Showing results by narrator "Katie Scarfe" in All Categories

Cassie loves Henry. Henry loves Cassie. With a Tiffany ring on her finger, all that Cassie has left to do is plan the wedding. It should be so simple, but when Henry pushes for a date, Cassie pulls back. Henry's wild, young cousin, Gem, has no such hesitations and is racing to the aisle at a sprint, determined to marry in the Cornish church where her parents were wed. But the family is set against it, and Cassie resolves to stop the wedding from going ahead.

Somewhere along the cobbled streets of Paris, an apartment lies thick with dust and secrets: full of priceless artworks hidden away for decades. High-flying fine art agent Flora from London, more comfortable with the tension of a million-pound auction than a cosy candlelit dinner for two, is called in to assess these suddenly discovered treasures. As an expert in her field, she must trace the history of each painting and discover who has concealed them for so long.

Rowena Tipton isn't looking for a new life, just a new adventure, something to while away the months as her long-term boyfriend presses pause on their relationship before they become engaged. But when a chance encounter at a New York wedding leads to an audition for a coveted house share in The Hamptons - Manhattan's elite beach scene - suddenly a new life is exactly what she's got. Stretching before her is a summer with three eclectic housemates, long days on white-sand ocean beaches and parties....

Ross Ransome is at the top of his profession; one of the most successful, and certainly one of the richest, plastic surgeons in the business. Such a man would expect his wife to be perfect - and why not? After all, he has spent enough hours in surgery to get her that way. But when his wife falls ill she turns her back on conventional medicine, and her arid marriage, and seeks help from the world of alternative medicine and a charismatic therapist who promises not just medical salvation. For Ransome, this is the ultimate betrayal.

Three women, once enemies. Their secrets will unite them. The First World War is over. The war-torn area of Flanders near Ypres is no longer home to troops but groups of tourists. Controversial battlefield tourism now brings hundreds of people to the area, all desperate to witness firsthand where their loved ones fell.

A crown can be won; blood cannot be changed. The Conqueror's Queen is the third title in Joanna Courtney's sweeping historical series, The Queens of Conquest. William of Normandy is a rough man, but what more can you expect of an illegitimate son trying to muscle his way into a dukedom? After a violent start to their courtship, Mathilda of Flanders discovers William to be a man of unexpected sensitivity.

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr. Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr. Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma.

When a stranger asks Jo Blackmore for a lift, she says yes, then swiftly wishes she hadn't. The stranger knows Jo's name; she knows her husband, Max, and she's got a glove belonging to Jo's two-year-old daughter, Elise. What begins with a subtle threat swiftly turns into a nightmare as the police, social services and even Jo's own husband turn against her. No one believes that Elise is in danger. But Jo knows there's only one way to keep her child safe - run.

Growing up in a quiet Yorkshire village, Roxanne couldn't wait to escape and find her place in the world in London. As a high-powered fashion editor, she lives a glamorous life of perennial singlehood - or so it seems to her sister, Della. But when Roxanne gets her heart broken by a fashion photographer, she runs away, back to Della's welcoming home above her bookshop in Burley Bridge. But Burley Bridge, Roxanne discovers, is even quieter than she remembered.

Meet the Reading Group: forever friends you can count on in good times and bad. No topic is off-limits: books, family, love and loss...and don't forget the glass of red! Grace, Anne-Marie, Kate, Jojo and Serena couldn't be more different, but each month they meet in Serena's cliff-top cottage to discuss a good book - oh, and their lives, which are stranger than fiction. Or are they? Between new loves and old flames, cheating husbands and wayward children, there's always a surprise around the corner....

When they were children, Megan adored her younger sister, Chloe. Now she can’t bear to be in the same room as her. Megan believes Chloe is a psychopath, and her sister does appear to be a textbook case: cold, cruel and lacking in empathy. Why does Chloe want to taunt Megan at every opportunity? And why does she persist in manipulating their mentally ill mother, Tilly? When Tilly, under Chloe’s malignant influence, becomes dangerously unstable, the consequences are ugly. Megan’s world falls apart. 

In the far reaches of space, a tour group embarks on what will be the trip of a lifetime - in more ways than one.... At Sigma Station, a remote mining facility and luxury hotel in deep space, a group of tourists boards a small vessel to take in the stunning views of the Horsehead Nebula. But while they're out there, a mysterious ship with devastating advanced technology attacks the station. Their pilot's quick thinking means that the tourists escape with their lives - but as the dust settles, they realise they may be the only survivors....

'Snow White', 'Cinderella' and 'Sleeping Beauty' - stories you love and that we all think we know...but what about the secrets hidden within them? Why would a prince fall in love with a woman in a coffin? Why would a queen try so hard to poison her stepdaughter? And what is a fairy godmother's real motivation? Press 'play', and discover these classic fairy stories told the way they always should have been....

Lady Bette, the 14-year-old heiress to the vast Northumberland estates, becomes the victim of a plot by her grandmother, the Countess Howard, to marry her to the dissident fortune-hunter Thomas Thynn, a man three times her age with an evil reputation. Revolted by her new husband, Lady Bette flees to Holland. Within weeks, Thynn is gunned down in the street by three hired assassins. Who is behind the contract killing? Is it the Swedish Count Coningsmark, young and glamorous with blond hair down to his waist?

Bo Luxton has it all - a loving family, a beautiful home in the Lake District and a clutch of best-selling books to her name. Enter Alice Dark, an aspiring writer who is drifting through life, with a series of dead-end jobs and a freeloading boyfriend. When they meet at a writers' retreat, the chemistry is instant, and a sinister relationship develops.... Or does it?

In the idyllic early summer of 1914, life is good for the de Witt family. German Rudolf and his aristocratic English wife, Verena, are planning the wedding of their daughter, Emmeline, while their elder son, Arthur, is studying in Paris, and Michael is just back from his first term at Cambridge. Celia, the youngest of the de Witt children, is on the brink of adulthood and secretly dreams of escaping her carefully mapped-out future and exploring the world.

Last winter she had a plan. Lucy fell in love with tumbledown Rosemary Cottage as a child. So 30 years on, when she loses her city job and discovers the cottage is for sale, it feels like fate. She'll raise her children in Burley Bridge and transform the cottage into a B&B with her husband. But a year can change everything.... Now Lucy is juggling two children and a B&B, but on her own. Christmas looks set to be their last on Rosemary Lane until she meets James, a face from her past and someone who might offer a different kind of future. 

There are some people you can’t imagine life without. What, at the end of it all, is really important? Liv and her friends can’t imagine a life different from now: freedom, lifelong friendships, and dreams that are still within their reach. Then, Liv dies. For those left behind - Mia, Fraser, Anna, Norm, and Melody - everything stops. Their lives and dreams are frozen in time. In the years that follow, they decide to meet on Liv’s birthday to raise a toast and celebrate her life, even though none of them are living their own - not really.

Absorbing and richly observed, The Restless Sea is a masterful story of the turbulent years of the Second World War. Three lives collide in a way that only the war makes possible.... Jack, a child of the Blitz, has fled the law to become a seaman in the Merchant Navy. The frozen world of the Russian Arctic convoys may be harsh, but it opens his eyes to a new life.

Somewhere deep in her mind, Christine Marsden is witnessing the murder of young girls. And now she has urges to hurt her own children. After a head injury which left her having nightmares and visions, Christine is convinced that something inside her brain has broken and that she is slowly sinking into insanity. She is terrified of what she might be capable of. She fears that in losing her mind, she will also lose her children and husband.