Showing results by narrator "Imogen Church" in All Categories

I had been so excited for our big New Year's Eve party. Hosting with my best friend Alice and our two beautiful boys - my Leo and her Robbie, who had grown up together like brothers. But then I heard the terrible crash. I remember the flashing lights of the ambulance and how everyone then turned on Leo. Saying that Robbie was dead because of my son. The boys had argued, but Leo still won't tell me why. I know he's keeping a secret from me. I need to find out the truth, need to clear the name of my darling boy before something terrible happens to him, too.

When three little girls—Anna, Bernie, and Elica—make a pact to be blood sisters for life, they believe nothing can come between them. Anna is from an affluent Jewish family, while Bernie and Elica are from poor Austrian families who barely make ends meet. As they get older, their social differences become all too real. With infectious Jew-hate-laden rhetoric from Nazi Germany spreading into Austria, it is only a matter of time before their bond of friendship gets severely tested.

Anna has found solace and love in the colorful Romany camp. How long will this last under the watchful eye of a spurned and obsessed Nazi? In the unrelenting grimness of Ravensbrück, Moriah is caught in the web of Dagna's deadly ambition and schemes. Her chances for survival diminish with every passing moment. Shunned by society for the telling scar on her face, Elica struggles to live with the consequences of her selfish choices. Will she ever find love, redemption, or her son Theo, again?

1816. A massive volcanic eruption has caused the worst storms that Europe has seen in decades, yet Percy and Mary Shelley have chosen to visit the infamous Lord Byron at his villa on Lake Geneva. It wasn't their idea: Mary's eighteen-year-old step-sister, Claire Clairmont, insisted. But the reason for Claire's visit is more pressing than a summer escape with the most famous writers in the world. She's pregnant with Byron's child - a child Byron doesn't want, and scarcely believes is his own.

Junko is bad at athletics. Really bad. Other students laugh because they think she is small and weak. Then her teacher takes the class on a trip to a mountain. It’s bigger than any Junko’s ever seen, but she is determined to make it to the top. Ganbatte, her teacher tells her. Do your best. After that first trip, Junko becomes a mountaineer in body and spirit. She climbs snowy mountains, rocky mountains and even faraway mountains outside of her home country of Japan.

Sarah is the first person in her family who wasn’t born into slavery in Delta, Louisiana. But being free doesn’t mean that Sarah doesn’t have to work. She cooks, she cleans, she picks cotton, she does laundry and she babysits. And when she works, she wraps up her hair. One day, Sarah’s hair starts to fall out! It’s itchy, crunchy, patchy and won’t grow. Instead of giving up, Sarah searches for the right products. And then she invents something better than any shampoo or hair oil she’s used before.

When one of Nora Bunstruggle’s friends is murdered in cold blood, it sends the Coochie Hole burlesque club on Megalopolis into shock. It soon becomes clear that the police have zero interest in the death of a burlesque dancer. But what if the twisted killer strikes their troupe again? And who is going to exact justice for the victim’s now motherless child? Nora and the gang from the Coochie Hole realise that if they want to get to catch their faceless murderous foe, they are going to have to roll their sleeves up and kick some backsides themselves.

Twenty floors above the shimmering lights of the Hamburg docks, public prosecutor Chastity Riley is celebrating a birthday with friends in a hotel bar when 12 heavily armed men pull out guns and take everyone hostage. Among the hostages is Konrad Hoogsmart, the hotel owner, who is being targeted by a man whose life - and family - have been destroyed by Hoogsmart’s actions. With the police looking on from outside - their colleagues’ lives at stake - and Chastity on the inside, increasingly ill from sepsis, the stage is set for a dramatic confrontation.

Serial killer Neva has been conditioned not to ask questions of the mysterious Network, to remain perfectly incurious and perennially cold-blooded. She must simply execute the targets they text her and live to bury the tale. But then she’s tasked with terminating a fellow assassin and glimpses her own future in her colleague’s fate. When she leaves flowers on the gravesite, someone notices.

Sam Wylde has fought off Albanian gangsters and vindictive old friends to make it to Bali, hot on the heels of her ex-husband, Matt, and Jess, their daughter, whom he took without Sam’s permission. But a nasty surprise awaits her in paradise: Bojan. A Serbian thug she thought was dead, back to make her life a misery.

Shipwrecks are part of life in the remote village of Porthmorvoren, Cornwall. And as the sea washes the bodies of the drowned onto the beach, it also brings treasures: barrels of liquor, exotic fruit, the chance to lift a fine pair of boots from a corpse, maybe even a jewel or two. When, after a fierce storm, Mary Blight rescues a man half dead from the sea, she ignores the whispers of her neighbours and carries him home to nurse better. Gideon Stone is a Methodist minister from Newlyn, a married man.

Rebecca is 42, has a beautiful child and a wonderful husband. But she just hasn’t been feeling herself recently.... Rebecca thinks a great night out should involve a packet of Marlboros, six double vodkas and snogging a colleague. Not gormlessly drinking a zero-alcohol No-hito while Instagramming a vegan chicken wing. Rebecca wants to ride on a Harley-Davidson, crowd surf till dawn, then collapse in a heap after swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniels...not sit in a soul-destroying meeting surrounded by 'blue sky thinking' and men half her age who interrupt all the time.

It was meant to be Caitlin's perfect summer, but betrayed by her best friend and her boyfriend, she finds herself hitchhiking home alone, heartbroken, and penniless. When a smiling family pulls up on the roadside to help her on her way, she's relieved at first - they seem friendly, normal. And when they offer her a warm bed in their cottage for the night, she's grateful - it's not safe for young women travelling alone in the dark, and she's in no rush to get home, where she knows a grave secret is due to blow her family apart.

Jessamine Byron's life has fallen apart and she has no idea how to fix it. Her messy divorce has been splashed all over the tabloids, her mother is furious with her, and she's run away to go into hiding in the Scottish Highlands. Okay, so she's a countess and she's hiding in the family castle, but with even her personal assistant tormenting her and only her cat on her side, she still feels like she's hit rock bottom. So when she meets gardener Mac Douglas, who hasn't got a clue about her title or her past, she's relieved to introduce herself as just plain Jess.

When Sarah Roberts’s son, Oscar, was born, he was unexpectedly diagnosed with Down syndrome. Sarah had to rapidly come to terms with a new normal, as she suddenly found her life on a different path to the one she’d always hoped and believed she’d follow. For the Love of Oscar shares a mother’s real and very raw emotions as she comes to terms with that new path, in a story which is nevertheless both heart-warming and funny. Sarah writes candidly about the ups and downs not only of parenthood but also of parenting a child who just happens to have additional needs.

The tried and tested 'On This Day in History' format has elevated the stories of many people and their impact on the wider world. However, of those considered noteworthy by the Establishment, just a fraction are women. But this is not the whole story - not by half. Our past is full of influential women many of whom have been unfairly confined to the margins of history. Politicians, troublemakers, explorers, artists, writers, scientists and even the odd murderer; these women have shaped society around the globe.

Kit Pelham is a professional fan, interviewer, host of the podcast The First Cult is the Deepest, and occasional obituary writer. Except this time the obituary is for her friend, maverick podcaster Wolf Tyler, who is murdered in his shed during a live broadcast, moments before revealing a huge secret about the cult TV show Vixens from the Void. Kit and her group of friends and fellow superfans soon realise Wolf had discovered something about the disappearance of Lily Sparkes, an extra on Vixens from the Void, back in 1986. And it was a secret worth killing for.

From the internationally best-selling author of Christmas in the Snow comes another spellbindingly beautiful story for winter. Christmas on Primrose Hill is a spellbinding, emotional and romantic tale from the best-selling author of Christmas at Tiffany's, Karen Swan. On Primrose Hill... Twinkling lights brighten London's Primrose Hill as Christmas nears - but for Nettie Watson, it's not parties and presents that she wants.

Kings Cross station, 1943: As the bombs fall, Rose loses her heart to a pilot but will lose so much more before the war has done its worst. Las Vegas, present day: A beautiful woman in a wedding dress walks into a seedy bar and asks the first man she sees to marry her. So when Jane meets Rose, now a formidable older lady, there's no love lost between them. But with time running out, can Rose and Jane come together to make peace with the secrets that have haunted their lives?

Everyone tells her she's a survivor. No one knows she's dead inside. Six years ago Melody Pieterson was attacked and left for dead. She coped by locking away her memories, burying herself. The man responsible was caught and convicted. Even his release from jail won't derail her new life. She's a survivor after all. Then the body of another woman is discovered in identical circumstances. Like Melody, she has blond hair and green eyes. Like Melody she is found holding a gold bird cage chain.