Showing results by narrator "Rachel Atkins" in All Categories

Orphan girl Alice dreams of more than toiling long hours in Pink’s jam factory. Inspired by stories about the legendary Queen of Thieves, Mary Carr, who terrorized the streets of Victorian London, Alice decides to set up her own gang: the Forty Thieves. She has an accomplice too: sly seamstress Kate Felix from Whitechapel persuades Alice they’d make the perfect team. Before long, the pair are making headlines in the glitzy world of 1920s Soho, known for their daring heists and for the row of heavy diamond rings that Alice uses like brass knuckles in her frequent brawls.

When Jo falls down the stairs at home, she wakes up in the hospital with partial amnesia. In fact she finds that she's lost an entire year of memories. She can't remember what she did or anything that happened the night she fell. A lot can happen in a year, and she begins to discover that she may have been leading a double life before the accident. As she questions the details of the past year and why her family wants her to stay in the dark, she begins to realize she might not be as good a wife and mother as she might have hoped....

It's the dawn of the Swinging Sixties. The Cold War is at its height and support for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is building. The Berkshire Constabulary's Detective Gwen Crockford is promoted to Woman Police Sergeant in Newbury – the town at the heart of Britain's atomic weapons program. Gwen's initial reservations that her posting in rural Berkshire will be boring soon prove to be unfounded. A serial sex attacker on the loose, an attempted murder at Greenham Common US Airforce Base, and a charismatic heiress with a family secret keep things interesting for the capable sergeant.

Cartoonist Steven Appleby asks where reality ends and fantasy begins, as he gives us his distinctly abnormal insights into everyday life. In these two series, he takes a look at a few of life’s fundamental topics, including Love, Death, Science, Truth and Oceanography.

Ever since her sister, Anya, was murdered in Sotogrande, a playground for the rich, Natasha's life has gone off the rails. After three months of poring over the details of what happened, Natasha travels to the scene of the crime where she hopes to unravel the truth—about her sister's death and life. With no job, how did Anya end up in a multimillion-Euro apartment in one of the most exclusive areas on the continent? The police have no suspect. Publicly, they claim the killing was likely gang-related. But their key person of interest, a local with links to organized crime, is also now dead.

A collection of highly disturbing and deeply original short stories from the master of horror Graham Masterton and rising star Dawn G Harris. A belt adorned with strange markings has the power to strangle anyone who attacks its owner. A man whose wife has been placed into a portrait at the Tate decides to join her on the other side. In these and other unsettling tales, master of horror Graham Masterton and his protegee Dawn G Harris explore the dark side of human nature—from the graphic and violent to the spine-tingling and supernatural.

Preparing a midwinter's feast for all hundred residents of the little Yorkshire village of Scrafton Busk is exactly the kind of challenge Prudence Bulstrode adores. A chance to show off her braised-neck of Moorland mutton, Wensleydale tart—and, of course, her famous figgy pudding—is just the thing to shake off the winter blues. But on the night of the feast, local vagabond Terry Chandler is found dead—his body entombed in the pristine snowman standing pride of place on the village green.

December 1941: Evacuated from the threat of German bombs, sisters Amelie and Mireille have grown up under the storm clouds of war. Now they have joined the fight against Hitler, with Amelie training as a nurse to save wounded soldiers, and Mireille enlisted to help the Air Force wage war in the skies over Europe. But as each sister fights for peace, they are still haunted by the memory of their missing sister who was snatched away from them at the beginning of the war.

Iris Caldwell and Nell Ryland were never meant to be friends. From two very different backgrounds, one the heir to the Caldwell estate, the other a humble vicar's daughter. Both have their secrets, both have their pasts, but they each find solace with one another and soon their futures become irrevocably intertwined. Until May Day 1912, a day that haunts Missensham. The day two girls disappeared. The day the girls were murdered. Now, many years later, old footage has emerged which shows that Iris Caldwell may not have died on that spring morning.

Two women. An open road. The trip of a lifetime. Thea is confident, sorted, determined to have fun, but there are sorrows beneath the surface of her life. Denise is struggling under the weight of her many commitments and in desperate need of some excitement. When these polar opposites meet, and unexpectedly become friends, they realise they're both looking to escape.

Thrilling, creepy, and utterly unforgettable, these five stories of strange voices, haunting passions, and terrifying nightmares will stay with you forever.

Prudence Bulstrode has fond memories of St Marianne's School for Girls, the beautiful Cornish school where she boarded as a girl. So when she's invited back to the school, to lead an Easter holidays course in the fundamentals of cookery, Prudence couldn't be more delighted. What's more, it's a chance to show her grand-daughter Suki the way school used to be in the good old days. But no sooner has Prudence arrived at St Marianne's, a gruesome discovery is made. The builders excavating the old hockey pitch to construct the new dormitories have unearthed human bones.