Showing results by narrator "Karen Cass" in All Categories

When Cate Rivers leaves her husband in the middle of the night with their young daughter, Eliza, she has no idea what the future holds. Taking a live-in position at Hollow House on the Dorset coast, she determines to make a new life for her and Eliza. But Cate's new boss, fossil hunter Charles Thorner, could do without the problems of a couple of runaways under his roof. He's got enough worries of his own, including a painful past which still holds him prisoner today.

After the shocking events of last Christmas, Jess Croft is determined this festive season will be the one to remember, for all the right reasons. But when a stranger turns up on her doorstep claiming to be her estranged father, Jess is shocked. Moreso, when the man claims that the little girl with him is none other than Jess’s sister - a child she knew nothing about. Jess isn’t sure she wants these strangers to stay, but she can’t turn them away, especially when she learns that their lives are in danger.

The hotly anticipated wedding of Iris Devonshire, ravishing teenage daughter of celebrity couple Mia and Leo, is to be held in the gardens of their grand Palladian pile alongside the Thames. But Mia and Leo worry that she's rushing into the marriage. Just ask their best friends since college, Simon and Laney de Montmorency, whose relationship is on the rocks again - and they've already married each other twice.

Are we living in an age where we are more boredom-prone? Or are other people boring us? Or could we be those boring people? In our current information age, we are constantly connected to technology and have so many varied ways to spend our leisure time that we should all surely never know what boredom feels like. Yet boredom appears to be on the rise; it seems that the more we have to stimulate us, the more stimulation we crave.

Brought to you by Penguin. The hidden fabric of a Victorian woman's life - from family and friends to industry and Empire - told through her unique textile scrapbook. In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully...

A heartbreaking and deeply compelling debut, Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase is a compulsive page-turner about thwarted love, dashed hopes, and family secrets—book-club fiction at its best. Roberta, a lonely thirty-four-year-old bibliophile, works at The Old and New Bookshop in England. When she...

A beautiful and talented actress, Mary Robinson was one of the most famous women of her time. But Mary was destined always to be betrayed by the men she loved: by her father, who abandoned his family; by her husband, who bankrupted the family with his gambling and humiliated his young wife with numerous affairs; and by the Prince of Wales, later King George IV, who fell in love with Mary when he saw her playing Perdita in A Winter's Tale.

In a quiet English village, Marion Sharpe and her mother, two seemingly ordinary women, find their lives upturned when a young girl named Betty Kane accuses them of kidnapping and abuse. As the allegations escalate, the women become embroiled in a sensational legal battle that captures the attention of the public and the media. When even Inspector Alan Grant is baffled, Marion enlists the help of savvy barrister Robert Blair to clear their names. Together, they confront the disturbing truths lurking beneath the surface...

"Asylum-seeker"; "refugee". All the major British political parties have brought these words to the top of the political agenda. Some newspapers shout about the swarms of refugees arriving on our shores; others criticize our government's lack of humanitarian principles. But what do we know about the refugees themselves what it means to leave your home, your family, your past? Author Rose George has travelled to Liberia and Ivory Coast and also met refugees in Britain to discover what really happens when you are uprooted by war, greed, and guns.

Pepper Minesse is a success: a wealthy, stylish businesswoman who commands respect. But she owes that success to a thirst for revenge. Twelve years have given her the ammunition to ruin the four men responsible for the event that destroyed her as a woman - their careers for her lost innocence. At a formal meeting, Pepper offers them an impossible choice between resignation and blackmail.

The perfect escapist listen, for all fans of Cathy Bramley and Scarlett Bailey. A Year at the Star and Sixpence is Holly Hepburn's four Star and Sixpence novellas collected together as a novel for the first time. When sisters Nessie and Sam inherit a little pub in a beautiful country village, they jump at the chance to escape their messy lives and start afresh. But when they arrive at the Star and Sixpence, it's not quite what they imagined - it's pretty much derelict, ruined by debts, and it's going to be a huge job....

‘Chillingly compelling and expertly assembled. An immersive piece of thriller writing of the sort late-night-reading binges are made of’ B. P. WALTER ‘Dark, intense, and expertly crafted. Kate Rhodes delivers exactly what I look for in a gripping thriller’ RACHEL ABBOTT She thinks she...

Karin and Kai are looking for a pleasant escape from their busy lives when they accept an offer to stay in a luxurious cabin in the Norwegian fjords. Instead of finding a relaxing retreat, their trip becomes a reminder of everything lacking in their own lives, and when they meet the couple from the neighbouring cabin, Karin tells a little white lie – a lie that grows ever bigger, entangling her and Kai in a nightmare series of deceits with absolutely no means of escape.

The Virginia Woolf Complete Collection brings together all of her 9 published novels, from her very first published work, the exuberantly youthful The Voyage Out, to the modern masterpieces of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, as well as the hugely ambitious and ever-relevant Orlando, alongside many other wide-ranging and ever-inventive works of fiction.

A young woman finds herself on the wrong side of the law in The Knock, a gripping gangland thriller from top ten bestselling author Jessie Keane. Dora O’Brien had a good start in life, but things went bad when she began to mix with the wrong company. Pregnant by her gangster lover, she found...

In need of an escape from her failing marriage, Nia agrees to house-sit her aunt’s cottage on the Isle of Wight. She feels sure the cosy close in a quaint harbour town will be a safe place to hide and figure out what to do next. But things are not all as they seem in the close, and the neighbours who welcome her with open arms, are keeping secrets. When Nia finds the body of one of her new friends lying on the beach, she feels sickeningly sure that the killer is dangerously near to home.

In 2018, 66.3 million pairs of shoes were manufactured across the world every single day. They have never been cheaper to buy, and we have never been more convinced that we need to buy them. Yet their cost to the planet has never been greater. In this urgent, passionately argued book, Tansy E. Hoskins opens our eyes to the dark origins of the shoes on our feet.

Frances and George are enjoying some well-deserved leisure time in Paris when an old acquaintance from London, Alicia Stoke-Whitney, seeks Frances’s help to investigate a personal matter. Alicia’s daughter is being courted by Carlson Deaver, a wealthy American shadowed by a very suspicious tragedy. Less than a year ago, Carlson’s wife, a former actress, was murdered, her body discovered in one of the more dubious quartiers in Paris. Though authorities guess it was a robbery gone wrong, no one was ever brought to justice.

When Harriet Carmichael leaves her husband, she is determined to begin again: new home, new life, a chance to live on her own terms. A life drawing class seems harmless enough, until she finds herself drawn to Mac, the charming but elusive model. Her adult children disapprove of her every move, and when Mac—significantly younger and apparently homeless—moves in with her, their suspicions reach fever pitch. Yet there is an undeniable spark between Harriet and Mac, one that makes Harriet question what she truly wants from this new chapter.

Sarah-Jane Crosse, SJ to her friends, is desperate to avoid going to her parents’ ruby wedding anniversary party. She’s terrified of introducing her husband, Tom, to her estranged sister, Alison, because the sisters have history. Alison covets everything that belongs to SJ. With her anxiety spiralling, SJ knows she often has one or two glasses of wine too many and after a disastrously drunken night she reaches out for help. However, help does not begin at home. Tom is not supportive.