Showing results by narrator "Karen Cass" in All Categories

Alexandra Prince is clever, outspoken, and, yes, perhaps a bit impulsive. Yet she’s always been overshadowed by her siblings. While they are off on adventurous expeditions, she’s the one left to keep the family’s antique shop going while she works on a book about lady pirates—and longs for an adventure of her own. When she overhears a group of suspicious customers whispering about a plan to steal the Crown Jewels, she knows it’s her opportunity to shine. But she needs a little help.

"I want to know why, when you become all woman in my arms, when you respond so passionately to my kiss, you’re going to marry a man who you’ve just admitted can’t turn you on." Carter Macdonald oozed sex appeal. He was the sort of man who could easily sweep a woman off her feet. But Elspeth was made of sterner stuff. She wanted an orderly life with no highs and lows, no chaotic emotions. And that was exactly what Peter, a wealthy lawyer, was offering her.

In A Clergyman's Daughter, Orwell leads us through a landscape of unemployment, poverty and hunger, where Dorothy's faith is challenged by a social reality that changes her life.

Does anxiety have a hold on you and your life? Do panic and worry tend to dominate every moment? You’re not alone—Making Friends with Anxiety is here to help. In this friendly and supportive little book, best-selling author Sarah Rayner draws on her own experience of living with an anxiety disorder and shares the life-changing coping techniques that have helped her manage her anxiety and panic at home, at work, and in all areas of life.

Widowed duchess Sophie will do anything to protect her son and his inheritance. Even ask roguish Lord Nicholas Pascoe to retrieve her late husband’s diaries before the secrets they contain bring down the government and the monarchy! Sophie knows she must maintain her distance from Nicholas…only she can’t help but respond to the desire in his eyes. Their mission is treacherous, but will it prove as dangerous as their unexpected attraction?

It's the start of another school year at St. Ambrose. While the children are busy in the classroom, their mothers are learning sharper lessons. Lessons in friendship. Lessons in betrayal. Lessons in the laws of community, the transience of power...and how to get invited to lunch. The Hive is a wickedly funny and brilliantly observed story about female friendship, power plays, and the joys and perils (well, mainly perils) of trying to do one's part.

Two weeks at a stunning villa, in the South of France, was supposed to heal the rifts in this fractured family. Flaky croissants and rich, black coffee every morning before long days by the sparkling pool. Balmy candlelit dinners, once the kids have gone to bed. But Nora is shaking, as she gathers her family around the large, oak table on the terrace, at the front of the villa. Her two daughters eye her suspiciously as she tops up her wine and clears her throat to speak. But when she opens her mouth, the secret Nora came here to tell won’t come out....

Jude is the owner of a unique antiques shop in Cambridge. She makes it her mission to match customers with the special something that they are missing, a talisman to bring them what their heart desires. Unfortunately, Jude’s life is not overflowing with love. However, when she 'inherits' a niece that she never knew existed, doubling her meagre family overnight, Jude's life is soon set to get a lot less lonely and a lot more interesting.

On paper, Merina Wilde has it all: a successful career writing the kind of romantic novels that make even the hardest hearts swoon, a perfect carousel of book launches and parties to keep her social life buzzing and a childhood sweetheart who thinks she’s a goddess. But Merry has a secret: the magic has stopped flowing from her fingers. Try as she might, she can’t summon up the sparkle that makes her stories shine.

Italy, 1935. Alessandra Durante is grieving the loss of her husband when she discovers she has inherited her ancestral family home, Villa Durante, deep in the Tuscan Hills. The terms of the will are that she must live in the Villa Durante for at least 12 months, so, longing for a new start, she moves to Italy and sets about rebuilding her life. But the shadow of war hangs heavy over the Tuscan hills, and life will never be the same again.

When her life in London falls apart, Elodie Bright returns to Hartsford Hall in Suffolk, the home of her childhood friend Alexander Aldrich. There, she throws herself into helping Alex bring a new lease of life to the old house and its grounds. After a freak storm damages the Hall chapel and destroys the tomb of Georgiana Kerridge, one of Alex’s 18th-century relatives, Elodie and Alex find a connection in the shocking discovery brought to light by the damaged tomb.

When the teenage girl who's been hanging around near the house knocks on the door and tells her she's her granddaughter, Cassie is shocked rigid. There's only one way this can be true: if Evie is the daughter of the baby Cassie gave away for adoption when she was herself a troubled teenager. Is this a trick? Or is Evie's tale true? When she finds out why the girl has come to find her, it brings a tangle of other problems that she can't ignore. This was the last thing she expected to be dealing with as she moves into her new home in a leisure village in Wiltshire.

Suzy and Demi were carefree twenty-somethings. They had fun! They didn’t have responsibilities! And then they decided to have a baby. Goodbye lazy weekends, hello sleepless nights, arguments and an addiction to industrial-strength hot chocolate. Follow Suzy on the ultimate make-over - from nervous-wreck new mother to happy families. In this hilarious and refreshingly honest account for parents who prefer the realistic to the utopian, Suzy debunks the myths and takes us all along for the (bumpy) ride.

The Welsh borders, 1870s. On the cusp of adulthood, Eliza Mace is battling for her independence. Stuck in a crumbling manor house on the fringe of a small town, she is thwarted by powers that conspire to protect, control and deceive her. But when her father goes missing in mysterious circumstances, Eliza’s determination to uncover the truth is unstoppable. Joining forces with the charismatic new police constable, Dafydd Pritchard, she sets out to solve the case, but that’s no easy task. Her father has run up debts in town and beyond, and there are many who bear him a grudge.

Family. Secrets. Murder. Newly promoted DI Kate Fletcher has reluctantly returned to her hometown after a 20 year absence and a recent divorce. The discovery of a child’s body near the estate where Kate grew up has her rushing back to Thorpe - a place of bad memories and closed mouths. As her team investigate the murder, they keep hitting dead ends. The community is reluctant to reopen old wounds and retell old stories. But Kate’s history refuses to stay buried. Then another child disappears.... Can Kate solve the case and right the wrongs from her past?

Two families. One cancelled flight. And a last-minute house swap. Things get desperate for strangers Harriet and Sophie when they become stranded with their families in Heathrow's Terminal 5. Each woman has her own reason for really, really, really needing the family holiday they've anticipated for months. But Iceland's volcano has other plans for them. When their flights are cancelled, the families swap houses and discover that sometimes the best things in life happen close to home.

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.

What is visible to the naked eye has been exhaustively raked over; in Underground London, acclaimed travel writer Stephen Smith provides an alternative guide and history of the capital. It's a journey through the passages and tunnels of the city, the bunkers and tunnels, crypts and shadows. As well as being a contemporary tour of underground London, it's also an exploration through time.

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.

On August 12th each year, members of the upper class retire to their country estates for grouse-shooting season. Frances Wynn, the widowed Countess of Harleigh however, is expecting to spend a quiet few months in London. Instead, she's immersed in a shocking mystery when a friend, Mary Archer, is found murdered. Her cousin Charles is in the spotlight for the murder, along with dozens of others. It seems Mary had countless notes hidden in her home, detailing private indiscretions of society's elite.