Showing results by publisher "Bolinda audio" in Genre Fiction

England, 1942: 23-year-old Betty runs away from Bristol to make a new life for herself. Betrayed by her husband, Betty flees to the seaside town of Bournemouth, where she has fond memories of childhood holidays. There, she finds a small family bakery in desperate need of a new shop girl.... At the Barton Bakery, Betty finds a sanctuary with shopkeeper Audrey Barton, but Audrey is fighting battles of her own. Her husband is at war and in grave danger, she is heavily pregnant and her customers are horrified by the demands imposed by rationing.

Wagners Creek, otherwise known as the arse-end of the Earth, is the home of the mutton-bird, the carrion crow, and the remarkable Fin Starling. Son of the local provider of "special services", Fin is different from other children and soon it becomes clear that he is something of a miracle-worker as he transforms the dirt-poor shantytown into a place of pilgrimage. Elizabeth Stead's gently comic portrait of Wagners Creek is handled with benevolent grace.

In the bitter Antarctic winter of 1910, in the waning years of the Edwardian era, a group of gentleman adventurers wait out a raging blizzard in the close, perpetual darkness, poised for a strike at the South Pole. As the storm lifts, a new challenge faces Captain Sir Eugene Stewart - to discover which of his twenty-five carefully chosen men has become a murderer, as what has begun as a probe for the bottom of the world becomes a probe for the bottom of man's soul.

Skunk Cunningham is an 11-year-old girl in a coma. She has a loving dad, an absent mother and a brother who plays more X-Box than is good for him. She also has the neighbors from hell: the five Oswald girls and their thuggish father Bob, vicious bullies all of them, whose reign of terror extends unchallenged over their otherwise quiet suburban street.

A gloriously warm-hearted novel about wonderful hats, the people who buy them - and their remarkable stories. Hats! Hats! Hats! Upbrims, sidesweeps, silks, ribbons and trims all become part of Ellie's life when she inherits the little hat shop on Dublin's South Anne Street. But the city is changing, and Ellie must decide if she wants to follow the hat-making tradition of her mother or accept a generous offer to sell the shop.

When DI Thomasine Albright is informed that the remains of her 15-year-old sister have been found, she has the tragic responsibility of breaking the news to her mother. Thomasine promises her mother that she will be the one to find Karen’s killer. But Karen Albright wasn’t the only girl to go missing during that weekend in 1973.... Veronica Lightfoot disappeared, too. They’d lived barely four miles apart yet apparently never met. Suddenly there is a new question: was Veronica involved in Karen’s death? Is that why she vanished?

Now anyone can have a baby. With FullLife’s safe and affordable health-care plan, the brave new world is here. Without the pouch, Eva might not have been born. And yet she has sacrificed her career, and maybe even her relationship, campaigning against FullLife’s biotech baby pouches. Despite her efforts, everyone prefers a world where women are liberated from danger and constraint and all can share the joy of childbearing. Perhaps FullLife has helped transform society for the better? But just as Eva decides to accept this, she discovers that something strange is happening at FullLife.

1928. In British-ruled India, headstrong Sita longs to choose her own path, but her only destiny is a good marriage. After a chance meeting with a Crown Prince leads to a match, her family’s status seems secured and she moves into the palace, where peacocks fill the gardens and tapestries adorn the walls. But royal life is far from simple, and her failure to provide an heir makes her position fragile. Soon Sita is on the brink of losing everything, and the only way to save herself could mean betraying her oldest friend …

I only came back to Skelwick Bay to lie low and reconnect with my sister. But now she wants me to fake her death. So we hatch a plan – we fake a sailing accident. And my darling sister 'dies'. Only, when she's gone, I start to think. There are holes in the story she gave me. She doesn't reach out like she says she will, leaving me to deal with the mess alone. So when I learn Bryony never actually saved my life all those years ago, I start to question everything she's ever told me.

I know I have to get myself out of this funk, but it feels impossible. My childhood best friend is dead and nothing in life is working out as I’d planned. Then Lottie leaves me a ‘jar of joy’ in her will – filled with instructions to visit places where we had our happiest memories. But with every happy memory, I also remember the things that tore us apart. Because Lottie was keeping secrets. And Jay – the man we both loved – keeps turning up at the same places. Even as I feel pieces of myself begin to heal, some wounds run too deep.

After five exhilarating years in New York, Stevie has a successful career and glamorous social life. But what she most wants is a baby – an aspiration that feels impossible given that she is single, 38 and living in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, far away from most of her family in England. Determined to become a mother, Stevie returns to London and has a baby on her own. When she gives birth to Ash, she finds motherhood painfully at odds with her former life and her expectations. She begins to wonder if having a child was a mistake, and what she might be willing to do to escape.

Everything changes for Kate, Moya and Romy when they receive word that Maeve Dillon, their mother, is critically ill. It is time to return from Dublin, London and New York to Rossmore and the old stone house overlooking the Irish Sea where they grew up. But ancient jealousies surface as each sister confronts the past and the decisions they have made.

January 1941: As Charlie Barton tiptoes silently out of the house one cold winter morning to go off and fight for his country, his wife, Audrey, is left to run the family bakery on her own. Times are tougher than ever, but at the Barton Bakery in Bournemouth, Audrey is determined as always to serve the town with love, loaves and cakes, even as the town is reeling from the struggles of the Blitz. Audrey’s brother, William, has returned from battle with serious wounds. His fiancé, Elsie, is waiting for wedding bells, but William is a changed man, and will her hopes be in vain?

December 1940: All that Audrey Barton wants is her family together for Christmas. But the war changes everything.... The Barton family bakery in Bournemouth has been at the heart of the town for generations: Audrey and Charlie Barton have never been rich, but their bread and cakes – and their love and advice – have enriched the lives of others in the town for many years. When war breaks out, it doesn't take long for trouble to arrive on the bakery doorstep.

A woman running from her past rents a lonely cottage haunted by drowned lovers and the presence of the sea. Here - amongst the local writers and conservationists, the Aborigines, fishermen, ferals and drifters - Jessica Sorensen almost loses her life and then remakes it. In this haunted and haunting story, Dorothy Hewett has written a novel about love and loss and the endless drift of the tides.

For Tom, a counsellor struggling to rebuild his emotional life after the breakdown of his marriage, the suburbs are his world. His neighbours in Winter Close are his 'people', a kind of twenty-first century tribe. Tom, however, has a weakness for jumping to dramatic conclusions about his neighbours' relationships with each other and with him. Although he's often wrong, the truth is even more engrossing than his fantasies.

Those who are familiar with the Angel Mountain Saga series will find some characters and settings that they know and love; but this story ranges far more widely, leaving West Wales behind and taking in episodes set in the industrial districts of Merthyr Tydfil, and in Paris. It is a strange story of an elderly lady who calls herself Susanna Ravenhill and who lives far more dangerously than is recommended for someone of her age. She has a dark secret to hide and she is pursued relentlessly by a group of armed men. One day they will catch up with her....

As the sun rose higher in the sky there was nothing to suggest that 23rd July 1932 was to be anything other than the most ordinary of days. But, for Grace Hardie, this one day changes everything. Grace Hardie has been happy in her family home of Greystones. Alongside her mother and brother, she lives a quiet life of sculpting. But her beloved Greystones is beginning to show signs of neglect. Unable to afford the maintenance of the sprawling estate, Grace begins to worry about who will care for her birthright when she’s gone.

Grace Hardie has grown up in a sweeping estate on the outskirts of Oxford. But her life has been a far cry from a fairytale. Ailing and asthmatic as a child, she never really found her place - not with her brothers, not with any friends - always on the outside. And when tragedy strikes twice in the same day, Grace’s world, and her place in it, is turned upside down. Ungainly and lonely at 16, could the bloom of first love be the guiding light she needs?

Hailed by the critics as a masterpiece, Tatty is a devastating yet hilarious depiction of a troubled Dublin family, told through the lively, charismatic voice of a little girl over a 10-year period. During this time we see the destruction brought about by alcoholism as one little girl tries to come to terms with her parents’ drinking. Chapter by chapter, the child’s voice matures and her perception becomes more honed; we are left with a stunning portrait of a disintegrating family and the child lost within it.