Showing results by narrator "Carolyn Bonnyman" in All Categories

Jenny Bowen is going home. Following an acrimonious split from her husband, she is quitting her job and moving back from London to the small town in the Scottish Highlands where she grew up. After tying up some last-minute loose ends, she rushes to Euston and boards the Caledonian Sleeper, headed north on a 500 mile, 10-hour journey through the night. As Jenny is getting settled in her cabin, she hears a commotion outside in the corridor.

Returning to the Hebridean island of Garve after 35 years, Alys falls in love with Donal, her childhood playmate. Interwoven with their story is that of Henrietta, held on an island against her will 300 years earlier. Linking the women are an enchanting embroidered curiosity cabinet, the tug of motherhood, and the island itself.

Grace is excited about her holiday, staying with Granny at her house in the Hebrides. A whole week exploring rock pools, collecting shells and playing on the beach. She makes friends with local boy, Col, and together they go exploring all over the Island. One day, Grace discovers a baby seal injured on the beach. She's not sure if she can save it, but she's determined to try.

When Catherine moves several hundred miles away from her sister, Helen says, 'Phone calls aren't enough', but they make it easier to edit the truth. Helen can dismiss Gilbert and his enchanted Factory as 'weird' when she's never met him, and Catherine thinks Helen is foolish for loving the unreliable and dangerous Joe. Neither sees the perils concealed in what they have not told each other or guesses at the sinister connection between their separate lives.

Spring 1900. Ever since she was nine years old, Mairi McGloughlin has known she wants to be a farmer, but by the law of the land it's her scholarly brother, Ian, who will someday inherit. The next best thing might be to marry a farmer, and charming, confident Jack could be the perfect answer. But then there's Robin, her brother's best friend, more a man of books than of the land - and yet there's something about him.... But with the outbreak of the Great War, their choices change completely, and neither Mairi, Ian nor Robin can hope to escape unscathed.

Sky is devastated when she finds that her husband is in love with her oldest friend, Nick. She has lost the two most important men in her life and can't trust either of them again. To escape, she goes alone on a dream trip to Marrakech and meets Gail, on a mission to meet the father of her child, a man she loved but thought did not want her. There, Sky and Gail both find unexpected joys - and surprises. For Sky these lead to France, to a beautiful chateau and a family whose relationships seem as complicated as her own.

I found I didn't know who I had become. I couldn't find the woman you'd met. I only knew that if you didn't want her, neither did I. There is more than one way to stay close to someone...if you're prepared to do whatever it takes. Skye meets the feckless but handsome Johnny Strachan in the Alps, where she reluctantly falls into a heady love affair. At home, Johnny has promised to call her - this is just the beginning after all. But when Skye hears nothing from him, it seems it's actually the end.

A multi-generational novel that follows two women from the same family as each embarks on her own journey through single parenthood in the 1950s and the present day. It explores the varying perception of single parenthood and was inspired by Wallace's family as her grandmother raised her mother alone in the 1950s.

Opera Sunderland has a tradition of performing a new work every season - "its umbilical cord to civilisation". However, when managing director Dwight Gaggenheim opts for an unconventional piece, the tempers and egos of a plethora of opera types come bubbling to the surface. This series follows the cast of a staging opera as they put on the new season’s production Carmen.