Showing results by narrator "Ell" in All Categories

As bogus corruption charges loom over her, DS Kat Ballantyne finds herself deskbound and stuck with cold cases. Her hated boss, DI Carver, has given her just one week to explain how £50,000 found its way into her bank account. If she can’t, she’ll be lucky to have a desk at all. Then a close friend calls her from a murder scene, claiming to have strangled a local gangster’s wife. Kat has no choice but to disobey orders and investigate. Despite overwhelming forensic evidence supporting her friend’s confession, something still doesn’t add up…

During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. When the time is right, each girl is smuggled into the palace of Versailles, with its legendary Hall of Mirrors.

Issy is the perfect combination of gay and depressed. Living in Margate with her mum and pet chinchilla, she has always drawn inside the lines. Crafting is her biggest comfort - the way she quiets her thoughts. So when an artist comes calling with Issy's dream internship, she knows it is time to start living her life at last. Moving to Hackney, Issy has a lot of firsts to catch up on - falling for housemates, navigating sex and dating, and avoiding the neighbour who seems to hate you for no good reason.

We were always The Four. From our very first day at High Realms. The four scholarship pupils. Outsiders in a world of power and privilege. It would have made our lives a lot easier if Marta had simply pushed Genevieve out of our bedroom window that day. Certainly, it would have been tragic. She would have died instantly. But Marta didn’t push her then, or – if you choose to believe me – at any other time. If she had, all of what we went through would not have happened.

Emily Laurence is a liar. She is not polite, she's not polished, and she has never taught a child in her life. This position was meant to be her sister's - brilliant, kind Amy, who isn't perpetually angry, dangerously reckless, and who does like children. But Amy is unwell and needs a doctor, their father is gone and their mother is useless, so here Emily is, pretending to be something she's not. If she can get away with her deception for long enough to earn a few month's wages and slip some expensive trinkets into her pockets along the way, perhaps they'll be all right.

Wren and Rose rule the kingdom of Eana. But an ancient, powerful enemy moves in the shadows. Oonagh, the twins’ evil undead ancestor, is creating a terrifying army, and she is determined to fight for the throne. Rose must gather support from the four corners of the kingdom whilst she wrestles with what the future holds for her and her beloved Shen. Meanwhile, Wren and Alarik set out to destroy the curse that both unites and weakens them. Caught between the King of Gevra and his Captain of the Guard, Tor, Wren must decide where her heart truly lies.

Alexander “Sander” Cooke is the most celebrated “boy player” in the Chamberlain’s Men, William Shakespeare’s theatre company. Indeed, Sander’s androgynous beauty and deft portrayal of female roles have made him the toast of London, and his companionship is sought by noblewomen and -men alike. And yet, now at the height of his fame, he teeters on the cusp of adulthood, his future uncertain. Often, he wishes he could stop time and remain a boy forever.

It’s the 1970s, and from hippie London to Warhol’s Factory in New York, reluctant aristocrat Loulou de la Falaise is desperately seeking adventure. Having escaped an early, unhappy marriage, she arrives on a whim in Paris—the champagne-soaked heart of the fashion world, where the rigid old world of haute couture and the fast-paced new world of ready-to-wear are vying for supremacy. Glamour, sex, and cocaine nights fuel the Paris fashion scene. Its crown prince is the soulful and intensely gifted Yves Saint Laurent.

With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.

Feng-Li can't wait to discover America with her family! But after an action-packed vacation, her parents deliver shocking news: They are returning to Taiwan and leaving Feng-Li and her older siblings in California on their own. Suddenly, the three kids must fend for themselves in a strange new world--and get along. Starting a new school, learning a new language, and trying to make new friends while managing a household is hard enough, but Bro and Sis's constant bickering makes everything worse.

Running from strife in her homeland, Maribella Waters becomes the new owner of the fabled Cozy Quill. After finding squatters on her property, she employs Asteria Helsdottir, a giant, barbarian warrior woman more accustomed to swinging an axe than opening a book. Together, the odd couple must make a success out of the bookshop—and survive a dizzying procession of seasonal festivals. But the local evil noblewoman has other plans in mind.

Serena Mills should be at her wedding. Instead, she’s eating an ice cream sundae and drinking an obscenely large glass of wine in a Harvester off the M25. She’s left the man everyone told her she was ‘so lucky’ to find–because she’s realised that she wants to find love. Real love. So she sets herself a challenge: 52 weeks. 52 dates. 52 chances to find real love. But sometimes even the best laid plans don’t work out. And it’s the people that take you most by surprise who can really sweep you off your feet . . .

Firestorm is down – the assassin for hire website that had the world by its throat, gone. Alek Konstantin, king of the underworld, is in hiding. But while the world celebrates, Winter is bracing for what must surely follow. All the world’s cut-throats, assassins and thugs are unemployed, roaming the globe without a leader - and nature abhors a vacuum. Something’s not right, and it’s not only that Winter’s body is in pieces. A boy held captive. An attempted assassination. Thirty men gunned down in rural South Wales.

Fourteen years ago, Delphine abandoned her prestigious soloist spot at the Paris Opera Ballet for a new life in St. Petersburg - taking with her a secret that could upend the lives of her best friends, fellow dancers Lindsay and Margaux. Now 36 years old, Delphine has returned to her former home and to the legendary Palais Garnier Opera House to choreograph the ballet that will kick-start the next phase of her career - and, she hopes, finally make things right with her former friends. But Delphine quickly discovers that things have changed while she's been away.

Built by long-gone Saints, the city of Vaiwyn lives and breathes and bleeds. As a Keeper, Mina knows better than most what her care of Vaiwyn’s bells means for the sentient city. It’s the Strauss family’s thousand-year legacy—prevent the Vespers from ringing, or they will awake a slumbering evil. One afternoon, to Mina's horror, her bell peals thirteen times, shattering the city’s tenuous peace. With so much of the city's history and lore lost in a long-ago disaster, no one knows the danger that has been unleashed—until the city begins to fight back.

It’s been over a decade since renowned author Beckett Ryan set foot in her bleak childhood hometown on the southern coast of England. When her estranged parents die within a week of each other, she reluctantly returns to bury them, only to find herself as reviled in the community as they were revered. Of course, the locals didn’t really know her parents. Nobody did. Then a warm welcome emerges from the sea of cold faces: Leanne. Beckett’s best friend when they were younger, and now a super-fan. Only… Beckett is pretty sure she’s never met her before in her life.

A lesbian in a lavender marriage, Jo Smith cuts a dashing figure in pin-striped trousers, working in her bookshop and keeping impolite company. But her hard-earned stability is about to be upended thanks to her husband’s pregnant paramour, who needs medical attention that no reputable doctor will provide.

In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars and the rise of the floriography craze in Europe, two sisters separated at birth are bound together by a secret language of flowers passed down to them by the mother they never knew. When Cornelia leaves her cruel uncle's home to join Napoleon's army as a traveling naturalist, her ability to heal any wound and bring soldiers back from the brink of death earns her praise—and exposes her to those who would exploit her powers for themselves.

On the glistening surface of Virginia Woolf’s groundbreaking novel is the Ramsay family, a seemingly stable group of characters, but a group that is ultimately subject to the same alterations and losses that come with the passing of time. Set at the Ramsays’ summerhouse over two September days, ten years apart, Woolf’s influential landmark of twentieth-century literature explores the hopes, frustrations, and small moments of grace and change that permeate everyday life.

Geneva Castle honed her skills for survival as a prison nurse by day and a stripper by night. Her world takes a tumultuous turn when Dominick LaRocca, who knows only the treacherous ways of the Mafia, emerges on her horizon. The moment Dominick abducts her, their lives become a twisted web of complexity. Geneva grapples with her own moral code, teetering on the edge of losing her nursing license if she succumbs to Dominick's demands. Or worse, if she doesn't comply.