Showing results by narrator "Imogen Church" in All Categories

Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she’s dropped off at the door of her brownstone, a stranger answers—a stranger who now lives in her apartment and forces her out in the cold. She reaches for her phone to call for help, only to discover it’s missing, and in its place is a bloodstained knife. That’s when she sees that her hands are covered in black pen, scribbled messages like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE.

The women in Lara Williams’ debut story collection, A Selfie as Big as the Ritz, navigate the tumultuous interval between early twenties and middle age. In the title story, a relationship implodes against the romantic backdrop of Paris. In “One of Those Life Things,” a young woman struggles to say the right thing at her best friend’s abortion. In “Penguins,” a girlfriend tries to accept her boyfriend’s bizarre sexual fantasy. In “Treats,” a single woman comes to terms with her loneliness.

Compulsive, gripping and dark, Never Be Broken is the stunning new novel in the Marnie Rome series, for fans of Peter James, Mark Billingham, and Val McDermid. Children are dying on London's streets. Frankie Reece, stabbed through the heart outside a corner shop. Others recruited from care homes, picked up and exploited, passed like gifts between gangs. They are London's lost. Then Raphaela Belsham is killed. She's 13 years old, her father is a man of influence, from a smart part of town. And she's white. Suddenly, the establishment is taking notice.

Leila has never met Tess, but she now knows more about Tess than anyone in the world. She’s read all of her emails, researched her past and asked Tess for every detail about her friends and family.Tess has never met Leila. But if she wants to slip away from the world unnoticed, she needs to trust Leila with her life.At first, Leila finds it easy to assume Tess’s identity, and no one has any reason to distrust her. But as Leila is soon to discover, there is much more to a person than the facts and there are things about life you can learn only by living it...

State prosecutor Chastity Riley runs off to Glasgow. For one, there is that letter, written by a lawyer, that lures her to the birthplace of her great-great-grandfather. And secondly, her life in Hamburg has arrived at a sad impasse. In the rough Scottish city, she meets Tom, who knows the key that unlocks the Rileys’ family secret. She never dared confront the painful truths about herself, but some whisky and a few ghosts help her to do just that.

Every day for the last sixteen years, Olivia Grant has longed for her daughter. Forced to give her up at birth, Harley has been raised by her father Roy and his wife. When the day to meet her arrives at last, Olivia’s heart swells as she takes in Harley’s precious face, so like her own. But Olivia can tell: her little angel is very sick and needs urgent help. And when a doctor delivers the most devastating news any parent could hear, Olivia must grapple with the heartbreaking truth. Will she lose the daughter she’s waited so long to meet?

When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote countryside, it’s meant to be a fresh start, away from the big city and the scene of a violent assault she’s desperate to forget. But despite the distractions of a new life and single motherhood, her nerves continue to jangle. To make matters worse, a vicious debate about violence against women inflames the tensions and mounting rivalries in her creative writing group.

Lizzie Riley is sure that the local academy school, with its excellent reputation, is perfect for her eight-year-old son Tom. But there's something strange happening at school. Parents are forbidden from entering the grounds and there are bars across the classroom windows. Why is Tom coming home exhausted, unable to remember his day? What are the strange marks on his arm? And why do the children seem afraid to talk?

When identical twin Coco goes missing during a family celebration, there is a media frenzy. Her parents are rich and influential, as are the friends they were with at their holiday home by the sea. But what really happened to Coco?

Abby Archer, a smart and savvy woman who refuses to be taken in by celebrity culture, becomes fascinated with it girl and media darling Brooke Simmons after she falls into a coma following a car crash. Her loyal security-guard-turned-lover Nick Lawson is implicated in the accident - someone Abby met just days before. One day Abby begins to feel unwell and is shocked to see the face looking back at her in the mirror is no longer her own but that of Brooke Simmons.

He was everything that Alice wanted in a man, or everything that she had thought she wanted - until the moment arrived when they were destined to be joined at last, and she knew that she didn't want him at all.

It’s the ultimate fantasy: When Lizzie meets an attractive older man in the bar of a luxury hotel, he mistakes her for a high class call girl on the look-out for a wealthy client. With a man she can’t resist, Lizzie finds herself following him to his hotel room for an unforgettable night where she learns the pleasures of submitting to the hands of a master. But what will happen when John discovers that Lizzie is far more than she seems?

Veronica Cecil was 25 years old when her husband was offered a job at a large multi-national company in the Congo. Filled with enthusiasm for their new life, the couple and their 11-month-old son set off for an African adventure. Very soon, however, Veronica began to realise that life in the Congo was not what she had imagined. Food shortages were an everyday occurrence; she felt like an outsider at the club in Léopoldville, which only the Belgians and other expats frequented; and flickers of violence were starting to erupt everywhere.

Selina Lennox is a Bright Young Thing. Her life is a whirl of parties and drinking, pursued by the press and staying just the right side of scandal. Lawrence Weston is a penniless painter who stumbles into Selina's orbit one night and can never let her go. Spanning two decades and a seismic shift in British history as World War II approaches, this is an epic novel of passion, heartache and loss.

In the end, all things are known. Return to the world of The Relic Guard with this remarkable fantasy novel. Divided, hunted and short on resources, the surviving members of the Relic Guild are in real trouble. Their old enemy, the Genii, and their resurrected master have infiltrated Labrys Town and taken over the police force. So the Relic Guild must flee their home, and set off on a dangerous journey across the worlds of the Aelfir. One that will lead them to a weapon which might destroy the Genii.

Cass Wheeler - a British singer-songwriter, hugely successful since the early '70s, whose sudden disappearance from the music has been the subject of intense speculation among her fans - is in the studio that adjoins her home, taking a journey back into her past. Her task is to choose 16 songs from among the hundreds she has written since her early teens, for a uniquely personal greatest hits record, describing the arc of her life through song.

When neatly packed male body parts wash up by the River Elbe, Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley and her colleagues begin a perplexing investigation. As the murdered men are identified, it becomes clear that they all had a history of abuse towards women, leading Riley to wonder if it would actually be in society's best interests to catch the killers. But when her best friend Carla is attacked, and the police show little interest in tracking down the offender, Chastity takes matters into her own hands.

Kings Cross station, 1943: As the bombs fall, Rose loses her heart to a pilot but will lose so much more before the war has done its worst. Las Vegas, present day: A beautiful woman in a wedding dress walks into a seedy bar and asks the first man she sees to marry her. So when Jane meets Rose, now a formidable older lady, there's no love lost between them. But with time running out, can Rose and Jane come together to make peace with the secrets that have haunted their lives?

Dawn broke that morning in the same way that it did every other day, but I knew nothing would ever be the same again. The shore resembled a scene after battle. Bodies were scattered haphazardly across the sand, nude, lithe, breathing in unison as if the scene we had all witnessed had unified the crowd in some unearthly way.

A mesmerising, gripping novel from the winner of the 2015 Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year for Someone Else's Skin. Perfect for fans of Clare Mackintosh and Alex Marwood. Two young boys. Trapped underground in a bunker. Five years later, the boys' bodies are found and the most difficult case of DI Marnie Rome's career begins. She has to find out who they are and what happened to them. For no-one has reported them missing - and it seems she is the only person to care.