Showing results by narrator "Karen Cass" in All Categories

Beth loves her job working in a care home, looking after its elderly residents, but she doesn’t love the cramped and dirty house-share she currently lives in. So, when she gets the opportunity to move to Nightingale Square, sharing a house with the lovely Eli, she jumps at the chance. The community at Nightingale Square welcomes Beth with open arms, and when she needs help to organise a fundraiser for the care home they rally round. Then she discovers The Arches, a local creative arts centre, has closed and the venture to replace it needs their help too.

Facing bankruptcy, Celine's family were forced to turn their home into a guesthouse to make ends meet. Celine found her new life hard work but great fun. She met a young man, Nicky, who seemed very taken with her. If only Nicky's masterful cousin, Oliver, wouldn't keep interfering. But when she discovered that Nicky was married, Celine was only too grateful for Oliver's comforting presence. Gratitude wasn't exactly what Oliver had in mind, but it was a start.

Istanbul, 1922. Lady Marigold Grey—former British spy and daring adventuress—sets out for England on a luxury train. But where Marigold goes, trouble follows. When the director of the train is murdered—and false evidence linking her to his death emerges—Marigold suddenly finds herself on the fast-track to becoming a prime suspect.

Raegan Kent-Walters is living the high life. Thanks to her husband’s salary, she enjoys the elite Surrey housewife existence of luxury holidays, exclusive gym memberships and skinny lattes. But then the high life comes crashing down, and, whilst reeling from the discovery that her husband wasn’t the man she thought he was, Raegan is also confronted with the reality that she and her daughter, Sabrine, will have to make some major life changes.

Though many have never heard her name, Alice Prin—Kiki de Montparnasse—was the icon of 1920s Paris. She captivated as a ground-breaking nightclub performer, wrote a bestselling memoir, sold out exhibitions of her paintings, and shared drinks with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Peggy Guggenheim, Marcel Duchamp and Gertrude Stein. She also shepherded along the career of the then-unknown American photographer: Man Ray.

Like many women, Clare Pooley found the juggle of a stressful career and family life a struggle, so she left her successful role as a managing partner in one of the world's biggest advertising agencies to look after her family. She knew the change wouldn't be easy, but she never expected to find herself an overweight, depressed, middle-aged mother of three who was drinking more than a bottle of wine a day and spending her evenings Googling 'am I an alcoholic?'

Nestled in the quiet countryside sits the cosy village of Little Monkham, home of the Star and Sixpence, a renovated pub owned by sisters Sam and Nessie. As the locals welcome the new season, it appears that change is afoot in their tiny community, and not all of it for the better...Nessie is moving in with her boyfriend, leaving Sam alone in the pub. But with the arrival of new chef Gabriel causing a flutter among the women of the village, it seems that Sam might not be so lonely after all.

With her heart in tatters, Rose Bennett swaps her hometown of London for sunny Australia, but arrives to find the Shingle Valley shrouded in winter. As the weather improves, Rose starts to unlock the secrets of the valley - from bonfire ceremonies and wine-making traditions, to eccentric locals and their histories.... And soon, Rose falls in love with the valley, the wines, the two children she’s caring for and with the handsome and brilliant Mark Cameron, owner of the troubled Kalkari Wines estate.

Seven years after his sister vanished without a trace, Jude is on the road, determined not to return home until he has found her. He wants to reunite his broken family, but more than this he wants to know why Zoe left. They’d been enjoying the funfair - grasping a rare moment of happiness following their parents’ divorce - when after a ride together, Zoe had stopped speaking to her mother’s new partner. Though Mandy believed he was the man she’d waited all her life for, her love for her daughter trumped even that.

As young women, Lise and Emma had the kind of friendship people dream about. While Lise's own family was distant and disengaged, Emma's was welcoming and warm, and for the first twenty-six years of their life, growing up together in a close-knit community, the duo were inseparable. But when they decide to spend one year living together in Paris, what starts as the adventure of a lifetime becomes a disaster that changes everything. And when Emma returns to Bath the following summer, Lise stays behind in France, their friendship in tatters.

When seven-year-old Fran first met Will they knew instantly that they were made for each other. For 11 years they were inseparable, but then, at the age of 18, Will just upped and disappeared. Twenty-five years later Will is back. Is fate trying to give them a second chance? Still nursing the heartbreak from all those years ago, Fran is reluctant to give Will the time of day. The price Will must pay is to tell the truth - the truth about why he left, the truth about why he’s back.

After a lifetime of kissing frogs, Roxie Pratt has given up on finding her own fairytale romance. That is, until she meets her very own Prince Charming, Mark Wright, and he sweeps Roxie off her feet! So when Mark finally gets down on one knee and pops the question, there’s only one thing left to do: meet the family! And when everything has been picture-perfect so far, what could possibly go wrong?

The Complete Sherlock Holmes and Alan Grant Collection brings together two of the greatest crime writers of the 20th century and their most iconic characters. All 9 of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books are here - including 4 novels and 5 short story collections - and all 6 of the Inspector Alan Grant novels from Josephine Tey.

Ava's marriage has been a lie. For the past five years her husband Mark has been squandering their money on gambling and dodgy deals that have amounted to nothing. Mark has left Ava and their daughter, Sophia, to fend for themselves with a mountain of debt. Then Ava is shocked to learn her grandfather has passed away and left his entire vineyard, Chateau Montrose, to her. What does Ava know about making wine?

They took her children away, and she will fight to the end to get them back . . . In 1941, mixed race Ruby Darke is born into a family that seem to hate her, but why? While her two brothers dive into a life of gangland violence, Ruby has to work in their family store. As she blossoms into a beautiful young woman she crosses paths with aristocrat Cornelius Bray, a chance meeting that will change her life forever. When she finds herself pregnant, and then has twins, she is forced to give her children away.

Following a shocking revelation within her family, Tess Tyler is looking to escape her hectic city life - and where better to hide than Wynmouth, the seaside town she visited as a child, with its sandy beaches, stunning rock pools and welcoming community. But little does she realise, Wynmouth isn't quite the haven she remembers it to be, and her real life is still threatening to catch up with her. Also returning to Wynmouth is Joe. Having fled more than a decade ago after an accident that changed his life forever, he’s back and is determined to face his demons.

On paper, Merina Wilde has it all: a successful career writing the kind of romantic novels that make even the hardest hearts swoon, a perfect carousel of book launches and parties to keep her social life buzzing and a childhood sweetheart who thinks she’s a goddess. But Merry has a secret: the magic has stopped flowing from her fingers. Try as she might, she can’t summon up the sparkle that makes her stories shine.

The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is...don't make any afternoon plans.

Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way.

Tiga Whicabim is settling in to the witchy world of Ritzy City. Peggy is Top Witch, and Tiga is enjoying life at the Brews' house with Fluffanora. But when Fran the Fabulous Fairy visits Linden House and finds Peggy has gone, leaving evil Felicity Bat in charge - the girls realise something is very wrong. When witches all across town start to disappear, Tiga and Fluffanora set out to investigate and discover an unsolved mystery that might just be the key to it all.

A history of the Renaissance told through the lives of its most influential patrons. From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of 15th- and 16th-century Italy immersed themselves in the culture of antiquity, commissioning palaces, villas and churches inspired by the architecture of ancient Rome, and offering patronage to artists and writers.