Showing results by narrator "Helen Duff" in All Categories

Stella follows her handsome husband Rob to the beautifully laid-out table in the restaurant he’s chosen specially for her 40th birthday lunch. Stella knows how they must look to anyone watching. Two people very much in love, with the perfect marriage and the perfect life. But Rob is about to drop a bombshell on Stella. He wants a divorce. If she doesn’t agree to his plan - to sell the house, divide the money, and award him full custody of 14-year-old Georgie - he will tell their innocent daughter the one secret he promised to keep.

Jenny has too much on her plate, literally - she’s pregnant with only one child, but she’s already eating for three. Not to mention trying to juggle her future life with a baby, a nightmare boss, a know-it-all sister, and a bizarrely laid back husband.

In the Full Light of the Sun follows the fortunes of three Berliners caught up in a devastating scandal of 1930s Germany. It tells the story of Emmeline, a wayward young art student; Julius, an anxious middle-aged art expert; and a mysterious art dealer named Rachmann, who are at the heart of Weimar Berlin at its hedonistic, politically turbulent apogee and are whipped up into excitement over the surprising discovery of 32 previously unknown paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

'Tis the season for finding love... and the perfect book! With just two weeks until Christmas, everything in Clove Lore should be perfect. But the latest holidaymaker to the Borrow a Bookshop is feeling far from festive... Icelandic ex-bookseller Magnús Sturluson might be surrounded by love stories in the Bookshop, but he’s nursing a sadness that not even fiction can fix. When Alexandra Robinson winds up stranded in Clove Lore, she finds a safe place to hide from heartbreak. After all, all that’s waiting for her at home is a cheater boyfriend and the memories of her parents.

On entering Sarah Hall's world, we become travellers, suddenly. Our surroundings of farms and offices, seasides and cities, Turkish forests and English moors, shade into otherness: hazed by delirium, tinged with dream, fertile with the animal codes of the wild. Our lovers, friends, and parents go about their days warped by ruptures of brain and body, alternatively predator and prey, reborn in unexpected evolutions, and haunted by drownings and dictators, agitated hearts and sprouting wings, coffins and floods.

Gethsemane fought off an attack by a sleazy hotel developer who wanted to turn her Irish cottage into a tourist trap. But now she must face a vengeful ghost determined to exact revenge for a murder that took place centuries ago. This ghost's wrath spares no one - not Gethsemane's students, Inspector Niall O'Reilly, fellow teacher Frankie Grennan, or the group of ghost hunters that has descended on Dunmullach to capture proof that ghosts exist...proof that Gethsemane has to quash to keep Eamon, her resident ghost and friend, from becoming an internet sensation.

In its three-hundred-year history, there has never once been a scandal at Mullings, ancestral home of the decent but dull Stodmarsh family—until, that is, Edward Stodmarsh makes an ill-advised second marriage to the scheming Regina Stapleton, who insists on bringing her family's “ornamental hermit” to live on the estate.

Sir Roslind of Aksson, fierce and unyielding, is not the only female knight—but she is few among men who cling to older ways. And while whispers of disdain are so easily heard in a land pushing beyond tradition, whispers of rebellion are more subtle, more insidious, and much more costly to ignore.

Can she write her perfect love story? Austen Archer is on her dream solo bookselling holiday, the new 'borrower' at the Borrow-A-Bookshop in Devon's Clove Lore. While she has always loved poetry, her words have dried up since being fired by her last boss, bestselling author, Callista Flyte, a year ago. Austen distracts herself with the Borrow-A-Bookshop, as well as her flirty online exchanges with an anonymous Parisian bookseller. Hiding from the world, Austen doesn't notice that wedding planner, Patti, is falling for her – and is too afraid to admit that she feels the chemistry too.

Three women with something to hide. A beauty clinic in a former asylum. One deadly secret. Jenny: a troubled woman who spent time at the clinic when it was an asylum. Amy: a guest at the clinic who will do anything to transform her body. Rebecca: the doctor who will stop at nothing to make the clinic successful. What happens to them at the clinic will change everything...

A fairytale ending isn’t just for fiction... The Borrow-a-Bookshop is recovering, seven months after the winter flood that destroyed all its wares. When newest resident Joy Foley arrives in Clove Lore with her daughter, five-year-old Radia Pearl, she is set to drag the Bookshop into the 21st century by virtue of her tech expertise. But Joy has a secret. She is on the run from Radia Pearl’s father. She can’t settle down here or anywhere.

March 1933, Dovecote Hatch, England. Florence Norris knows she has found a good man in George 'Birdie' Bird, the landlord of the local pub, The Dog & Whistle. They are set to marry in a understated service at the parish church in their beloved village, Dovecote Hatch. But when a mysterious stranger seeks out George, sharing family secrets and talks of an illegal burial years ago, an ominous dread falls over the happy couple. Soon they are pulled reluctantly into this mystery that uncovers unpleasant truths in this idyllic English village.

It’s November 1932, and the peaceful village of Dovecote Hatch is still reeling from the recent murder at Mullings, country estate of the wealthy Stodmarsh family. Now it’s about to be rocked by news of another violent demise. When the body of mild-mannered Kenneth Tenneson is found at the foot of the stairs in his home, the coroner’s inquest announces a verdict of accidental death. However, Florence Norris—the quietly observant housekeeper at Mullings—suspects there may be more to the story than a fall.

There are two little girls in the photo. I instantly recognize myself as the small, dark-haired child in the purple dress. But who is the girl with the long, blonde hair laughing at the camera? And why is the photograph here, in a stranger’s house? When I find the tattered picture hidden away at the back of a dusty cupboard in Amy’s house, my mouth goes dry with shock. Though I haven’t known Amy for very long, I love looking after her young children, in her picture-perfect hilltop house with its sprawling wildflower garden and bright, airy kitchen.

In a freezing, isolated farmhouse with ice on its windows, Flora is looking after her sick mother. Since she was a little girl, Flora has been frightened of her mother. And when she discovers a photo of a smiling baby girl she doesn’t recognize, hidden at the bottom of a drawer, her mother grows even more remote, and refuses to talk about it. So, when a visitor arrives from a paradise island of sapphire coves and white sand beaches, and confirms that the baby in the picture is her sister, she should feel joy. But, he also brings the news that Flora’s sister is dying.

Christmas magic can thaw the coldest of hearts... From the author of One Winter’s Night, an uplifting, feel-good Christmas romance that will captivate readers of Holly Martin, Cathy Bramley and Milly Johnson. Sylvie Magnusson is going to be lonely this Christmas. Instead of jetting off for her honeymoon, she’s freezing at home in Cheshire. Guess that’s what happens when your fiancé dumps you a week before your wedding... Sylvie’s best friend, Nari, plans a trip to see the Northern Lights and get Sylvie’s mojo back.

Born in a honeysuckle-choked garden deep in the forest, Aphrodite - young, sensitive and beautiful - learns her true purpose in the world moments before she's cast out of the only home she's ever known. Haunted by loneliness, she begins a journey to fulfill her destiny. It is a path that will lead her into the arms of four very different men - a dreamer, a fighter, an artist, and a lost soul. All human, all flawed, and all on their own journeys of painful self-discovery. But could it be the secrets she left behind that hold the answers to the questions she's seeking?

On the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote, Helen Pankhurst - great-granddaughter of suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and a leading women's rights campaigner - charts how women's lives have changed over the last century and offers a powerful and positive argument for a new way forward.

Lucy is married, she has children, but she is haunted by the feeling that somewhere along the line her life's gone wrong. One cross, hectic day, she has a car crash, and when she wakes, she is 18 again and lying beside the man she's always loved - the one she never kissed. She wants to do it now. She thinks she's in control. But she's not, and she has far more to lose than she realised.

Fresh from solving her third mystery, Gethsemane Brown is ready to relax and enjoy her summer. Her plans include nothing more dangerous than performing in the opening ceremony of the annual rose and garden show and cheering on Frankie Grennan, who has entered his hybrid rose into the competition. But when a mysterious stalker starts leaving Frankie floral bouquets as coded messages, Gethsemane fears a copycat may be planning to recreate the still-unsolved murders of the infamous Flower Shop Killer.