Showing results by narrator "Charlotte Strevens" in All Categories

Oxfordshire, 1947. Exhausted by the war and nursing a tragic secret, Kit Smallwood flees to Wickam Farm to recuperate. There she throws herself into helping set up a charity sending midwives to India. Then Kit meets Anto, a handsome, complicated but charming trainee doctor nearing the end of his English education, and she falls utterly in love. But when Anto informs his family that he is to return home with an English bride, his parents are appalled.

When Angel Tempest finds out that her best friend, Zac, has inherited a Scottish mansion, Taigh Fallon, from his great aunt, she immediately offers to go and visit it with him. It will mean closing up her jet jewellery shop in Whitby for a few days, but the prospect of a spring trip to the Scottish Highlands is too tempting. Then Kyle, Zac’s estranged and slightly grumpy Canadian cousin, unexpectedly turns up at Taigh Fallon, and events take a strange turn as the long-kept secrets of the old house begin to reveal themselves....

Sisters Georgie and Kate have always been close. Brought up by their mum Jan after the death of their father, this family of women have always been able to rely on each other. Jan loves her daughters with all her heart. She knows some people think she’s an over-protective mother, but they didn’t know what she knows. She has always kept her girls close but now she can feel them slipping away. Secrets have a nasty habit of refusing to stay hidden, and now Georgie and Kate are about to discover that while lies can cause pain, the truth could destroy them all.

On the day that her youngest child leaves home, Alice Hatton discovers two disturbing truths in a matter of hours. The Empty Nest cliché is true. And she does not love her husband Peter at all. Now in her fifties, Alice is appalled to realise that she is no longer considered her own person, but is instead defined by her relationships – mother to her adult children, wife to her husband. Horrified by the thought of spending another thirty years with Peter in their North London suburb, Alice decides to take matters into her own hands.

Vita's gift shop would do better if she ran it as a business, not as somewhere to daydream. But she's not one to tell herself off: she leaves that to Tim, her ex. Active, outdoorsy Oliver runs his trees-surgery business as calmly as his home - but his love life is intensely private. When Vita and Oliver's paths cross at a pear tree, there's a chance of something blossoming. As spring turns to summer, both Vita and Oliver are given second chances. Bu will they take them - or walk away?

In 1621, 57 women undertook a three-month journey to Jamestown after responding to an advert placed by the Virginia Company, looking for wives for its tobacco planters in the New Colony. They travelled of their own free will, but the Company was effectively selling them at a profit, having set a bride price of 150lbs of tobacco for each woman. But what did the women want? Why did they make the perilous Atlantic crossing to a dangerous land, where six out of seven European settlers died within a few years?

When Kate's younger daughter Ella goes off to university, she realises her life has become consumed by the minutiae of family life. In her 'empty nest', Kate starts to wonder: what now? Decades after abandoning her university hobby of rowing, Kate gingerly joins a local ladies' rowing team and rediscovers her passion for the pleasing rhythmic sensation of paddle slicing through water. More than anything, though, Kate finds that the team of strong women bring new adventures and unlikely friendships she hadn't even realised she missed having.

Rosie Bunting has spent her life caring for others, often at the expense of her own hopes and dreams. But when she overhears somebody describing her as ‘boring’, she decides it’s time for a change. Little does she realise that the outdoor pursuits weekend brochure handed to her at the local Art Café will kick start a summer that will see her abseiling down a Welsh cliff face in ‘eye watering’ leggings, rediscovering her artistic side and unexpectedly inheriting an old fire engine.

It was meant to be the perfect romantic holiday. But then Flora Bexton’s boyfriend does the unthinkable, and she responds in the only logical way: she steals his motorbike and escapes for a holiday by herself on the Welsh coast. Far from the lonely trip she imagined, Flora soon finds comfort at the friendly local Art Café, where the legendary hot chocolate and cake help to ease her troubled mind. And when Aussie Welsh lifeguard Jake Foley steps in just when Flora needs help the most, she realises that her ‘holiday’ feels more like home with every passing day.

The gruesome murder of a homeless teenage boy suggests a methodical serial killer is at work in Walvis Bay, a depressed port, isolated in the Namib Desert. Police profiler and investigative journalist Dr Clare Hart is sent to work with Tamar Damases, head of the town’s Murder Unit. Until a few days ago, her relationship with Captain Riedwaan Faizal seemed to be going well - but she knows she is not the only woman in his life.

In 18th-century Venice, Minguillo Fasan, heir to a fortune, contrives to dispatch of his sister, Marcella, condemning her to the fate of a nun. But Marcella Fasan is tougher than Minguillo imagines, and, aided by a servant, a painter, a skin-obsessed doctor, a Scottish merchant and a cigar-smoking pornographer, she pitches her wits against her brother….

On a moonlit night in 1903, a mysterious young woman flees alone across the Canadian wilderness. Mary Bouton is 19 years old, half mad and widowed - by her own hand. Tearing through the forest, she is desperate, her nerves burning, and she is certain of only one thing - that two red-headed brothers, rifles across their backs, lurch close behind her. She has murdered their brother and their cold lust for vengeance is unswerving.

Charles Mountford, Marquis of Tonbridge, knows he must do his duty and take a wife. But when he's left snowbound with the unconventional Miss Honor Meredith Draycott, he finds his inner rogue wants to come out to play... Merry doesn't need a man - no matter how handsome he is! Sadly society takes a different view. Charlie is more than happy to make her socially acceptable, but only if she acts publicly as his betrothed and privately as his mistress!

18th century, Scotland. Jacobite sympathies stir powerful emotions, especially in a titled young man with little to occupy him. But strong-willed Lady Winifred Nithsdale has already seen her mother, father, and brother imprisoned for their support of England's Catholic king. While she wants to be loyal, Winifred tries to protect her husband from imprisonment, or worse, the scaffold. But will she escape with her own life intact?

Trapped in a burning cabin on a freezing, snow-covered mountain, Selma Falck has no idea where she is or how she got there. She barely makes it out in time as the flames engulf the cabin. With no signs of human habitation nearby, the temperature rapidly dropping and a blizzard approaching, how will she survive? As Selma fights the cold, the hunger and her own wounds, she eventually forms a frightening picture of the past six months. Not only does she have to find a way to stay alive, she needs to make it back to civilization.

The rural idyll of life in a remote Welsh valley has turned sour for the Cordiners. For David, life in the local police force is deathly dull after the exhilaration of working for the Met. For Tessa, the hostility of the local community is a daily torment. Then a young nurse is found dead at a nearby beauty spot, her corpse strewn with wild flowers in some sick ceremony.

Sarah Hall is an exquisite chronicler of landscapes - rural, industrial, psychological - and these haunting stories reveal a writer at the peak of her powers. Rich in the mythic symbolism of wilderness and wasteland, these tales blur the natural and urban, mundane and surreal, human and animal. Written in Hall's lyrical prose, this uncannily disturbing collection glitters with poetic and erotic imagery.

Time is running out ... A killer who won’t stop. An investigator who won’t give up. When a beautiful young woman is found murdered on Cape Town’s Seapoint promenade, police profiler Dr Clare Hart is drawn into the web of a brutal serial killer. As more bodies are discovered, Clare is forced to revisit memories of the horrific rape of her twin sister and the gang ties that bind the city’s crime rings. Are the murders really linked to human trafficking, or is the killer just playing sick games with her?

Sheikh Prince Ibrahim refuses to bow to the duty that has destroyed his family by locking away his emotions and shunning his royal responsibility. Until the desert calls.… One searing kiss is all it takes for Georgie to know Ibrahim is trouble. And she’s had more than enough of that to last her a lifetime! Can Georgie ever truly be with Ibrahim? Or will his duty always get in the way?

Sarah has been receiving threatening anonymous letters seemingly from a former lover. Just one day after revealing this information to her co-worker Nancy, Sarah is shot and found in her bedroom by one of her past flames, Donald. Desperate to clear any evidence of Donald's presence at the scene for her own infatuations, Nancy finds herself as the key suspect when she is discovered in the apartment. As the real killer uses the situation to their advantage, Bennett crafts a tense and nuanced story through flashbacks to Sarah's life and loves.