love. That is until Annie becomes seriously ill and dies, and Lucy is forced to put her family first.

Marie is turning 69 this year, but there are no signs of her slowing down - she has a new lodger (very into conspiracy theories), an intractable iPhone to wrestle with, and a trip to India to plan! As usual the year brings plenty of challenges as well as opportunities. Marie is burgled, which sends the street into uproar. Ex-husband David is still around and getting rather too close for comfort.