Showing results by narrator "Charlie Norfolk" in All Categories

London, May 1537. As those closest to the throne are locked in a fierce fight against those desperate to save England's monasteries from destruction, young Joanna Stafford faces a far more personal battle. When Joanna learns her cousin is about to be burned at the stake for rebelling against Henry VIII, she makes a decision that will change not only her life, but quite possibly the fate of a nation. It will mean turning her back on everything she knows, for Joanna is a novice at Dartford Priory - and to save her family, she must break the sacred rule of enclosure.

Everyone in the village admires Anna because she’s a wonderful mother. Juggling family life with a small sewing business, she’s the one they turn to for a warm hug after a hard day. Her kind, polite daughters are a credit to her - even Bay, her stepdaughter, whom Anna loves as much as her own two girls. But normal family life changes overnight when Anna’s middle daughter’s beauty catches the eye of a stranger in a café. As jealousy erupts between the siblings, Anna’s perfect blended family begins to unravel around her.

A solitary child who only really found solace in nature, Tess Eagle Swan ran away from home aged 16 and, by her late 20s, had already survived violence and drug addiction. In the following decade, life spiralled further out of control, as substance abuse filled the hole meaningful relationships should have occupied. Something had to change. Tess had always loved animals, so when she saw a post on Facebook about the plight of two dogs in Romania, she was moved to take action, helping find homes for both. It was the first step on the road that led her to Kratu.

My precious daughter. You have no idea how dangerous the world is. No idea of the horrors I’ve shielded you from. The things I’ve endured...our past. We’ve been happy. We’ve been hidden. We’ve been safe. But our perfect life is about to come crashing down. Because they’ve found me. And they’re about to reveal my darkest secret...to you. I’ll do anything to protect you, darling, because if you knew—I’d lose you forever. You can never discover what I’ve done...or what I’m willing to do to keep you safe.

England, 1538. The nation is reeling after the ruthless dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII. Cast out of Dartford Priory, Joanna Stafford - feisty, courageous, but scarred by her recent encounter with rebellion at court - is trying to live a quiet life with her five-year-old charge, Arthur. But family connections draw her dangerously close to a treasonous plot and, repelled by violence and the whispered conspiracies around her, Joanna seeks a life with a man who loves her.

"Do you have a name for her?" she asked. He shook his head. "You've decided it's a girl?" She looked at the skull and thought of it washing backwards and forwards in the dirty water of the Thames until coming to rest in sight of tip of the Isle of Dogs under the gaze of the grandiose buildings of Greenwich. "We'll call her Flotsam," she said. Home truths are always the hardest. Beatrice Palmenter is 36, a successful filmmaker. And discontent. She is about to make two journeys, one back a thousand years to the world of the Anglo Saxons, the other to wartime France.

When her mum is taken into hospital, Pearl goes to live with a foster family. But all Pearl really wants is to be back with her mum on their narrow boat. And when her mum runs away from the hospital, Pearl knows she must go back to the boat to find her.

When Olivia's husband, Carlos, begins having violent nightmares in which he leaps, fighting, from his bed and rampages through the house, her family's idyllic life in Lisbon is shattered. Things escalate when Carlos unwittingly injures Olivia and Leo, their seven-year-old son, and they can no longer hide the purple bruises staining their skin. But what is causing the warm-hearted, gentle Carlos to have such explosive nightmares?

Cumbria, 1967. Grieving the loss of her son, Cordelia Hemlock is in a village graveyard when lightning strikes a tumbledown tomb - and gives her a glimpse of a new corpse that doesn't belong among the crumbling bones. But when the body vanishes, the authorities refuse to believe some hysterical outsider. Cordelia persuades Felicity Goose, the only other person to have seen the corpse, to join her investigation. But the villagers don't take kindly to their interference. There are those who believe the village's secrets should remain buried...whatever the cost.