Showing results by narrator "Kate Rawson" in All Categories

Sonja's over 40, and she's trying to move in the right direction. She's learning to drive. She's joined a meditation group. And she's attempting to reconnect with her sister. But Sonja would rather eat cake than meditate. Her driving instructor won't let her change gear. And her sister won't return her calls.

One split second can destroy your life forever. Single mother Jen Cornish is just trying to hold things together for the sake of her seven-year-old son Charlie. Until the day when she does an impulsive good deed to help a neighbour, setting off a terrifying chain of events that quickly spirals out of control.... When she is arrested for a crime she didn't commit, Jen quickly starts to wonder if someone is playing a cruel game with her - or is she losing her mind?

When Cassie sees a job advertised for a couple to run a remote Australian farm, she thinks it will be the perfect escape for her and Graham. But trapped under the baking sun of the outback, paranoia sets in. There's no radio and they send but never receive any letters. Their enigmatic and unusually forgiving boss Larry and his wife Mara have secrets, sedatives, and some very odd habits: a result of their isolated lifestyle or something more sinister?

A fabled house. A fabulous fortune. Beautiful, identical twins...a tale of dark shadows and extraordinary deception. Dark shadows fall across the golden summer of 1886. Naive country girl Ida Garfield longs to escape the farm. When Miss Matilda Gregory, the elegant mistress of Summersby House, offers Ida employment as a housemaid, Ida leaps at the chance. Yet it's not for her servant's skills that she's wanted. It's her inquisitiveness.... Before Ida starts her first day, however, Miss Gregory is found dead.

A wonderfully strange yet poignant tale of accepting the truth about oneself. Magrit lives in an abandoned cemetery. She is as forgotten as the tiny graveyard that surrounds her. One night, a passing stork drops a strange bundle into the graveyard. Master Puppet, her friend and adviser, tells her it is an awful, ugly, terrible thing, and that she should get rid of it. But Magrit has other ideas.

Meg and her daughter Grace are the most beloved family in Ashford, the lynchpin that holds the town together. So when Meg is found brutally murdered and her daughter missing, the community is rocked by the tragedy. Her daughter, Grace, has been sick for years and all Meg has ever done is look after her. Now Meg is dead, Grace is gone - and fears are growing for her life.

Bea has started to hear and see things that no-one else can - creatures, voices, visions. Then strangers visit Bea and tell her she is different: she has the rare powers of a witch. They warn her she is being hunted. Her parents think she is hallucinating and needs help. All Bea wants to do is get on with her life and to get closer to Lars, the mysterious young man she has met at the skate park. But her life is in danger, and she must break free. The question is - whom can she trust?

When India falls to her death from a bridge over a railway, her sister, Poppy, returns home to Brighton for the first time in years. Unconvinced by official explanations, Poppy begins her own investigation into India's death. But the deeper she digs, the closer she comes to uncovering deeply buried secrets. Could Matthew Temple, the boyfriend she abandoned, be involved? And what of his powerful and wealthy parents and his twin sister, Ana?

Francine would prefer to be thinner but is happy enough to suffer her boss' manhandling of her ample hips if it helps her survive the next cull in quality assurance. She just wishes she could get the dead biker's crushed face out of her mind's eye. Robin is having a baby with the wrong woman, wishes he were with the perfect Polish waitress instead, leans hard on Deleuze for understanding, and wonders if his work in film will continue to be valued by the university management.

It's a sweltering summer's day, and Anja Aropalo is on her way home with two errands in mind: first, to water the roses, and then to commit suicide. She is slowly losing her husband to Alzheimer's disease, and she has made him a terrible promise - one she's not sure she can keep. For Anja's niece, Mari, death is a teenage fantasy of grieving family and eternal beauty, an escape from the dullness of her life.

Vivian, a student nurse, chose her profession as a challenge, both to her spirit and to her permanently exhausted body; Mic immerses himself in his work at the hospital to ward off the emotional wounds of an unhappy childhood. Through Jan, Viv's beloved older brother, they meet, and their friendship turns into a secret romance. Secret because, if discovered, it would cost them their jobs.

Botanica is an island, but almost all of the island is taken up by the Tree. Lillah has come of age and is now ready to leave her community and walk the tree for five years, learning all Botanica has to teach her. Can Lillah keep the huge secret she has been entrusted with, or will she have to resort to breaking the oldest taboo on Botanica?

Marina's father, a naval captain, has been away for most of her life - certainly since her mother died - and yet Marina feels the pull of an ocean she's never known. When sent to boarding school to learn to be a lady, Marina decides instead to stow away on her father's ship. A perilous voyage awaits - but where are they sailing to and why, and what has it to do with the dark shape in the deep that seems to be following them?

June, 1905. Helena and her parrot, Orbit, are swept off to Cambridge when her father is appointed clock-winder to one of the wealthiest men in England. There is only one rule: the clocks must never stop. But Helena discovers the house of one hundred clocks holds many mysteries: a ghostly figure, strange notes and disappearing winding keys.... Can she work out its secrets before time runs out?

Only very special people are chosen by children's author Laura White to join 'The Society', an elite group of writers in the small town of Rabbit Back. Now a 10th member has been selected: Ella, literature teacher and possessor of beautifully curving lips. But soon Ella discovers that the Society is not what it seems. What is its mysterious ritual, 'The Game'? What explains the strange disappearance that occurs at Laura's winter party, in a whirlwind of snow? Why are the words inside books starting to rearrange themselves?

Thwarted in her desire to become a doctor like her brother, Robert, Pips Maitland rebels against her mother's wishes that she settle down and raise children. However, when Robert brings home a friend from medical school, Giles Kendall, it seems perhaps Pips might fall in love with an acceptable suitor after all. But the year is 1914, and the future is uncertain. Hearing that her father's friend, Dr John Hazelwood, is forming a flying ambulance corps to take to the front lines, Pips is determined to become one of its nurses and asks Alice Dawson, her maid, to go with her.

Why does paying for things often feel like it causes physical pain? Why does it cost you money to act as your own real estate agent? Why are we comfortable overpaying for something now just because we've overpaid for it before? In Small Change, world renowned economist Dan Ariely answers these intriguing questions and many more as he explains how our irrational behaviour often interferes with our best intentions when it comes to managing our finances.

Family and friendship mean everything under the darkening skies of wartime Britain, by Sunday Times best-selling author Margaret Dickinson. It is the 1930s, and the Maitland family have spent the years following the Great War struggling to come to terms with its catastrophic aftermath, and their hopes now lie with the next generation. Their Lincolnshire village of Doddington suffered terrible loss and it has taken great courage for the bereaved families to rebuild their lives without their loved ones.

On the day Cate came into the world, her mother left it. Ever since, Cate's dad has become distant and silent, locked in his own little world. Cate has to keep herself entertained, with kung fu films, her pet rabbit and her photography hobby, until one day she receives an invitation to a mysterious, abandoned cinema, and everything changes.