Showing results by narrator "Colleen Prendergast" in All Categories

Annie Howarth is living a restless life in a restless town. It's 1984 and for a mining community in South Yorkshire, the strikes mean tensions are running high. Then a murdered girl is found on the moors and the anxiety levels are pushed to a dangerous breaking point. Married to the Chief of Police, Annie should feel safe – William can be secretive, though surely whatever he's hiding is for her own good. But Annie is keeping her own secrets.

Rabbit is surprised: some of the trees in the valley seem to be flying south for the winter. His friend Bear is sure that trees can't fly. Then there's a loud crunch! from very near by. It sounds like the world's largest rabbit, eating the world's largest carrot. There's a new creature in Rabbit and Bear's valley, and he's trying to change everything. From novelist and playwright Julian Gough and the winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize Jim Field, this is a tale of friendship, Progress and all kinds of getting muddy.

Former investment banker Johan Golding - Joe to his friends - is the newest member of the Hartley and Edwards Investigations team. And he's thrilled to be shadowing Kitt Hartley, librarian-turned-top sleuth, and her right-hand woman Grace Edwards; even if it means adjusting to the low-level madness that seems to reign in the Hartley and Edwards offices. But Joe finds himself thrown in at the deep end when a man known as Ralph Holmes goes missing on the outskirts of Carlisle.

Lady Beatrice is fleeing an arranged marriage by stagecoach to Brighton, where the proud beauty meets her match in Miss Hannah Pym who is determined to find her a proper beau.

Elaborately disguised and hidden deep beneath the city's streets lies the world of Miss Brickett's, a secret detective agency. From traversing deceptive escape rooms full of baited traps and hidden dangers, to engineering almost magical mechanical gadgets, apprentice detectives at Miss Brickett's undergo rigorous training to equip them with the skills and knowledge they will need to solve the mysteries that confound London's police force.

A spellbinding adventure from the best-selling, award-winning author of The Last Wild trilogy. Jewel Hastings doesn't know who she is. But she is about to discover that she is one of the most remarkable people to have ever walked the earth. On the run from school bullies, Jewel tumbles through the door of a mysterious old bookshop and falls headlong into Folio, the world of the imagination. There, she must begin a quest to rescue her missing aunt, helped only by her rude pet hamster Fizz and a malfunctioning copper robot.

Meg just wants to keep her family together. Her mother is desperately ill, and her sister is still in school so it is up to her to support them. All Meg knows to do is bake, and desperation leads her to Ted Lund, the miserly owner of a local bakery. In a moment of uncharacteristic kindness, he takes pity on Meg and offers her a job. But Ted’s charity ends there. He’ll save money at any costs, cutting corners by using sawdust in his bread, ignoring vermin in his flour and paying Meg a pittance.

Working on the notorious Mitchell Estate, housing officer Josie Mellor faces challenges every day, but not nearly as many as those of her tenants. Kelly Winterton is scared and alone after her partner has been jailed. A victim of domestic abuse, Charlotte Hatfield has fled from her violent partner four times already. He'll probably kill her if he finds her this time. Disowned by her family, someone is taking advantage of Amy Cartwright's vulnerability. Who can she turn to for support?

Eliza Wild has come a long way from her hungry childhood days in a rented miner's cottage on Pit Lane on the outskirts of Leeds. Her sewing skills have enabled her to go into business with a wealthy patron and to give her young niece, Victoria, a better life than she and her sister, Mary-Anne, ever dreamed of. There's also Eliza's sweetheart, Tom, who is determined to marry her, but having worked so hard to get to where she is, will Eliza take a chance on love when it means she might lose everything she has ever worked for?

1945. They have survived the Blitz, but when Simon, Patricia, Evelyn and Larry step through a mysterious library door, it is the beginning of their most dangerous adventure yet. They discover the magical world of Folio, where an enchanted kingdom of fairy knights, bears and tree gods is under threat from a sinister robot army. The many stories of the Library are locked in eternal war, and the children's only hope is to find their creator - a magician who has been lost for centuries. What they find will change not just their own lives, but the fate of the world, for ever....

SPLASH! A mysterious thing lands in Rabbit and Bear's peaceful summer lake. Is it exciting, or terrifying? Is it a tiny fluffy owl, or a huge hungry monster? And has Rabbit finally met a creature with worse habits than himself? Rabbit's sure he can solve this mystery. But when he accidentally turns the best day ever into the worst day ever, he needs Bear's help.... From novelist and playwright Julian Gough and the winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize Jim Field, this is a tale of friendship, acceptance and what you can do with blueberry poo.

As a palliative care nurse, it is Kelly Critcher's job to look death in the eye - to save a patient while the fight can still be won and confront death with grace and kindness when it can't. In early 2020, everything changed for nurses on the NHS frontline. Working on Covid wards and the High Dependency Unit, Kelly spent the height of the coronavirus crisis at Northwick Park Hospital - perhaps the UK hospital most deeply ravaged by the illness.

Amy lies in a coma. Her older sister, Moira, comes to her in the evenings and sits beside her hospital bed. Here, Moira confesses. She admits to her childhood selfishness which deeply hurt her family; to her savagery at boarding school; to the wild, bitter and destructive heart that she carried into her adult life.

After being orphaned as a child, Mary is taken in by her mother's friend - and ex-prostitute - Nell and raised as her own. But when Nell dies her stepfather takes too much of an interest in Mary, and she is forced to leave home, landing a job as a barmaid. Only Whitelocks is no spit and sawdust pub but a new gin palace in the centre of Leeds. Mary thinks she's landed on her feet. More so when she catches the eye of William Winn, the charming owner of a glamorous new hotel.

'Peace and quiet,' shouts Rabbit. 'That's all I want.' Owch. He's hurt his own ears again. What with Bear's snoring, and a BANG!BANG!BANG! noise from up in the tree, Rabbit knows that something simply has to be done. But high in the branches, perhaps Bear can show Rabbit how to see the world from a different place....

Beth Lomas thought she knew her late husband. But this one small word, written on the back of a discarded envelope and left on their kitchen table, convinces the police that Oscar took his own life. As the police announce they are not seeking anyone else in connection with Oscar's death, Beth is convinced that there is more to the story. As she sets out to discover what really happened, Beth uncovers shocking truths about the man she thought she knew better than anyone.

DI Annie Delamere and her colleague DS Zoe Everett are off duty and enjoying a walk on the Peak District’s vast moorlands when they stumble across a mutilated corpse. While Annie is put in charge of the case, her long-term partner, MP Sheena Pearson, is confronted by a group of far-right extremists. Sheena chooses to stand her ground - and almost pays for it with her life. As more bodies are found, Annie is under pressure to prove her worth.

Liverpool, 1910. When Patch runs up the gangway of the steamship, RMS Glorious, she isn't planning to hang around. But if she leaves her hiding place, the constable might catch her, so sitting tight is worth the risk. Her plan is spoiled when she realises too late that the ship is setting sail, and Patch finds herself an accidental stowaway. Luckily, Patch's unconventional past has made her pretty fearless when it comes to fending for herself, and besides there are friends in high and low places to be made onboard.

Once known as 'London's most bohemian rendezvous'....

In 1959 Milly starts her new life as a housemaid at Rutherford House, working for the aristocratic Rutherford-Percy clan. Entranced by her new mistress, Vivienne, she becomes deeply embroiled in the household and the keeper of dark secrets the family conceals beneath the mansion’s grand exterior. In the present day, Christie is working as a psychiatric nurse when she meets troubled patient Lillian Percy, Vivienne’s granddaughter and heiress to Rutherford House. They soon bond over the loss of their mothers.