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

Julia is married and eight years Julian's senior; he is a gifted English student, a life of academia ahead. Ignoring warnings, they both give up all they have to be together. When Julian hears that his boyhood home is for sale, he sets out to recreate a paradise for his new family. It is only when their daughter, Mira, becomes terrifyingly ill that it is impossible for Julia to conceal the explosive secret that she has been keeping from him.

Widowed early in World War Two, heartbroken Helen Harrison decides to leave her domineering mother determined to rebuild her shattered life. Her godmother, Pearl, offers her work in a fashion wholesaler. When the showroom is robbed, she meets DC Kershaw and he inspires her to join the Women's Auxiliary Police Corps. Helen throws herself into the work, dealing with evacuees, the destitute and vulnerable. A series of tragic events makes Helen realise there's still something missing in her life, and soon she will have to choose between two very different men vying for her heart.

It's hard enough having a baby on your own. But for Imogen, 24 years old and blind since birth, it will be harder than most. Her journey will take her from heartache to hope and back again. But Imogen has never let blindness rule her life, and she isn't going to start now.... Inspired by a real-life story, this is a moving and gripping listen from number-one best seller Amanda Prowse.

Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents' marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', Adrian's painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling thirty years after it first appeared.

Adrian Mole continues to struggle valiantly against the slings and arrows of growing up and his own family's attempts to scar him for life in this second volume of his secret diary.

When the grain crop failed in Kansas it seemed like an isolated incident and no one took much notice. Except Ed Hardesty. Then the blight spread to California's fruit harvest, and from there, like wildfire, throughout the nation. Suddenly America woke up to the fact that her food supplies were almost wiped out. Her grain reserves lethally polluted. And botulism was multiplying at a horrifying rate.

Twenty years ago, Tatia was adopted into a well-off home where she seemed happy, settled. Then the youngest boy in the family dies in an accident, and she gets the blame. Did she do it? Tatia is cast out, away from her remaining adopted siblings Joel and Poppy. Now she yearns for a home to call her own. So when she see families going on holiday, leaving their beautiful homes empty, there seems no harm in living their lives while they are gone. But somehow, people keep ending up dead. Did she kill them?

Over twenty years of marriage to Max, Prue has remained a busy, contented mother and stepmother. Now, Prue's stepdaughter, Violet, has returned with her new husband from New York and, suddenly, Prue is precipitated into a secret life. As she moves between a sleepy village in Hampshire and buzzing London, Prue finds herself crossing the boundary between innocence and knowledge, exploring the line between the gluttony and surrender of desire and facing the stark realities that result.

Young doctor Edie Carter is bright, talented and ambitious. She is embarking on her dream career in anaesthetics and is engaged to a man who adores her. The one thing she doesn’t have is a childhood. Suffering from traumatic repression, large parts of her past are blank spaces. When an unidentified patient arrives in her intensive care unit with her name carved on his body, she realises that memories can refuse to stay buried. The man is unknown to Edie, but digging deeper, she discovers that the patient is Samuel Cox, a man imprisoned and brutalised over the last two decades.

The Chamberlain family - Charlie and Daphne and their children Laura, Scott and Nick - had fantastic summer holidays when they were young. But then, inevitably, the children grew up, and their own messy lives got in the way. Since their mum died, it feels to them all as if their family just isn't that close any more. And Charlie fears his kids have all lost their direction. For his 80th birthday, all Charlie wants is to bring his family together again - and by some miracle, they've all said yes. It's only 10 days...how hard can it be?

New Year’s Day. A dog walker is enjoying the early morning calm in Birmingham’s Woodgate Country Park. At first he thinks it’s some old rubbish. His dogs are always digging up trouble. But it’s a mummified body. The victim is Nathan Troy, an art student who disappeared twenty years ago. Days later, a second body is found. This time it’s a fresh kill. And the ligature marks on the victim’s neck are identical. It’s been twenty years, but after all this time, forensic psychologist Kate Hanson knows that Nathan’s killer is back.

Cornwall, 1801. In the wake of her mother's death, Pandora Woodville is desperate to escape her domineering father and finally return to Cornwall. Posing as a widow, she safely makes it across the Atlantic, bright with the dream of working at her Aunt Harriet's school for young women. But as Pandora is soon to learn, the school is facing imminent closure after a series of sinister events threatened its reputation.

Left an orphan, five-year-old Rosie Harris is found and raised by Maria, a Romany gypsy. Life on the road is hard, but the little girl soon feels one of the tribe with the travelers. As she grows older, Rosie realises she has 'second sight' and is able to read people's palms and see into their futures. Needing to make a living of her own, she befriends the canal folk, known as the 'cut-rats' traversing the Black Country waterways with their cargo, and so offers readings to anyone who can pay. Pursued by Jake Harding, Rosie instead finds herself falling in love with a married man.

Paul lives in the Welsh countryside with his wife Elise, and their two young children. Over in London, Cora plans to move back to Cardiff, to the house she has inherited from her parents. She is escaping her marriage, and the constrictions and disappointments of her life. Connecting them is the London train, and a chance meeting that will have immediate and far-reaching consequences for both Paul and for Cora.

The day Maggie Lane dies, she sends her daughter Olivia a letter containing the address of Olivia's first love, Richie Briscoe. Olivia has not seen Richie for over twenty years, not since his desertion of her as a teenager almost destroyed her. Convinced that the note represents an admission of guilt, Olivia sets off for the idyllic seaside village where Richie now lives.

Justine is running for her life. Escaping a city and a man, she heads north to the valleys of the Highlands. Michael and Hannah are also running, with their two sons and their tattered marriage. They are looking for somewhere they can call home. In an ancient landscape, a shocking accident causes their lives to intertwine. Tangled together in threads of guilt and love, with Scotland rushing towards a referendum and the community fracturing, they must all face their ghosts.

Two teenage boys make a gruesome discovery. A body locked inside a church crypt. The victim’s throat viciously ripped out. The dead man is quickly identified as twenty-year-old Matthew Flynn, son of a wealthy businessman. He was reported missing a year ago. Nothing about the crime scene makes sense to forensic psychologist Kate Hanson. The evidence reveals careful planning — but also a frenzied loss of control. Kate and her team disagree about the killer’s motive — is it drugs? Money? Sex?

On the beautiful island of Santaniki, close to Crete, it's not all white sands and sunshine. When retired bookseller Ariadne Blunt suggests the English residents form a choir, there are groans of resistance. After a little persuasion, the group gather in Ariadne's olive garden to rehearse, but each member of this choir has their own anxieties and secrets. Ariadne's partner, Hebe, is in failing health. Clive struggles to accept the loss of his wife while Della, the Pilates teacher, drinks too much and Chloe, Queen Bee of the village society, faces a family dilemma.

1979. Jackie Chadwick is 17 and living in a supported bedsit. She’s still close to her foster parents and friends with (aka unofficial minder for) Amanda, their irresponsible daughter, but she’s enjoying her independence–until a fire leaves her temporarily homeless. Jackie’s dad, widower and recovering alcoholic Dave, has just been released from prison and sees this as his chance to make amends. He offers her his spare room–but can their relationship survive him going back on the booze, his gin – loving lady friend and her errant son?

For five years, the remains of a young woman lie undisturbed in dark woodland on the outskirts of Birmingham. The gold necklace round her neck reads ‘Molly’. Now, watching the post-mortem, forensic psychologist Kate Hanson knows in a heartbeat that she’s looking at Molly Elizabeth James. She was only eighteen when she disappeared from a shopping centre in Solihull. DCI Bernie Watts’ team unearths more long-buried bodies in the area. Kate realises they’re dealing with a serial killer. One who abducted young women, torturing them for days before finally killing them.