Showing results by narrator "Penelope Keith" in All Categories

E Nesbit is widely regarded as the first modern children's writer. Her ground-breaking novels have influenced authors from Oscar Wilde to Jacqueline Wilson, and over 100 years after their first publication, they remain perennially popular. This wide-ranging collection comprises some of her very best children's fiction, commencing with her timeless tale The Railway Children.

With deceptive economy in these nine short stories, Ruth Rendell indicates hidden depths in ordinary events and creates a sense of profound unease. The stories are: 'A Pair of Yellow Lilies', 'Paperwork', 'Mother’s Hel'p, 'Long Live the Queen', 'Dying Happy', 'The Copper Peacock', 'Weeds', 'The Fish-Sitter', and 'An Unwanted Woman'.

Left with bald patches thanks to the wicked doings of a murderer from a previous investigation, Agatha flees to coastal Wyckhadden to re-grow her lost locks. With hair tonic supplied by a local witch, Agatha's tresses begin to flow - but the witch is found bludgeoned to death. The odd elderly residents of Agatha's elegantly faded hotel seem innocuous, but as she delves deeper she discovers secrets best left and powerful motives for revenge.

Agatha's former husband James is engaged to be married to a beautiful, young woman and Agatha has been kindly invited to the wedding. When the bride is murdered on her wedding day, naturally Agatha is Suspect Number One - but then matters are turned on their head when the dead bride's mother engages Agatha to take on the case of her murdered daughter! And very soon Agatha's own life is in danger while she tries to solve the mystery of the corpse bride while fighting off (halfheartedly) the advances of a very attractive and determined Frenchman!

Mim Lyons is a retired film actress, occasionally still recognised from her last great starring role in the late 1960s, but she's now more than content to stay away from the limelight. When her agent calls out of the blue with a job offer, her husband begins to have his own dreams and schemes about the possibility of a comeback, in a part that unsettles Mim's perception of how her husband sees her and of who she really is.

The Good Mayor is a magical debut novel. It is a love story and a story about love. Set in the little town of Dot in a forgotten part of the Baltic, it tells the story of Tibo Krovic, the good and honest Mayor of Dot, and his love for his secretary, the beautiful, lonely, but married, Mrs Agathe Stopak. In the quiet, respectable town of Dot there is nothing that Tibo can do about his love for Mrs Stopak but, one day, when she accidentally drops her lunch into a fountain, everything changes and their lives will never be the same again.