Showing results by publisher "Orion" in Genre Fiction

It's 1949, and Nurse Kitty Longthorne is still hard at work at Manchester's Park Hospital. The one-year-old NHS is inundated by the nation's sick and dying, made worse by a crippling labour shortage. Now engaged, Kitty and James adore each other, but once they marry, she will be expected to leave the job that means so much to her. When she is offered the trip of a lifetime - a voyage by sea to Barbados to recruit nurses to join Park Hospital's ranks - adventurous Kitty is desperate to go.

If Isla Pembroke could turn back time, she knows exactly which days of her life she would change. The day she started working in the local aquarium, not knowing that she'd still be stuck there seven years later. The day her sister, Morgan, ran away from home. And, most of all, the day that changed everything, when her mother's death cracked her family in two. So when she's given an impossible gift - a chance to go back and relive those life-changing moments - Isla realises that she might be able to save the people she loves.

When a teenage girl is found brutally murdered, DS Amelie Davis struggles to keep her own trauma from clouding the investigation. After suffering years of abuse at the hands of her father, Amelie has only ever trusted one man—her husband, Edward. In the middle of the night, she receives a phone call from an unknown number. The voice at the other end asks: Do you think you know your husband?

April, 1963. Aspiring artist Kitty Campbell has recently given birth to her first child in a mother-and-baby home. Kitty is to give her baby away for adoption, but, when the day comes, she can't bring herself to part with her tiny daughter. In desperation, Kitty flees. She stops at a tea shop to feed her hungry baby and meets the owner, Bet - a mother with her own heartache to bear. But Bet is kind to Kitty, holding the baby and offering a listening ear. Then Kitty makes a decision that will change all their lives for ever.

Hannah is 28 when the worst happens. Her first instinct? To call her mum. The problem is, her mum having an accident, being rushed to hospital and never waking up was the worst thing. Realising that she is now the woman of the family, Hannah has to be the rock for her emotionally repressed father and chaotic younger sister, all while trying to muddle her way through the crucial life lessons her mother never taught her.

In remotest Wales, Joseph Carillo recruited young, lonely women to join his community and adopt his erratic views. Blue's mother was one of them. But when the Black House goes up in flames, Blue escapes to freedom and never stops running. Twenty years later, when Blue's old dormmate commits suicide, Blue receives a strange call. She has been awarded sole custody of Natasha's daughter. But things don't add up. The girls haven't spoken since the night of the fire.

Eighty-two-year-old Nettie still hears the occasional gossiping, but most have forgotten what she did. Now, living alone in a run-down farmhouse, she surrounds herself with memories of her late husband and estranged daughter, Catherine. When Catherine's friend James appears out of the blue, Nettie is grateful for the company and keen to learn more about her daughter. But soon James starts asking Nettie questions she doesn't want to answer, about some things she can't remember and others she's tried to forget.

Estelle is the headstrong daughter of Fleur, a Resistance legend who disappeared during the Great War, supposedly killed while helping Allied soldiers to escape. Christa, an only child, longs to break free from the constraints of London suburbia, and fantasises about the ethereal Belgian heroine who saved her father. When Estelle comes looking for the truth about the mother she believes deserted her, an intense friendship grows between the two young women. Estelle invites Christa to De Eikenhoeve, her family's idyllic country estate.

Sometimes all it takes to make the world a better place is a small act of kindness.... When Ceri Price arrives in the small seaside village of Dwynwen in West Wales, she only means to stay for a couple of nights - long enough to scatter her mother's ashes and then go back to her life as a successful makeup entrepreneur. But a case of mistaken identities means she lands a job as the barmaid in the local pub, unexpectedly finds friendship and wonders if love might follow....

From the best-selling author of Pulitzer finalist What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Dinner at the Centre of the Earth is a spellbinding thriller, a spy novel and a love story, showcasing Englander's gifts as never before. Prisoner Z, held at a black site in the Negev desert for a dozen years, has only his guard for company. How does a nice American Jewish boy from Long Island wind up an Israeli spy working for Mossad and, later, a traitor to his adopted country?

In a sleepy English village in 1944, Annabel and her son, Daniel, live in the shadow of war. With her husband away, Annabel withdraws ever deeper into long-ago memories of happier times. When mother and son befriend Hans, a German PoW consigned to a nearby farm, their lives are suddenly filled with thrilling secrets. But Hans has plans of his own and will soon set them into motion, with chilling consequences.

Marguerite had been living a comfortable but dull existence in a suburban town with her straitlaced lawyer husband. When he dies, she realises that life has passed her by. Marcel had been in a loving relationship with Nora since they left Algeria 60 years before. Now that he has lost her, he has lost his way. Marguerite and Marcel live in two very different worlds - one rich, one poor. They never should have met. And yet their paths cross at a retreat, and a connection forms....

'Are you waiting for Monsieur Bellivier, madame?' Helena Folasadu should of course say no. She doesn't know the man talking to her, she doesn't know Monsieur Bellivier, and she certainly isn't waiting for him. But, bored of life, and sparked by a whim, she says yes. The go-between leads her to a deserted floor in an office building and offers her a large sum of money to sit at a computer and forward emails to Monsieur Bellivier.

After caring for his mother in her last days, Alex has gone off round the world - with no plan other than to travel and maybe recapture some of his lost youth. Beginning his travels in Indonesia, the idea of finding himself sounds appealing...but soon he finds himself in real trouble. It starts with a bus crash on a terrifying mountain road. Lucky to escape with his life, Alex loses everything else - even his identity. But then he meets Domino, a beautiful girl who takes Alex under her wing.

Heathcote, England, 1984. A mysterious figure is sneaking into homes through backdoors and open windows. Known locally as 'the Fox', he knows everything about everyone, leaving curious objects in their homes or taking things from them. When beloved Anna disappears, everyone believes the Fox is responsible. For the villagers, finding Anna will be difficult - but stopping the Fox from exposing their darkest secrets might just be impossible.

The second in a trilogy of World War Two sagas featuring Evie, a new teacher in a Devon primary school, and a supporting cast of characters destined to become as familiar as old friends. After having her heart broken not once but twice, Evie has sworn off men and is putting her energy into her now more permanent job as a teacher at the village school.

England, 1911. Reverend Albert Canning, a vicar with a passion for spiritualism - and his naive wife, Hester - led a happy existence in the sleepy parish of Cold Ash Holt, Berkshire. As summer dawns, their quiet lives are changed forever by two new arrivals. First comes Cat, the new maid; a free-spirited and disaffected young woman sent down from London after entanglements with the suffragette movement and with the law.

Newly married to dashing RAF officer Tom, Irene Farley leaves behind her safe countryside life to move in with his family by the docks in South Shields. Little prepares her for the devastation the Jerry bombers have wreaked on the Sixteen Streets or that they would be living under her mother-in-law's roof, alongside Tom's three brothers and two wives!

1933. Single mother Vera Ray kisses her three-year-old son, Daniel, good night and leaves with a heavy heart to work the night-shift at a local hotel. The next morning she emerges to discover an unseasonable snowfall has blanketed the city, and her son has vanished. Outside their home, she finds his beloved teddy bear lying face-down on an icy street, the snow covering up any trace of his tracks, or the perpetrator's.

When 18-year-old Joshua Mayo takes a man's life in a terrible accident, he leaves the scene without reporting the crime to the police. He hopes to put the awful night behind him and move on with his life. But, of course, he ends up telling his mother, Karen, what happened. Karen has raised Joshua on her own in Cedar Rapids, Iowa - and she'd thought they'd finally made it. He was doing well in school and was only months away from starting college at his dream school. After hearing his dark confession, she's forced to make a choice no parent should have to make.