Showing results by narrator "Katherine Press" in All Categories

1944 - The Isle of Wight: 16 year-old Constance’s life on the island is sheltered until the death of her brother, brings the reality of war crashing down around her. He leaves behind his pregnant widow, Ginny. When Constance meets a handsome Canadian airforce man, she’s eager to escape her grief and be swept up by first love. It’s a love which has ramifications she could never envisage. Present day: When young British backpacker, Isabel Stark happens across a car accident on a lonely stretch of road in the South Island of New Zealand her life changes forever.

One sunny day in July, someone took three-month-old Alicia Owen from her pram outside a supermarket. Her mother, Marie, was inside. No one saw who took Alicia. And no one could find her....

England, 1925. Louisa Drew lost her husband in the First World War and her six-year-old twin sons in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Newly remarried to a war-traumatised husband and seven months pregnant, Louisa is asked by her employer to travel to Clewer Hall in Sussex where she is to photograph the contents of the house for auction. She learns Clewer Hall was host to an infamous séance in 1896, and that the lady of the house has asked those who gathered back then to come together once more to re-create the evening.

Stuart Ingram was once a respected local councillor. The first time the police knocked on Gina's door, they arrested her husband. The second time, they accused him of child abuse. But he died a guilty man. This time, the police are here for Gina - to tell her that her husband is dead. Murdered, just two weeks before his trial. Gina always stood by her husband. Even when everyone else walked away. She believed the trial would clear his name. But now Stuart is dead. And his wife is the suspect.

The year is 1607. When a catastrophic flood hits the Somerset coast, young sailor-in-disguise Fortune gets the blame. Locals are convinced witchcraft is at work. And Fortune - who is secretive, suspiciously good at swimming and, to everyone's surprise, a girl - is an obvious scapegoat. Even saving the life of her rival's only son doesn't clear her name. If anything, it makes matters worse....

At 18, Emma Kenward runs away from her dull Sloane home to try her luck as a painter in Tuscany. Waspish, idealistic and far too clever for her own good, she is at the awkward age when women choose their futures - and their identities.

On National Divorce Day, my husband Steve and I decide to break up. After years of depression and mood swings (him) and hope and defeat (me) enough is, quite frankly, enough. Until a chance remark triggers a chain of events leading to Steve’s diagnosis of ADHD and autism. What follows is a year of discovery, denial, medication and salvation as we, our teenagers and even our beloved Golden Retriever, Margot, set out to embrace this new reality. But will my plan to start an amateur honesty box business from our tiny Devon village be the catalyst to bring us together, or drive us further apart?

Winner of the Costa Children’s Book Award 2018. The Skylarks' War is a beautiful story following the loves and losses of a family growing up against the harsh backdrop of World War One, from the award-winning Hilary McKay. Clarry and her older brother Peter live for their summers in Cornwall...

A timeless tale of courage, resistance and friendship, The Umbrella Mouse is a heart-stopping adventure drawing on the true stories of animals caught in the conflict of WWII, winner of the 2019 Sainsbury's Book Prize for Fiction and selected for Waterstones Book of the Month. 1944, and London is...

There are more deities and daemons in the world than stars in the sky. But only Heartseers like Anise Star can see them—because only they still believe... Anise's job is to help humans and daemons live happily together. But when the villainous Mr Babbitt tries to steal her home in the White Woods and drive the daemons out, she is forced to travel to the capital to ask the High King for help. First, though, she'll have to convince him that daemons still exist.

When Vicky's ex threatens to expose a decade-old secret, she becomes an internet sensation overnight. But fame has a dark side. As her family unravels under the weight of buried sins, a disturbed man takes deadly offense, setting off a tragic chain of events. Mia, a broken girl caught in the crossfire, loses everything but gains infamy. Now alone, she monetizes her trauma, questioning if the fame she's found is worth the price she paid.

Louise Lovett’s death was a tragedy. But questions still swirl about exactly what happened to Louise that day. Did she fall…or was she pushed? Helen Matthews’ donor heart saves her life. But as her new heart beats inside her, Helen feels the pull of its previous owner – despite what everyone is telling her, Helen is certain she has one final message to pass on. As the lives of Helen and Louise become ever more entangled, Helen’s obsession gets increasingly out of control. And the fragile new life she has built begins to fall apart.

Portugal, 1750s. Cecilia Lamb knew being a sea captain’s wife would mean a life of waiting and watching the horizon for her husband’s ship. But John has been gone longer than any voyage should last. Everyone else has given up hope of his return. But she knows in her bones that he is not lost. Gone, but not lost. Barely able to tear her eyes from the shimmering sea, she feels drawn to the sun-baked shoreline, and amid the bustle of the docks she feels certain that her husband will come back to her. Though along with that feeling is another sense – that something darker is coming.

Hiding in the seedy underbelly of Paris, Vernita is keeping her sick mother alive by selling exquisitely embroidered lingerie to a shop that supplies the Princess Pauline Borghese. When Vernita approaches the Princess directly with a new negligee, she is enchanted and employs Vernita as a personal servant. As an English noblewoman in the enemy French court, Vernita has to tread carefully. However, both the Princess’ handsome lover Count Axel de Storvik and the all-powerful Emperor Napoleon are making matters more complicated...

Soulmates do exist... But will they find their way to each other? The year is 1954. In a small French museum, two people's lives are about to change forever. On a wintery night in December, fifteen-year old Zara meets Leon for the first time. As the power cuts out in the museum, Leon and Zara spend an hour in complete darkness, discussing their love for art, Monet and Paris. They both feel an instant connection but they have never seen each other in the light. They might not know what the other looks like but they know, their lives will never be the same.

Spring 1937: Teresa, a young Basque girl, is evacuated to London in the wake of the Guernica bombing. She thinks she has reached safety in the lofty halls of Rochester Place and the soothing arms of Mary Davidson, but trouble seeks her out wherever she goes. Autumn 2020: Corrine, an emergency services operator, receives a call from a distressed woman called Mary. But when the ambulance arrives at Rochester Place—the address the woman gave them—she is nowhere to be found.

Family matriarch and Holocaust survivor Nora Wojnaswki is about to become the oldest woman in the world, and her family are determined to celebrate in style. Her great granddaughter, Debs, however, is not too happy about being left in charge of the party. It’s been a struggle to get the Rabbi to commit to a date and the large Wojnaswki clan can’t agree on what food should be served. Only, Debs’s problems are just beginning. Because Nora isn’t your average centenarian, and she has other ideas.

Carla Craig is passionately in love with Richard Mere—he has a hold over her she can't resist. Even when her world is blown apart, Carla still can't put the affair behind her. And Avril Hayden, Carla's flamboyant and sensual friend, finds herself increasingly intrigued by this mysterious connection—a connection that won't go away. But as hidden truths are finally revealed, intrigue turns to fear, and risk to terrible danger.

Linnet wishes she could sing magic like her father, Nightingale—and bring the two sides of her island together again. For her land has been divided by a terrible tragedy, and Linnet has been banished with her father to the deepest swamps, leaving behind her best friends. When her father is captured, Linnet must be brave and embark on a treacherous journey. Through alligator pools and sinking sands, she finds new friends. Yet without her singing magic, Linnet discovers something even more powerful. Something that could save her father and heal the broken heart of her island.

A dark, gothic adventure set deep in a Bavarian forest, with angels and owls and magic and a boy who isn’t all that he seems to be. A cherub is blown into Cassie Engel’s bedroom during a thunderstorm, triggering a series of terrifying events. Cassie must discover if its arrival was an accident or part of something more sinister. With a self-obsessed opera singer for a mother, a strange taxidermist father and a best friend who isn’t quite what he seems, Cassie is forced to unearth the secrets of her family’s past.