Showing results by narrator "Penelope Rawlins" in All Categories

Fen was a good guy pretty much his entire life up until the day he died. After his death, Fen woke up in a strange place without any memory of himself or the events that led to his death. This new place was unlike anything he’d seen on Earth, but that wasn’t his biggest problem. Fen’s biggest problem was the sword at his neck and the big man asking him to tell the truth. But telling the truth seemed wrong, out of place. Lying seemed like the easiest and fastest way to keep his head. So he lied.

Discover the inspiring story of Marie Curie—the scientist who made more than one world-changing discovery, and the first woman to win a Nobel prize—in this fascinating kids' biography. Born to poor school teachers at a time when women could not attend university in her home country of Poland, Marie Curie sought out an underground university and worked hard to save money for further study in Paris. She made it to France, and continued to dedicate herself to science once she had graduated.

Life never stays still for long on Big Sky Mountain. Rosa and Grandma Nan are off on an adventure to Toe-Dipper Bay, to see who's in trouble—a distress flare has gone up! When they arrive they find the beach covered in plastic rubbish, and a family of beach otters farming seaweed, while doing their best to tidy up. Rosa and Grandma Nan join in, but they have to find out who sent the distress flare—because who is that out wrecked out at sea? Rosa and Grandma Nan will need the otters' help to build a raft to get out there....

When Andy's school announces a new no-uniform policy, her classmates are over the moon—but her heart sinks. All she wants is to dress like everyone else. However, her mum's the owner of a run-down kooky vintage boutique, so she's bound to look—well—different. But when Andy finds a gorgeous bag full of designer goodies in the shop's storeroom, everything changes. Can she learn to love vintage and help transform her mum's shop into something truly special?

Scarlett's blog has found success beyond her wildest dreams. A TV show is on the cards, and the Secret Cooking Club has several new members. What's more, her mum is getting married and Scarlett is baking the wedding cake. Everything is perfect...or is it? Her estranged dad arrives in town unannounced, and Scarlett's friends say fame has gone to her head. As the wedding approaches, she has much more on her mind than the perfect bake.

Twelve-year-old Scarlett is the star and victim of her mum's popular blog - the butt of school jokes, she's eager to stay firmly out of the spotlight. But one evening, she finds a gorgeous kitchen in the house next door, left empty by an elderly neighbour in hospital. As Scarlett bakes, she starts to transform her life, discovering new friends and forming the Secret Cooking Club.

There is never a dull day on Big Sky Mountain! Rain or shine, there is always something that needs doing. Rosa and Grandma Nan are busy building a bigger cabin when a storm strikes and a host of animals descend for shelter. There is one unexpected visitor: a tiny wolf cub. This little wolf doesn't seem like the scary, giant-fanged forest wolves that Rosa has heard about! Can the cub really be part of their pack? Rosa and Grandma Nan set off into the forest to find out.

Kate, a young woman newly arrived from London, is determined to become the kind of person who is up for it and down for it - and not remotely troubled over how those two semantically opposed phrases could have come to mean the same thing. In the sweltering city, she encounters Bill, a once-lauded now booze-sodden novelist, and Inez, his teenage daughter who makes extra cash catering to the sexual fantasies of men she has met online - and falls into a complex infatuation with them both.

Bella's new next-door neighbour is Magda. Magda is lots of fun, and soon they are best friends. But Magda is also trouble! She breaks Bella's mum's best tea set, wrecks Bella's room and covers the living room in soot. And in Trouble at School, on Bella's first day at her new school she already has a best friend - or frenemy! - Magda! Bella wants to make a good impression, but with Magda around, things don't always go according to plan.

Daisy Miller is a young American girl travelling Europe with her mother and younger brother. While in Vevey, Switzerland, she becomes acquainted with Frederick Winterbourne, an idle expatriate, of well-to-do Americans. Winterbourne, who observes and critiques young Daisy through their brief acquaintanceship, is infatuated with her irreverent behavior. Daisy flaunts society's rules and uncompromising standards; she is charming, spontaneous, and unpretentious, and her audacity shocks the Europeans, who consider her an uncultivated flirt. The sophisticated Winterbourne remains smitten with Daisy, but his classical values stand in his way.

Princess Ellie is pony-mad! So when top designer Lord Leo arrives to give the palace a makeover, Ellie quickly escapes to the stables to avoid all the fuss. But she soon discovers that there's something strange about Lord Leo, and she suspects there's more to his plans than meets the eye. Can her pony, Starlight, help Ellie uncover the palace plot?    

Victoria woke one morning at the age of 18 to discover that her uncle had died and that she was now queen. She went on to rule for 63 years, with an influence so far-reaching that the decades of her reign now bear her name - the Victorian period. Victoria is filled with the exciting comings and goings of royal life: intrigue and innuendo, scheming advisors, and assassination attempts - not to mention plenty of passion and discord.

To her friends, Amber leads the perfect life with her successful marriage, her powerful job in London and her immaculate style. But as more of her friends fall pregnant, and her best friend, Dylan, announces his decision to adopt a baby with his gay lover, Amber's carefully structured world begins to fall apart. Intricately crafted and sensually evocative, Something I'm Not is a sharp, contemporary novel that discusses the way the psychological scars of the past pass through the generations of a family.

What sort of mother would leave her all alone? A gripping and heart-wrenching domestic drama that won't let you go. Lily, who is almost three years old, wakes up alone at home with only her cuddly toy for company. She is afraid of the dark, can't use the phone and has been told never to open the door to strangers. But why is Lily alone, and why isn't there anyone who can help her? What about the lonely old woman in the flat below who wonders at the cries from the floor above? Or the grandmother who no longer sees Lily since her parents split up?

At 23 Alice Hare leaves England for New York. She becomes fixated on Mizuko Himura, a Japanese writer living in New York, whose life story has strange parallels to her own and whom she believes is her "Internet twin". What seems to Mizuko like a chance encounter with Alice is anything but - after all, in the age of connectivity, nothing is coincidence. Their subsequent relationship is doomed from the outset, exposing a tangle of lies and sexual encounters as three families across the globe collide.

The heart-stopping new thriller in the Ren Bryce series by Alex Barclay, bestselling author of DARKHOUSE and KILLING WAYS. When Special Agent Ren Bryce is called to Tate, Oregon to investigate the disappearance of twelve-year-old Caleb Veir, she finds a town already in mourning. Two other young...

Isabel Murrow is precariously balancing her career and her family. Hard-working and caring, worried but supportive, all Isobel wants, in a perilous world of bullies and temptations, is to keep her daughter Phoebe safe. Phoebe has just attempted suicide. She says it is Isabel's fault. Saving Phoebe Murrow is a timely tale about an age-old problem - how best to raise our children, and how far to go in keeping them from harm.

This Christmas a little dog is in for a BIG adventure… Meet Claude. He’s a loveable, big-eared, permanently hungry French Bulldog, who loves his humans – the McCawley family of number 11 Maple Drive to be precise. When Daisy and Oliver McCawley start using new words like, ‘ferry’...

‘Shocking, tender and funny… as gripping as a thriller’ Miranda Sawyer Mind-boggling, heart-rending and darkly comic, this is the full story for the first time, from the writer of the Guardian column Midlife Exwife…. When her husband fell in love with someone else, Stella Grey thought...

Sophia Beaumont-Brown was an 'it' girl. But now she's in the papers for all the wrong reasons. She's single, sofa surfing and not speaking to her family; only her grandmother has any faith left in her. From her hospital bed, Tilly Beaumont sends Sophia letters about her life: dispatches about wartime England, about family secrets and, finally, about the most beautiful thing she ever owned - a necklace of the most incredible pearls. If Sophia's prepared to listen, she'll unlock the secret story of generations of incredible women.