Showing results by narrator "Patience Tomlinson" in All Categories

Born on a Somerset pea-field in 1941, the second of eight children in a Romani family, Maggie Smith-Bendell has lived through the years of greatest change in the travelling community's long history. As a child, Maggie rode and slept in a horse-drawn wagon, picked hops and flowers, and sat beside her father's campfire on ancient verges, poor but free to roam. As the twentieth century progressed, common land was fenced off and the traditional ways disappeared.

Nell Golightly is living out her widowhood in Cambridgeshire when she receives a strange request. A Tahitian woman, claiming to be the daughter of the poet Rupert Brooke, writes to ask what he was like. How did he sound, what did he smell like, how did it feel to wrap your arms around him?

Bea Abbot and her husband have been running a highly successful domestic agency for many years, but when he falls ill and dies, she is pressured by her MP son and novelist daughter to retire. Bea is so tired from the long years of nursing her husband that all she wants is peace and quiet, and to have her pretty early Victorian house in Kensington, London, all to herself. What she gets is a couple of young lodgers with troubled backgrounds and an old friend banging on her door, asking for help.

Bea Abbott runs a domestic agency which does not “do” murder. But the disappearance of Tomi, the star of an award-winning short film, is a different matter, especially when the charming Chris bribes Bea with a bouquet of flowers. Can Bea find time to help him, when some well-meant advice she’s given to her daughter-in-law has led to a breakdown in family relationships? Bea discovers that Tomi’s circle contains a secret so deadly that they are dying one by one, even though none of them will go to the police.

There’s nothing sinister about Zander’s request for Bea Abbott to accompany him on an errand to a grieving widow, but it’s an awkward situation. Zander exposed a scam that his boss Denzil had been running on the Tudor Housing Trust…after which Denzil had, unexpectedly, died. His widow wants to sue the Trust, while the paperwork that could have proved her husband’s guilt has gone missing. Oliver, Bea’s computer geek of an assistant, is delighted to delve into the mysteries left on Denzil’s computer.

The fake diamond in Dilys Holland's engagement ring implies that all is not well with her marriage. And Bea Abbot has already clashed with Dilys's husband, the bullying Benton, when she refuses to help him rescue his ailing company. But matters are about to turn a great deal worse when Dilys tries to commit suicide. Or does she?

While Bea Abbot worries that she’s lost control of her domestic agency, she’s asked to find some domestic help for an eccentric little musician falsely accused of murder. She doesn’t realize how dangerous this might be until Jeremy - fleeing from attempts on his life - lands up on her doorstep. Researching the gang who’d used an attractive girl to entrap Jeremy, Bea finds traces of them throughout high society. Can Bea keep Jeremy - and herself - alive, while all he thinks about is composing a song for pretty, dead Josie?

Bea Abbot is asked to find the man or woman who laid a booby trap for Sir Lucas Ossett, the powerful head of an international company. She finds Sir Lucas’ wife in a state of fear, while gossipy elderly ladies cast doubt on their neighbours; these include a "therapist", an ex-employee of Sir Lucas’, and a cross-section of yuppies and oddballs. Call-girl cards have been left in tenants’ letterboxes, a cat has met an untimely end, and snow is forecast.

Bea Abbot's friend, Leon Holland, has asked for her help in establishing an alibi. But why would he need one? First, he tells her, he had a narrow escape from being run down in the road, and then he was lured to a car park to meet someone who didn't turn up. Matters escalate when two bodies are found in the car park stabbed to death. Then everything is thrown into chaos as a devastating virus infects the agency's systems. A hidden camera. Hate mail. A nasty practical joke.

When Gina Bianchi returns to the beautiful Italian resort of Portofino to attend her father’s funeral, she is beset by vivid memories of World War 2, when she joined the Resistance, alongside her identical twin sister, Adele. In her childhood bedroom, Gina reads Adele’s diary, left behind during the war. As Gina learns the shocking truth about her sister, she’s compelled to face the harsh realities of her own past.

What would you do if you saw a girl in a crowd whose face had the same, identical birthmark as your only child? A child who, nearly 10 years ago, you were told died? It's 1935, and housewife Emma glimpses a face in a crowd - a little girl with a very unique birthmark. Transfixed by the sight of a stranger; Emma becomes convinced that the girl is her long-lost daughter taken from her at birth. There is only one problem: Emma's daughter is dead. So who is the stranger?

From the best-selling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Tulip Fever, a deliciously funny, poignant and wry novel, full of surprising twists and turns. James is getting on a bit and needs full-time help. So Phoebe and Robert, his middle-aged offspring, employ Mandy, who seems willing to take him off their hands. But as James regales his family with tales of Mandy's virtues, their shopping trips and the shared pleasure of their journeys to garden centres, Phoebe and Robert sense something is amiss.

From best-selling author, broadcaster, journalist and Book Club champion Judy Finnigan comes an unputdownable and wonderfully moving story of the enduring power of a mother's love. Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there; I do not sleep. Five years ago, Molly Gabriel lost her 20-year-old son, Joey, to a terrible sailing accident. His empty boat was found washed ashore on the rocks - but his body was never found. Now, Molly has returned to the sands of Cornwall haunted by his death, unable to accept he is gone.

For Miss Cordell, principal of Persephone College, there are two great evils to be feared: unladylike behaviour among her students and bad publicity for the college. So her prim and cosy world is turned upside down when a secret society of undergraduates meets by the river on a gloomy January afternoon only to find the drowned body of the college bursar floating in her canoe.

In 2017 Susie Kennaway asked her son Guy to kill her. 88 years old, with an older and infirm husband, Susie wanted to avoid sliding into infantilised catatonia. Her son immediately started taking notes and Time to Go is the result. In turns a manual for those considering the benefits of assisted dying, a portrait of a mother - son relationship, and a sympathetic description of old age, this audiobook is a route map through the moral, legal, emotional, intellectual and practical maze that is the biggest issue facing the senior generations today: leaving life on their own terms.

After a difficult few years with her husband Victor, Prue's life is about to change in a dramatic and unexpected way. Will she have the strength to carry on into a more positive future? Rookery House is bursting at the seams after Thea welcomes two WAAFs to stay while their accommodation is being built on the new aerodrome.

Flo Butterworth and the village singing group are asked to perform a carol concert at the local hospital. This stirs up bad memories for Flo, who lost her family at Christmas in the Blitz. VAD nurse, Evie Jones, is faced with a dilemma that throws her life into turmoil. Will Evie find a way to solve the problem and keep all she holds dear?

Former cook Hettie Brown hears some shocking news, making her question her new life at Rookery House. Expectant mother, Gloria Jessop, is having doubts about her new evacuated life in the village. She's missing her family, and she's tempted to return to London. But is that the right thing to do? Hettie and Gloria decide to take action and quickly hatch a plan. Can they support each other, celebrate Christmas, and bring the whole village together in their time of need?

Norfolk, 1944. Phylly is a Land Girl on Catchetts Farm. She and her friend Gracie are doing their bit to support the war effort. But times are changing at Catchetts—there's an evacuee and two POWs on their way. And then Phylly meets an American airman from the base up the road. As the War rages on the Continent, Phylly and Gracie's world will be changed forever.

When sleuth-come-pantomime director Libby Serjeant learns of threatening letters sent to Cy, a friend of her friend Harry, she is furious, but assumes this anti-gay prejudice won't escalate. Despite her anger, Libby is reluctant to get involved—there's a lot going on as she tries to juggle the stress of directing a pantomime at the same time as suddenly having a full house. Her partner Ben has just moved in, and her son Adam has come home with a broken leg.