Showing results by narrator "Colleen Prendergast" in All Categories

Meg just wants to keep her family together. Her mother is desperately ill, and her sister is still in school so it is up to her to support them. All Meg knows to do is bake, and desperation leads her to Ted Lund, the miserly owner of a local bakery. In a moment of uncharacteristic kindness, he takes pity on Meg and offers her a job. But Ted’s charity ends there. He’ll save money at any costs, cutting corners by using sawdust in his bread, ignoring vermin in his flour and paying Meg a pittance.

When Laura McAllister, a young lady's maid, learns her three siblings have been taken from their mother and emigrated to Canada without her mother's knowledge, she becomes determined to search for them and reunite the family. But a lack of funds and resistance from authorities push her to use a false name and take a position with a child emigration society to gain passage to Canada.

When it comes to baby sleep, Lucy Wolfe has seen - and solved - it all. Her gentle stay-and-support approach has helped thousands of people achieve the holy grail of parenthood: a full night’s sleep! But even with the best routine things can go awry, so in All About the Baby Sleep Solution Lucy addresses the most common problems that interrupt sleep routines.

A lost little girl with her notebook and toy monkey appears on the CCTV screens of the Green Oaks shopping centre, evoking memories of junior detective Kate Meaney, missing for 20 years.

Down a winding lane lined with honeysuckle and wild flowers, there’s a beautiful orchard beside the rushing River Wye. There, in a little farmhouse in the furthest corner, a young woman has a difficult and life-changing decision to make... Life on Appleyard Farm is all Freya Sherbourne has ever known. Having spent her childhood playing between the blossom-heavy apple trees, Freya can’t imagine calling anywhere else home. But times have been hard since her father’s sudden death, and now that she’s being forced to put the farm up for sale, her world is about to come crashing down.

Lady Ariana Boxstall's brother, Norris, is a strapping young man, but he's happily unmarried and childless. Pestered by his sister, Norris agrees to take a wife on one condition: that Ariana take a husband first. Although she realizes she risks spending a lifetime in a loveless marriage, for the sake of her own family's legacy, Ariana accepts his challenge. When the Earl of Kynaston met Ariana eight years ago, he broke her heart. Since then, his own heart has been broken, and he's sworn off love.

When James Everard announced that he had invited a young lady home for the holidays, his father, the Earl of Gyllford, was astounded and skeptical. Could it be that Jamie was finally showing an interest in something other than horseplay with his friends? But when lovely Miss Evalyn Pennington arrived at Gyllford Manor, it was the earl who found himself inexplicably drawn to her winsome beauty. Having been dismissed from her post as a governess, Evalyn would long remember the kindness of being welcomed at Gyllford Manor when she had nowhere else to turn.

Since her twin brother, Eddie, drowned five years ago, 16-year-old Elsie Main has tried to remember what really happened that fateful day on the beach. One minute Eddie was there, and the next he was gone. Seventeen-year-old Tay McKenzie is a cute and mysterious boy that Elsie meets in her favorite boathouse hangout. When Tay introduces Elsie to the world of freediving, she vows to find the answers she seeks at the bottom of the sea.

Life is good for nurse Kat. That is until the man she intended to marry legs it, she’s unexpectedly promoted to a position with too much responsibility, and a patient arrives on her ward under strange circumstances. Susan is a mystery. She refuses to speak or interact with anyone, she’s obsessed with a book of fairy tales, and the only name in her diary is that of Rhys – a plumber she barely knows. Down-to-earth Rhys is trying to get his life back on track after the death of his beloved brother. His mum is his priority, and she needs him as much as he needs her.

It's 1959, and a new killer haunts the streets of London, having baffled Scotland Yard. The newspapers call him 'The Florist' because of the rose he brands on his victims. The police have turned yet again to the inquirers at Miss Brickett's for assistance, and second-year Marion Lane is assigned the case. But she's already dealing with a mystery of her own, having received an unsigned letter warning her that one of the three new recruits should not be trusted.

In 1909, Grace McAlister set sail for Canada as one of the thousands of British Home Children taken from their families and their homeland. Although she’s fortunate enough to be adopted by wealthy parents, the secrets of her past are kept hidden for 10 years until someone from her long-buried childhood arrives on her doorstep. With this new connection to her birth family, will she be brave enough to leave her sheltered life in Toronto and uncover the truth?

It’s December 1902, and Rose O’Leary is looking forward to her baby girl’s first Christmas. But then tragedy strikes: her husband dies at the shipyard where he works, and within days his friend Nathaniel makes it plain he’s determined to have her. Rose flees with her child but soon finds the world is a cruel place for a beautiful woman with no protection. More tragedy ensues, and yet, although she’s bruised and broken, Rose is a fighter.

When 18-year-old Eve runs away from her small village to start a new life in the city, she quickly discovers that Leeds is not everything she expected it to be. Wandering the cold streets in search of shelter, timid Eve can only find work as a barmaid at the Bluebell Inn - a place her strict parents would never approve of. Serving ale and cheap gin to the rowdy crowd, Eve eventually catches the eye of dashing Sergeant Joseph Oates - but his intentions are not honourable, and he will leave her with more than just a broken heart.

After being cheated on by her ex, Leanne Riley is trying her hardest to get her life back on track, which isn't easy without a job and living in a bedsit surrounded by a junkie and a madwoman. On a night out with her best friend, she meets Jake, a face from her past who has changed beyond all recognition. Jake is charming, handsome and loaded, a far cry from the gawky teenager he used to be. Weary of men, Leanne isn't easy to please, but Jake tries his best to break through the wall she's built around herself.

Rabbit is surprised: some of the trees in the valley seem to be flying south for the winter. His friend Bear is sure that trees can't fly. Then there's a loud crunch! from very near by. It sounds like the world's largest rabbit, eating the world's largest carrot. There's a new creature in Rabbit and Bear's valley, and he's trying to change everything. From novelist and playwright Julian Gough and the winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize Jim Field, this is a tale of friendship, Progress and all kinds of getting muddy.

After two years, Meg Fairfax has finally started to make a success of herself. Her skills as a baker have made her enough to buy the bakery she loves and she’s planning a wedding to her fiancé. But Frankie hasn’t been entirely honest and both the bakery and Meg’s happiness are threatened when she discovers the truth. Meanwhile, Meg’s younger sister, Sarah, is attempting to build a life for herself in London but soon realises it’s far from what she expected. Finding herself alone on the city streets, she seeks comfort in the arms of a young cockney named Sam Waites.

When 16-year-old Erin Ellis is attacked, she dies in the arms of her best friend, Molly, just metres from her home. Molly is the surviving girl but says she easily could have been the victim. It was a random mugging gone wrong. With inconclusive evidence, DS Grace Allendale must dig deep within the tight-knit Stoke community for leads. And she soon finds that someone had a motive to kill Erin. As the investigation unfolds, Grace is reminded of a horrifying case she worked on earlier in her career.

For fans of Jojo Moyes, David Nicholls and Sophie Kinsella, here is a Pride and Prejudice for the modern era. Londoners Kim and Harry can't see eye to eye...until the life of the person they both love most hangs in the balance. Kim has never grasped what her free-spirited big sister, Eva, sees in a stuck-up banker like Harry and has spent her childhood trying to keep him out while Harry's favourite occupation is winding Kim up.

Caitlin Hext’s first shedding ceremony is imminent, but she’s far from prepared to produce a Snakeskin clone. When her skin fails to turn to dust as expected, she must decide whether she wishes the newcomer alive or dead. Worse still, it transpires that the Hext family may be of central importance to the survival of Charmers, a group of people with the inexplicable power to produce duplicates every seven years and, in the process, rejuvenate.

Holly Evans and her over-protective mother, Josie, are living a hand-to-mouth existence, moving constantly from one squalid dump to the next. When they move into an illegally sub-let council flat in Manchester’s rough Lansdowne Estate, Holly finally feels settled for the first time in her life - even if she is forbidden to go out, or even open the front door to callers when her mum’s at work due to fear of eviction. Increasingly cut off from friends at school, she soon feels isolated and alone in the world.