Showing results by narrator "Anne Dover" in All Categories

1942. Sixteen-year-old Poppy Percival turns up at Trout's clothing factory to start work as a seamstress. Poppy harbours a secret - one from which she is still suffering. But she's not the only one with a secret. Each of her new friends at the factory is hiding something painful. The war will throw their lives into turmoil but also bring these women closer to each other than they could ever have imagined.

Liverpool 1939: Olivia Campbell appears to have the perfect life. However, behind closed doors she lives in constant fear of her abusive father and has no support from her mother. Longing for love and affection, she begins a relationship with Ted, a young lad who works in her father's factory. But her family disapprove of the relationship and forbid them from seeing each other.

August 1940: As the Luftwaffe swarm over Liverpool, Shane Quinn decides to move his family back to the safety of Ireland. But his only child, the beautiful Dana, would rather stay and serve her country than flee to a foreign land. Determined to make it on her own, she joins the WAAF with newfound pals Patty and Lucy. There’s plenty of excitement to be had on a RAF station, even a chance or two at love.

Summer, 1936. Newly trained midwife Hazel Price returns to the Yorkshire streets of her childhood, only to find that her modern methods and 'stuck-up' ways bring her into conflict with her family and other formidable residents of Raglan Road. Determined, Hazel battles on, assisting with home deliveries and supporting the local GP. The days are long and hard, but Hazel brings knowledge and compassion to the work she loves.

It wasn't a privileged childhood, but it was a happy one. Sybil and Lizzie Cream, brought up in a fisherman's cottage on the edge of the cold North Sea, were content to leave privilege where it belonged: with their friends the Wintertons. Christina Winterton was the same age as Sybil, and the two girls were inseparable, but it was Lizzie whom Ralph Winterton, three years older, found irresistible. Then war came to East Anglia, and so did Manchester-born Fenn Kitzmann, now of the American Army Air Force.

Yorkshire, 1927. Eclipse fever grips the nation, and when beloved theatre star Selina Fellini approaches trusted sleuth Kate Shackleton to accompany her to a viewing party at Giggleswick School Chapel, Kate suspects an ulterior motive. During the eclipse, Selina's friend and costar Billy Moffatt disappears and is later found dead in the chapel grounds. Kate can't help but dig deeper and soon learns that two other members of the theatre troupe died in similarly mysterious circumstances in the past year.

It's 1919 in Ashford-in-the-Water, Derbyshire. The Ryan family are adjusting to life in the aftermath of the First World War. Walter has returned home a broken man, and so it falls to his son, Josh, and daughter, Emily, to do their best to keep their family business as the village candle makers going. Josh and Emily are great friends with Thomas 'Trip' Trippet, whose father owns a cutlery manufacturing company in Sheffield, and Amy Clark, daughter of the local blacksmith.

From the best-selling author of Miss Appleby's Academy comes a gritty saga perfect for fans of Dilly Court, Maggie Hope and Nadine Dorries. Prue's heart beat hard - she had heard of the low seams of the mines of Northwest Durham, and she had always had a fear of being enclosed. This was her job, she told herself; this was what she had wanted. She must do it. So she picked up her bag and followed them to the cage which carried the miners belowground, praying that the man did not die, that she need not produce some miracle....

A Pawnshop Robbery: It's no rest for the wicked as Kate Shackleton picks up her second professional sleuthing case. But exposing the culprit of a pawnshop robbery turns sinister when her investigation takes her to Harrogate - and murder is only one step behind.... A Fatal Stabbing: A night at the theatre should be just what the doctor ordered - until Kate stumbles across a body in the doorway.

As war approaches, Alice, Edith and Marg fear for the safety of their families, while trying to decide the best way they can do their bit for their country. Alice decides to volunteer with the Red Cross, helping those most in need, Marg is preparing to marry her true love at the most dangerous of times and Edith hopes to finally realise her dream of becoming a teacher, and starting a family of her own. Things have never been easy for the Halfpenny girls, but family, friendship and community spirit will always see them through the darkest of days.

Liverpool, 1941: After German bombs shatter the life Cadi has built for herself in Liverpool, she is more determined than ever to sign up and do h bit. Joining the WAAF also means she is closer to her beau—until Jez is sent thousands of miles from home. While Jez is in Africa, someone from the past starts spreading vicious rumours that could threaten their relationship, and Cadi finds herself torn between keeping secrets and telling the truth to protect those she holds dear.

1901. Tina Rose is the beloved daughter of a wealthy Jewish family while Edward grew up with an abusive father in the wilds of New Zealand. Despite their differences, the two fall madly in love when Edward arrives in England, looking for a better future. However, the consequences of their love affair are terrible for Tina, as she is shamed by the father she adores, and Edward is sent away. Against all the odds, Tina and Edward find each other again.

As WWI begins, no family, including the Neylers, will be left untouched, and by the time the war finally finishes, nothing will ever be the same again. Ted and Tina Neyler's children are growing up, doomed to be drawn into the Great War: Frank will be scarred forever by one terrible day in the trenches while Louis, the charming optimist, returns unscathed from the war to find that his wife and mistress have met up and that his misdemeanours are inexorably catching up with him.

1929, London. In the darkness before dawn, a London railway porter discovers a man's body as he unloads a special goods train from Yorkshire, all means of identification stripped away. Hitting a dead end, Scotland Yard call on indomitable sleuth Kate Shackleton, hoping her local Yorkshire knowledge and undoubted skills at winkling out information will produce the results they need. 1929, Yorkshire. Fears of unrest in the Yorkshire coalfields mean that Kate must conduct her investigation with the utmost secrecy.

1688: Beth Ambrose has led a sheltered life within Merryfields, her family home on the outskirts of London; a place where her parents provide a sanctuary for melancholic souls. A passionate and gifted artist, Beth shares a close bond with Johannes the painter, who nurtures her talents and takes her on as his apprentice. But as political tensions begin to rise in the capital, Noah Leyton arrives at her family home in the middle of the night with a proposition that turns Beth's world upside down.

Among millions of Holocaust victims sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau in 1944, Priska, Rachel and Anka each passed through its infamous gates with a secret. Strangers to each other, they were newly pregnant and facing an uncertain fate without their husbands. Alone, scared and with so many loved ones already lost to the Nazis, these young women were privately determined to hold on to all they had left: their lives and those of their unborn babies.

It is 1937, and Alice, Edith and Marg continue to face hardships every day, growing up on one of the poorest streets in Blackpool. Penniless, their friendship has helped them survive this far, but it'll take more than that to see them through the dark days ahead. Alice is coping with a violent father. Marg is left reeling after a dark secret about her birth comes to light and threatens to destroy the life she knows, and Edith is fighting to protect her alcoholic mother from the shame of their neighbours and keep her brother on the straight and narrow.

Dympna Byrne lives a simple life with her family on the Connemara coast. She adores her father Micheál, and does her best to help her family by working hard and expecting little. But beneath the surface there are hidden secrets. Dympna’s mother idolises her clever eldest son, yet her attitude to Dympna is puzzling. So when her family find themselves in desperate need of money, it is Dympna who crosses the water to Liverpool to seek a better life.

Angela O'Rourke is six when her parents hand her over to an aunt and uncle in a distant village. It's a common practice for large, hard-up families in 1950s Ireland, but for Angela it means that her mother and father don't love her any more. Still, she's well cared for till she's 16, when her uncle starts to take too much of an interest in her. Moving to Liverpool in the early 1960s, she becomes a success in the world of fashion design. The pain of a disastrous love affair sends her home to Ireland just after the death of her aunt. There, among old papers, Angela makes an astonishing discovery....

The Batleys and the Caldwells owned neighbouring farms on the beautiful, wild Northumbrian coast. But there all similarity ended, and enmity began. For between the two families raged a violent and bitter feud. Into this stormy atmosphere came Linda Metcalfe, an agricultural student, who became involved in the tensions between the two households on her arrival. Employed by Ralph Batley, Linda soon found herself unwittingly a part of the feud, and began to feel a strange admiration for Ralph, who made it painfully clear that he didn't need her on the farm or in his life.