Showing results by narrator "Maggie Ollerenshaw" in All Categories

I thought moving to this quiet cul-de-sac was the fresh start my husband and I needed, escaping the noise of our cramped flat in Hounslow. I left India and all that was familiar for a new life with him in England. But my husband works all hours, leaving me alone in a house that doesn’t feel like a home. Our neighbours notice the bruises on my arms. They draw the obvious conclusions. They seem kind, but they’re hiding something. I just can’t shake the feeling that someone is always watching me . . . waiting. My husband’s working late. Again. That’s when I see it.

The lives of the three daughters of Lord Curzon: glamorous, rich, independent and wilful. Irene (born 1896), Cynthia (b. 1898) and Alexandria (b.1904) were the three daughters of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India 1898-1905 and probably the grandest and most self-confident imperial servant Britain ever possessed. After the death of his fabulously rich American wife in 1906, Curzon's determination to control every aspect of his daughters' lives, including the money that was rightfully theirs, led them one by one into revolt against their father.

Pauline first became ill when she was 15. What seemed to be a urinary infection became joint pain, then life-threatening appendicitis. After a routine operation, Pauline lost all the strength in her legs. Shortly afterwards, convulsions started. But Pauline’s tests are normal: her symptoms seem to have no physical cause whatsoever. This may be an extreme case, but Pauline is not alone. As many as a third of people visiting their GPs have symptoms that are medically unexplained.

In January 1972, a peaceful civil rights march in Northern Ireland ended in bloodshed. Troops from Britain's 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment opened fire on marchers, leaving 13 dead and 15 wounded. Seven of those killed were teenage boys. The day became known as 'Bloody Sunday'. The events occurred in broad daylight and in the full glare of the press. Within hours, the British military informed the world that they had won an 'IRA gun battle'. This became the official narrative for decades until a family-led campaign instigated one of the most complex inquiries in history.

There was a time when the Red Gods ruled the land. The Dark Lady and her horde dealt in death and blood and fire. That time has long since passed, and the neighbouring kingdoms of Mireces and Rilpor hold an uneasy truce. The only blood spilled is confined to the border, where vigilantes known as Wolves protect their kin and territory at any cost. But after the death of his wife, King Rastoth is plagued by grief, leaving the kingdom of Rilpor vulnerable.

As Britain stands alone against a monstrous enemy, the inhabitants of Pearl Street face hardship and heartbreak with courage and humour. The war touches each of them in a different way: for Annie Poulson, a widow, it means never-ending worry when her twin boys are called up and sent to France; Sheila Reilly's husband, Cal, faces the terror of U-Boat attacks; Eileen Costello is liberated from a bitter, loveless marriage when her husband is sent to Egypt.

In the 1970s, a single night in a remote hunting lodge with a Hollywood director and his leading lady causes an international scandal that wrecks Astrid's glittering stage career and rips apart her marriage. Her ex-husband, Scottish actor Magnus Fellowes, finds global fame, while Astrid retreats to a Sussex windmill. Now 82, she lives there still, with a troupe of dachshunds and her loyal friend, Mrs Baker, who came to clean over twenty years ago, and never left. But Mrs Baker has a troubled past too. There has been an 'Awful Incident' at the windmill; police are sniffing around.

The season of 1939 brought all those 'in Society' to London. The young debutante daughters of the upper classes were presented to the king and queen to mark their acceptance into the new adult world of their parents. They sparkled their way through a succession of balls and parties and sporting events. As the hot summer drew on, the newspapers filled with ever more ominous reports of the relentless progress towards war. There was nothing to do but wait - and dance.

Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again. A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life.

The Dark Flood Rises asks momentous questions as it entertains and enthralls. In her beautifully imagined new book, Margaret Drabble is at her incisive best, exploring the end of life with her trademark humour, composure and wisdom. Francesca Stubbs holds our hand as we take a walk through old age and death. Fran brings us to drinks with her dear friends, dropping off mouth-watering suppers for Claude, her ex-husband, warm and cosy in his infirmity.

When Laura Thyme goes to Baffington to visit her cousin's recently-ordained son, she witnesses a sudden death. A year later, Rosemary and Laura return to help with an ambitious Medieval Fayre, organised by the local celebrity, Franklin Danvers. Their task is to refurbish the neglected churchyard, but on their first morning they discover a body, pierced through the heart with an arrow. Unfortunately, most of the villagers have just received tuition in archery, and several have proved excellent shots!

This collection of narratives from autistic adults is structured around their decades of experience of life, covering 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60 and 70s+. These are varied and diverse, spanning different continents, genders, sexualities and ethnicities, yet the author highlights the common themes that unite them and skilfully draws out these threads. Each chapter is based on accounts from one age group and includes accounts from people of that age, giving an insight into the history of autism and signifying how gaining a diagnosis (or not) has changed people's lives over time.

Eight-year-old Grace is last seen in a sweetshop. Her mother, Emma, is living a nightmare. But as her loved ones rally around her, cracks begin to emerge. What are the emails sent between her husband and her sister? Why does her mother take so long to join the search? And is there more to the disappearance of her daughter than meets the eye?

A fascinating biography of Freda Bedi, an English woman who broke all the rules of gender, race, and religious background to become both a revolutionary in the fight for Indian independence and then a Buddhist icon. She was the first Western woman to become a Tibetan Buddhist nun - but that pioneering ordination was really just one in a life full of revolutionary acts. Freda Bedi broke the rules of gender, race, and religion - in many cases before it was thought that the rules were ready to be challenged.

Coronary heart disease remains the single biggest killer of women worldwide, yet it is still not seen as a woman's problem. Every day the female heart patient is measured by male standards, which leads to confusion, unclear diagnosis and often the wrong treatment.

Hana is 17 when her husband goes to war. When enemy soldiers attack her house she flees to the Yoshiwara, Tokyo's pleasure quarter, where she becomes a courtesan. Yozo returns to Japan to discover that the world he left behind has been destroyed. Travelling north to join his rebel comrades, he is captured but escapes making his way south-to the Yoshiwara. There the battered fugitive meets the beautiful courtesan.

Annie naturally embraces the baby boomer's credo that old age, far from being a biological inevitability, is a mere lifestyle choice. If not downright carelessness. That doesn't stop her marshalling her contemporaries into suitable relationships - before it's too late. Perhaps it's even time she did the same for herself. But while smart, sassy Ms Stoneycroft may temper any romantic fancies with Yorkshire common sense, what she has yet to learn is that love is like the measles. The later it strikes, the harder it hits....

Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham are turning 60. They live in a small Dorset town and have been friends since school. On the surface Susan has it all - a lovely house and a long marriage to accountant Barry. Life has not been so kind to Julie, but now, with several failed businesses and bad relationships behind her, she has found stability: living in a council flat and working in an old people's home.

From the foggy streets of Victorian London to the eerie perfection of 1950s suburbia, the everyday is invaded by the evil otherworldly in this unforgettable collection of new ghost stories from the author of The Woman in Black. In the title story, on a murky evening in a warmly lit club off St James, a bishop listens closely as a paranormal detective recounts his most memorable case, one whose horrifying denouement took place in that very building.

Rilporin has fallen and Corvus, King of the Mireces, reigns over an occupied land. The raiders and their dark religion have conquered, but victory came at a terrible price – the death of a god – and sparks of resistance glimmer on all sides. In the south, Mace gathers the survivors of Rilpor’s armies. Among the fierce tribes of Krike, Crys and Dom search for allies and for the truth of what binds them to the Gods of Light. And in the royal palace itself, Tara – once a soldier, now a slave – hopes to ignite a rebellion.