Showing results by narrator "Imogen Church" in All Categories

In this entertaining collection, dogs of all kinds are brought to life. Working dogs, dogs who are mistreated by humans, dogs who save lives and the ones that make us laugh; they all leap and bound in stories by our most accomplished writers, including Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Jack London and Jerome K. Jerome.

Sophie is bored with her perfectly nice but deathly dull boyfriend, Matthew. Sensing he’s about to lose her, Matthew takes her on a last-ditch attempt trip to the seaside, hoping to rekindle their dying flames. But things take a dark turn when Sophie visits Mr Sandman, a Haitian priest, who claims that he can change Matthew into the boyfriend that she wants. But does Sophie really know what she wants? Never has the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ been more apt. Because Matthew does change...just not in the way that anyone could’ve predicted.

A devastating and unsettling story of a powerful and unshakeable twin bond, Too Close is a twisty and gripping tale of secrets and lies. What would it take to tear them apart? Cecelia and Sebastian share a bond like no other. Growing up in a bleak old farmhouse, their mother gone and their father abusive, the twins have only each other. But when the secrets of their mother’s disappearance start to emerge, events take a terrifying turn.

Kate is not in a meaningful relationship but dreams of being a parent and pouring all her love into the tiny bundle of happiness that will her love unconditionally in return. Except without any partner on the horizon before her ovaries retire, Kate decides to take matters into her own hands and have one anyway. No one thinks this is a good idea, not her best friend, or her boss at the bookshop where she works—not even June, one of her elderly customers. Because what they can see, and what Kate can’t, is that it isn’t a baby that she needs at all—it’s something else entirely.

So I’m knocked up again. Preggers. Up the duff. Or to put it another way...whoops. And I am in NO WAY prepared for the shit-storm of pregnancy. While Nick and I get our heads around unexpected parenthood, I’m having all the usual pregnancy symptoms: throwing up, indigestion, sciatica, constipation, migraines, and brain-fuddling tiredness.

Sam Wylde has fought off Albanian gangsters and vindictive old friends to make it to Bali, hot on the heels of her ex-husband, Matt, and Jess, their daughter, whom he took without Sam’s permission. But a nasty surprise awaits her in paradise: Bojan. A Serbian thug she thought was dead, back to make her life a misery.

So I’m knocked up again. Preggers. Up the duff. Or to put it another way...whoops. And while Alex and I get our heads around unexpected parenthood, I’m having all the usual pregnancy symptoms: throwing up, indigestion, sciatica, constipation, migraines and brain-fuddling tiredness. Mother Nature is a psychopathic old hag. Luckily, modern science offers some lovely distractions in the form of cruise ships and European air travel.

Catherine needs a replacement: someone to step into her place and temporarily take things in hand. Catherine Elliott needs a person to stand in for her at home and work while she does...something else. Her friend Becca thinks she’s having a breakdown, her husband, Allie, is baffled, and her seven year old daughter, Petra, scornful. But Catherine is determined that somebody must take her place. She auditions a series of stand-ins, drawing her husband into the process of casting the character.

Returning home from a holiday, Tarot reader Dolly Greene learns that much has changed on her street. Squatters have taken over at No.7 Tinderbox Lane, and a mysterious Brazilian woman has moved in next door at No.3. She also finds a surly Russian girl, Marina, waiting outside the house, insisting on a reading. Marina's cards reveal conflict, misery and death and Dolly knows she should feel concerned. But the girl is so disagreeable she's only too relieved when the reading finally comes to an end.

Love is Angela Carter's fifth novel and was first published in 1971. With surgical precision it charts the destructive emotional war between a young woman, her husband and his disruptive brother as they move through a labyrinth of betrayal, alienation and lost connections.

Who can you trust if you can't trust yourself? Twenty-seven-year-old Lizzie has a great relationship with her teenage stepson, Sam, even though they could pass for brother and sister. When Sam becomes sullen and withdrawn, Lizzie starts to suspect that something sinister is going on at school. But no-one believes her, and then suspicion falls on Lizzie herself....

Sam Wylde is a Close Protection Officer to the rich and powerful. In a world dominated by men, being a woman has been an advantage. And she is the best in the business at what she does. She takes a job protecting the daughter of the Sharifs - Pakistani textile tycoons - but she realises that there is more to their organisation than meets the eye and suddenly she finds herself in danger.

Connie Granger has escaped the devastation of her bombed out city home. She has found work in the Women's Timber Corps, and for her, this remote community must now serve a secret purpose. Seppe, an Italian prisoner of war, is haunted by his memories. But in the forest camp, he finds a strange kind of freedom. In each other they find the means to imagine their own lives anew, and to face that which each fears the most. But outside their haven, the world is ravaged by war and old certainties are crumbling.

Growing up the middle child of transatlantic parents, Bella Pollen never quite learnt how to belong. Restlessly crisscrossing the boundaries of family and freedom, safety and danger, home and away, she has sought but generally failed to contain an adventurous spirit within the narrow lines of convention - until, finding herself stymied in the in-between, she reluctantly concludes that to move forwards, she must take a good look at her past.

In the heart of Southwest London, just a short stroll from the Thames, lies a single row of cottages. Residents may come and go, but they all have one thing in common: Tinderbox Lane - small, enclosed, unknown to any iPhone or supermarket delivery van - is the place they call home. Foremost among the residents is Dolly Greene: divorced and permanently broke, she shares her tiny house with her 21-year-old daughter, Pippa, who can't afford to leave. Aside from Pippa the other constant in Dolly's life is her tarot business.

Cass Wheeler - a British singer-songwriter, hugely successful since the early '70s, whose sudden disappearance from the music has been the subject of intense speculation among her fans - is in the studio that adjoins her home, taking a journey back into her past. Her task is to choose 16 songs from among the hundreds she has written since her early teens, for a uniquely personal greatest hits record, describing the arc of her life through song.

It is the middle of the roaring '20s, and Gittel is living The Hague with her parents, whose blazing rows are the traditional preserve of Sundays and public holidays. What luck, then, that Gittel is Jewish and must submit to 'the double helping of public holidays that is the lot of Jewish families'. After every matrimonial slanging match, Gittel's mother runs off to her parents' home in Antwerp - with her daughter in tow.

With an abandoned degree behind her and a 30th birthday approaching, amateur writer Bonnie Falls moves out of her parents' home into a nearby flat. Her landlady, Sylvia Slythe, takes an interest in Bonnie, encouraging her to finish one of her stories, in which a young woman moves to the seaside, where she comes under strange influences. As summer approaches, Sylvia suggests to Bonnie that, as neither of them has anyone else to go on holiday with, they should go away together - to the seaside, perhaps.

A collection of long-lost love letters from 1928 to 1930, recently discovered in a dusty cellar in Paris. Mademoiselle S., identified here only as Simone, was a well-educated and cultured lady living in Paris at the height of the glamorous Roaring '20s.

Abby Archer, a smart and savvy woman who refuses to be taken in by celebrity culture, becomes fascinated with it girl and media darling Brooke Simmons after she falls into a coma following a car crash. Her loyal security-guard-turned-lover Nick Lawson is implicated in the accident - someone Abby met just days before. One day Abby begins to feel unwell and is shocked to see the face looking back at her in the mirror is no longer her own but that of Brooke Simmons.