Showing results by narrator "Alix Dunmore" in All Categories

An emotionally powerful novel about four women and the incredible strength it takes to live a life made invisible by others. In a nondescript building in a gentrifying corner of London, Penny is doing daily battle with her mind. She is convinced that the world beyond her door is too dangerous for her, though her heart knows it isn't. Penny's neighbour Carla, an American expat and single mother of two teens, has lived in a coercive relationship for many years, too worn down by her controlling husband to escape her situation.

A schoolyard stabbing sends wingbeats echoing from the past. One shocking event. Two teachers risk their careers to help a boy who has nothing. Three worlds intersect and collide. The best way to avoid trouble, thinks Ayisha Emmanuelle, is to avoid confrontation. As an inner-city schoolteacher, she does a whole lot of avoidance. 14-year-old Shamayal Thomas trusts no one. Not the family, not the gang. And at school, trusting people is forbidden. Jim Stevens teaches history. Haunted by his own, he still believes everyone can learn from the past. History doesn’t always have to repeat itself.

Puk is 26 years old, preparing for the birth of her second child, when her husband has a heart attack while out running. She leaves their toddler with a friend and dashes to the hospital, where Lasse lies unresponsive in a coma. He dies a few hours later. Into a Star follows Puk and her young family in the first year after this tragedy, which has shattered the ordinary life she imagined for them. As the days turn to weeks and months, Puk's second son is born, her sister moves in, her relationship with her in-laws fractures and evolves.

Millie loves her city life, her city friends and writing her true(ish) confessions column—but she’s starting to wonder if the grass really is greener on the other side, or if her heart really belongs back in Northumberland, with her mum who is struggling after the death of Millie’s dad.

When designer Camille Fontaine returns to the sun-drenched Spanish island of Majorca, painful memories resurface. She isn’t the only one with dark secrets to hide. Sunseeker Isobel seems to have everything. Is her perfect life a lie? Rising Hollywood star Stephanie should have the world at her feet, if only she can believe in herself. Michel has loved Camille for decades, but his search for the truth could destroy their last chance for happiness.

In the summer of 1973, teenage Ruth and her four friends are obsessed with pre-Raphaelite paintings and a little bit obsessed with each other. They spend the scorching summer days in the river by Ruth's grand family home, pretending to be the drowning Ophelia and recreating tableaus of other tragic mythical heroines. But by the end of the summer, real tragedy has found them. Twenty-four years later, Ruth is a wife and mother of three children and moves her family into her still-grand, but now somewhat dilapidated, childhood home following the death of her father.

Pip always worries about fitting in—which is tougher than usual when his new neighbors are vampires, banshees and ghosts. Worst of all is the mysterious spirit snatcher, which appears out of nowhere and sucks away people's personalities. When it attacks Pip's parents, the only way to save them is to destroy it. But first Pip has to find it. Along with his new friend Fliss and her dog Splodge, they set out to solve the monstrous mystery, facing murderous ghouls, werewolf attacks and an incredibly mouldy cheese along the way.

Kate Wareing is astonished when she secures a place in a televised dance competition. Especially as it means she’ll be paired with a professional dancer to compete for a life-changing cash prize. When she’s matched with gorgeous French dancer Merle, it quickly becomes clear that he’s just as keen to work on their chemistry as their routine. But when the competition is rocked by a scandal, Kate’s forced to switch to a new partner, Aleksis, who is just as devastatingly attractive as Merle – but seems to hate her.

London, 1936: At twenty-one, Kate Grifferty is a press photographer in a Fleet Street agency, an unusual job for a young woman. But Kate is both talented and daring, recklessly going wherever the story might be—including, one October day, to an anti-fascism protest in East London. There, she meets David Rabatkin, a brilliant Jewish medical student. While his idealistic brother is eager to go to Spain and join the fight for the Republic, David knows where his path lies: at home, fulfilling the expectations of his profession and his family.

1936. Anglo-Breton translator Annie Wrenne is working in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. Annie becomes a nurse on the front line, but after falling in love with a patient, she ends up pregnant - and abandoned - by a man she thought she knew. Annie passes the rest of the war in a haze, her only consolation her relationship with mysterious Republican fighter Carlos Ortega. Annie finds herself caught up in Ortega’s world, a web of intrigue, which leads to her recruitment into MI5.