Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

Marian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, half French, half British, naive yet too clever for her own good. But when she is recruited from her desk job by SOE to go undercover in wartime France, it seems her hybrid status - and fluent French - will be of service to a greater, more dangerous cause. Trained in sabotage, dead-drops, how to perform under interrogation, and how to kill, Marian parachutes into southwest France with an urgent mission....

Gateshead, April 1866. The Apprentice of Split Crow Lane takes the forgotten case of a child murder in 1866 as a springboard to delve deeply into the pysche of the Victorians. What Jane Housham finds in this exploration of guilt, sexual deviance and madness is a diagnosis that is still ripe for the challenging and a sentence that provokes even our liberal modern judgment.

Set against the rolling backdrop of a century of British history from the First World War to today, this is a family portrait captured in snapshots. First there is William, the factory lad who loses his life in Gallipoli. Then there is his son Billy, a champion cyclist who faces the D-Day Landings on a military bicycle, followed by his crippled son Will, who becomes an Oxford academic in the 1960s. Finally there is his daughter Billie, an artist in contemporary London.

The name of your first-born. The face of your lover. Your age. Your address... What would happen if your memory of these began to fade? When Claire starts to write her Memory Book, she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have of her. But how can she hold onto the past when her future is slipping through her fingers...?

Since Susannah Cates's husband was sent to prison three years ago, life has been a constant struggle to provide for herself and their teenage daughter. Nothing ever seems to go right, and the most she hopes for now is that nothing more will go wrong. Worried by her mother's unhappiness, 13-year-old Neve decides to take matters into her own hands. And when Susannah's closest friend, Patsy, discovers what Neve is up to, she immediately lends her support.

Set in the industrialising England of the Napoleonic wars, a period of bad harvests, Luddite riots, and economic unrest, Shirley is the story of two contrasting heroines and the men they love. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory, whose life represents the plight of single women in the 19th century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention.

Socially critical and emotionally complex, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is Hardy's masterpiece. It tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, forced by her family's poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy d'Urbervilles. Violated by the son, Alec, her hopes of rebuilding her life with the gentle and bookish Angel Clare founder when he learns of her past.

Tatiana Vytenis has worked hard to leave her past behind. Once a ruined Russian princess in hiding, she is now a sought-after model and engaged to Gérard de Sainte-Vierge. But fate still has a final hand to play. Hidden beneath their genteel exteriors, Gérard and his brother have a secret darker side, and her darling fiancé will gladly ruin Tatiana’s life to save his own reputation.

Perhaps England's greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë's, they were rather good at that too.

It has been 11 years since Hanne Wilhelmsen's life was forever changed by an assault that left her wheelchair bound. Now Hanne's self-imposed exile is nearing its end. When Oslo comes under attack from Islamic extremists in a series of explosions, the city is left reeling. A militant group claim responsibility, but the Norwegian police force doubt the group's very existence. The unfolding drama is brought to Hanne's door by her former partner, Billy T, who is convinced that his son, Linus, is involved in the recent events.

Michelle Clark has loved animals all her life, filling her home with a menagerie of stray cats and abandoned dogs. But when her outreach work with London's homeless community leads to a chance meeting with a desperate man, and a quest to find a missing Staffie named Poppy, she has no idea that her life will be transformed forever.

Freda has never shared her history with anyone before. But now she’s ready to tell the story that has haunted her for forty years – about a 15-year-old girl falling madly in love with her teacher.

The Sleeping Nymph: a work of art of magnetic beauty, painted by a young partisan fighter during the last days of the Second World War. A painting carrying a shocking secret hidden in the red pigment on the canvas, made with the blood of a human heart. But whose heart? There is no body, no confession. Only that faint trace of blood. And that's what leads Commissioner Teresa Battaglia - herself hiding an unspeakable truth - to the Resia Valley, in the north-eastern part of Italy: a perfect genetic enclave protected for centuries from the outside world.

Two suburban women. Two dark secrets. The almost perfect murder. Everybody needs good neighbours.... Melissa and Hester have lived next door to each other for years. When Melissa's daughter was younger, Hester was almost like a grandmother to her. But recently they haven't been so close. Hester has plans to change all that. It's obvious to her that despite Melissa's outwardly glamorous and successful life, she needs Hester's help.

1918. Young, beautiful and impoverished, Katya arrives in Paris to begin a new life - leaving behind a terrible secret. She is swept up in the city's glamour - particularly the boutiques on the Champs-Élysées, with their glittering haute couture gowns. Dare Katya dream that she may someday wear - or even design - one of these dazzling creations? It feels like an impossible wish, until she meets businessman Harry Morten. Tall, handsome and well-connected, Harry could give Katya everything she wants...but at what price?

Wiltshire, 1922. Fifteen-year old Pudding Cartwright has begun the career she always wanted, as 'girl groom' to the Hadleigh family's horses at Manor Farm. Irene Hadleigh is struggling to adjust to her new life in sleepy Slaughterford, having married Alistair to escape a scandal in London. At a loss to occupy herself, Irene sets about restyling Manor Farm, and during the work the chance finding of a strange object hidden away in the house for years will change everything.

Chief Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud's wife is found dead in front of the fireplace in the family living room. The cause of death is instantly apparent – she has been brutally decapitated. Halvorsrud immediately falls under suspicion. Then a journalist at one of Oslo's largest newspapers is found beheaded. What links these two horrifically violent crimes?

Jane Eyre was sent to work as a governess to the ward of Mr. Rochester. Thornfield Hall is a spooky and mysterious place with many secrets. Jane and Mr. Rochester became fond of each other and grow very fond of each other after Jane saves Mr. Rochester from a fire that broke out in his room while he was sleeping. Their bond is sealed when Jane is able to keep Mr. Rochester's secret.

Nadine, a 16-year-old runaway new to the city, is set up in a decaying Georgian house by her Finnish lover, Kai. Slowly she begins to suspect that Kai and his partner, Tony, have plans for her that have nothing to do with love. "Be careful", warns Enid, a sitting tenant in the house, whose own tragic past means that she knows all about survival. When Nadine discovers that she has been groomed for renting out to a government minister with special tastes, Enid's warning takes on a prophetic quality.

Rosemary Penfold's beautiful and evocative memoir of her life growing up in the fields of the English countryside is a moving testament to a forgotten world and a disappearing and misunderstood people. Born in 1938 in a traditional Gypsy wagon, surrounded by the love of her parents and extended family in a small but close-knit community, Rosemary paints a vivid and touching portrait of a way of life that no longer exits.