Showing results by narrator "Julia Franklin" in All Categories

Juliet Joyce has been happily married to Rick for 25 years. But with two children who treat the house like a hotel, a mother who's moved in with them and a father who's announced a radical life change, Juliet and Rick have little time for themselves, let alone romance.

Alex Lake’s day job is all about helping people, especially children. She cares about them passionately and does everything in her power to rescue them from those who mean them harm. When the case of three-year-old Ottilie Wade comes to her attention, Alex finds herself completely unable to detach from the child the way she should. She feels an overpowering need to make a real difference in little Ottilie’s life, but no one is prepared to believe that Ottilie is in danger.

Queen Victoria, a woman of diminutive stature and superabundant temperament, gave her name to something more than an age. Elizabeth Longford's classic biography won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize when it was first published in 1964. The author's grasp of the era's politics, and her understanding of the problems which confront a woman who is not only a queen but also a mother of a large high-spirited family, make this audiobook unique to this day.

Jenny loves to house-sit, looking after a stranger's enviably perfect home and pretending to be someone else - just for a bit. Her latest booking is a beautiful, disheveled old rectory in the Home Counties owned by the uber-successful Lewis family. Freed of teaching duties for the summer, and her own teenagers spending time with her objectionable ex, Jenny readies herself for a life of walk-in larders and sparkling water taps.

Dan and Sally Oliver and their friend Chloe Hennessey are lucky to be alive. Three years on, after surviving one of the world's biggest natural disasters - the Boxing Day tsunami - their lives have changed dramatically. Dan and Sally are now parents. Dan is enjoying being a stay-at-home father taking care of their young son, and Sally is the bread winner and loves her job as a partner in a Manchester law firm.

After losing all her family in the Great War, Nell is grateful to marry Stan Hibbert. However, five years on, she is just another backstreet housewife, making every penny do the work of tuppence and performing miracles with scrag-end. When she discovers that Stan is leading a double life, she runs away to make a fresh start. Two years later, Nell has carved out a fulfilling new life for herself and her young children in Manchester, where her neighbours believe she is a respectable widow. But the past is hard to run from, and Nell must fight to protect the life she has made for herself and her children.

Freddy left her childhood home in Newhaven 22 years ago and swore never to return. But now her parents are dead and she's back in her hometown to help her brothers manage the family fishmonger. Nothing here has changed: the stink of fish coming up from the marshes; the shopping trolleys half-buried by muddy tides; the neighbours sniffing for a new piece of gossip. It's not what Freddy would have chosen, but at least while she's here she'll get to see her childhood best friends, Toni and Pauline. At school, the three of them were inseparable.

Following a personal tragedy, florist Persimmon “Simmy” Brown has moved to the Lake District to be nearer her parents. But her peace is shattered when, at a wedding, the bride's brother is found brutally murdered. As the florist of the wedding and one of the last people to talk to Mark Baxter alive, Simmy gradually becomes involved with the relatives. When events take another sinister turn, Simmy finds herself at the heart of a murder investigation.

As Christmas draws nearer, Simmy Henderson is invited to a party in Glenridding at the heart of the Lake District. However, the festivities are overshadowed by two alarming discoveries: a man's body in the beck above the village, and a vulnerable newborn baby, apparently abandoned by its mother. Caught in the crosscurrents and tensions of the inhabitants of Glenridding, Simmy is drawn into the investigation. The season of goodwill has been eclipsed by far darker emotions, and a murderer must be found.

Strangling vines and meat-hungry flora fill this unruly garden of strange stories, selected for their significance as the seeds of the villainous (or perhaps just misunderstood) 'killer plant' in fiction, film and video games. Step within to marvel at Charlotte Perkins Gilman's giant wisteria and H.G. Wells' hungry orchid; hear the calls of the ethereal women of the wood and the frightful drone of the moaning lily; and do tread carefully around E. Nesbit's wandering creepers. Every strain of vegetable threat can be found within this new collection.

Twenty years ago, Malcolm Whiteley discovers his wife Lysette is having an affair. The Whiteleys are wealthy and live with their 16-year-old daughter Amber in the Dungeon House. But Malcolm begins to disintegrate psychologically, and when Lysette tells him their marriage is over, he snaps, and takes out the old Winchester rifle. In the present day, Hannah Scarlett's cold case team are looking into the three-year-old mystery of the disappearance of Lily Elstone, whose father was Malcolm Whiteley's accountant. Their investigation coincides with the disappearance of another teenage girl.

Friday nights, the best night of the week, the night they all looked forward to more than they cared to admit – talking, drinking, laughing and crying together. They were six female friends, different in age and circumstances, but with one common need: the warmth and support of their Friday nights. It was a time to share secrets and fears, triumphs and tragedies and, above all, to feel safe in the company of women friends.

For Lucy Riddick, Venice has always been the dream destination, the ideal place to lose herself. And now she needs to do just that. The secret she's been keeping has finally caught up with her and Lucy needs to disappear - fast. But what if, when she sets foot in Venice, Lucy finds the one thing she has been running from?

Manchester, 1922. Molly Watson has had enough. Engaged for the last three years to a penny-pinching pedant, she finally decides she'd rather be a surplus girl than marry a man she doesn't truly love. Aware of the need to support herself if she is to remain single all her life, she joins a secretarial class to learn new skills and a whole world opens up to her.

Two very different women are starring in their own real-life dramas behind the scenes of the Cannes Film Festival. Newly in love, Anna Carson returns to the Festival for the first time in nearly 40 years hoping to reconcile her past with her present-day happiness. Journalist Daisy Harris is looking for a big scoop at her first Festival and is determined to embrace her new single status amongst all the glitz and glamour.

An informative and entertaining look at royal weddings through English history. The excitement surrounding the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton has prompted four of Britain's top historical biographers to look closely at Royal Weddings.

Simmy is four months pregnant, working partly from home and partly from her Windermere florist shop when her husband Christopher asks her to take flowers to Eleanor Padgett. Eleanor has helped him in his auction house, as she is an expert in antique textiles. She lives near the church at Dacre, and Simmy meets her in the nearby churchyard. But when they notice the body of a young man by one of the gravestones, the happy outing turns dark. It is not long before Simmy once again finds herself in a complex and puzzling investigation, led by DI Moxon and aided by her friends Ben and Bonnie.

From the vaults of the British Library comes a new anthology celebrating the best works of forgotten, never-since-republished supernatural fiction from the early 20th century. Waiting within are malevolent spirits eager to possess the living and mysterious spectral guardians - a diverse host of phantoms exhumed from the rare pages of literary magazines and newspaper serials to thrill once more.

August, 1797. When Mary Wollstonecraft's labour begins everything appears normal, and she anticipates being back at her usual occupations before too long. However, after her baby girl, her second daughter, is delivered, both mother and child will fight for survival. In that time, Mary Wollstonecraft weaves the tale of her life to bind her frail daughter close and to give herself a reason to fight, even as her own strength wanes. She describes a life lived against the conventions and restrictions of her time.

Ellie Quicke, although comfortably re-married, is still inclined to act hastily. But when she took in a young rape victim, she didn’t expect it to become an invitation to murder. When she was released from the hospital, Mia had nowhere to go. Mia is threatened by violent deaths which dog her every move . . . and Ellie’s. But who is responsible for these terrifying “accidents”? Ellie has other things on her mind as well, after being asked to help organise the weddings of both her best friend and her daughter.