Showing results by narrator "Patience Tomlinson" in All Categories

Poppy Carlton: Cousin to the groom. She is devastated when Chris falls in love and marries someone else. She will never love again. James Carlton: The groom’s older brother – and best man. Mocking and cynical, he is the exact opposite of fun-loving Chris. James taunts Poppy that she should find herself a real man and leave her adolescent fantasies behind. He is not adverse to showing her just what real passion is about. But how can he be sure that her response is for him?

Martha Packer is much loved by everyone in the village of Hillsbridge. As the landlady of The Three Feathers, she runs a respectable establishment and is known for her generosity and care for her family and others around her - she even took in two orphan girls to save them from a life of cruelty in the workhouse. So when Martha announces that she has killed her son, Garth, the community is shocked. Martha refuses to give a reason, but her other children cannot believe their mother is capable of murder and they begin to believe that she is protecting someone - maybe even one of them.

Isabella of Spain was a great woman, a great Queen. Crown of Aloes is presented as a personal chronicle. Within the framework of known fact and detail drawn from hitherto unexploited contemporary Spanish sources, a novelist’s imagination and understanding have provided motives, thoughts, and private conversations, helping to build up the fascinating character Isabella must have been. Her fortunes were varied indeed: she knew acute poverty, faced anxiety and danger with high courage, gave much, suffered much, lived to the full.

Sir Godfrey Tallboys had come home from the Crusades. Home to Knight’s Acre. But the years had brought many changes – and not only to his estate. His wife Sybilla, exhausted with struggling to keep poverty at bay, had grown old before her time. And with Sir Godfrey’s return, there was further change. With him was the Moorish slave girl who had saved his life in Spain.

The deliciously twisty twenty-fifth novel in the much-loved Libby Sarjeant audiobook series by Lesley Cookman.

'You don’t mean you're going to divorce him?' Miss Spanner said with horror. A sophisticated, emotive novel, Chatterton Square concerns the complex web of relationships between two neighbouring families, the Blacketts and the Frasers. Framed by the advance of the Second World War, the subtle mechanics of marriage and love are laid bare through the observation of three of the marital options open to the mid-century woman: unmarried, separated, miserably married.

1787, West Africa: All her life, Grace Winslow, the daughter of an English sea captain and an African princess, has been sheltered from the truth about the family business - the capture and trade of slaves. Desperate to avoid marriage to an odious suitor, Grace escapes the family compound only to be caught up in a slave revolt at the fortress of Zulina. Soon, she begins to grasp the brutality and ferocity of the family business.

An unidentified woman’s body is found in a remote garden in Kent. With the owners not in residence, the only people with legitimate access are the caretaker, Johnny, and landscape gardeners Adam Sarjeant and his employer, Mog. Afraid of her son falling under suspicion, Libby Sarjeant, with her friend Fran, are determined to find the murderer, with or without the assistance of the police in the person of Chief Detective Inspector Ian Connell.

No one at Gad’s Hall could admit what they knew about the room in the attic. The locked room that held the Thorley family’s most shameful secret. The terrifying room that had once been the living tomb of a beautiful young woman possessed by the darkest evil. Years had passed but the relentless diabolic force abided – waiting until it could once again possess an innocent and inflict its horror upon the living. It was a force countless centuries old. It was simply a matter of time before it would strike again.

The Wars of the Roses were over, but for Henry Tallboys the battle for survival went on. Scratchign a livign from the meagre soil of Knight’s Acre was no easy task, but that wasn’t Henry’s only worry – there was also Joann’s future to settle. Even at the age of eleven Joanna seemed destined to fetch a handsome price in the marriage market; yet a mysterious bond seemed to unite her with Henry, a bond more close than either of them could have known.

Bella Morleigh was pleased to inherit a derelict theatre, that is until an unknown body is discovered within it. Luckily for her, her two friends, Libby Sarjeant and psychic investigator Fran Castle, are on the case. Although Libby is rather distracted by the preparations for her friends' civil partnership ceremony, she's at least getting the hang of using a computer to dig for information, something she's certain will be terribly useful in her detecting career.

P. D. James'sextraordinary memoir of her early life and time starting out as a novelist as well as diaries recording her in old age. In this intriguing and very personal book, part diary, part memoir, P. D. James considers the twelve months of her life between her seventy-seventh and seventy-eighth birthdays and looks back on her earlier life.

The eleventh book in the Libby Sarjeant series of British murder mysteries which features a retired actress as the female sleuth and is based in the picturesque village of Steeple Martin. Libby Sarjeant is invited to look into the provenance of a jewelled Anglo-Saxon reliquary which has appeared on a website. The nuns at St Eldreda's Abbey are curious, as it apparently contains a relic of St Eldreda herself.

Hampshire, 1850. Under the watchful eyes of her guardian, Lord Edward Sharland, and an excellent estate manager, Beth Langton has been running her large family estate. After a week away, terrible news is waiting for her. The father of her best friend, Lady Helen Denton, has shot himself, leaving Helen destitute. Beth persuades Helen to live with her, although too proud to take charity, Helen insists she work as a paid companion. The girls soon settle happily together, but further tragedy awaits.

It is early spring in 1944, and Allied troops will soon invade northern France. Alice Todd is beginning her second year as warden of a Land Army hostel located in the wilds of Devonshire. Here she has won the affection and confidence of the girls in her charge and found herself caught up in lives which are complex, humorous, and sometimes tragic.

My only regret is that I shan't be alive to savour my retrospective triumph. But that is of small account. I savour it every day of my life. I shall have done the one thing I resolved to do when I was 12 years old - and the world will know it. Follow the 'Queen of Crime' as she takes us into the mind of a man who has waited decades to enact his patient, ingenious revenge on a school bully.

“The end of the old world”, people said about the long, hot summer of 1914. That summer Aunt Tilly comes to stay with her brother, the Rector, and his four lively daughters in the sleepy Sussex village of Ashden. Aunt Tilly’s visit sparks off a chain of events which threatens to split Ashden apart. Agnes Pilbeam, the Rectory palourmaid, and her sweetheart, Jamie, find themselves bewilderingly caught up. Then, in August, the lamps go out all over Europe, and war bursts open the straitjacket of rural village life.

1990. On the luxurious private island of Angel Cay, four privileged students toast the end of their exams. Self-assured Miles, clever Grace, talented Alex and beautiful Sasha have the world at their feet. But one dark night will change their perfect lives forever. As the friends move into glamorous careers – fashion, music, politics – each tries to put the past behind them. But no matter how far their stars rise, they cannot escape the dreadful truth.

From the summer of 1938, British women from all walks of life joined the Women's Voluntary Services (WVS). This disparate band of women came together for the common good - to help serve and protect their communities. By 1941 a million women had enrolled. These brave and dutiful women played a vital role in Britain's victory. The positive impact of the WVS on wartime society was universally acknowledged. They were instrumental in implementing the large-scale evacuation of children from bomb-targeted cities, in the care of the wounded, and in keeping those in war service fed.

Mrs Paschal, the heroine of Revelations of a Lady Detective, is regularly consulted by the police and serves as an undercover agent as well as investigating her own cases. But even though she is 'verging on 40', she throws herself into cases with verve and gusto and has no hesitation in infiltrating a deadly secret society or casting off her crinolines in order to plummet into a sewer on the trail of a criminal.