Showing results by narrator "Gemma Lawrence" in All Categories

I would. And I did. Because living without Gregory Ryans is unthinkable. I'm ready to put my faith in the law, but he's doing what he does best: buying a contingency plan. He tells me I'm his light, his one bright spot in all the darkness that surrounds him. But his past is creeping forward from the shadows, and the secrets he's guarded with his life are destroying him.

Mia is telling me a story. It’s about a princess, who lives in a castle, on a street that bears a remarkable resemblance to ours. About a kind old lady who’s the queen. I’m distracted for a moment by her little hand softly slipping into mine. My daughter. My angel. But then she says something that pulls me from my reverie. She says that the queen doesn’t treat the princess well. She punishes her and doesn’t let her eat anything…Helen, my neighbour, has been so good to me. And more importantly, she’s so good with the children. Surely this is just another story of Mia’s, just make believe.

I’ve spent years running from my past. After what happened to my parents, I needed to start fresh, far away from the whispers and stares. Now, as a struggling university student, I barely scrape by, living in a new town where no one knows me or the tragedy I’ve tried to forget. To make ends meet, I take on a ghostwriting job for a high-profile client. But the deal comes with one strange condition: their identity must remain a secret. Their only communication is through a distorted voice on an app.

Lissa's heart belongs to the Colours of the Wind museum, a charming haven where fairytale artifacts whisper tales of old. But her quiet magic is shattered when a sleek real estate firm buys the building, threatening to demolish her beloved museum. Lissa is devastated and ready to fight. Enter Warren Berrington, the infuriatingly handsome developer whose modern vision clashes with her quirky world. He talks budgets; she dreams of magic. Yet, Warren offers a lifeline: three months to save the museum, and despite their fiery arguments, a curious spark ignites between them.

For the courageous Bletchley Park girls, the fourth Christmas of the war is approaching fast. It should be a happy time, yet life throws them challenges they could never have imagined. Lily's heart is torn in two when her boyfriend, Grant, is badly injured in an air raid. As he spirals into despair, she must find a way to give him hope again. Bronwyn has a new romance on the horizon. But will the widower's young daughter accept her, or will she jeopardise Bronwyn's hopes for love?

A determined girl gives up on kissing a frog. A fearless heroine comes face-to-face with a not-so Big Bad Wolf. A monstrous princess, held captive on a deserted island, yearns to break free. Within this book are seven famous fairy tales turned into enchanting, inspiring and sometimes hair-raising stories for today's world, about girls with their own dreams and desires. These are no damsels in distress, but real young women of flesh and blood — who certainly don't need rescuing.

London, 1941. The war has robbed eight-year-old orphan Elsie of everything except her older brother Jack. Evacuated together, they escaped a cruel farming family only to find their home destroyed, their mother gone. Elsie hasn’t spoken since. Wandering under the falling ash, their stomachs twist with hunger and Jack knows he cannot protect Elsie alone. But everything changes when they join a rag-tag band of orphans, runaway evacuees who’ve returned to the city just like them.

Isabelle, a young university researcher, is sent to a country manor house deep in the heart of rural England to verify an ancient object that the family has discovered during the renovation of their home. While Isabelle sets to work verifying its authenticity, she becomes the obsession of the owner’s strange but beautiful daughter, and they develop a dangerous attraction.

Thirteen years ago, magic was banished and the witches were hunted. Sisters Spel and Egg are the daughters of witches, but they grow up in Miss Mouldheel’s School for Wicked Girls with no idea who they really are. Until the day the message arrives telling them to run. The message sends them to a funeral parlour in a far away village—and their new guardian, the Undertaker, has a secret. Beneath the funeral parlour is a portal to the Other Ways—four worlds that lie parallel to ours. When Egg vanishes through the portal, Spel knows she must try to save her sister.

Sisters Spel and Egg grew up in Mistress Mouldheels’ School for Wicked Girls believing they were the daughters of criminals, until they discovered the truth: They are witches. And after always being in the shadow of her big sister, Spel discovered that she was a Shadowborn Witch—the only one who can step between portals to other worlds. Now in a coven with their schoolmates and part of the alliance against the Hunt, the sisters try to master their new powers. But the Hunt is rising, the witches are in danger and when a new portal opens the whole world is under threat.

When Princess Florizella finds a baby boy delivered by stork to her parents’ palace, she is shocked to discover that he will one day be king and inherit her kingdom! For every prince is given a permit which allows them to do whatever they like in the same way that every princess is given a set of rules that they have to live by. As soon as Princess Florizella’s brother is big enough to have adventures, she takes him all over the land. Can she prove that girls having rules and boys having permits isn’t right?

War. Fae Princes. One Clumsy Woman. A Hidden Secret. A silly children's story had us rushing against time. The fae will come and take you away if you are in their homeland for more than three days.It was the silliest thing ever but the people back home believed it. While out hunting to provide for my family with my brother, the last thing we planned was to be out in the fae lands more than three days. However as day four crept up on us, unease settles in. After a chance encounter with one of the dreaded fae, I find myself reeling with doubt and curiosity.

In a silverware shop, a young wife works alongside her husband. Amid growing political turmoil, Bea finds solace in the local marsh, where she is visited recurrently by a mysterious presence, logging each appearance carefully in a scarlet journal. In a time like now, Kay navigates friendship, queerness and the temporary job market, whilst contemplating the significance of her life in a world with such an uncertain future. At her grandmother’s house she finds an intriguing record of an angel’s visits.

12-year-old Nancy Crumpet lives above a bakery and her life is a delightful mix of flour, salt and love. Yet her mind is brimming with questions nobody can answer. Why did her birth parents disappear? Why can she speak with the sky? And why must she keep her mysterious birthmark hidden? Everything is about to change when the Scareground returns to Greenwich. Nancy is convinced it holds the answers to her parents' disappearance. She and her best friend Arthur Green meet Skelter, the fair's spooky owner, and discover a world full of dark magic and mystery.

For Lil, life at the Squawking Mackerel inn couldn't be more miserable. She's tasked with the sloppiest, grottiest jobs and picked on at every turn. Her only friend is Augustus Scratchy, a cantankerous crow with a habit of stealing. When the dread villain Rotten Bob Hatchet and his gang of cut-throat highwaymen begin attacking travellers on the road, things get really dire. Joining forces with a new servant boy, Ned - and armed with the contents of the inn's lost property cupboard, a pocketful of dumplings and some knicker elastic - Lil comes up with a plot to scare off Rotten Bob.

Sisters Bel and Marie are poles apart. Whilst Marie is a free spirit who spurns alcohol, casual sex and material possessions, Bel needs all of those things just to make it through to lunchtime. When their mother dies suddenly, leaving them a rundown house on the Norfolk coast, they are unexpectedly thrown together. Because there's a condition: before they can inherit it, they have to live in it for one year - together.

One Girl Began entwines the stories of three women, separated by history but connected by the same building. For Ellen in 1909, it is a box factory where she finds work and a transformative circle of friendship when her family fall on hard times. For Frances in 1984, it is a derelict ruin, where she joins a group of squatters and is drawn into a coercive relationship. And for Amanda in 2020, it is a gentrified conversion, where she finds herself trapped in a tiny flat and grappling with new motherhood as the pandemic looms into view.

The Children's Book of the Future is a narrative non-fiction audiobook offering an inclusive and hopeful vision of the future, with a diverse, multicultural approach that will appeal to children of all backgrounds. Some of the diverse visions explored include: underwater cities; the solar system and space travel; green technologies and sustainability; robots and AI; the future of cities; and much more! In short, the audiobook sets out to reclaim the future for current and future generations of children.

There's good and bad in everyone. Except Tom. Tom used to think his life was pretty ordinary. Just another orphan, sleeping in the cellar of his uncle's pub with plenty of mice to chase. But then things started to change, both in the land of Boden-Rine and in young Tom's heart, after a stranger from a far-off land spun him a story of deadly adventure and world-ending peril.

East London, 1916: The Sanctuary Lane Animal Hospital is proving a huge success. For its founder Ruby Archer, this is a dream come true – and her blossoming romance with a local boy is the icing on the cake. But in wartime things change in the blink of an eye. When a heartbreaking tragedy shatters Ruby’s world, suddenly she is at odds with everyone - her family, her friends, and even her sweetheart. And when the hospital is threatened with immediate closure, she’s not sure who to trust.