Showing results by narrator "Rachel Atkins" in All Categories

Zelda's life isn't exactly what she expected it to be in her 30s. Single, without a home of her own, and at another underwhelming 40th birthday party, she wonders if there might be more to life. But her best friend Lennie has a plan, and before she knows it they have answered an advertisement to go to Sicily to help rejuvenate a crumbling town and head to the beautiful island as a couple. A new life with her favourite person could be the chance to start over. But what if a summer in Sicily is about to change her life in more ways than she could have ever imagined?

Pre-war debutantes were members of the most protected, not to say isolated, stratum of 20th-century society: the young (17-20) unmarried daughters of the British upper classes. For most of them, the war changed all that for ever. It meant independence and the shock of the new, and daily exposure to customs and attitudes that must have seemed completely alien to them. For many, the almost military regime of an upper class childhood meant they were well suited for the no-nonsense approach needed in wartime.

Eighteen months after Natalie Gray loses her husband, Bernie, in a horrific hit and run accident, she finds love with his best friend, Ed Cooper, and moves into his home with her teenage daughter, Scarlett. But she begins to suspect Ed has a dark side - and even darker intentions. Natalie must get her troubled child to a safer place, but when Scarlett starts to hear voices coming from the empty apartment next door it seems she has unwittingly moved them into the heart of danger.

Diary of a War Crime is the first book in the DI Ruth Hunter crime prequel series. If you like chilling police procedurals, true-to-life characters and psychological twists, then you’ll love Simon McCleave’s addictive thrill ride. London, 1997. A series of baffling murders. A web of political corruption. DC Ruth Hunter thinks she has the brutal killer in her sights, but there's one problem. He’s a Serbian War criminal who died five years earlier and lies buried in Bosnia.

Ruth and Lucy are called to the brutal killing of young actress, and it seems that her murder might be connected to a cover up of serious sexual misconduct in London’s film industry. However, when the investigation is thwarted at every turn, they begin to wonder if they will ever solve the case. When a lucky break turns their attention to a man suspected of stalking the actress, Ruth and Lucy think they now have the prime suspect in their sights. With the clock ticking, will they be able to collect enough evidence to charge the man before he escapes abroad?

As the glamour of the Bright Young Things crashes into the world of the Mitford sisters, their maid, Louisa Cannon, finds herself at the scene of a gripping murder mystery. Meet the 'Bright Young Things', the rabble-rousing hedonists of the 1920s whose treasure hunts were a media obsession. One such game takes place at the 18th birthday party of Pamela Mitford but ends in tragedy as cruel, charismatic Adrian Curtis is pushed to his death from the church neighbouring the Mitford home. The police quickly identify the killer as a maid, Dulcie.

1937. War with Germany is dawning and a civil war already raging in Spain. Split across political lines, the six Mitford sisters are more divided than ever. Meanwhile their former maid Louisa Cannon is now a private detective, working with her ex-policeman husband, Guy Sullivan. Louisa and Guy are surprised when a call comes in from novelist Nancy Mitford requesting that they look into the disappearance of her Communist sister, Jessica, nicknamed Decca. It quickly becomes clear that Decca may have made for the war in Spain - and not alone.

It's never too late to change the habits of a lifetime... Evelyn Pringle isn't the sort to make rash decisions. Or any decisions, really – she's always left that sort of thing up to her husband. But he's been found dead, wearing his best suit, with a diamond ring in his pocket that doesn't fit her. When Evelyn finds a letter addressed to a woman on the Isle of Wight, she decides to deliver it. By hand. So begins a very unusual holiday, and an adventure no one could have predicted – least of all Evelyn herself.

When an old television rival, Deirdre Shaw, is found dead at the Cotswolds manor house where she was catering for a prestigious shooting weekend, Prudence is asked to step into the breach. Prudence is only too happy to take up the position, and soon she is working in the kitchens of Farleigh Manor. But Farleigh Manor is the home to secrets, both old and new. The site of a famous unsolved murder from the 19th century, Farleigh Manor has never quite shaken off its sensationalist past. It's about to get a sensational present, too.

When Gill Swanley decides to take up gardening to fight a midlife malaise, she never expected it to become quite such a dangerous hobby. Pushing herself to 'get out there', Gill picks herself up the secateurs and joins the Bromley Botanists. Here she finds a seven-strong group whose main agenda is how to win the coveted Golden Trowel for best community club of the year. But when a dead body turns up in the community greenhouse, they suddenly have more serious matters to consider than victory.

The Liddiard family have lived in Honeycote for generations. But that just might be changing.... Mickey Liddiard adores his wife, Lucy - so why he is cheating on her with Kay? James Liddiard has been in love with Lucy for years. So when he discovers Mickey is being unfaithful, could this be his opportunity? Kay is most definitely not happily married - it was the money which first attracted her to her husband. But now, could Mickey hold the key to her heart and her happiness?

Winter 1939: Danusha and her family are forced to flee their home when the Nazis invade Poland. Danusha’s mother, Anna, changes her name and secures a position as a housekeeper in a German doctor’s mansion in Kraków where Gestapo meetings are hosted in the kitchen. Her secret is their salvation, but what Danusha remembers most is the solitude, with only her baby brother and the girl in the mirror for company.

I waved my husband good-bye at the airport, and he vanished without a trace. I sat awake, night after night, looking at photos of our family. I knew he would never leave us. And then I found him. Now he lives with the younger, beautiful woman he thinks he loves. And he doesn’t even recognize me. Who will he choose? Can I forgive him? And will I ever be able to look into his eyes without thinking of his other woman?

When ex-soldier Ashley Campbell is brutally murdered outside a Peckham nightclub, Ruth's first thought is that it is gang related. Yet, as the investigation progresses, it seems that the victim's time as a recruit at Cranleigh Barracks might hold the key to the true identity of the murderer. As Ruth and Lucy uncover a brutal culture of bullying, racism and sexual abuse at the barracks, it seems that several officers in the British Army will go to any lengths to protect their identity.

Adventurers are once again gathering in Fang to participate in Baron Sukumvit’s ‘Trial of Champions’ and undertake ‘The Walk’ through Deathtrap Dungeon...but this year the prize has changed...and the stakes have never been higher!

Kent, 2019. With her marriage in tatters, school teacher Lizzie Armstrong moves to sleepy Elm Heath for a fresh start and her pupils and the community soon steal her heart. So when the school is threatened with closure Lizzie knows she has to fight and she looks to the school’s founder for inspiration. What makes Esther, born and bred in London, a proud Suffragette, suddenly leave the city and escape to Elm Heath? And when Lizzie uncovers Esther’s heartbreaking secret, could it give her the strength she needs to save not just the school, but her new beginning too?

Maybe it's the weirdness of the weather. Maybe it's another way to pour scorn on politicians. Maybe the steady stream of headlines about fires, floods and droughts is finally starting to get to us. Whatever it is, for more and more of us, climate change is shifting from a shadowy fear in the backs of our minds to something we feel we need to get a handle on. Climate change may be a horror story, but, as Our Biggest Experiment shows, the tale of how we discovered it isn't.

Dreaded more than the Devil himself, cholera - the 'blue death' - spares no one. As fear grows across the city, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain are called to the bedside of a dead man, murdered, and with his throat torn out, in the back room of a brothel. When an innocent man is taken to Newgate, Jem and Will have until execution day to save him. The search for the identity of the corpse, and the killer, takes them to the gates of Blackwater Hall, home to the secretive, and corrupt Mortmain family.

From one of the most daring voices in European fiction, this is a story of the twentieth century traced through the various possible lives of one woman. She is a baby who barely suffocates in the cradle. Or perhaps not? She lives to become as an adult and dies beloved. Or dies betrayed. Or perhaps not? Her memory is honoured. Or she is forgotten by everyone.

December 1941: Evacuated from the threat of German bombs, sisters Amelie and Mireille have grown up under the storm clouds of war. Now they have joined the fight against Hitler, with Amelie training as a nurse to save wounded soldiers, and Mireille enlisted to help the Air Force wage war in the skies over Europe. But as each sister fights for peace, they are still haunted by the memory of their missing sister who was snatched away from them at the beginning of the war.