Showing results by narrator "Anne Dover" in All Categories

The choice was hers - fame and fortune or true love. Poppy Mazzini, born in Hull over her father's grocery shop, lives up to the promise of her fiery red hair and Italian ancestry. Her lovely singing voice and good looks lead her to her great ambition - to go on the stage and see her name top of...

1939. The threat of war is looming over Blackpool, but Martha and Trisha are determined not to let it dampen their spirits. With two young evacuees for Martha to take care of, and Trisha's market garden business growing as Britain digs for victory, the friends have their hands full. Both are proud to see their daughters making their own way in the world, even in wartime. Sally has become a ballerina and Bonnie is training to become a doctor. The girls' friendship brings them all happiness and hope. But Martha is troubled by her visions for their daughters' futures.

Heartbreak and family loyalty collide in Rita Bradshaw's number one bestselling Dancing in the Moonlight, read by actress Anne Dover. As her mother lies dying, twelve-year-old Lucy Fallow promises to look after her younger siblings and keep house for her father and two older brothers. Over the...

After the death of her mother during childbirth, Beth is left to care for her father and two older brothers. When she discovers that she is pregnant, she leaves the family home in a Yorkshire mill town to live with her aunt. A tragic accident leaves her in the colourful world of the Romany Gypsies, where she gives birth to her son, Joshua. She keeps his birth secret, but when he is falsely accused of murder many years later, she is forced to reveal her secrets to save him from the hangman’s noose.

Brought to you by Penguin. The festive follow-up to The Rose Queen, from beloved Sunday Times bestselling author Katie Flynn... Liverpool, 1941: After German bombs shatter the life Cadi has built for herself in Liverpool, she is more determined than ever to sign up and do her bit. Joining the...

A moving Yorkshire saga, The Windfell Family Secrets is the much anticipated follow up to Diane Allen's The Mistress of Windfell Manor. Twenty-one years have passed since Charlotte Booth fought to keep Ferndale Mill and her home at Windfell Manor following her traumatic first marriage. Now...

Charlotte Booth loves her father and the home they share, which is set high up in the limestone escarpments of Crummockdale. But when a new businessman in the form of Joseph Dawson enters their lives, both Charlotte and her father decide he's the man for her and, within six months, Charlotte...

Brought to you by Penguin. At only thirteen, Mikey Quinn is arrested for stealing a rabbit to feed his family. Despite his age, he's shown no mercy by the wealthy lawyer who sends him to prison. He returns home to find that his mother has died and his younger siblings taken into the workhouse...

Emmy Dickens lives with her widowed mother in a neat house in neglected Nightingale Court, but Mrs Dickens has always impressed upon her daughter that her main aim in life must be to escape from the court. Emmy sees that marriage is her best way out, and when Peter Wesley, First Officer aboard a cruise ship, asks her to marry him, she is over the moon. Life goes well for the newlyweds; they set up home and start a family. But when Peter is killed and Emmy is left almost penniless, her problems begin....

Mum always knows best… The stunning debut for fans of Celia Imrie and Dawn French. Meet the daughters of Iris Parker. Dee; sensitive and big-hearted; Rose uptight and controlled and Fleur the reckless free spirit. At the reading of their mother’s will, the three estranged women are aghast to...

Can two friends find hope in hard times? Ruby and Grace have grown up in the poorest slums of Hull. Friends since early childhood, they have supported each other in bad times and good. But their families are bound together by more than friendship, and secrets from the past threaten to make their lives even more difficult. The local cotton mill has provided work for Ruby and Grace since they were nine years old, and now, years later, both girls find themselves the objects of attention from the mill owner's sons.

1943, Hampshire. Pixie Saunders is 19 and employed in the local armaments factory. Not for the first time, her mother has run off with a dodgy-looking bloke, leaving Pixie to pay the rent and fend for herself. Pixie, along with her best friend, Rita; Em, the factory overseer; and the rest of the girls are making the most of the war while trying to stay alive. The work is dangerous and the hours long, but in the evenings they take off their overalls and go to the pub or, better still, go dancing.

Set on the wild moors of West Yorkshire, The Girl from the Tanner's Yard by Diane Allen is a moving family drama about a girl who rises to prosperity from humble beginnings. After facing the horrors of the Crimean War, Adam Brooksbank returns to Black Moss Farm filled with regret over the path...

Holderness, 1846.For reliable, thirteen-year-old Bella, life isn’t turning out quite as she’d hoped. She lives at the Woodman Inn – an ancient hostelry run by her family in the Yorkshire countryside – surrounded by two older brothers who never pull their weight and a flighty younger sister. When Bella learns not only that her father is seriously ill, but that her mother is expecting a fifth child, her dreams of leaving home to become a schoolteacher are quickly dashed.

For Amelia and her brothers and sisters, the grim past which their mother, Emily, had endured seemed very far away. As pretty as a picture and now learning to be a teacher in York, Amelia looked forward with pleasure to becoming acquainted with the young men clamouring to get to know her, and especially the two gentlemen who had come all the way from Australia to meet her family. Ralph Hawkins, bringing with him his friend Jack - a handsome half-aboriginal Australian who was determined to make a good living for himself - arrived in Hull looking for his roots.

1273. Arriving in Byzantium, physician Anna Zarides resolves to prove the innocence of her brother, now in exile for conspiring to kill a nobleman. Unable to move freely in society as a woman, Anna must pose as a Eunuch and use her medical skills to manoeuvre close to the players involved in her brother’s fate. But time to find the truth is running out. A crusade to capture the Holy Land is brewing, and leaders have set their sights on Constantinople.

When Helga Schneider was four, her mother, Traudi, abandoned her to pursue her career. In 1998, Helga received a letter asking her to visit Traudi, now 90-years old, before she dies. Mother and daughter have met only once after Traudi left, on a disastrous visit where Helga first learnt the...

Sing As We Go is a heart-rending wartime novel from the much-loved author of The Clippie Girls, Margaret Dickinson. Kathy Burton longs to escape the drudgery of her life as an unpaid labourer on her father's farm. With only the local church choir and the occasional dance at the village hall for...

It is 1907. Liverpool is a bustling and busy city. Sisters Livvie and Amy Goodwin are just 16 and 13 years old when their adored mother dies in childbirth. They are still missing their mum every day when their father, Thomas, announces that he is going to marry again. His new bride is Mary Fitzgerald, a girl just a few years older than Livvie, and only time will tell whether Mary will be the kind of stepmother a motherless girl could love. There's more trouble ahead, for Thomas believes that he should make all the important decisions in his daughters' lives.

A story from Night in the Front Line, a collection of Second World War short stories. One of Elizabeth Bowen’s most well-known stories, The Demon Lover sees Mrs Drover return to her abandoned London home, her family having settled into evacuated life in the countryside, to find a letter waiting for her.