Showing results by narrator "Gemma Lawrence" in All Categories

Assassin’s Creed: Gold follows Aliyah Khan, a card shark and hustler who’s been dealt a rough hand in life. Surviving through her smarts and street scams, Aliyah struggles to get by until she loses big time to a mysterious older man, Gavin Banks. Her only option to repay Banks is to become an Assassin. During her training, Banks tells Aliyah of the centuries-old battle between the Assassins and Templars, imploring her to help him decode a secret message inscribed on an illegal form of currency during the Great Recoinage of 1696.

Growing up in a quiet, middle-class suburb outside of Amsterdam, childhood best friends Anna and Olivia had their whole lives ahead of them. But every parent's worst nightmare came true when the teenagers fell in with the wrong crowd. Eleven years their senior, Ryan was charming and good-looking - and Anna and Oliva easy prey. Blind to his grooming, the girls were soon trapped in a terrifying cycle of sexual and physical abuse.

The girls of Dressmakers Alley are happy in their new jobs. Business is thriving and yet a new shadow looms. Women are being attacked and robbed whilst several businesses have been burgled. Are these two circumstances linked or is this just a coincidence? As the attacks escalate, and the police seem unmoved to intervene, the men of Dressmakers Alley decide to take the law into their own hands and patrol the streets to keep them and their women safe.

Peggy and Molly Gainsborough—the daughters of one of England’s most famous portrait artists of the 1700s and the frequent subject of his work—are best friends. They spy on their father as he paints, rankle their mother as she manages the household, and run barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly periodically experiences bouts of mental confusion, even forgetting who she is, and Peggy instinctively knows she must help cover up her sister’s condition.

When Megan loses her beloved husband, Rick, in a tragic car accident, she feels like it’s her own life that has ended. She feels too young to be a widow. Walking around the house that had been their home – so quiet without him – nothing feels the same. But at his funeral, she sees a face she doesn’t recognise. A heavily-pregnant young woman, with a sweet heart-shaped face that is somehow a little familiar. This stranger introduces herself as Emily, Rick’s estranged sister. She explains how she’s been searching for her brother for years, but she knows she’s too late now.

Daisy’s hero is Florence Nightingale, and she hopes to one day become a nurse just like her. But as a girl growing up in the East End of London in 1912, it seems like all her future holds is dropping out of school to work a tough job in a factory for very little money.

Eldest sister Frances is about to marry her childhood sweetheart. But with Marcus Danby now a fighter pilot, his fate hanging in the balance. Will he return from war for their happy ever after? Meanwhile youngest daughter Emily is swept off her feet by a dashing young officer, but does she really know him? Brother Daniel has joined up, but not before falling in love with a local kitchen girl Alice. Against the backdrop of war is there hope of a future for them?

In the heart of Dressmakers' Alley, Madame Pauline’s sweatshop is rumoured to be a particularly unpleasant place to work. Filled with seamstresses paid a pittance who turn a blind eye to what darker activities are hidden behind locked doors. Young Winnie Brown is keen to prove her value to the Women Movement and secures a job as a seamstress to investigate the whispers of some unsavoury goings on. Her concerns are soon justified when she hears a desperate cry for help.

Helen Macdonald is a falconer and poet. She keeps a goshawk called Mabel. As a child she fell in love with a rare book of intense nature writing, J.A. Baker's The Peregrine, which records a winter watching wild peregrines on the Essex coast. Her new play brings her birds and his together. Baker tramps the bleak coastal marshes scanning the skies for fleeting moments of bloody drama as a peregrine stoops at immense speed after a plover or a pigeon.

Mia is telling me a story. It’s about a princess, who lives in a castle, on a street that bears a remarkable resemblance to ours. About a kind old lady who’s the queen. I’m distracted for a moment by her little hand softly slipping into mine. My daughter. My angel. But then she says something that pulls me from my reverie. She says that the queen doesn’t treat the princess well. She punishes her and doesn’t let her eat anything…Helen, my neighbour, has been so good to me. And more importantly, she’s so good with the children. Surely this is just another story of Mia’s, just make believe.

When Princess Florizella finds a baby boy delivered by stork to her parents’ palace, she is shocked to discover that he will one day be king and inherit her kingdom! For every prince is given a permit which allows them to do whatever they like in the same way that every princess is given a set of rules that they have to live by. As soon as Princess Florizella’s brother is big enough to have adventures, she takes him all over the land. Can she prove that girls having rules and boys having permits isn’t right?

From early childhood, Dr. Hannah Mumby has loved wildlife, especially elephants. Her first wild elephant sighting at 24 changed the course of her life. Since then, she has devoted herself to studying these incredible animals and educating humanity about them. Hannah's field work has taken her around the world, where she has studied many elephant groups, including both orphaned elephants and the solitary elephant males. These remarkable animals have so much to teach us, Mumby argues, and Elephants takes listeners into their world as never before.

Frances is finally about to see her dreams realized as Marcus finally returns from the war. But the threat of her father-in-law and a much-changed Marcus, leave Frances in a perilous situation. Emily’s lie has trapped her in a new future. She lives in a big house and has a job she loves. But it could all come tumbling down around her if her shocking secret is ever revealed? Alice believes Daniel will return home to her, but if he does, will he be the same man he was if he does survive?

Sophy Pemberton is struggling to cope with the pressures of becoming a new mother. Her nine-month-old son never settles in her arms, and the unrelenting tiredness from late-night feeds is all consuming. So, when Liv Granger from the mother and baby group offers her services as a nanny, Sophy is overcome with relief. Now she can finally get some sleep. She can stop failing at being a mother. But Liv has a secret. She didn’t become Sophy’s nanny by accident.

This third volume in The Princess Rules series sees the feisty princess take her baby brother and best friend, Bennett, on another round of adventures together. Can they rescue their new-found friend, the sea serpent, from a travelling circus? And hold back the pirate, Five-fathom Freida. Or will Florizella’s worst fairy godmother prove that in a fairytale world, you really do have to be careful what you wish for?

Thirteen years ago, magic was banished and the witches were hunted. Sisters Spel and Egg are the daughters of witches, but they grow up in Miss Mouldheel’s School for Wicked Girls with no idea who they really are. Until the day the message arrives telling them to run. The message sends them to a funeral parlour in a far away village—and their new guardian, the Undertaker, has a secret. Beneath the funeral parlour is a portal to the Other Ways—four worlds that lie parallel to ours. When Egg vanishes through the portal, Spel knows she must try to save her sister.

Sisters Spel and Egg grew up in Mistress Mouldheels’ School for Wicked Girls believing they were the daughters of criminals, until they discovered the truth: They are witches. And after always being in the shadow of her big sister, Spel discovered that she was a Shadowborn Witch—the only one who can step between portals to other worlds. Now in a coven with their schoolmates and part of the alliance against the Hunt, the sisters try to master their new powers. But the Hunt is rising, the witches are in danger and when a new portal opens the whole world is under threat.

Sunday morning, and the body of Reverend Villiers has been found propped up on the vigil seat in the church's lychgate. It appears that he has been poisoned. When amateur sleuth and regular churchgoer Amy Rowlings arrives she finds DI Bodkin already at the scene. Bodkin tells her about a cryptic scripture reference that has been scrawled in chalk on the stone slabs beneath the body. What the citation hints at, shocks everyone.

For the courageous Bletchley Park girls, the fourth Christmas of the war is approaching fast. It should be a happy time, yet life throws them challenges they could never have imagined. Lily's heart is torn in two when her boyfriend, Grant, is badly injured in an air raid. As he spirals into despair, she must find a way to give him hope again. Bronwyn has a new romance on the horizon. But will the widower's young daughter accept her, or will she jeopardise Bronwyn's hopes for love?

When young Amy Rowlings meets Detective Sergeant Bodkin at the scene of a robbery on the way to work at The Mill, she is blissfully unaware of how much her life is about to change. She is drawn into the murky world of murder when the body of Edward Handsley is found lying on the floor of the factory. Edward, a libertine, philanderer, the son of the factory owner George, a young man with many enemies, many of them female. Bodkin is new to the area and Amy soon becomes an invaluable source of information. But when a family friend, Adam Smethwick, is arrested, Amy sets out to prove his innocence.