Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Literature & Fiction

Pam Ayres, one of Britain's best-loved entertainers, personally presents this audiobook which brings together two of her solo stage shows with live audiences. Pam introduces each recording and then, as a bonus, reads a collection of new and previously unrecorded poems from her two most recent books, You Made Me Late Again and Up In The Attic. With poems such as 'My Mother Was Right About You', 'Geriatric Juliet', 'Poor Old Father Christmas', and 'The Hat From Hell', this hilariously funny collection is a must-have for seasoned fans and first time listeners alike.

Nick Robertson has become used to his grandmother Rosie's dotty behaviour. At 86, a widow now, she is determined that before life passes her by, she will live a little. Or preferably a lot. It wouldn't be so bad if Nick had nothing else to do, but with a job to find, two warring parents to cope with and a love life in terminal decline, he would prefer his grandmother to get on with things quietly. But, Rosie insists, there is no time like the present....

Sara Loveday ditches her cheating fiancé at the altar and flees with her best friend to the beautiful island of Santaniki. Here, amid olive groves and whitewashed stone villas, where dark cypress trees step down to a cobalt blue sea, Sara vows to change her life. Spotting a gap in the local tourist market, she sets up a wedding-planning business, specialising in 'second time around' couples. For her first big wedding, she borrows the olive garden of a local artists' retreat, but almost at once things begin to go wrong.

Esme Posorsky is an enigma. For as long as people can remember, she has been part of community life in the quaint Cornish fishing village of Tremarnock, but does anyone really know her? She is usually to be found working in her pottery studio or at home with her beloved cat, Rasputin. But when an old school friend turns up with a secret from the past, nothing will ever be the same again.

Having married once for love and been abandoned by her husband, Ellen is determined that her second marriage will be for money. And conveniently Duncan, her divorce lawyer, is not unattractive - and he’s enticingly single. But when she meets painter Matthew, Ellen has to remind herself very strongly indeed that Duncan is the man for her....

Molly Black has disappeared. She's been a bit flighty since her parents died (sure, hadn't she run off with a tree surgeon that time?) but this time, or so says her hastily written leaving note, she's gone for good. That's why the whole Black clan—from Granny perched on the printer all the way through to Killian on Zoom from Sydney—is huddled together in the back room of Uncle John's semi-D in the Dublin suburbs, arguing over what to do.

Here today. Dead tomorrow? Last night I almost died. A fire consumed the hotel room where my best friend, Emily, and I slept. Emily was killed. But I can't afford to cry, to grieve. It was meant to be me. And he'll be coming for my daughter next. The press thinks it was me that died. At best that gives me 24 hours. Twenty-four hours to find Polly and disappear. Twenty-four hours to stay alive.

A gripping gothic page-turner told in a startlingly different and wonderfully captivating voice. In a remote and crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence is neglected by her guardian uncle and banned from reading. Left to her own devices she devours books in secret and talks to herself in a unique language of her own invention. By night, she sleepwalks the corridors and is troubled by a recurrent dream in which a mysterious woman appears to threaten her younger brother Giles.

When you are an inoffensive retired librarian with bitter personal experience of Evil Talking Cats, do you rescue a kitten from the cold on a December night? Do you follow up news items about cats digging in graveyards? Do you inquire into long-ago cats who voyaged around the world with Captain Cook? Well, yes. If you are Alec Charlesworth, that is precisely what you do - with unexpected and terrifying consequences.

Your God. Your Country. Your Kin. Who Do You Betray? London, 1563. Catholic plots against the young Queen Elizabeth spring up all over the country. William Harley - known to everyone as Clarenceux - receives a book from his friend and fellow Catholic, Henry Machyn, who is in fear of his life. Then Clarenceux is visited by Francis Walsingham and his ruthless enforcers, who will stop at nothing to gain possession of the book. What secret can the book hold?

August 1883. The future for Ling Southcott, a quarryman’s daughter, seems to be already mapped. Marriage to her childhood sweetheart, Barney, a cluster of children, a life contained to the hamlet of Foggintor Quarry. For Ling, with her sharp, enquiring mind and love of books, it is an accepted, if unwelcome fate. But then the new Princetown Railway opens across Dartmoor, connecting her remote hamlet to the neighbouring town of Tavistock, and even Plymouth.

Princess Pasiphae of Kolchis is sent to Knossos to secure the throne, but she soon finds herself entangled in a brutal power struggle. As the Mother cult demands blood and Minos seeks to overturn ancient rule, she fights to protect her children; Asterion, her gentle son marked as a monster, and Ariadne, the ambitious daughter who rejects her.

Adam Hamilton-Shaw has more reason than most to avoid commitment. Living on a houseboat in the Severn Valley, his dream is to sail into the sunset - preferably with a woman waiting in every port. Would-be screenplay writer Sienna Meadows realises that everything about Adam spells trouble - but she can't ignore the intense physical attraction that exists between them. But can Adam change his damaging behaviour - or is the road to destruction a one-way street?

Mia, Kelsey, Scarlett and ex-model mom Amanda are back and the Saunders women are not afraid to burn bridges to protect their family.

Evelyn St. John has been parachuted into France to link up with the Resistance and to work undercover. Paul von Hoch's brief, as a member of the German Intelligence, is to track down enemy spies. When Evelyn and Paul meet and fall in love, their feelings for one another are fierce, but can never be uncomplicated. And when the battle lines shift, and patriotism gives way to deeper truths, they will both face the gravest of challenges.

Welcome to a London on the cusp of the 21st century. And meet Anthony, Alison and Lucy. Anthony is the disillusioned junior partner of a city insolvency firm; Alison is his PR-director wife; Lucy is the girl he has secretly been in love with for the past 17 years. This is the story of how Anthony and Lucy are brought together again and the emotional consequences for the people involved.

Reeling from the attempts on his life and the lives of his family, Police Inspector Robert Finlay returns to work. His first job - to investigate the Eastern European sex-slave industry, just as a key witness is murdered. Finlay, along with his new partner, Nina Brasov, finds himself facing a ruthless criminal gang determined to keep control at all costs. Finlay's efforts to protect his wife and child may have been in vain, though, as an MI5 protection officer uncovers a covert secret service operation that threatens them all....

Sebastian Hunter has shown his last hand at the card table. Nights once spent womanising and gambling are now spent in the dark shadows of Blackloch Hall. That is until the mysterious Phoebe Allardyce – his mother’s new and far too pretty companion – interrupts his brooding.

Robert Finlay seems to have finally left his SAS past behind him and is settled into his new career as a detective. But when the author of a book about secret operations goes missing, along with his agent and an explosive new manuscript, it’s clear that Finlay’s troubles are far from over. With his friend and former colleague, Kevin Jones, in trouble, and police complaints branch gunning for them both, Robert teams up with MI5 agent Toni Fellowes to find out who’s behind the growing conspiracy.

Consider Vivien in November 1922: she is 24 and a spinster. She wears fashionable clothes, but she is plain and - almost worse in those times - intelligent. At nearly six feet tall, she is known unkindly by her family as 'the giantess'. Fortunately Vivien is rich, so she can travel to London and bribe a charismatic gentleman publisher to marry her. What he does not know is that Vivien is pregnant with another man's child and will die in childbirth in just a few months....