Showing results by narrator "Annie Aldington" in All Categories

Thirteen-year-old Alice Truelove can’t take another day of her father’s cruelty. Better a life on the streets than being constantly blamed for her mother’s sad death, or that’s what Alice thinks as she packs up her meagre possessions. But fending for herself in the Black Country town of Wednesbury is not as easy as she expected, and it soon hits her that without help she will quickly be hungry and cold.

The Last Word is the definitive story of how Katrina Amy Alexandria Alexis Infield became Katie Price. It documents how her life has been shaped by a tradition of strong women, by cycles of abuse which have been repeated through generations, and by the impact of fame and trauma on a close family unit.

Behind the cold, damp walls of the cottage, 17-year-old Malakai River is left to fend for his younger sisters. In her selfish quest for freedom, his mother shacks up with a small-time gangster and recklessly leaves the children behind. When Jean River returns a year later, she makes two shocking discoveries - a decomposing body of a young woman in her cottage...and Kelly Raven.

London, 1923. Cyril Black is finally out of prison. Rather than going home to his wife and son, he visits his mistress only to find that she's given birth to his daughter - and wants nothing to do with her. His wife, Florrie, reluctantly agrees to take them in. But there's no love in her heart for another woman's child... 1939. At sixteen, Penny Black lives in constant fear of her mother's temper. Her only friend is her twelve-year-old neighbour, Katy Darwin. When they learn Katy will be evacuated to the countryside, the two come up with a plan to smuggle Penny along.

‘A second’s silence and then an almighty scream. It was the most moving thing I had ever seen … A baby, a real live baby, another human life had entered the world. It didn’t seem possible and yet I had witnessed it with my very own eyes.’ Born into a happy working-class North London family in the mid-twentieth century, Katie is determined to ‘do something’ with her life. Working in the impoverished East End in the 1950s, she meets the Sisters of St John the Divine – a community of nuns dedicated to nursing and midwifery.

Left on the steps of an orphanage when she was just days old, Nancy Sunday was brought up in hardship—until the kindly Rosalind Carey took her in. Now 18 years old, Nancy is an adopted member of the Carey family. But she can’t help wondering who her parents really were. When Nancy is sent away to finishing school, she finds herself in the midst of London society. There she meets Freddie Ashton—kind and warm-hearted, he might just be the man of Nancy’s dreams. But she knows his wealthy parents would never let him marry a penniless foundling.

A gripping thriller that will shock you to the core. Controlled all her life by her religious mother, 15-year-old Kelly Raven commits the ultimate sin. She soon discovers that running away to the cold, frightening streets of London is less harsh than her previous life. A drug dealer, two fraudsters, and a prostitute are her new family now, and she becomes the woman she was destined to be. Little does she know that Eddie Raven is coming for her, but she is no sweet four-year-old child, and he is certainly no doting father.

Twenty years ago, Fletch avenged the gangland killing of his younger brother, Spencer, and accepted his guilt. But his actions meant he had to leave his precious children to fend for themselves. He thought they would be looked after. Now a free man, Fletch returns to find his family in chaos. Kit is married to notorious gangster while Austin seems hell-bent on doing everything he can to create a turf war. Fletch knows he has to get his kids under control, but he also knows that the seeds of this disaster were planted long ago. Now Fletch is back and it’s time to settle the score.

Once the top dog, Danny Mckay has walked away from his old gangland life. He’s on the straight and narrow now, looking forward to settling down and living a quiet life. But trouble seems to follow Danny. And when his own family is caught up in a shocking event, Danny is dragged back into the gangland world, hell-bent on revenge. Danny’s determined to make someone pay, but the rules are different this time around—old friends are enemies, and Danny doesn’t know who he can trust.

Hard live. Hard Lessons. It's murder on the streets. When a prostitute's body is found lifeless, mutilated and brutally raped, DCI Annie Carr has never seen anything like it and never wants to again. Kate Burrows, retired DCI now consultant, has plenty of experience when it comes to murder - after all she caught the Grantley Ripper and broke the biggest pedophile ring in the South East. She is determined to help put the killer behind bars.

Living in a beautiful home on the edge of a council estate, Kara Bannon can’t imagine what it’s like to have nothing. An eerie phone call plays on her mind and within three days she loses everything – her job, her home and Justin, the only person she thought she could trust. Alone and terrified, she makes a decision that will change her life forever.

Two childhood friends.... Best friends Tommy Boyle and Scratch always had each other's backs. Dragged up in care and cruelly betrayed by everyone they trusted, they made a pact to fight their way out of the gutter together. Two sides of the law.... Old loyalties die hard on the streets of London. Tommy throws his lot in with the notorious Darling family even if it means leaving Scratch to the wolves. She's destined for a different path, reinventing herself as copper Kim Regan. One deadly showdown.... Now they're on opposite sides of the law.

When Carrie Manning’s father dies, her mother, Esther, is heartbroken. Essie leaves London to convalesce with her good friend Lady Alice, and it is down to Carrie to look after her family and take charge of the shipping company that her father has left behind. But the company is in dire straits, forcing Carrie seek work as a companion to Maria Colville. When Carrie and Maria try to track down Maria’s mother, they have no idea of the secrets that they will discover. Secrets that link the Colvilles, the Mannings and figures from the past who return to England.

Standing on London’s Victoria docks with the wind biting through her shawl, Rose Munday realises she’s been abandoned by her sweetheart. She had risked everything to get to London, but, stumbling through the pea-soup fog, she has nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Scared and alone, Rose steps straight into danger, only to be rescued by two women with even less to their names - a woman of the night and her young sidekick, Sparrow.

London, 1875. Taking one last look around her little room in Covent Garden, Nettie Carroll couldn’t believe she wouldn’t even be able to say good-bye to her friends. Her father had trusted the wrong man, and now they would have to go on the run. Once again.

After losing her mum in a tragic accident when she was young, Chrissy Moss had to find out the hard way how to survive on one of the East End's most notorious estates. When a 15-year-old girl disappears, hours after delivering a message for local gangland lowlife Eddie, the residents take the law into their own hands, forcing old secrets to resurface. With rumours flying - not just about the girl's disappearance, but about Laura Moss' death years earlier - Chrissy begins to suspect what happened to her mother was no accident: it was murder.

Holding the letter in trembling hands, Daisy’s future crumbled before her – the words engraved on her heart forever. The village of Little Creek, the long winter of 1867. The first flakes of snow are falling when Daisy Marshall, secretly engaged to her master's son, finds herself jilted at the altar. Heartbroken, Daisy flees to the small village of Little Creek, nestled on the coast of Essex. There she is warmly welcomed – but the village is poverty-stricken, suffering under a cruel lord of the manor. And when cholera hits, the villagers are truly in dire straits.

It’s spring in Little Creek, and wedding bells are ringing. After their hasty marriage the Christmas before, Daisy Marshall is overjoyed to be finally marrying dashing Jay Fox properly, in front of the whole village. But then, on the evening of their wedding, amid the festivities, Jay disappears. Daisy doesn’t know if Jay is dead or alive, if she’s his wife or his widow. And what’s more, without her husband, she has no means of supporting herself or her household.

Once they had been called Orrice and Effel, two bedraggled, scruffy waifs who lived rough off the streets of Walworth. Now they were Horrace and Ethel Cooper, grown up - quite respectable really - and living with their adopted parents, Jim and Rebecca Cooper. When Horrace saw the pretty girl who worked as a shop assistant in Adams (Ladies Fashion Modes) he was quite bowled over and knew he had to meet her. From then on he was in and out of the shop, buying hats and stockings and ribbons, trying desperately to persuade Miss Sally Brown to come out with him.

London, 1910. Lily is 10 years old when she realises her grandmother, a washerwoman, is seriously ill. She's determined to do what she can to help and keep her grandmother's illness a secret - even from her beloved twin, Artie. When tragedy strikes and the twins are faced with the prospect of a workhouse or an orphanage, a benefactor offers to take Artie in and educate him. All Artie's needs will be taken care of - but the gentleman has no use for a girl. As the orphan twins grow up and take different paths, their new lives are beyond anything they could have imagined.