Showing results by narrator "Anne Dover" in All Categories

England, 1940: Clara is forced to flee her home as the Nazis invade the beautiful island of Guernsey, leaving her mother Julia behind. She's scared and alone, but her spirits lift a little when she learns she's headed for Blackpool. Her slight hopes are crushed however when she is housed with and at the mercy of a cruel shopkeeper, Miss Brandon. Clara is worked like a dog, but the warmth of some newly made Blackpool friendships will go far to save her. Separated from her beloved daughter, Julia heads to London to try and track Clara down but she is thwarted at every turn.

Lexi Jakes thought she could run from her past. But when her biological mother is found dead, strangled with a red silk scarf and holding a chess piece, Lexi knows that her worst nightmare has come true. Because the murder has all the hallmarks of her own serial killer father, renown strangler Peter Graves. Now with her own precious daughter’s life in danger, Lexi will do anything to keep her child safe...she is the serial killer's girl after all.

Ten years ago, deeply in love, I would have done anything for Thomas Kirkwood. But on the night of our graduation, fuelled by drink and drugs, Thomas’s lifeless body was found floating in the Kirkwood family lake. That weekend changed everything, and I swore I would never return to Kirkwood manor. Now, ten years later, I have been invited back to the place that holds such terrible memories for me, to a memorial weekend for Thomas, organised by his still-grieving mother Ada. But this is no ordinary weekend. This is a reunion to catch a killer.

Twenty-one years have passed since Charlotte Booth fought to keep Ferndale Mill and her home at Windfell Manor following her traumatic first marriage. Now, highly regarded in local society and happily married to her childhood sweetheart, Archie Atkinson, she seeks only the best for their children, Isabelle and Danny. But history has a habit of repeating itself, and Danny's head is turned by a local girl of ill repute, despite his promise of marriage to the far more respectable Harriet Armstrong.

Nell Whitaker is 15 when war breaks out and her mother sends her to live with her Auntie Kath in a remote farmhouse on Anglesey. At first Nell hates it, but her friendship with Bryn, who works on the farm whilst waiting for his call-up papers, helps a lot. So when he leaves to join his ship, Nell is counting the days to his return. But her heart is broken when news reaches her that Bryn’s ship has been bombed and he has been drowned. Determined to bury her grief in hard work, Nell finds herself growing closer to Auntie Kath.

In 1998, Helga Schneider, in her sixties, was summoned from Italy to the nursing home in Vienna in which her 90-year-old mother lived. The last time she had seen her mother was 27 years earlier, when her mother asked her daughter to try on the SS uniform which she treasures, and tried to give her several items of jewellery, the loot of holocaust victims, which Schneider rejected.

When the Todds move into a flat on the Scotland Road, they are strangers to city life: their previous home was a canal barge. Harry gets a job as warehouse manager and his wife, Martha, works in a grocer’s shop whilst Seraphina trains as a teacher, Angela works in Bunney’s Department Store and young Evie starts at regular school. Then circumstances change, and Seraphina takes a job in Lyon’s Corner House. Customers vie for her favours, including an old friend, Toby....

Hull, 1874. Clara had always wondered about the beautiful, mysterious Jewel Newmarch, who was adopted as a baby and turns heads wherever she goes - her exotic looks point to her origins far away from the streets of Hull. Even at her twin sister Elizabeth’s wedding, Clara knows that Jewel is the belle of the ball. And as Jewel looks on at the happy, newly-married couple she feels a restlessness and intense longing to know her own roots.

Maddy Kiernan knows her situation is desperate. With her parents dead, her brother Thomas is left as guardian to her and her sister, Carmel, and Thomas, Maddy is all too aware, only cares about himself. When his plans to marry the daughter of the Protestant canal agent backfire Thomas takes off to Liverpool, leaving the girls to fend for themselves against the lecherous agent. Taking the momentous decision to follow their brother, Maddy leaves for Liverpool. Within days the girls are destitute, reduced to living in a cellar, their money gone. Eventually, Maddy finds work as a maid to an old lady....

It is 1907. Liverpool is a bustling and busy city. Sisters Livvie and Amy Goodwin are just 16 and 13 years old when their adored mother dies in childbirth. They are still missing their mum every day when their father, Thomas, announces that he is going to marry again. His new bride is Mary Fitzgerald, a girl just a few years older than Livvie, and only time will tell whether Mary will be the kind of stepmother a motherless girl could love. There's more trouble ahead, for Thomas believes that he should make all the important decisions in his daughters' lives.

Harriet and Fletcher Tuke have worked hard to raise their children well. Daniel, the eldest son, has always accepted that his birth father died soon after he was born, and Fletcher has raised Daniel as his own. But as Daniel comes of age and begins to fall in love with childhood friend Beatrice Hart, he can’t help but wonder about his heritage – his olive skin and dark eyes reminding him daily of the difference between him and his siblings, and between his and Beatrice’s families.

Angela O'Rourke is six when her parents hand her over to an aunt and uncle in a distant village. It's a common practice for large, hard-up families in 1950s Ireland, but for Angela it means that her mother and father don't love her any more. Still, she's well cared for till she's 16, when her uncle starts to take too much of an interest in her. Moving to Liverpool in the early 1960s, she becomes a success in the world of fashion design. The pain of a disastrous love affair sends her home to Ireland just after the death of her aunt. There, among old papers, Angela makes an astonishing discovery....

Martha is seventeen and alone in the world. Of Irish decent, her flashing green eyes see into your soul. Foretelling the future is a gift passed down by her late grandmother and is how she earns her living on Blackpool Promenade. Though she spends hours in a little tent, waiting and hoping for a customer. Trisha is Martha's neighbour and quickly becomes her dearest friend, but she is pregnant and married to a brutal man. And when tragedy strikes, she finds herself alone, her future uncertain.

One Of The Old Guard focuses on a small rural community as anxious lovers, parents, grandparents and children wait for loved ones to return home from the front.

1912 in The Yorkshire Dales and Alice Bentham and her brother Will have lost their mother to cancer. Money is scarce and pride doesn't pay the doctor or put food on the table. Alice gets work at Whernside Manor looking after Lord Frankland's fragile sister Miss Nancy. Meanwhile Will and his best friend Jack begin working for the Lord of the Manor at the marble mill. But their purpose there is not an entirely honest one.

Rose Pritchard and her seven-year-old daughter Maddie have left everything behind to come to the village of Millthwaite, Cumbria, in search of the person who once offered Rose hope. Almost immediately Rose wonders if she's chasing a dream - but she knows in her heart that she cannot go back. She's been given a second chance - at life, and love - but will she have the courage to take it?

Hetty Gilbert is a canal child with no permanent address, so when she needs to join the library, she cannot do so. Miss Preece dislikes children, but Hetty's longing for books touches a chord and she stretches the rules to help her. Soon, Hetty's chief desire is to become a librarian like her friend. But with war on the horizon, their lives will never be the same.

It is the autumn of 1945 and identical twins Joy and Gillian Lawrence are on their way home to Liverpool, having been evacuated to Devonshire five years earlier. Their mother has been killed in the blitz but the girls hope that with their beloved father’s help they will be able to manage. All goes well until there is a terrible accident and Joy loses her sight. At first she is bitter and resentful whilst Gillian is racked with guilt.

When best friends Dee Campbell and Jean Williams leave school, in 1959, it feels like every opportunity awaits them. Their families haven't long moved from a rundown part of the city to leafy Kirkby when Jean's father wins the Irish sweepstake and soon Jean's set up her own hairdressing salon, while both girls have fallen for good-looking lads with prospects. It's hard to imagine being any happier. But Dee's father is about to discover a disturbing truth about her fiancé. With one revelation, the Campbells are torn apart. As Dee flees to Ireland, Jean marries Tony, blissfully unaware that she's not the only pretty girl to catch his eye....

Britain is at war and Ruth, a gifted pilot, is determined to join the Air Transport Auxiliary. Over in America, Jack and Lucy Nelson, are also keen to join. After a perilous journey by sea, Jack is posted to White Waltham, where he quite literally bumps into Ruth.