Showing results by narrator "Jess Nesling" in All Categories

With the Great War raging, can they keep Britain going? 1915. On Beth Healey's 18th birthday, she hopes that she will be able to forget the ghastly war and celebrate. But that evening, her twin brother, Ned, announces that he has signed up to fight. No longer able to stand working in her parents' village shop while others are doing their bit, Beth applies to join the Army Post Office's new Home Depot on the Regent's Park and is astounded to be accepted. She will be responsible for making sure that letters and parcels get through to the troops on the front line.

Denis is searching for his mother’s past, knowing she had secrets. In Nice, he finds her friends, Monique and Clemence. In the 1950s, they were Matisse’s assistants when he was old and ill, pinning up his coloured paper shapes, putting the great cut-out works together. Monique inspired his great designs in the chapel at Vence, Clemence, in pursuit of love, was caught in an affair that led to violence and disaster. So they have their own intense and colourful past - but they hold the key to Denis’s past, too. He’s about to face the greatest challenge of his life.

Following the scandalous revelations about his love life, disgraced media mogul Harry Rose is searching for redemption. His daughters - bright, winsome Eliza and dark, difficult Maria - have taken over the helm at Rose Corp. But while Eliza's on study leave at Oxford, Maria embarks on a drive to rid the British media giant of sleaze. His legacy under threat, Harry wants Maria out and Eliza in. But hanging between Harry and Eliza is the unresolved death of Eliza's mother, Ana.

In 1861, the great journalist and social advocate Henry Mayhew published London Labour and the London Poor, an oral history of those living and working on the streets of Victorian London. Nothing on this scale had been attempted before. On the surface, the streets of London in 1861 and in 2019 are entirely different places. But dig just a little and the similarities are striking and, in many cases, shocking. Taking Mayhew's book as inspiration, Jennifer Kavanagh explores the changes and continuities by collecting and mapping stories from today's London.

I ended my marriage for a man who didn’t exist.... I have everything money can buy. I’m a good wife, but sometimes I feel trapped. And when I start an affair with a stranger called Ewan, my life changes in ways I can’t begin to understand. Because Ewan breaks apart my marriage piece by piece and then he just disappears. He uses a fake name and leaves no trace behind—it’s like he doesn’t even exist. Someone did this to me and now they’re waiting for me to unravel, watching my every move. I can’t trust anyone, not even myself—not even the people I love.

In this brilliant work of political satire, Henry Morris presents fourteen years of Conservative (mis)rule in the only form in which such misfortunes could be portrayed: as a Shakespearean play. In five acts that take in five prime ministers, The Tories: A Tragedy is a captivatingly realised Jacobean tragedy, replete with Machiavellian manoeuvrings, hilarious mechanicals and poignant verse.

The strawberry harvest is finally ready. The delicious fruit make up the main source of income for the small hamlet of Strawbridge. Good friends Leah, Alice and Dora are ready to spend their summer months working in Isaac Whitworth’s farm. But when Leah takes a fancy to young farm hand Harry and Alice catches the eye of the curate’s son the two girls find themselves falling fast. This leaves Dora on the outside, struggling with the weight of being here family’s sole breadwinner and caring for her sickly father.

Once upon a time, there was a lonely woman who was beautiful on the outside but sad on the inside… Meet Ava, a blonde bombshell and newly divorced banker who leads a glamorous life in Mayfair and is looking for love again. She is passionate and strong, a woman who has it all and wants more, but her professional success and fearlessness are a foil to her vulnerability and inner demons. Outwardly Ava is confident and successful, yet she feels alone in the world.

Family secrets, lost loves, and one woman’s fresh start... When heartbroken Lowri Morgan, a young Welsh widow, discovers a secret inheritance after finding a mysterious letter among her late husband's belongings, she and her daughter's world is about to shift. Now the owner of Clearwater Castle, she's determined to make the best of it, despite the derelict state of the castle and the overwhelming responsibilities.

Many of us long to leave everything behind and start a sun-soaked new life. Emmy Jamieson has done it: she is the manager of a beautiful guesthouse that nestles among vineyards in France. She has also found love with gorgeous Alain the accountant. Life could not be better. She is so happy that she is even confident that she can cope with the arrival of the eccentric, demanding Thomson family for a golden wedding. Then, in steps owner Rupert's poisonous ex-wife Gloria, who criticises Emmy, attacks Alain and unpicks Rupert's finances.

Summer sun, chilled, white wine, and a gorgeous fiancé. Nothing could upset pure bliss ... Right? Emmy Jamieson loves her new life in the gentle hills and sunflowers of the lush French countryside, managing La Cour des Roses, a beautiful, white stone guesthouse. With marriage to caramel-eyed Alain just round the corner, things couldn’t be more perfect. The odd glass (gallon) of wine dulls the sound of Emmy’s mum in full motherzilla-of-the-bride mode, and the faint tinkling of alarm bells coming from Alain’s ex are definitely nothing to worry about.

The brand new novel from bestselling author of The Village Affair, Julie Houston, follows vicar Rosa Quinn as she navigates the highs and lows of being the parish priest of the village of Westenbury, alongside her triplet sisters, Eva and Hannah.

Despite the misery of war in the air, some things in the small hamlet of Strawbridge remain unchanged. The strawberry harvest is nearly ready and friends Leah, Alice and Dora still have each other. Before the war, the three women had found a tentative happiness but now war has torn their lives apart. Each woman must learn to live with their new life at war, dealing with the absence of their loved ones and finding courage in the hardest of times.

As an estate agent, Alex’s job is to create happy-ever-afters. It’s just a shame she can’t work the same magic on her own life. Her long-term boyfriend Thomas still lives with his mother, and her hopes of them taking the next step are dashed when he announces he’s spending all his savings (savings she’d quite hoped he’d want to put towards their future home) on an ‘artist retreat’ in San Francisco.