Showing results by narrator "Jilly-Bond" in All Categories

In a remote, crumbling house in the Fens live four sisters - Agatha, Milly, and Ellen and Esther - identical twins so closely linked as to be almost one person. They have lived there all their lives, trapped still by the fear of their dead father, who governs his daughters' lives from beyond the grave. And then there is George, another inhabitant, imprisoned in the cellar. Little by little, macabre events come to light: events that transform an idyllic country childhood into a world of eccentric isolation.

Caro Swanson has taken a job in a remote part of Scotland. She’s answered an ad in The Lady: being a companion to an elderly gentleman who lives in a country estate could be perfect! Surely it is time to make a change and do something different for a while? The fact that she may also see Alec, the young man whom she met some years previously and whom she has always thought of as her ‘one who got away’, is of course purely incidental. Soon Caro is falling in love - not only with Alec but with the stunning house and grounds she is now living in.

Sophie Apperly has spent her whole life pleasing others - but when she realises her family see her less as indispensable treasure and more as general dogsbody, she decides she's had enough. So when an old friend offers her the chance of a lifetime, she decides to swap Little England for the Big Apple, and heads off to the land of opportunity.

From the moment Sophie hits the bright lights of Manhattan she's determined to enjoy every minute of her big adventure.

Fay Merryweather runs her cake shop from her beautiful garden. She whips up airy sponges and scrumptious scones while her customers enjoy the lovely blossoms and gorgeous blooms. Looking after the cake shop, the garden, and her cantankerous mother means Fay is always busy, but she accepts her responsibilities because if she doesn't do all this, who will? Then Danny Wilde walks into her life and makes Fay question every decision she's ever made.

It's 1940, Guernsey. Vivienne de la Mare waits nervously for the bombs to drop. Instead comes quiet surrender and insidious occupation. Her husband is fighting on the frontline, and her new life is one where the enemy lives next door. Small acts of kindness from one Nazi soldier feel like a betrayal. But how can you hate your enemy when you know his name, when he makes you feel alive, when everything else is dying around you?

One of the earliest works of feminist philosophy, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman advocates for the education of women in a time where the opposite belief was predominately held. Written during the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft's work had a significant impact on those advocating for women's rights during the nineteenth century.

A powerful, posthumous novel from bestselling author Mario Reading. Relegated to an isolated provincial town in France after years spent fighting on the Eastern Front, German commander Maximilian von Aschau finds unexpected distraction in the form of beautiful and reserved Lucie Léré. He’s seen every horror of the human experience. She’s never left her village. Opposites in every way, Max and Lucie manage to find common ground. But love is the most dangerous element of war. It makes you vulnerable... and careless.

A brand-new audiobook by the number one best-selling author Katie Fforde containing never before published Christmas short stories. Perfect for anyone who loves romance, humour and happy-ever-after endings.

Each month best friends Claudia, Sal, Ella and Laura meet for drinks, celebrating 45 years of friendship. Sal had spent a lifetime building her career, but she hadn't banked on the one thing over which she had no control. Claudia loved her urban existence. But, as many women will know, other people's needs always seem to come first. Ella is ready to try something different. But she hadn't bargained on quite such a radical change. And Laura succumbed to the oldest cliché in the book.

A high society Christmas Eve wedding at a secluded Scottish castle sounds like the perfect winter getaway for the three Dahlias - until a dead body wearing a wedding dress and a stolen diamond necklace turns up in the snow outside the family chapel, and the bride and groom are suddenly the prime suspects in a murder case...

When the phone rings in Judy McVee’s Languedoc farmhouse, she knows her past has finally caught up with her. It’s her daughter, frantically asking why there are journalists on her London doorstep making terrible accusations. Decades earlier, Judy was a girl with big plans – to ensnare a rich husband, to make something of herself, to rise above her upbringing and leave behind past tragedies. Wealthy young widower Rory Harrington seemed the perfect target – but Judy hadn’t reckoned on actually falling in love with him.

This collection includes two of the most notable titles from author Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd.

A World of Beauty: Tales from Pavlysh contains 19 charming little tales about the beauty of the natural world, and how nature supports all living creatures. A chicken hatches some duck eggs. A rowan tree welcomes some beautiful crested birds to feed on its berries. A blade of grass slumbers through the winter and awakens to joyfully greet the spring. In some of the stories, people engage with this beauty. A child admires the magic beauty of a snowflake, “a six-pointed star, so beautiful and shiny, that a fairy-tale master might have cut it from a plate of silver”.

Emily Soldene's life spanned the entire Victorian era. As both leading lady and a formidable impresario with her own opera company, she was a darling of London’s music halls and theatre land, later reinventing herself as a journalist and writer. From humble working-class beginnings, Emily's fiery ambition would see her counting the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Charles Dickens as friends and mingling with the Rothschilds, Oscar Wilde and aristocrats. She even alleged that she had a close encounter with Jack the Ripper.

In this beautifully nostalgic memoir, eminent author Angela Thirkell recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up. Focusing first on 'The Grange', where her grandfather, the celebrated painted Sir Edward Burne-Jones, set the cultivated tone, Thirkell also reminisces about her parents' home in Kensington Square and the Burne-Jones' seaside retreat, where Angela's cousin, Rudyard Kipling, lived across the green.

Based on a true story, Even in Darkness highlights the intimate experience of Klare’s reinvention as she faces the destruction of life as she knew it, and traces her path not only to survival, but to wisdom, meaning, and most unexpectedly, love.

WW1 is over. As a nurse at the front, Clementine has found and lost love but has settled for middle-class marriage. Vincent had half his face blown off and wants more than life offers now. Drawn together by their shared experiences at the Front, they have a compulsive relationship, magnetic and parasitic, played out with blackmail and ending in disaster for one of them.

This book is the flip to How to Be Happy; a book which offers a reassuring and empowering guide to finding positivity and inner strength, it helps individuals to understand that it is not what happens to them, it is the way that they react and respond. Happiness guru Liggy Webb is here to help us all find positivity and inner strength to cope with stressful situations.

Organised. Neat. Lonely. Kathy Simmonds is alone at Christmas this year, after her beloved husband John passed away a few months ago. She keeps her home spick and span, struggling with her grief for a family she has lost or lost touch with. But a chance phone call from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home opens the door to something new. She meets Scruff, a messy Jack Russell with a heart of gold who has been left for dead on the streets of London.

London, 1702. When her husband is lost at sea, Mary Burton Gulliver, midwife and herbalist, is forced to rebuild her life without him. But three years later when Lemuel Gulliver is brought home, fevered and communicating only in riddles, her ordered world is turned upside down. In a climate of suspicion, poverty and violence, Mary is caught in a crossfire of superstition and fear driven by her husband’s outlandish claims of the wonders he has seen, and it is up to her to navigate a passage to safety for herself and her daughter, and the vulnerable women in her care.