Showing results by narrator "Sophie Ward" in All Categories

A gently entertaining and charming fairy story that also deals cleverly with a young child's real problems and emotions. Connie is not a child who likes books. So she's not too pleased when she's sent to stay with her eccentric author aunt. But then Connie meets Ruby - a book fairy - in the dusty old library. Ruby is in trouble: she has broken fairy law by trying to take something - a piece of jewellery - back to fairyland through the gateway of a fairy-dust-sprinkled book.

The year is 1967. Thirteen-year-old Maisie is at her decaying family home, once a medieval abbey. Lucas, an artist and friend, is painting a portrait of Maisie and her sisters. Maisie embarks on a portrait of her own: telling the story of herself, her sisters and their lovers, and of her friend, Daniel Nunn. Twenty-three years later, Lucas's now-famous portrait features in a retrospective of his work. Daniel, obsessed by the sisters and determined to understand what happened that summer at the abbey, pursues answers.

When Julia flees her unhappy marriage for the handsome tailor Eve Perret, she expects her life from now on will be a challenge, not least because the year is 1911. They leave everything behind to settle in Vienna, but their happiness is increasingly diminished by Julia's longing for a child. Ada Bauer's wealthy industrialist family have sent her to Dr Freud in the hope that he can fix her mutism and do so without a scandal. But help will soon come for Ada from an unexpected quarter and change many lives irrevocably.

Ellie never thought she'd meet fairies when she goes to stay with her aunt, but Myfanwy and Bronwen, the valley flower fairies, tell Ellie a secret. The old toy museum nearby contains the entrance to Fairyland and some of the toys can even come to life.

Isobel lives an isolated life in North London, working at a nearby library. She feels safe if she keeps to her routines and doesn't let her thoughts stray too far into the past. But a newspaper photograph of a missing local schoolgirl and a letter from her old teacher are all it takes for her ordinary, careful armour to become overwhelmed and the trauma of what happened when she was a pupil at The Schoolhouse to return.

Brought to you by Penguin. With her beautiful flat in London, Alice appears to have it all. But beneath the surface, everything is unravelling: she needs money, and fast. Her boss Mina, the wife of a powerful MP, lives a life dripping with luxury – one Alice can only dream of. And she’s...

Scandal, intoxication and lies flourish in the silent film studios of Paris. A silent film, destroyed in a fire in 1914 at the Pathé studio, before it was seen even by its director. A lowly seamstress who makes the costumes she should be wearing but believes her talent - and the secret she keeps, too - will soon get her a dressing room of her own. A famous - and dashing - creator of spectacular cinematic illusions, husband to a beautiful, volatile actress, the most adored icon of the Parisian studios.

A fascinating exploration of the psychology behind the seven deadly sins: Why have we evolved these ugly emotions? What’s going on in the brain and the body when we feel them? And how best can we live alongside them - in ourselves and with others? Becky Ripley and Sophie Ward take a humorous and compelling look at the psychology behind each of the seven deadly sins. Rolling with the order established by Pope Gregory the Great, first up is pride, followed by greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and (finally) lazy old sloth.

Originally published in 1928, The Well of Loneliness follows the life of Stephen Gordon, a girl born to parents who wished for a boy in late Victorian England. Through Stephen, Hall explores love, loneliness, and the struggle for self-acceptance in the face of rejection.