Showing results by narrator "Zara Ramm" in All Categories

A tale of perfumes, exploring life, love, loss and forgiveness - Maggie Alderson's new best seller. Are you still married if you haven't seen your husband for months? Polly's life is great. Her children are away at uni, her glamorous mother - still modelling at 85 - is happily settled in a retirement village, and her perfume blog is taking off. Then her husband announces he needs some space and promptly vanishes. As Polly grapples with her bewildering situation, she clings to a few new friends to keep her going.

Every Christmas, for reasons which seem good at the time - especially after an eggnog or two - Max and the others leap into the nearest pod and indulge in their illegal Christmas jump. It's a tradition. This year, however, just to be different, they find themselves part of someone else's illegal Christmas jump. It's time to don a spacesuit and bring your own urine!

God rest ye merry gentlefolk, it's time for the traditional St Mary's Christmas jump - this year to Martingale Manor, where a murder mystery is unfolding... It's nearly Christmas and Leon has had a Brilliant Idea. A holiday - to enable a very reluctant Max to recover from her recently acquired...

Miss Mildred Percy has no wish to go to London. Unfortunately, her niece, Belinda, has recently absconded from Nyth y Ddraig with 1) a newly hatched white dragon, 2) over a dozen (unhatched) dragon eggs, and 3) an extraordinary surfeit of hubris. All clues lead to London, and so Mildred and company have no choice but to follow her to town. But retrieving a hoard of dragon eggs in the middle of a vast city is no easy task, especially when confronted with such impediments as journalism, pelicans, and a certain Prince Regent.

It all begins when the Time Police hold their first Children's Christmas Party. Their most dangerous mission yet. No good deed ever goes unpunished. Lt Grint succumbs to his softer side and soon lives to regret it. The combination of bubble universes, candy floss, a small boy, a toad named Mr Fluffy, Mount Fanboten, £6.5 million, and a love-struck Officer Lockland are all hard enough to believe, but imagine a situation so dire that only Officer Parrish can save the aforementioned Grint from a lengthy stay in prison. At least, he can—but will he?

Max, Leon and Matthew - together at last for Christmas at St Mary's - a time of conspicuous consumption, riotous misbehaviour and the traditional illegal Christmas jump. And this time, it's inter-generational. Donning her unfamiliar mother hat, Max takes Matthew back to 19th century London, where they plan to deliver a parcel of Christmas cheer to his former friends, but find themselves confronting the terrifying Old Ma Scrope in the process. 'Tis the season to be jolly. It's also the season of goodwill towards all mankind. Pity no one told Max.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Max's husband met Max's father? What would Leon do? They're normally a fairly amiable bunch, but this is the story of what to expect if St Mary's doesn't like someone. As in, really doesn't like someone. Warning: contains a unit-wide criminal enterprise, a great deal of illegal activity and a sad misuse of public resources. All the things a father will do to protect his family. It is also a story of revenge. Because this is payback - St Mary's style. Includes bonus St Mary's escapades 'Desiccated Water' and 'Markham and the Anal Probing'.

It's Christmas Eve at St Mary's And all through the house Nothing is stirring... Except for Max, Peterson and Markham, sneaking out at midnight for an assignment that is very definitely off the books. It's ten years ago tonight that Senior Historians Bashford and Grey went missing in 12th century Jerusalem. So how did they end up in AD60 Roman Colchester?

It's Christmas at St Mary's and time for the traditional illicit jump. Except this one is perfectly legal. It's Major Guthrie's last jump. To the Battle of Bannockburn, no less. An important moment in history for two nations - one that warrants everyone's full attention. But Max soon finds herself grappling with a near-lethal game of pooh sticks, another avian incursion and two turbulent teenagers intent on piloting their own illegal jump. And that's all before they even get near 14th-century Scotland. For this is St Mary's, and nothing is ever simple.

Betrayed, terrified and alone, Elizabeth Cage has fled her home. With no plan and no friends, she arrives at the picturesque village of Greyston and finds herself involved in an ages-old ceremony that will end in death. And that might be the least of her problems - the Sorensen Institute would very much like to know her whereabouts. And Michael Jones is still out there, somewhere, she hopes. No matter how far and how fast she can run, trouble will always find Elizabeth Cage.

What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we're not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people? When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-30s, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Fascinated by the experience, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Humane, provocative and deeply moving, The Lonely City is about the spaces between people and the things that draw them together, about sexuality, mortality and the magical possibilities of art.

It's Christmas Day 1066 and a team from St Mary's is going to witness the coronation of William the Conqueror. Or so they think... However, History seems to have different plans for them and when Max finds herself delivering a child in a peasant's hut, she can't help wondering what History is up to.

On Riddleston Road each house reaches three storeys high, with smart gabled roofs and neat garden paths unfurling from pastel coloured front doors. Wide, sash windows stare outwards from the brick facades, revealing a glimpse of beautiful interiors. And concealing dark secrets. Today a new...

First, there was a trunk. Inside the trunk was an egg, and inside the egg was…well, it certainly was not a chicken. Miss Mildred Percy, former wallflower and current adventurer, is now in charge of a dragon. Along with Mr. Wiggan and Mrs. Babbinton—our stalwart companions from the first volume of Miss Percy’s adventures—she embarks on a journey across Wales, in search of the mysterious Nyth y Ddraig, or Nest of Dragons. But traveling with a young dragon in an unfamiliar land proves more difficult than anticipated.

At the moment he knows he is dying, Johnny Eagle takes a photograph, which is later discovered by his heartbroken wife, Heidi. Heidi pores over the image and sees a busy street scene and a pavement full of strangers - she has no idea what this last message from her beloved husband could mean. Heidi has spent her days - and her years - giving cherished old furniture a second chance. But there are some parts of Heidi’s own life she believes are beyond repair.

Former correspondents E. and Henerey, accustomed to loving each other from afar, did not anticipate continuing their courtship in an enigmatic underwater city. When their journey through the Structure in E.'s garden strands them in a peculiar society preoccupied with the pleasures and perils of knowledge, E. and Henerey come to accept—and, more surprisingly still, embrace—the fact that they may never return home. A year and a half later, Sophy and Vyerin finally discover one of the elusive Entries that will help them seek their siblings.

On the longest night of 1895, a terrible storm rages above Harewood Hall. Max, Markham and an injured Peterson are welcomed in by the Harewood family but quickly realise that the gathering is far from celebratory. For tonight marks the Ordeal of the Haunted Room. Every Harewood heir must endure one terrifying night alone in the Haunted Room before he can inherit the family seat. Legend says that ghosts will murder anyone who isn't the true heir. Francis Harewood's ordeal will begin at midnight and end at dawn, but it isn't long before everything goes horribly wrong.

The greatest empire of them all began with a road. The Circle - a thousand miles of perilous forests and warring clans. No one has ever tamed such treacherous territory before, but ex-soldier Teyr Amondsen, veteran of a hundred battles, is determined to try. With a merchant caravan protected by a crew of skilled mercenaries, Amondsen embarks on a dangerous mission to forge a road across the untamed wilderness that was once her home. But a warlord rises in the wilds of the Circle, uniting its clans and terrorising its people. Teyr's battles may not be over yet.... All roads lead back to war.

When Rosie and Jules discover a ground-breaking clinical trial that enables two women to have a female baby, they jump at the chance to make history. Fear-mongering politicians and right-wing movements are quick to latch on to the controversies surrounding Ovum-to-Ovum (o-o) technology and stoke the fears of the public. What will happen to the numbers of little boys born? Is there a sinister conspiracy to eradicate men at play?

Paris, 1917. The notorious dancer Mata Hari sits in a cold cell awaiting freedom...or death. Alone and despondent, she is as confused as the rest of the world about the charges she's been arrested on: treason leading to the deaths of thousands of French soldiers. As she waits for her fate to be decided, she relays the story of her life to a reporter who is allowed to visit her in prison.