Showing results by narrator "Janet Ellis" in Literature & Fiction

The debut novel by actress and presenter Janet Ellis, The Butcher's Hook is the dark and unexpected tale of a young girl in 18th-century London determined to take her life in her own hands. No matter the cost. Anne Jaccob is coming of age in late 18th-century London. When she is taken advantage of by her tutor - and her father's great friend - her powerlessness in the world is brought home to her.

It is 1957 and, as the series opens, all crime has stopped along the South Coast. But Mrs Groynes - the cockney charlady who is actually a criminal mastermind - is desperate to get back in business, and a performance at the Hippodrome gives her an idea. A day out in a vintage car turns out to be highly eventful, and Brunswick is kept busy organising a police open day featuring a range of criminal exhibits and going undercover as a careers master in a girls' school.

In a 1970s village in rural Kent, lives go on in an unremarkable way. But Marion Deacon, struggling with being a wife and mother, is about to set events in motion that she cannot control in a story of love, motherhood, betrayal, and long-hidden secrets...because everyone has at least one secret. Marion Deacon sits by the hospital bed of her dying husband, Michael. Outwardly she is, as she says, an unremarkable old woman. She has long concealed her history - and her feelings - from the casual observer. And she's learned to ignore her own past, too.