Showing results by narrator "Eilidh Beaton" in All Categories

Anthony Shackleford had long been acquainted with the word duty. Indeed, since the moment he could walk, it had been drummed into him every Friday between the hours of two and four in the afternoon, accompanied by tea and apple cake. His mother had always been especially partial to apple cake. The essence of his obligation was this. The Duke of Blackmore could not be expected to keep his in-laws into their twilight years. Despite the fact that his sisters had all made extremely advantageous marriages, as the only son, it was his job to ensure his parents a comfortable dotage.

They live 500 miles apart. Yet their lives are about to collide. Lissa loves her job as a nurse, but recently she's been doing a better job of looking after other people than looking after herself. After a traumatic incident at work leaves her feeling overwhelmed, she agrees to swap lives with someone in a quiet village in Scotland. Cormac is restless. Just out of the army, he's desperately in need of distraction and there's precious little of it in Kirrinfief. Maybe three months in London is just what he needs.

Valerie Rousseau is burning with determination to help free her beloved France from the Nazi regime. Working at the mysterious Bletchley Park, she strikes up an unexpected bond with smart, fiercely loyal Fran Morgan as they spend long days together with their heads bent over maps of France in preparation for the Allied invasion.

With her four older sisters now married, it's Patience Shackleford's turn to take charge of her younger siblings' education. But given that Patience's most prodigious skill is lock picking, any abilities she passes on to her younger sisters are unlikely to provide any assistance in the drawing rooms of the genteel, especially as she has no interest in either high society, or horror of horrors… marriage. Indeed, her father the Reverend Augustus Shackleford is firmly of the opinion that the less society knows about his fifth daughter the better…

Millie Spark can kill anyone. A special effects make-up artist, her talent is to create realistic scenes of bloody violence. Then, one day, she wakes to find her lover dead in her bed. Twenty-five years later, her sentence for murder served, Millicent is ready to give up on her broken life - until she meets troubled film student and reluctant petty thief Jerry. Together, they begin to discover that all was not what it seemed on that fateful night...and someone doesn't want them to find out why.

A spellbinding collection of 15 stories from multi-million copy internationally best-selling author Rosamunde Pilcher, published posthumously two years after her death. Each of the 15 stories is a perfect slice of romance written with warmth and passion, featuring some wonderfully memorable, smart and feisty female characters that will transport listeners to another time and place.

When two young boys discover human bones buried beneath a tree in a trailer park, Detective Josie Quinn races to join her team at the scene. She used to play in those woods as a child, happier outside and away from her abusive mother, Belinda Rose. Josie’s past crashes into her present when a rare dental condition confirms the bones belong to a teenage foster-child who was murdered 30 years ago. A girl named Belinda Rose.

from the start, Eve finds herself in a sticky situation. Famous guest artist Nena Field is a complete nightmare, painting everyone in a bad light. So when Eve finds her body in Blind-Eye Wood, there’s no shortage of suspects. But who could have hated her enough to take her life? Was it the curiously over-qualified cook, the secretive manager, or the chatty receptionist, mysteriously missing at the time of the murder? Determined to find the killer and save Simon’s business, Eve sets to work sketching out a theory of the crime.

For 70-year-old Marion Gaynor, the answer lies in opening her doors-and her heart-to two unexpected housemates: Felicity Booth, a brilliant but frazzled PhD student, balancing research and the chaos of academia, and Lana Rolls, newly separated and searching for a fresh start. Together, these three women discover that friendship blooms in the unlikeliest of places, and the bonds they form will change their lives forever.

With a shattered heart and her career completely in tatters, Lucy needs to get away from her life in the UK. But, when she takes a job as hotel manager of the Northern Lights Lodge, she doesn’t quite expect to find herself in a land of bubbling hot springs and snowflake-dusted glaciers - and in the company of gorgeous Scottish barman Alex. Determined to turn her life around, Lucy sets about making the lodge the number one romantic destination in Iceland - even though romance is the last thing she wants.

Born into a family of successful pilots, Morag is used to flying high. But when a tragic accident above the clouds grounds her, could the future she'd always imagined be suddenly out of reach? When she receives a call telling her that her beloved grandfather has been taken ill, Morag leaves her fast-paced life in London to return home to the tranquil Scottish Highlands. With her grandfather out of action, Morag has no choice but to take over flying the local route in his rickety old plane, ferrying locals across the beautiful islands of the archipelago.

London, 1888. While Jack the Ripper's reign of terror grips the city, Emma Langley's world shatters when her husband is found murdered in Whitechapel. But grief is quickly overshadowed by a startling discovery: William Langley was not the man she thought she knew. As panic fills London's streets, Emma delves into her husband's secret life, uncovering a web of lies that stretches from glittering society drawing rooms to the seedy gambling dens of the East End. Aided by Penny Green, a former reporter with a nose for trouble, Emma follows a trail of blackmail and corruption.

Gertie has always had her head in the clouds, wondering what her life might be like if she could only pluck up the courage to leave the remote Scottish island where she was born. It's the only place she knows, but you can't do anything there without everyone knowing - the glue of this close-knit community is the Knitting Circle, a group of strong, capable and frankly nosy women who work hard, gossip, knit and support each other through thick and thin. At the centre of this sisterhood is Gertie's mum Jean and her grandmother Elspeth, and the three generations of women live together.

When Olivia Tennyson - or Ollie to her friends - was 16, she wrote a Dream List of all the things she wanted for her life, including a happy marriage and a family. But at 29, Ollie is single, living at home with her over-protective and manipulative mother and is feeling like her dreams are getting further out of reach. It’s time for a change. It’s time to take matters into her own hands.

When Rose Fenemore takes a desperately needed holiday to an isolated cottage on the Scottish island of Moila she doesn't expect much in the way of adventure - just a few quiet weeks of writing, walking and bird-watching. And then, late one night during a wild storm, two young men appear in her doorway, seeking shelter from the wind and rain. Neither man is quite who he claims, and the question of whom to trust will put Rose in grave peril....

Prudence Shackleford had not expected to be a spinster at three and twenty, but unfortunately, as she'd quickly discovered, very few men were prepared to tolerate either her ghoulish sense of humour, or her macabre taste in literature. And those were the ones she'd got as far as holding a conversation with. When invited to London by the Duke and Duchess of Blackmore to witness the Coronation of King George IV, she was equal parts horrified and intrigued. Especially after a chance meeting with a Bow Street Runner on the trail of conspirators it was feared were planning to murder the King.

Olivia and Anthony are planning a very extravagant wedding at the newest hotel on the tiny Scottish island of Mure. They're flying in chefs, musicians and something called a living flower wall...and no one is even allowed to think the word bridezilla. Flora is trying—and failing—not to let Olivia and Anthony's wedding distract her from planning her own big day with Joel. But the couple have wildly different ideas about how to celebrate and somehow, just when their relationship should be plain sailing, everything is suddenly very hard indeed.

When Stefania Carmichael steps into the mysterious world of Bletchley Park, she immediately finds herself signing the Official Secrets Act. In whispers, she is told that she’s been recruited because of her talent for languages. Before the war ripped Europe apart, Stefania was living in Rome, charming everyone she met, and engaged to the man of her dreams, handsome and brave Matteo. And now everything has changed. With secrets swirling around the building, Stefania finds it hard to know who to trust, until she forms a close bond with two other new recruits.

At the bottom of a great stone staircase, dressed in her mother's black lace evening dress, twisted in murderous death, lies Janet. So end the 16 years of Janet's short life. A life spent in a draughty Scottish castle, where roses will not grow, and a jackdaw decides to live in the doll's house. A life peopled by prettier, smoother-haired siblings, a Nanny with a face like the North Sea and the peculiar, whisky-swigging Cousin Lila. A life where Janet is perpetually misunderstood - and must turn from people, to animals, to books, to her own wild and wonderful imagination.

In The Silo Effect, award-winning journalist Gillian Tett examines the structural development of institutions such as UBS, Sony and the Bank of England. While the world is increasingly interlinked in some senses, it remains profoundly fragmented in others. As organisations become larger and more global than ever before, they are apt to be divided and sub-divided into numerous different departments to facilitate productivity. However, there is a trap to the inevitability of these silos.