Showing results by narrator "Gabrielle Glaister" in All Categories

Summer, 1942: Kitty, an army driver stationed in Sussex, meets Ed, a Royal Marine commando, and Larry, a liaison officer with Combined Ops. She falls instantly in love with Ed, who falls in love with her. So does Larry. Both men go off to war, and Ed wins the highest military honor for his bravery. But sometimes heroes don’t make the best husbands. Motherland follows Kitty, Ed, and Larry from wartime England and the brutally tragic Dieppe raid to Nazi-occupied France, India after the war, and Jamaica before independence.

A chilling and atmospheric ghost story by the Orange Prize winning Helen Dunmore. In the winter of 1952, Isabel Carey moves to Yorkshire with her husband Philip, a GP. With Philip spending long hours on call, Isabel finds herself isolated and lonely. Woken by intense cold one night, she discovers an old RAF greatcoat in the back of a cupboard. Sleeping under it for warmth, she starts to dream. And not long afterwards, she is startled by a knock at her window...

A wonderful Christmas gift full of nostalgia and charm. Elsie Grimshaw lives in one of the worst streets in Weatherfield and is desperate to escape from life at home with a brutal father and the drudgery of working at the local mill. Grabbing at the slim chances that come her way, Elsie goes through the heartbreak of first love and her marriage to bad boy Arnold Tanner at only 16 years old and emerges, if not much older, then certainly wiser.

The warm and witty new novel from Alexandra Brown, best-selling author of The Great Christmas Knit Off. Perfect for fans of Jenny Colgan and Carole Matthews. Tindledale is in a tizzy.... The Village Show competition is coming around again, and after last year's spectacular failure the villagers are determined to win. Meg, teacher at the local school, is keen to help and to impose some much-needed order.

Tom Ward is the Spook, the one person who can defend the county from bloodthirsty creatures of the dark. But he's only 17, and his apprenticeship was cut short when his master died in battle. No one trusts Tom's skill, not till he's proven himself. And a 15-year-old girl named Jenny knows more about the three mysterious deaths in the county than Tom does. She is a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and she wants to be Tom's first apprentice – even though a female Spook is unheard of.

When Jaq Silver's mother dies, she is handed a poisoned chalice. An inheritance more valuable to her than she could have imagined. Travelling from Portugal to Brazil amid conspiracies and corruption to get to the bottom of her family mystery, Jaq learns she is not the only one with an interest in her unusual inheritance. Racing against the clock as the threats to her life increase on all sides, Jaq must use her scientific know-how to save what matters most.

Young Cinderella is desperate to go to the handsome prince's ball...and she's delighted when Fenella the fairy offers to help her. Unfortunately, though, Fenella hasn't really got the hang of her magic wand yet. Can Cinderella dance with the prince without tripping over her glass...flippers? And can she leave before midnight, when she'll turn into a ten-ton Cinder-Elephant?

After years of war, the residents of Coronation Street are looking forward to saying goodbye to rations books, blackouts and bombs. However, life is slow to change, and they are still waiting for the good times to return. Ida Barlow thought she was happy to have her husband back from the war. Frank can’t understand that his wife has no intention of giving up her new independence to wait on him hand and foot. Wendy Collins, a new arrival to the street, wants a fresh start but struggles to fit in to her teaching job at the local school.

Vera Sharples, the over-protected daughter of Ena Sharples, longs for independence, and while her mother wants to marry her off, she isn’t keen on Bob Lomax, Vera’s own choice for matrimony. Her friend, Lily Longhurst, has found herself on the wrong side of a doomed romance and decides it’s high time that she and Vera take their lives into their own hands. With Ena unable to deny her daughter the chance to do her bit for King and Country, the girls sign up for the Land Army, where life is very different from the familiar cobbles of Coronation Street.

Vera Sharples, the over-protected daughter of Ena Sharples, longs for independence, and while her mother wants to marry her off, she isn’t keen on Bob Lomax, Vera’s own choice for matrimony. Her friend, Lily Longhurst, has found herself on the wrong side of a doomed romance and decides it’s high time that she and Vera take their lives into their own hands. With Ena unable to deny her daughter the chance to do her bit for King and Country, the girls sign up for the Land Army, where life is very different from the familiar cobbles of Coronation Street.

Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood: two middle-aged women walk into a forest, as they did when they were girls, confronting their fears and memories and the strange thing they saw in their childhood - or thought they saw - so long ago. A distinguished obstetrician and young woman artist find they have sharply contrasting ideas about body parts, birth and death; an innocent member of an evening class harbours unexpected view on 'raw material'. The stories in this marvellous collection are by turns funny, spooky, sparkling and haunting.

When Laura wakes up after her office Christmas party and sees a man’s shirt on the floor, she is horrified. But this is no ordinary one-night-stand regret. Laura suffers from severe face blindness, a condition that means she is completely unable to identify and remember faces. So the man she spent all night dancing with and kissing - the man she thought she’d brought home - was ‘Pink Shirt’. But the shirt on her floor is blue. And now Laura must go to work every day and face the man who took advantage of her condition.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Stranger by Kate Riordan. When you're the outsider, who do you trust? Cornwall, 1940. For decades, Penhallow Hall has stood frozen in time, protecting the secrets of its isolated inhabitants. But the far corners of England are no shelter from the war, and Penhallow must finally open its doors to strangers. Three newcomers arrive, each looking to escape their past. They adjust easily to the routine - nightly blackouts, the threat of invasion - but tensions mount, and secrets are forced into the open.

It's 1940, and Annie Walker is the formidable landlady of the Rover's Return in Weatherfield. Her husband, Jack, has received his call up papers, and Annie must run the Rovers on her own while juggling one baby and another on the way. Manchester has been severely bombed, and Weatherfield has already lost some of its residents and houses. Everyone is just about muddling through.

Meet the daughters of Iris Parker. Dee, sensitive and big-hearted; Rose, uptight and controlled; and Fleur, the reckless free spirit. At the reading of their mother's will, the three estranged women are aghast to discover that their inheritance comes with very tricky strings attached. If they are to inherit her wealth, they must spend a series of weekends together over the course of a year and carry out their mother's bucket list.

From the Sunday Times best-selling author of The Queen's Choice. A tale of treachery, power-hungry families and legal subterfuges. Woven through it is a remarkable story of a beautiful girl, desirable as a bride, growing to be a woman of foresight and power. A story of love and loyalty and of the cost of personal ambition. The story of the woman who would ultimately wield power as the King Mother to 10-year-old King Richard II.

The new witty and warm novel from best-selling author and TV presenter Fern Britton. Perfect for fans of Katie Fforde, Jill Mansell and Trisha Ashley. Penny Leighton, TV producer and wife of the local vicar Simon Canter, is struggling to cope with motherhood. The couple have had their only child Jenna, while Penny is in her forties and it's been a big shock to her system. When Simon engages the services of a nanny, Ella, as a way of helping Penny, it serves only to push her further away from him and from Jenna.

She wanted a birthday surprise, just not the one she got.... The last thing Sally Summers expected from her husband on her special day was that he'd leave her for a Latvian lap dancer half her age. So with her world in tatters, Sally jets off to Turkey for some sun, sea and sanctuary. The Blue Bay resort brings new friends and the perfect balm for Sally's broken heart in gorgeous Dubliner James. He's just the birthday present she needs.

A hooker. A mistress. A murder. This town was built on sin. The town of Trinidad, Colorado was a tough place to be a woman in 1913. But it was the best place in the West to find one, if you had the cash. Honeyville, they used to call it. A murder throws Inez and Dora together - two women from opposite sides of town, in a town built for men. Against all odds, the well born girl and the high class hooker are drawn together in friendship…

On a bitterly cold night in January 2012, Haatchi the dog was hit over the head, and abandoned on a railway line to be hit by a train. A Facebook appeal brought him to the attention of a couple of kind-hearted dog lovers, Colleen Drummond and Will Howkins, who are also the dad and stepmum of Owen. Owen has a rare genetic disorder which causes his muscles to tense permanently. This audiobook tells their inspiring true story - one astonishing little boy and the very special dog who has changed his life forever.