Showing results by narrator "Kristin Atherton" in All Categories

When her daughter, Ellie, brings home a new boyfriend, Clare can’t put her finger on why she feels troubled by it. Is it because he’s attractive and closer to her in age? Or maybe she’s just jealous because all of her own husband’s passion seems to go into maintaining his wine cellar. Ellie’s colleague, Anna, is feeling restless, too. She’s much younger than her husband and is still in her prime, and definitely isn’t ready for crosswords and comfy slippers.

To Katherine, 24-year-old Lily Lunt is a typical “snowflake.” It seems like the privileged, politically correct millennial will do whatever she can to make it big as a writer, including leveraging her family’s connections. To Lily, Katherine Ross, a career woman in her early 40s, is a holdover from another era: clueless, old-fashioned, and perfectly happy to build her success on the backs of her unpaid interns. Is Katherine being paranoid? Or is Lily seeking to systematically destroy her life? As Katherine tries to fight back, a toxic generational divide turns explosive....

Two little girls were out playing a game of dares. Only one returned home. The 10-year-old told police what she saw: village loner Bill ‘Creepy’ Cawley dragged her friend into his truck and disappeared. No body was found, but her testimony sent Cawley to prison for murder. An open and shut case, the right man behind bars. The village could sleep safe once again. Now. Anna thought she had left Mapledon and her nightmares behind, but a distraught phone call brings her back to face her past. Thirty years ago, someone lied.

Five people: four are living; three are strangers; two are sisters; one, a teenage hotel chambermaid, has fallen to her death in a dumbwaiter. But her spirit lingers in the world, straining to recall things she never knew. And one night all five women find themselves in the smooth plush environs of the Global Hotel, where the intersection of their very different fates make for this playful, defiant, and richly inventive novel.

When Poppy’s boyfriend Harrison proposes the week before Christmas and gives her 12 days to decide, she doesn’t know what to do. With the festive season in full swing, it’s make or break time for the couple, and the clock is ticking.... Meanwhile, Poppy’s best friend Erin is desperate for the pair of them to fulfil their dream of setting up a dinner party catering company - and when an opportunity arises at a luxury log fire cabin, the girls take their chance to impress. But they hadn’t bargained on the owner of the cabin being quite so attractive....

All Shelley wanted on her hen weekend was to enjoy three days of sun, sea and sangria. But instead of being surrounded by the A-team of her closest friends, she somehow ends up with a Golden Girls-meets-the-Spice Girls B-list that includes her mother, a rebellious teenager and a best mate ‘on the verge’. The squabbling starts at the airport, and on arrival in Spain, Shelley barely has time to unpack her suitcase before getting an unwanted text—one that throws her wedding into doubt.

When Rio is sent to live with a grandmother he barely knows in California, he feels completely alone. Then he makes a new friend on the foggy beach—a girl named Marina, who teaches him about the massive grey whales that migrate nearby. As Rio grows to love the whales, he discovers that his mother loved them, too. He’s suddenly sure that if he can somehow find a way to connect her with these gentle giants – and especially with a particular whale named White Beak – she will get better and come to join him in California.

Rose O’Connell is barely surviving. Her marriage is rocky; her son isn’t fitting in at his new school, the prestigious Woolf Academy; and their tiny apartment in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood can barely contain her family. As she struggles to make ends meet on her junior bank teller wages, Rose finds that life as the only mom in a name tag and uniform at the Woolf’s shiny school gates isn’t easy.

Hell Unearthed charts Dante’s journey, guided by his hero, Virgil, through the underworld. In this modern version of Inferno, the cast of sinners Dante meets includes gangsters, dictators, pop stars, sports stars, princes and princesses. These characters’ stories will be familiar to many and they sit alongside sinners drawn from classical mythology as well as the heroes and villains from Dante’s contemporary medieval Tuscany. Characters are positioned in Hell according to the gravity of their sin and are tormented by weapons.

From the outside, anyone would think that Lucy Palmer has it all: loving children, a dashing husband and a gorgeous home. But when her marriage to Michael comes to an abrupt and unexpected end, her life is turned upside down in a flash. As the truth of her marriage threatens to surface, Lucy seizes the opportunity to swap her house in London - and the stories it hides - for a rural escape to her parents' farmhouse in the Chilterns. But Lucy gets more than she bargained for when she moves back to her childhood home.

Lizzie and Alice are the best of friends, as close as can be. Until the day when they’re out playing by the train tracks and a childish spat triggers Lizzie’s epilepsy. When she comes to, she finds an unimaginable horror: Alice has been killed. Lizzie is devastated, and as she tries to cope with her grief, she is shocked to find herself alienated from Alice’s friends and relatives, who are convinced Lizzie and “the dare” somehow had a role in her friend’s death.

In the final year of the nineteenth century, Peter Winceworth is toiling away at the letter S for Swansby’s multivolume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. But his disaffection with his colleagues compels him to assert some individual purpose and artistic freedom, and he begins inserting unauthorized, fictitious entries.

It isn't just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son Sigi are finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband Charles-Edouard after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bedhopping. When she discovers her husband's tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Sigi steps in.

Beautiful and independent, Arabella has been brought up in rural seclusion by her widowed father. Devoted to reading French romances, the sheltered young woman imagines all sorts of misadventures that can befall a heroine such as herself. As she makes forays into fashionable society in Bath and London, many scrapes and mortifications ensue - all men seem like predators wishing to ravish her, she mistakes a cross-dressing prostitute for a distressed gentlewoman, and she risks her life by throwing herself into the Thames to avoid a potential seducer.

For seven years, Sasza Zulaska has lived with her little girl in the north of England. Far from her previous job as an undercover cop, far from her dependence on alcohol and the traumatic case that made her flee from the police, her family and her native Poland. But now she is coming back. This time, Sasza is looking for a quieter life. She has studied to become a psychological profiler, and she soon picks up a freelance job to check out some threats made against the owner of a nightclub.

From leading mental health expert Dr Olivia Remes, this essential companion for navigating life's challenges offers everyday techniques and exercises to overcome setbacks and even achieve positive change. Whether you're dealing with job uncertainty, ill health, relationship problems, financial or mental health struggles, or the loss of a loved one, this highly practical and compassionate book will help you find meaning amidst the chaos and reset your life.

Ever since her ex-husband Ollie filed for a divorce last Christmas, Naomi is a self-confessed scrooge. She hates her job, has exactly zero hobbies, and on top of that she’s all alone this holiday season. Spurred on by her best-friend Mia – who has invited her to spend Christmas at her snow-kissed Chateau in the Swiss Alps – she decides it’s time for change. But, when she arrives, she’s shocked to see Mia’s big brother Gabriel. It’s been fifteen years since they last saw each other, forcing her to face memories she’d rather forget.

April Wood has returned home from her adventure on Bear Island. But even though it's been a whole year, she can’t stop thinking about Bear. When April hears that a polar bear has been shot and injured in Svalbard, she’s convinced it’s her friend and persuades her dad to travel with her to the northernmost reaches of the Arctic. So begins an unforgettable journey across frozen tundra and icy glaciers.

The Story Collector tells the story of three people, divided by time and circumstance yet bound by a long-held secret.

When struggling influencer couple Adele and Jack post a crowdfunding video online, they're amazed by a mysterious benefactor's offer: to buy them an idyllic 17th century French château. It’s the lifeline they need to leave all their troubles behind – and patch up their relationship after a rocky period. For Adele, it’s a dream come true. She will post videos from the fairytale setting, renovating the grand building as thousands of online subscribers follow their journey. But the château is not all it seems, and the local community is far from welcoming.