Showing results by publisher "Little, Brown Audio" in Historical Fiction

The county of Barsetshire is aflutter with preparations. With the wedding of Lucy Marling and Sam Adams fast approaching, and Lucy's brother Oliver brooding over his ill-fated tendre for glamorous Jessica Dean, Mrs Marling calls for reinforcements. Help arrives in the form of charming writer Isabel Dale, still mourning the loss of her fiancé on D-Day - who might just be the cure for a bruised heart.

Cornish farmer Joseph Moyle's loyalty to the crown goes well rewarded - his stepson Ralf is appointed page to the future Charles II. And when Ralf takes up his post, Britain is in the midst of its most tumultuous period ever - the war between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians and the dawning of an entirely new era...Ralf's duties oblige him to follow the heir to the throne through the western counties, where he experiences not only court intrigue and the constant threat of Cromwell's armies, but also romance.

Blackpool, 1922. Martha and Trisha may have escaped poverty, but their fortunes have yet to turn. Happy on her wedding day, Trisha's new fairy-tale romance soon darkens as her husband, Walter, keeps her at arms length. Between his secrecy, and her mother-in-law's coldness, Trisha feels a stranger in her own home, and lonelier than ever. Meanwhile a spectre from Martha's past threatens the happiness she has found with Joshua and Bonnie. When she is called to help in her past love's hour of need, she must decide whether to risk exposing a secret that could cost her the trust of her daughter.

Durraghglass is a beautiful mansion in Southern Ireland, now crumbling in neglect. The time is the present - a present that churns with the bizarre passions of its owners' past. The Swifts - three sisters of marked eccentricity, defiantly christened April, May and Baby June, and their only brother, one-eyed Jasper - have little in common, save vivid memories of darling Mummy, and a long lost youth peculiarly prone to acts of treachery.

Two women. One secret. A heart-breaking choice. Skye, 1903. Jessie, the young daughter of a local midwife, is determined to become a nurse one day, but family loss and heartache jeopardise her dreams. Isabel, the doctor's daughter, is planning to follow in her father's footsteps - even though medicine is not considered a fitting career for a woman. And then there's Archie, Jessie's older brother, whom Isabel just can't stay away from. After an unsettling encounter in the woods, Archie disappears, and all their lives are irrevocably changed...

At age fourteen, Princess Salome knows she will soon be ready for marriage - one that will satisfy the ambitions of her mother Herodias. But it is Herodias's own sudden remarriage that will change Salome's life in a way she did not expect. Uprooted to Judea, Salome finds herself in a land full of strange people - none more so than the prophet John 'the Baptiser', who condemns her mother and stepfather for their respective divorces. When John is imprisoned for inciting rebellion, Herodias forces Salome to ask for his head as a gift for her dancing.

Singapore is agog with the news of King Edward VIII's abdication to marry American heiress Wallis Simpson. Chen Su Lin, now Chief Inspector Le Froy's secretarial assistant in Singapore's newly formed detective unit, still dreams of becoming a journalist and hopes to cover the story when the Hon Victor Glossop announces he is marrying an American widow of his own, Mrs Nicole Covington, in the colony. But things go horribly wrong when Victor Glossop is found dead, his body covered in bizarre symbols and soaked in betel nut juice.

Behind every myth there is a spark of truth.... There's nothing special about Ben Garston. Or so he'd have you believe. He won't tell you, for instance, that he's also known as Red Ben. Or that the world of myth and legend is more real than you think. Because it's his job to keep all that a secret. But now a centuries-old rivalry has resurfaced, and the delicate balance between his world and ours is about to be shattered.

Mirza, a secretive neighbour of the Chens in Japanese Occupied Singapore, is a known collaborator and blackmailer. So when he is murdered in his garden, clutching a branch of mimosa, the suspects include local acquaintances, Japanese officials - and his own daughters. Su Lin's Uncle Chen is among those rounded up by the Japanese as reprisal. Hideki Tagawa, a former spy expelled by Police Officer Le Froy and a power in the new regime, offers Su Lin her uncle's life in exchange for using her fluency in languages and knowledge of locals to find the real killer.

After escaping the grip of the workhouse, Lily has kept her fiancé's business afloat while he is away fighting on the Western Front. Still battling on, she's now doing her bit for her country as an auxiliary nurse - but one thing above all else continues to weigh heavily on her heart: her long-lost sister. Born just before her mother died, the scandal was hushed-up and the baby spirited away. But now, at last, there is hope Lily could find her little sister for she has a clue to go on: the name of the notorious baby farmer who bought the child all those years ago. Mrs Jolley.

It is 1856. When three men are murdered in Cornwall, Amos Hawke, a Cornish detective working from London's Scotland Yard, is sent to investigate. He finds lodgings with one of the murdered men's wives - and her daughter, Talwyn. But while Amos's relationship with Talwyn gets off to a bad start, she is to prove crucial in helping him bring her father's killers to justice. A wonderful tale from a master storyteller, Though the Heavens May Fall has its heart and soul in the lore and landscape of Cornwall.

Tawcester Towers, the family seat of the Lyminster family, has suffered an unwelcome injection of distant cousins - so distant that they aren't even British! Count Igor and Count Lyudmilla Bashusky had to flee Russia after the Revolution and have spent the intervening years building up debts in the hotels of Europe's capitals and sponging off ever more exasperated (and distant) relatives.

In 1824, Lyme Regis is as tumultuous as the sea that surrounds it. When twenty-four-year-old Ada Winters - poor, peculiar and brilliant - uncovers a set of unusual fossils on the cliffs, she believes she has found the answer to her scientific frustrations and her family's financial struggles. Meanwhile, Doctor Edwin Moyle has come to Dorset in search of the discovery that will place him amongst the greatest geologists of the age. What he finds instead is a strange young woman who seems to hold the key to everything he desires.

Summoned to the riverside by the desperate, scribbled note of an old friend, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain find themselves on board the seamen's floating hospital, an old hulk known only as The Blood, where prejudice, ambition and murder seethe beneath a veneer of medical respectability. Onshore, a young woman, a known prostitute, is found drowned in a derelict boatyard. A man leaps to his death into the Thames, driven mad by poison and fear. The events are linked - but how?

After fleeing her divided Dutch homeland, Jannekyn van der Hest comes to Colchester, Essex, looking to make a new life for herself. Though she seeks comfort and community, she finds herself at the mercy of her cruel uncle, who condemns her to a demeaning life as a kitchen maid. As she struggles to regain her independence and make a life for herself in the cloth trade, Jannekyn will need all the courage and resourcefulness she possesses - especially when she falls in love with an Englishman, whose arrival turns Jannekyn's world upside down.

Cornwall, 1911. Freya Penhaligon is eagerly awaiting the return of her beau, the historian Tristan MacKenzie, but the surprise arrival of her mother on the same coach brings uneasiness and suspicion to more than the Penhaligon family. When Tristan proposes marriage to Freya it feels like the beginning of a new life for her and an excuse to shake off their troubled past; but not all his family are pleased with the news, and Freya finds herself viewed with hostility and mistrust.

Hyderabad, India. 1798. Beatrice Sinclair, a grieving young widow facing financial destitution, has travelled from Hampshire to Hyderabad to visit her brother, an employee of the British East India Company. There, she is astonished to discover that he has married a beautiful Indian girl and lives with his wife's extended family in a dilapidated palace, the Jahanara Mahal - famed for the theft of a fabled diamond many years ago. As an outsider in an unfamiliar world, Bee faces many challenges - not least of all building a new and meaningful life after the heartbreak she has endured.

1914. Mining engineer Tommy Birch goes off to war, leaving his new wife, Rita, behind in Pontefract. On the front line, Tommy runs afoul of a German mine and is reported as missing, presumed deceased by his fellow soldiers. But Tommy isn't dead. Found behind enemy lines, wearing only a pair of boots stolen from a dead German, Tommy is picked up by the enemy, who believe him to be one of their own.

Orphaned and destitute, will Grace find her own way in the world? When Grace's Ma passes away and her Da's ship sinks with all hands, Grace is utterly alone in the world. She's sent to an orphanage in Blackpool, but the master has an eye for a pretty young lass. Grace won't be his victim, so she runs, destitute, into the night. In Blackpool, she finds a home with the kindly Sheila and Peggy - and meets a lovely airman. But it's 1938, and war is on the horizon. Will Grace ever find the happiness and home she deserves?

The stirring second instalment in Terri Nixon's Penhaligon Saga series. 1910. Anna Garvey and her daughter are still running the Tin Streamer's Arms in Caernoweth, Cornwall, and it finally seems like she has left her tumultuous history behind in Ireland. Meanwhile, Freya Penhaligon has blossomed and is now the object of increasing affection of Hugh, the elder son of the wealthy Batten family.