Showing results by narrator "Anne Dover" in All Categories

Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage, not knowing that the papers she has signed will entitle them to do what they like with the children. And it is not long before the powers that be decide to send a consignment of orphans to their sister institution in Australia. Among them - without their family's consent or knowledge - are Rita and Rosie.

Coming up 16, Tilly Trotter is different from the other girls. Tall for her age and coltish, she is not afraid of taking on 'man’s work' to help out the grandparents who raised her in a cottage at the edge of the Sopwith Estate. Testing times lay ahead for Tilly, often hard to endure and even bringing her the undeserved taint of being suspected of witchcraft. She only loves one man, farmer Simon Bentwood, and is heartbroken to discover he is betrothed to another. A spurned suitor takes a terrible revenge, and a betrayal forces her into the cruel drudgery of the local mine.

Prudence Dudley was a woman who appeared to have everything: an undeniably attractive woman who had already achieved considerable success as a novelist. Yet she remained at odds with life after her sad rejected childhood and a more recent deeply wounding emotional crisis. Nearing a breakdown, Prudence seeks support from her staunch and supportive Auntie Maggie, and flees to her rented cottage in the Lake District. They encounter the owner of the cottage, aggressive and overbearing David Bernard Michael McVeigh. In time, Pru comes to learn that his iron façade is not the whole man.

Myself and Other Animals is a new book mosaicked from unpublished autobiographies, uncollected pieces and previously published extracts from Durrell’s work and archives. The result is an extraordinary journey through Durrell’s life in his own words, edited and introduced by his widow Lee Durrell. Moving from India to England and then to the always sun-lit Corfu, told with dry wit and insight into our fellow animals, here is the vivid finale of one of Britain’s most beloved conservationists and prose stylists.

Her name was Hannah Boyle, but to the people of the village she would always be 'The Girl' - Matthew Thornton's bastard. Savagely treated by Matthew's wife, Anne, she fled for protection to the devil-may-care horse-dealer, Ned Ridley, who had earlier befriended her. But, as the waif grew to beautiful womanhood, she became an object of desire to the local young men, and even to her half-brother. Against her wishes, she was married off, but Hannah kept on fighting for the man she wanted: Ned Ridley, who adored her and taught her the meaning of true love and passion.

Life on the Fifteen Streets was a continual struggle for survival. John O'Brien grew up in abject poverty, confined to the hardships of the Fifteen Streets. Labouring on the city's docks and trying to keep his loved ones safe from the drunken wrath of his father and brother, this is the only way of life he knows. Then John O'Brien meets his sister's teacher.

Aunt Mildred declared that no good could come of the Melbury family Christmas gatherings. So when Sir Osmond Melbury, the family patriarch, is discovered - by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus - with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day, the festivities are plunged into chaos. Nearly everybody stands to reap some sort of benefit from his death excepting Santa Klaus, the one person who seems to have had every opportunity to fire the shot.

Set in 1920s London, this is the inspiring story of Kate Goss' struggle against poverty, hunger and cruel family secrets. Her mother died in a fall, her father has vanished without trace, and now her aunt and cousins treat her viciously. In a freezing, vermin-infested garret, factory girl Kate has only her own brave spirit and dreams of finding her father to keep her going. She has barely enough money to feed herself, or to pay the rent. The factory where she works begins to lay off people and it isn't long before she has fallen into the hands of the violent local money-lender.

When Anna Harvik goes to Norway in 1946 this beautiful country is still recovering from five cruel years of Nazi Occupation. Her late husband was a pilot in the Royal Norwegian Air Force and she has come to visit his homeland and meet his family, in spite of being in doubt about how she will be received. She stays with Molly, who with other English war-brides makes her welcome.

A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians.

Now that her brood had left the nest, Fanny McBride, a large, cheerful and indomitable Tyneside widow, had time to sit by her window and watch the goings-on outside. There was plenty to keep her occupied: the mystery of the new woman at Mulhattan's Hall, the tenement block (here a fortnight already and not so much as a hello); the long-standing feud with Mrs Flannagan; after-school visits from her grandson Corny. But Fanny had any intention of ending her days in lonely isolation. So when her friend Mary fell sick and couldn't work, it was Fanny who took her place.

Summer, 1936. Newly trained midwife Hazel Price returns to the Yorkshire streets of her childhood, only to find that her modern methods and 'stuck-up' ways bring her into conflict with her family and other formidable residents of Raglan Road. Determined, Hazel battles on, assisting with home deliveries and supporting the local GP. The days are long and hard, but Hazel brings knowledge and compassion to the work she loves.

Liverpool, 1934. Hester Lowe agrees to act as governess to spoiled, self-willed little Lonnie Hetherington-Smith when they leave India to live with Lonnie’s elderly aunt in Shaw Street, Liverpool. Hester speedily realises that her new employer dislikes her niece and means to make life uncomfortable for both of them. Things improve a little when they meet the poor but happy Bailey family, who live in a court off Heyworth Street. Hester likes Dick Bailey very much, but her employer does not permit 'followers', and Lonnie and young Ben Bailey are deadly enemies.

Motherhood is every woman's right and the natural outcome of a happy marriage. But what then when a normal and beautiful young woman is forced to recognise, after two years as the wife of a country parson in the north of England, that her marriage will never bring her the fulfilment she desperately needs? Grace Rouse is faced with this situation and, like many other women before her, she seeks to escape a mounting sense of frustration and despair by turning from the husband she has tried in vain to love to the comfort and release offered by another man.

Roddy Greenbank was brought by his father to the remote Northumberland community of Langley in the autumn of 1807. Within hours of their arrival, however, the father meets a violent death and the boy is left with all memory of his past life gone. Adopted and raised by old Kate Makepeace, Roddy found his closest companions in Hal Roystan and Mary Ellen Lee. These three stand at the heart of a richly eventful narrative that spans the first half of the 19th century, their lives lastingly intertwined by the inexorable demands of a strange and somewhat cruel destiny.

In the mid-1850s, life for an orphan was grim, as Kirsten MacGregor discovered when her parents died suddenly on a journey to Northumberland, leaving her penniless and alone in the hands of a cruel farmer. Somehow, Kirsten survived her terrible childhood - only to be sold, at the age of 14, to a travelling tinker - a vicious man who held her captive until the fateful day they were separated during a storm. Rescued from the flood by the Flynn family, she gave birth to a child as the waters raged about her.

The Batleys and the Caldwells owned neighbouring farms on the beautiful, wild Northumbrian coast. But there all similarity ended, and enmity began. For between the two families raged a violent and bitter feud. Into this stormy atmosphere came Linda Metcalfe, an agricultural student, who became involved in the tensions between the two households on her arrival. Employed by Ralph Batley, Linda soon found herself unwittingly a part of the feud, and began to feel a strange admiration for Ralph, who made it painfully clear that he didn't need her on the farm or in his life.

Amanda Owen has been seen by millions on ITV's The Dales, living a life that has almost gone in today's modern world, a life ruled by the seasons and her animals. She is a farmer's wife and shepherdess, living alongside her husband, Clive, and seven children at Ravenseat, a 2,000 acre sheep hill farm at the head of Swaledale in North Yorkshire. It's a challenging life but one she loves.

In 1945, Gwen Moffat deserted from her post as dispatch rider in the Army and went to live rough in Wales and Cornwall, climbing and living on practically nothing. She hitch-hiked her way around, travelling from Skye to Chamonix and many places in between, with all her possessions on her back. When the money ran out, she worked as a forester, went winkle-picking on the Isle of Skye and did a stint as an artist's model. And always there were the mountains, drawing her away from a "proper" job.

Ever since her mother died, Martha Mary had had to take over the running of her home, a sprawling mansion called The Habitation. She did everything she could to make ends meet, but could not understand why they were in such financial straits - especially as when her mother was alive, they had several profitable businesses. She hoped that her father's frequent visits to Great-Uncle James would finally come good when he died, and they could sell his house to alleviate their great need of money.