Showing results by narrator "Julia Franklin" in All Categories

Actress Enora Andressen is facing the perfect storm. Her favourite French director, Remy Despret, has lost his touch and is keeping dangerous company. Her agent, Rosa, has been seduced by a kiss-and-tell novel of doubtful provenance. While H, sicker by the day at home at Flixcombe Manor, is battling both Long Covid and something far darker. Devoting herself to H, Enora needs good news, and it arrives in the shape of a fascinating Remy idea based on Flixcombe's role during the Second World War.

In 1851, Joshua Browning sets off to join the Californian gold rush, leaving his wife and twin sons behind to run Hatherton Farm. Squire Cameron Marshall soon plots a way to regain the few acres of land, which he believes are rightfully his. Gracie Browning soon finds herself at the mercy of the unscrupulous Squire. For the sake of her cherished sons, Gracie is compelled to make some huge sacrifices. With no alternative than to flee from their homeland, a terrible catastrophe inflicts a momentous change to the Browning family.

The world is struggling in the face of a relentless virus. When Hayden Prentice develops symptoms during a stay in his native Portsmouth, Enora Andressen and her son, Malo, must do their best to save his life. Because H, already in deep financial jeopardy, trusts no one. Except his kith and kin. But survival comes at a savage price. Not just the fortune that Enora must somehow raise to pay for his home nursing, but the murderous attentions of a stalker from H's past, determined to pay him one last visit and exact vengeance for a long-ago debt of blood....

Written in the form of two letters, 'Dear Mr. Editor...' showcases Christianna Brand’s skill for crafting inventive plots with a limited cast of characters. In this story, a woman receives a letter from an editor requesting a submission for an anthology of horror stories. Keen to provide an original piece, she plans to kill her sister for the perfect plot.

Written in 1905, this is Vernon Lee’s final genuinely weird tale, and it tells the 18th-century legend of Sister Benvenuta, a nun who wrote letters to a model of infant Christ. Whilst unexpectedly funny in places, this short story has dark undertones.

The return of the veiled lady to Chilcote Priory fills Mrs Peterson with dread. The ghostly apparition was too rare for them to accept the house is haunted, and they had managed to brush it under the carpet, but when it scares their latest maid senseless, Mrs Peterson thinks the ghostly visitor has a message this time.

Amelia is constantly overshadowed by her beautiful cousin, Ernestine. When two men both fall for Ernestine, they dare each other to stay in an ominous vine-covered pavilion, and it is up to Amelia to come to the rescue in this eerie feminist tale.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is known for her themes of female entrapment and patriarchal control, and she gives this a Gothic twist in "The Giant Wistaria". A wealthy young couple and their friends rent a manor house, excited by the prospect that it’s haunted, and they are not disappointed when they all experience the same vivid dream.

A spate of robberies targetting elderly women is disturbing enough, but especially so in a town as peaceful and sedate as Leek. Then one attack turns to murder, and Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy is called to the eerily named Spite Hall. For the body on Nan Lawrance has been found bludgeoned to death, lying over the tapestry she was in the process of embroidering. But what could have made the robbers move from simple theft to murder?

Mirepoix, France. Summer 1981. In a small village in southern France, a wilful English girl is falling in love. Frances Langley has fallen under Benoit's romantic spell, and their summer of love finds Frances willing to do almost anything for the handsome art collector, even hiding a precious Klinkosch box for him, stolen by the Nazis decades before. England. Summer 2022. Years later, Frances' son, Harry, finds himself packing up the clutter and chaos of his late mother's home.

July 1914. Britain is in turmoil as WW1 begins to change the world. While the young men disappear off to foreign battlefields, the women left at home throw themselves into jobs meant for the boys. Hiding her privileged background and her suffragette past, Constance Copeland signs up to be a Clippie on the trams in Staffordshire, despite her parents' disapproval. Constance, known as Connie, soon makes fast friends with lively fellow Clippies, Betty and Jean, as well as growing closer to the charming, gentle Inspector Robert Caldwell.

1919. WWI is over, and now living in Cambridge with husband Edmond, Amy Derwent is settling into her new life as wife and mother. Edmond's cousin, Vicky, spends her days tending to the soldiers suffering the after-effects of their time on the battlefield. Meeting Maxim Duclos, a young Frenchman, fills her heart with joy. But he’s hiding something. Vicky must choose to either follow her heart's desire and risk her family's disapproval or remain a dutiful daughter?

Actress Enora Andressen is catching up with her ex-neighbour, Evelyn Warlock, who's recently retired to the comely East Devon seaside town of Budleigh Salterton. The peace, the friendship of strangers and the town's prestigious literary festival...Evelyn loves them all. Until the September evening when her French neighbour, Christianne Beaucarne, disappears. Enora has met this woman. The two of them have bonded. But what Enora discovers over the anguished months to come will put sleepy Budleigh Salterton on the front page of every newspaper in the land.

Tells the story of the married life of Nevis Falconer, a young woman novelist, and Simon Quinn. Temperamentally unsuited, they live this superficial existence for three years, until one day Nevis meets Marcus Chard, her American publisher, who has just arrived in London. Soon friendship develops into love. Nevis finds herself caught in a whirl of circumstances over which she has no control.

The book opens with Neville celebrating her 43rd birthday and contemplating middle age now that her children are grown. Her mother, in her 60s, seeks answers to her melancholy in Freudianism. Her sister, Nan, a writer who has hitherto led a single and carefree life in London, experiences the loss of love and with it her plan for the future. And Neville's principled daughter, Gerda, who is determined not to follow her mother's generation into the institute of marriage, finds herself at an impasse with the man she loves.

Who was John Lewis? What story lies behind the retail empire that bears his name? Behind the glass windows and displays of soft furnishing, this book reveals the family that founded the shops in all their eccentricities, and whose relationships became blighted by conflicts of epic proportions as their wealth bloomed.

She dislikes her children, detests her ex-husband and despises her colleagues. When her mother dies, Roberta is left with a pile of letters and a mystery surrounding her son. The letters reveal Roberta’s heritage is not what it seems, and she is soon on a mission to become a better person. Told with humour and emotion, this is the tale of one woman’s journey to find out where she came from. As she looks to the past for answers, more questions are raised. Will Roberta discover whom she really is?

When Bea Hanlon follows her preacher husband, Max, to a remote island in the Pacific, she soon sees that their mission will bring anything but salvation.... Advent Island is a place beyond the reaches of Bea's most fitful imaginings. It's not just the rats and the hordes of mosquitoes and the weevils in the powdered milk. Past the confines of their stuffy little house, amidst the damp and the dust and the sweltering heat, rumours are spreading of devil chasers who roam the island on the hunt for evil spirits. And then there are the noises from the church at night.

Leanne and her teenage daughter, Abby, have recently been forced to move from London back to Kesterley-on-Sea, to Ash Morley Farm, where Leanne grew up. Leanne's husband Jack, Abby's father, killed himself over a year ago, and the pair are still reeling from the shock waves caused by the tragedy. Also living at Ash Morley farm is Leanne's mother, Wilkie, who is a rock for everyone, and family friend Klaudia and her two children.

When she receives a wedding invitation from one of her former patients, forensic psychiatrist Dr Claire Roget is more than a little alarmed. Highly intelligent and manipulative, Jerome Barclay suffers from a severe personality disorder. Although she has never been able to prove it, Claire believes him to be highly dangerous, responsible for at least three suspicious deaths - and she fears for the safety of his new bride.