Showing results by narrator "Claire Storey" in All Categories

Meet Sara Snow: Christmas fanatic, festive wedding Grinch. Her dream nuptials? Sun-soaked, Beth-free. Meet Beth Callaghan: Expert at running. From countries, feelings, and one-night stands with best friends. Now Beth's back, armed with apologies and tinsel-wrapped determination. But can she melt Sara's frosty heart? Or will she need a Christmas miracle? One thing's crystal clear: Sara Snow will NEVER have a Christmas wedding. Right? RIGHT?

Thrown together when their plane conks out and a blizzard rolls in, Morgan Scott and her childhood friend Ali Bradford are on a mission to make it from Glasgow to Devon in time for Christmas. The catch? Roads and trains are up the spout, Morgan’s patience is running low, and Ali has had a secret crush on Morgan since forever. But she can keep a lid on over two decades of unrequited love. Particularly when they keep having to share a bed. Absolutely no problem at all.

Fran finds her standing by the swings. A little girl, Esther, no older than seven years old, by herself in the dead of night, her pretty but old-fashioned yellow dress covered in grass stains and her hair dishevelled. She says she's waiting for Father, and that strikes Fran as particularly odd. After Esther is reunited with her family, Fran can't stop thinking about this pious child whose imaginary friend is God. Fran's instincts tell her something is very wrong. Why does Esther keep running away from home, and how did she get that bruise on her leg?

Hattie Gilby has not been back to her family home since the devastating events that took place there years ago. Events that changed Hattie and which continue to haunt her today. But one phone call changes everything. Now Hattie is going back to her family home to face her brothers, Adam and Luke and to hear the last words of her dying mother.

Saffron Oliver is the golden girl. Golden hair. Golden skin. Golden movie career. Only one problem: She hates it. She flees to her sister’s seaside town - where she meets the confident and charming Kirsty McBride. Kirsty is everything Saffron wants to be. Perhaps also, everything she wants. But Saffron can’t have it all. So now, she has to decide: Does she crave Kirsty enough to blow up her golden life?

Grace has it all. At least she did until a moment of indiscretion threatened to destroy her career. With everything in London at stake and her fate in the Board’s hands, she escapes to her Aunt’s house in the Lake District—the perfect place to hide from her secrets and to get some much-needed peace and quiet. But Duckton-by-Dale is nothing like she remembered and she certainly didn’t expect to be attracted to her new neighbor, Harriet. But then she also didn’t expect her world to be turned upside down by the quirky ensemble of villagers who plot to give love a helping hand.

It has been a year since Tess had to trade the hustle and bustle of London life for pulling pints and moonlighting as a Cher impersonator in a backwater country pub. The sleepy Yorkshire village of Cherrywood would always be home, but a return to rural life wasn't quite the path she'd paved for herself. Still, being back with her oldest friends, Raven and Oliver, was a definite upside and she was beginning to settle into the slower pace. That is until Clemmie Ackroyd, a stalwart member of the community, is brutally murdered.

Kira Murphy is a liability, always has been. She might be small, but her personality and heart are not: A sexual health doctor with a foul mouth, pink streaks in her hair, a bizarre worldview, a reputation for being "pathologically social", and a huge crush on the current minister of state for business, energy, and clean growth, she’s weird and lovable in equal measure.

Monica Noble is throwing a party to welcome the village’s new residents. Then as the drinks are flowing, a shotgun blast rings out. One of the guests is found dead. DCI Dury and Sergeant Jim Greer are soon on the scene and discover that the victim had many enemies. Almost all the guests harbor secrets and motives for murder. Even Monica’s daughter comes under suspicion. When another villager is strangled to death nearly a week later, the stakes are raised. Can Monica help the local detectives save her daughter and solve the murders before anyone else pays the ultimate price?

Fran Bell is a music exec who’s welded to her career. Even when her parents move to a sleepy village called Mistletoe, she still vows to work through Christmas. When she tells the locals, their shock is palpable. One particular local stands out. Ruby O’Connell, a dazzling singer and the last person Fran expects to find as her parents’ neighbor. They’ve crossed paths before in London. It wasn’t pretty. When they’re thrown together to organize a Christmas festival, their relationship starts to thaw.

Hannah Driver's life is on the skids: single, newly jobless, and nursing ambitions of becoming a drag king that make her traditional family baulk. She's at a crossroads. Enter Cordy Starling, the charming and composed pianist who moves in with Hannah, and quickly becomes the nudgeor—or rather, full-on shove—Hannah needs to chase her dreams. The prospect of romance with Cordy twinkles on the horizon like a disco ball, promising glitter but guaranteeing chaos.

Monica Noble is thrilled to be asked to judge a neighboring village’s flower show, even if she can't tell a begonia from an azalea! Her fellow judge Vicar James Davies inhales deeply from a large bloom and drops dead in the tent. At first everyone thinks he’s had a heart attack, but the doctor on hand is suspicious and calls in the police. A second murder quickly follows, this time of one of the main suspects. Monica must help Chief Inspector Jason Dury to solve the two murders and find the killer—fast, before anyone else pays the ultimate price.

Everyone in the village loves Joni Blackwood. She is beautiful and bold, and it's no surprise to anyone when on the annual village bonfire, she is crowned 'queen' of the festivities. After all, despite fierce competition from the charity-giving and churchgoing mothers in the village, she has won this honour five years in a row.

Monica Noble and her husband Graham, the local vicar, are invited to participate in a high-flying church conference being held at a swanky manor house hotel in their village. At the Saturday night dinner, the ambitious female cleric Celia Gordon tragically dies, seemingly of a peanut allergy. But when Chief Superintendent Jason Dury arrives on the scene he quickly discovers that it's a case of murder.

Dora Fairweather wasn’t cut out to be a wife and mother, and as soon as she’s able, she turns her back on her young daughter Lissie. With no parents to protect her, Lissie has no option but the dangerous streets of soot-sodden Bradford or the workhouse orphanage. Life in the orphanage is bleak and Lissie longs for the warm embrace of her beloved father. As the years pass, Lissie learns to enjoy the camaraderie of the other girls in the workhouse, and when she’s taken under the wing of matron Connie Briggs, things begin to look up..

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Anna Karenina, a literary masterpiece by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

Duckton-by-Dale has never been your average quintessential English village. And as preparations for the annual pantomime and winter solstice reach fever pitch, you just know that things are going to get even more bizarre! With new visitors bringing mystery, suspicion, flamboyance, and lust, past secrets and current desires will be revealed, bringing a dramatic conclusion to the Duckton-by-Dale series. Expect humor, paranormal happenings, fun and laughter, and of course a large dose of romance in this bestselling lesbian romantic comedy series. Merry Christmas one and all.

Despite the fact that her daughter is not cooperating, Caroline, Duchess of Riverton, is determined to ensure every one of her children marries someone they love as much as she loved their late father. William, the widowered Earl of Blackstone, is delighted to have his days of escorting daughters approaching an end.

Wakefield 1870. On the banks of the River Calder, Meg Taylor struggles to care for her younger siblings and sick mother whilst her father is away working as a boatman on the canals. The slums where they live are rife with disease, and Meg longs for a different life, away from the grinding poverty, but she'll never leave her family. But with the canals slowly dying as trade moves to the railways, and with Meg’s father stubbornly holding onto the past, Meg fears her family’s future is going to get even bleaker. If only there was a way she could save them.

When nine friends reunite for a weekend at the charming English seaside, their complicated personal lives lead to laughs as well as drama. Can they all find the happy endings they deserve?