Showing results by narrator "Julia Franklin" in All Categories

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.

Carrie Tollman awakes in the middle of the night with an intruder gazing down at her. He tells her he's killed before and he'll kill again. One word about what's happened, and he'll be back. Carrie is one of two carers looking after Enora Andressen's favorite scriptwriter. But Pavel is now paralysed, as well as blind, and it falls to Enora to track down this terrifying presence at Carrie's bedside.

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.

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.

These are the facts I collect. My son, Gabriel, met a woman called Mariela in a bar. She went home with him, where they had sex. They next morning she was found in an allotment. Mariela is dead. Gabriel has been asked to report to Camden Police station in six hours for questioning.

What's an editor to do with so many demands? Do you deal with the morning's pile of manuscript submissions first? Or do you concentrate on your ex-lover, whose business partner has just been found dead in their art gallery, slumped over his desk with a gun in his hand? It's another day at Timmins & Ross publishing house, but when sharp-tongued editor Samantha Clair's CID boyfriend is brought in to investigate Frank Compton's death, her loyalties become stretched.

Usually sharp-witted editor Sam Clair stumbles through her post-launch-party morning with the hangover to end all hangovers. Before the Nurofen has even kicked in, she finds herself entangled in an elaborate saga of missing neighbours, suspected arson and the odd unidentified body. When the grisly news breaks that the fire has claimed a victim, Sam is already in pursuit. Never has comedy been so deadly as Sam faces down a pair from Thugs "R" Us, aided by nothing more than a CID boyfriend, a stalwart Goth assistant and a seemingly endless supply of broccoli.

In Minor Key, John Harvey returns to his old favourites - DI Resnick, jazz and Nottingham - explaining why they interest him before launching into a set of stories, hitherto uncollected. Unsurprisingly, jazz, Resnick and Nottingham feature. This limited edition collection ends with a set of John Harvey's poems about jazz.

Anna Grayson has been a dutiful daughter her whole life, but her world is transformed when she meets the lively Mitchell sisters, employees in her father's factory, who awaken her interest in the women's suffrage movement. This new world of excitement and freedom comes with risks. No longer protected by her father, Anna is forced to grow up quickly when tragedy strikes at a rally and Lily Mitchell is knocked down by a motorcar and killed.

In this small but perfectly formed collection of supernatural short stories, Sophie Hannah takes the comforting scenes of everyday life and imbues them with a frisson of fear, then a gust of terror. Why is a young woman so unnerved by the presence of a visitors book in her boyfriend's inner-city home? And whose spidery handwriting is it that fills the pages?

Temperance Marston longs to escape England and explore the exotic empire of Japan. When offered the chance to accompany her cousin and Captain Noordholt on an expedition to Nagasaki, she jumps at the opportunity. On a foolhardy venture, she meets Kazuo. Kazuo is fascinated by her blond hair and blue eyes, but he has a mission to complete: Kazuo must restore his family's honour.

Newly retired Philip returns home to Cologne and is thrown into emotional turmoil upon bumping into his long-lost sweetheart. In the midst of a domestic crisis, Ricarda confides in Philip that she is looking for somewhere to live. And there and then, Philip suggests that she move in with him - he is setting up a flatshare. Will she join him with his mischievous dachshund named Ralf?

Ataxerxes, king of Persia, needed a wife. This powerful warrior lord picked the one girl who would have given anything to have been passed over - a Jewish scholar, Esther, from the back streets of his capital, Shushan. To a king bored by the chattering of women wreathed in musky scents, this changeling was a breath of fresh air. But the new queen of Persia was lost in a world of protocol and soon lost her husband;s favour.

It is almost a year since Sean and Thea met, and it's been a roller-coaster ride: they're getting married on Christmas Day! Neither Thea nor Sean wants a big fuss - a simple wedding, with Christmas lights and just a few sprigs of mistletoe for decoration is all they need. But before they know it, things begin to get complicated.

Biographer Rona Parish has a new project - contributing a series for the local glossy magazine, Chiltern Life, documenting life-changing experiences from those who have lived through them. When her father suggests she speaks to his friend, Frank Hathaway, who was in Iraq during the invasion of Kuwait, Rona decides to pay him a visit. But Frank was also badly injured in a failed rescue attempt following a car crash the previous year and has been tormented by flashbacks ever since.

Lori Maddox chooses to spend the year after university travelling and visits China, where she finds casual work as a private English tutor. Back in Manchester her parents, Joanna and Tom, who separated when Lori was a toddler, follow her adventures on her blog. When Joanna and Tom hear nothing for weeks, they become increasingly concerned and travel out to Chengdu in search of their daughter.

A sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves. At its centre is Monica Johnson, cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner, and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Intertwined with her modern narrative is the ragged childhood of Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff, the antihero of Wuthering Heights and one of literature’s most enigmatic lost boys.

When a minor adventure up the spire of Salisbury Cathedral makes Günter Glass a local celebrity, John Blades - window-cleaner to the stars - comes calling. He wants Günter to join him in London to clean Europe's tallest skyscraper, the newly constructed Shard in London Bridge. Günter soon finds himself among the bright lights of London but will his innocence put him on a collision course with the frequently baffling modern world?