Showing results by narrator "lesley Mackie" in All Categories

Balmoral Castle, 1905. For Rose McQuinn, a handsome cottage on the Royal estate promises a summer holiday of unaccustomed luxury. As Rose travels by train with her little stepdaughter, Meg, and her trusty dog, Thane, she wonders what exciting adventures await them at the Royal household. The holiday takes a darker turn when Rose is warned not to interfere in two deaths that occur soon after her arrival. When they’re dismissed as accidents, she suspects foul play.

Leith, 1953: The war is over, a young queen has been crowned and 18-year-old Kirsten Mowat is glad to be out and about with her handsome, dark-haired sweetheart, Duncan Armstrong. But there's a secret in her heart that needs to be told - and when Duncan insists on a shotgun wedding, it sets Kirsten's life along a downward path. Married life brings tragedy, and Kirsten's husband and grudging mother-in-law harden their hearts against the young bride. Beset by grief, Kirsten finds herself alone with her two daughters and vulnerable baby Dixie to care for.

It’s 1925, and Kate Cameron is just sixteen when she’s taken on at a shipyard on the Clyde. Kate’s wages are needed, and her school days are over abruptly. When Kate starts attending art classes at weekends, she meets Jack Drummond, whose world is far removed from her own. But Kate’s not equipped to recognise trouble when it’s disguised by charm.

Five young Ayrtons all grew up at Amberwell, playing in the gardens and preparing themselves to venture out into the world. To each of these children, Amberwell meant something different, but common to all of them was the idea that Amberwell was more than just where they lived - it was part of them.

In name and by birth, Celia was a Dunne. She had inherited the beautiful old family home by the Rydd Water – but was she bound to live her life by the principles of her predecessors? Was there some hidden restraint that compelled her to heed the past? Celia’s house is a moving and poignant story of the struggle between old and young: the older generation anxious to preserve the values they have helped create while their children are determined at all costs to make lives of their own.

Margaret Kerr of Perth is living in Edinburgh with her uncle Murdoch during the summer of 1297. She'd come to search for her long-absent husband who is in the service of Robert the Bruce. Margaret herself is still loyal to the deposed King John Balliol. Then terrifying raids and a brutal murder on the Kerr property bring the wrath of the English down on the heads of Margaret and her uncle.

Glasgow, WW2. Despite being shy and reserved, Jeannie finds herself newly engaged to Arthur the day war is announced. Unsure if she would ever get another proposal, Jeanie accepts. But with war raging on, her wedding must wait. As she sets off to work at a munitions factory, she meets Eileen, Janet and Annie. As her new friends reveal their chaotic romances at such a troubling time, Jeannie is grateful to be settled with rigid, formal and straight-talking Arthur. Until she begins to doubt everything.

Living in the Stationmaster's cottage at Partick, Carrie Burgess leads a charmed life, cushioned from the world of poverty surrounding it. Her only real problem is her mother, who thinks Ewen Livingstone, the railway labourer Carrie's in love with, a poor catch; Matt Campbell, a clerk, seems a much better prospect. Carrie's father dies suddenly and his wife and daughter are forced to move out of their home. Money is tight.

Liz MacMillan has wanted to be a nurse ever since her baby brother died of scarlet fever but her domineering father won't allow it. With the outbreak of war, nursing becomes a patriotic duty and Liz gets her chance, together with her new friend Helen Gallagher, whose large, Irish-Catholic family provides a striking contract to the constraint of the MacMillan household. Working in Glasgow's Western Infirmary, one of the other students, Mario Rossi, touches Liz's heart.

1920s. When her father dies, Ellie Douglas has little option but to go into service. Her position takes her out of the life of Frank Rafferty - childhood friend and now a member of one of Glasgow's notorious gangs - and into the world of Evander Tait - son, heir and black sheep of the Tait household. These two men dominate Ellie's entire life. No one approves of her friendship with Evander and the bond she shares with Frank is misunderstood by everyone.

Fiercely independent, Marguerite Sinclair has the opportunity of a lifetime to become a nurse and contribute to the war effort. Meanwhile, Rick, who has loved her from the first moment he saw her, asks her to marry him before being shipped off to the war front. Despite their distance, he pursues her in a romantic cross-country courtship. She refuses him but soon after begins to realise how strong her feelings for him are in his absence. Rick somehow manages to survive the carnage of the war unscathed, but Marguerite has an accident, becoming very ill as a result.

Four years on from discovering their true heritage, Sally and Luke have overcome their animosity to forge a trusting brother-sister relationship. So when Luke returns home from the Hong Kong police force, he asks Sally for help to prove the innocence of his friend Irish. But Sally already has her hands full. As well as tending her flourishing business empire, she must also pick up the pieces when her family - from her feckless sister Josie to her self-centred daughter Margo - runs into trouble.

In 1939, the unexpected death of Sandra Anderson dramatically and ruthlessly changes forever the lives of the family she leaves behind. Kitty, her spoiled and pampered 15-year-old daughter, has to give up her dreams of a career as she becomes the family drudge. Sandra's heartbroken husband, Johnny, finds solace for his grief by becoming the main mouthpiece for his trade union in the shipyards, leaving little time for newborn Rosebud, whose birth caused her mother's death.

In the years following the end of World War II, life at the Glens of Lochandee is tough. Many families in the village have been bereaved, and rationing is affecting business. Nevertheless, Conan Maxwell’s new garage is doing well, and he and business partner Nick are hoping to expand. But how will their partnership survive their differing ambitions? Conan’s young sister, Bridie, is faced with a dilemma. Is her desire for Nick going to pull her away from her other great passion - her animals and farm?

Grinding poverty and violence are on everyday part of life in Glasgow's slums during the 1920s. But Josie Collins, whose mother's death has left her alone with her abusive father, has a dream that she'll become a reporter for one of the city's newspapers. But then disaster strikes when Josie reaches sixteen. Forced to give up her unwanted baby, she starts a new life under her mother's maiden name.

Wanting to support her family through the depression in 1930s Glasgow, Jean Logan is seduced by the glamour of the city's many palais de danse. Working as a paid dancing partner, she is taken on by the new and sophisticated Luxor and it seems that all her dreams have come true. But she soon finds herself drawn into the sinister world that lurks behind the club's dazzling façade and learns, to her own great personal cost, that not all that glitters is gold.

Seventeenth-century century Scotland. A young Border Reiver is preparing to raid a town along the Anglo-Scottish border. But after he is deceived by his band of raiders, he is wounded and left to pay the penalty for his trespassing. Upon receiving the news of her brother's harrowing fate, Isabella battles the Scottish elements in a race against time to offer up her own life to William Douglas as a ransom for her brother’s. Captivated by Isabella’s courage and beauty, William Douglas excuses both Isabella and her brother’s execution, but at the cost of her freedom....

Pleasure is the highest good: the group who called themselves the Cyrenaics embrace the hedonistic principle until the death of one of their members from an overdose. Sobered, the group went their separate ways. One headed for Canada, another disappeared and a third was believed to have committed suicide - at least until his body turns up in the wreck of a car swept up on the Solway mud flats.

A young, disabled girl is lost on a winter's night in Leith, unable to help herself or find her way home. Someone is combing the streets, frantically searching for her. Within hours of her disappearance, a body is washed up on Beamer Rock, a tiny island in the Forth being used as part of the foundations for the new Queensferry Bridge. No sooner has DI Alice Rice managed to discover the identity of that body than another one is washed up on the edge of the estuary, in Belhaven Bay.

Elsie Weir is trying hard to keep her family together. Living in Kiltie Street tenement in Glasgow with her mother and little sister, Jessie, isn't easy - not least because her mother spends most days in a drunken stupor. But life gets harder still when their mother dies suddenly, leaving Jessie and Elsie broken-hearted. The future looks bleak, until their mother's estranged family deigns to take them in. But their relief is short-lived as it becomes clear the Mearns family have taken in the orphan sisters only for appearances, treating them cruelly behind closed doors.