Showing results by narrator "Jilly Bond" in All Categories

A novel of five lifelong friends who, in their sixties, decide to live together on a cocoa farm in Fiji, where they not only start a chocolate business but strengthen their friendships and rediscover themselves. "I've planted my feet on Fijian earth and I intend to stay here until the last...

Actresses Posy Starling and Caro Hooper both gained a name for themselves playing fictional detective Dahlia Lively on screen - but now they are back treading the boards in London's theatre district, starring in two very different plays. Their fellow Dahlia, Rosalind King, is in the city to catch their opening weeks, but she can't help but notice some tensions between Posy and Caro. Perhaps because of Caro's new friendship with her co-star Luke Burrows, who seems to have a history with Posy . . .Before Rosalind can get to the bottom of what's going on, Luke is found dead.

The dark wood was green and gold - green where the oak trees stood crowded together with misshapen, twisted trunks, red-gold where the great smooth beeches lifted their branching arms to the sky. In between jostled silver birches - olive-tinted fountains which never reached the light-black spruces with little pale candles on each tip - and nut trees smothered to the neck in dense bracken.

With the festive season fast approaching, amateur sleuth Juno Browne helps organise a Christmas Fair to raise funds for Ashburton’s local animal sanctuary. The event is a success, but whilst Santa is handing out presents in the fairy-lit grotto, a murder is being committed in a dark corner of the garden. Juno discovers the body of Bob the Blacksmith, found clutching a horseshoe decorated with a sprig of elder. Suspicion falls on Bob’s longsuffering wife, Jackie, and on Don Drummond, with whom Bob violently quarrelled in the past

When a strange child follows her home on the train from London, Ella Bridges feels bound to help her. However, she soon discovers the child is not what she seems. Having recently moved into a large home on Linhay Island, affectionately known locally as the Yellow Cottage, Ella finds herself at the center of a murder investigation thanks to a special gift from the previous house owner.

In the first book of The Duke's Daughters series, the Duke of Marymount's eldest daughter, Lady Eleanor, knows the burden of restoring her family's good name is hers to bear. So a good but loveless match is made, and her fate is set. But then Eleanor meets her intended's rakish younger brother. With his tawny hair, green eyes, and scandalous behavior, Lord Alexander Raybourn makes her want to be very bad indeed.

When Rachel sets off, alone, for her mother's isolated country house, she promises herself that the business of packing up and selling will only take a couple of weeks, and then she'll be home again, back to normal. But, from the moment she steps through the front door, Rachel feels that the house contains more than she had expected: along with the memories of her mother, there is something else, a presence - not quite tangible - trying to make itself felt.

Two years ago, Miff Ferguson chose to opt out of the rat race. Since then he's been living rough and happily so. Until now. For as the first signs of winter approach, everything in his life is uprooted. While looking for shelter, Miff stumbles across the corpse of a young woman in a dilapidated warehouse. Quickly realizing he is not alone, and has been spotted, Miff becomes embroiled in a game of cat-and-mouse with a killer that forces him to abandon his life and take refuge with his aunt and uncle in the village of Weston St. Ambrose.

When a fire destroys the Empress Theatre, a devastating tragedy unfolds. Amelia 's mother lost her peace of mind forever when she left her daughter alone for a few life-changing moments. The dance school lost their beloved teacher, Hilary , who died saving the lives of her young pupils. Karin lost her memory, and the answers she desperately craves. Claudia lost the one thing that would have made her perfect life complete.

One glorious morning, Rina heads out for a stroll along Frampton promenade, where all is picture-perfect...until she spots something that stops her in her tracks: a luxury yacht sailing round in circles. Rina knows that can’t be right. As for the captain, he is nowhere to be seen...until coastguards board the yacht and find him shot dead—execution-style.

On the night of October 3, 1922, as Edith Thompson and her husband, Percy, were walking home from the theatre, a man sprang out of the darkness and stabbed Percy to death. The assailant was none other than Edith's lover, Freddy Bywaters. When the police discovered his relationship with Edith, she denied knowledge of the attack but was arrested as his accomplice. Her passionate love letters to Bywaters, read out loud at the ensuing trial, sealed her fate, even though Bywaters insisted Edith had no part in planning the murder. They were both hanged. Freddy was guilty, but was Edith?

For Lucy Riddick, Venice has always been the dream destination, the ideal place to lose herself. And now she needs to do just that. The secret she's been keeping has finally caught up with her and Lucy needs to disappear - fast. But what if, when she sets foot in Venice, Lucy finds the one thing she has been running from?

Indulge in this lovely, cake-filled novel of romance and friendship. Christmas Cakes and Mistletoe Nights is Carole Matthews at her heart-warming best! Fay and Danny are madly in love, and it's all Fay's ever dreamed of. But she left everything - including the delightful cake shop she used to run - to be with Danny on his cosy canal boat, The Dreamcatcher. And as she soon finds out, making delicious cakes on the water isn't always smooth sailing!

When Juno Browne purchased a car for her lover, Daniel Thorncroft, she was not expecting that the previous owner would lock a dead body in the boot. Who the dead man could be is a persistent question, as is the whereabouts of the seller, Amber Horrell. While Inspector Ford and the Ashburton police are on the case, Juno's insatiable curiosity and concern for the missing Amber lead her to start sleuthing on her own.

A family can’t escape their secrets when they’re forced to spend a week in quarantine in this “sharply funny” (People) novel—an Indie Next and #1 Library Reads Pick! It's Christmas, and for the first time in years the entire Birch family will be under one roof. Even Emma and Andrew's...

It's 1782. The 13-year-old daughter of a Venetian merchant family is lured naked from her bath by a stray cat and finds herself in the arms of Casanova - the legendary seducer of women. Twenty-five years later Cecilia is in Albania, now a portrait painter of some renown. Enter a young man from England, a troubled poet, looking for adventure at any price - a man who begins his affair with Cecilia.

The profound emotion felt around the world upon seeing images of Notre-Dame in flames opens up a series of questions: Why was everyone so deeply moved? Why does Notre-Dame so clearly crystallise what our civilisation is about? What makes ‘Our Lady of Paris’ the soul of a nation and a symbol of human achievement? What is it that speaks so directly to us today?

A lorry crashes on a dark, wet road. In the wake of the tragedy, a dying man receives another chance at life - but does he really deserve it? And if he lives, will those around him wish he hadn't? When critically ill Jacob Wilson has a heart transplant, his behaviour becomes very strange. His worried parents and girlfriend try their best to understand his sudden mood swings, but as things worsen, they begin to live in terror of what they might find in their son's bedroom next - and as Jacob's personality morphs, so, too, do the lives of those around him....

Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of an impoverished family, must navigate a world of desire and romance once she meets Alec d'Urberville. The son of a rich widow, he takes a fancy to her and gets her a position as the poultry keeper on his family's estate. However, her good fortune is soon complicated by Alec's libertine ways, and Tess returns home shamed. Once recovered, she separates herself from the gossip by finding work at a dairy farm outside the village.

Vera Brittain and the First World War tells the remarkable story of the author behind Testament of Youth while charting the book's ascent to become one of the most loved memoirs of the First World War period. Such interest is set to expand even more in this centenary year of the war's outbreak.