Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck"

Lou Clark knows a lot of things. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop, and she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live, and now everything feels small and joyless. What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

Since her husband walked out, Louise has made her son her world, supporting them both with her part-time job. But all that changes when she meets...David. Young, successful and charming - Louise cannot believe a man like him would look at her twice let alone be attracted to her. But that all comes to a grinding halt when she meets his wife...Adele. Beautiful, elegant and sweet - Louise's new friend seems perfect in every way.

He is Dexter Mayhew, tall, dark, and (she can't deny it) handsome. She is Emma Morley, bottled red hair, wilfully badly dressed, all principles and no action. Could this be the dawn of the rest of their lives? Or are Dex and Em living proof that - despite an unlikely beginning - men and women really can be just good friends?

When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads North for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as private detective Zöe Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zöe kill herself, or did one of her old cases come looking for her? And what's brought Sarah's former sparring partner Gerard Inchon to the same broken-down hotel?

One summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for 'asylum'. Decades will pass before Holly understands what sort of asylum the woman was seeking.… The Bone Clocks follows Holly's life: not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air, and brief lapses in the laws of reality.

Returning to Penfleet after years in New York, Kate can't help but feel a pang of affection for the little town by the sea where she grew up. If only she were returning in happier circumstances. This last trip is full of farewells: to her childhood home, her once best friend and the life she left behind. Kissing the widow of the richest man in town wasn't one of Nathan's best ideas. Now he can't get Vanessa out his mind.

Sarah Tucker - a young married woman, bored and unhappy with her life - becomes obsessed with trying to find a little girl who disappears after a neighbouring house is destroyed by a massive explosion. She soon discovers that people she thought long dead are still alive and those living are fast joining the dead. What begins in suburban south Oxford ends on a remote and unwelcoming Scottish island as the hunt for the missing child takes Sarah out of her marriage and onto a journey with a troubled ex-soldier.

Belle Hatton has embarked upon an exciting new life far from home: a glamorous job as a nightclub singer in 1930s Burma, with a host of sophisticated new friends and admirers. But Belle is haunted by a mystery from her past - an old newspaper clipping found in her parents' belongings after their death, saying that the Hattons were leaving Rangoon after the disappearance of their baby daughter, Elvira. 

When Tim Whitby checks into a hotel, he’s not intending to check out again – but then he meets Katrina Blake, a woman in need of rescue. When Arkle, Baxter and Trent inherit the family business, they’re not planning on making a go of it – there are quicker ways of getting rich. But when Zoë Boehm agrees to track down the masked men who robbed Harold Sweeney’s jewellery shop, she’s just looking for some cash to pay off the taxman. She’s not expecting to wind up in a coffin.

Police inspector and profiler Teresa Battaglia is called back from the city when the first body is found in the woods, a naked man whose face has been disfigured and eyes gouged out. Teresa quickly realises that the killer intends to strike again, and soon more victims are found - all having been subjected to horrendous mutilations. When a newborn baby is kidnapped, Teresa's investigation becomes a race against the clock.... But Teresa is also fighting a different kind of battle: a battle against her own body, weighed down by age and diabetes, and her mind, once invincible.... 

Fresh from the cultivated hothouse of Renaissance France, Anne draws attention at the English court. A nobleman, a poet and a king vie for her love. She has a spirit worthy of a crown - and a crown is what she seeks. It is a more powerful aphrodisiac than love. And so she embarks on her perilous course, which will plunge a kingdom into turmoil. Blood will flow on her account. Her only protection is the King's great love.

Marian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, half French, half British, naive yet too clever for her own good. But when she is recruited from her desk job by SOE to go undercover in wartime France, it seems her hybrid status - and fluent French - will be of service to a greater, more dangerous cause. Trained in sabotage, dead-drops, how to perform under interrogation, and how to kill, Marian parachutes into southwest France with an urgent mission....

The hilarious and heartfelt new novel from the best-selling author of Out of Practice! The Practice at Larkford has suddenly been thrust under the spotlight - and its nomination as an NHS Model Surgery is causing the team major headaches. Dr Holly Graham should be basking in the glow of her new romance with fellow doctor Taffy - but she is worried that the team is prioritising plaudits over patients, and her favourite resident, the irreverent and entertaining Elsie, is facing a difficult diagnosis.

Hardy's third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, follows the story of Elfride Swancourt. The daughter of the rector of Endelstow, a sparse, sea-swept parish in Cornwall, Elfride is caught between two suitors of very different backgrounds: Stephen Smith, a young architect restoring the old parish church; and the respectable, older man of London society, Henry Knight. The blue-eyed and high-spirited protagonist must untangle the conflicting messages of her heart and her mind.

Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn’t remember to drink it. She sometimes thinks her daughter Helen is a total stranger. But there’s one thing Maud is sure of: Her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, Maud will get to the bottom of it.

H. E. Marshall’s classic children’s chronicle of Britain, Our Island Story, includes all the best-loved (and most infamous!) stories from history: King Alfred and the cakes, King John and the Magna Carta, Lord Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar, Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada, and many others. This recording contains the complete and unabridged text, released previously in separate volumes. It is read with aplomb by Anna Bentinck and Daniel Philpott.

One stolen baby. Two desperate strangers. One night of terror. When Nina almost dies during a disastrous blind date, her life is saved by a waitress called Angel. But later that evening, Nina is surprised by a knock on the door. It’s Angel - and she’s pointing a gun at her. Minutes later, Angel’s younger brother, Lucas, turns up, covered in blood, shielding a stolen newborn baby in his arms. Nina is about to endure the longest night of her life - a night that will be filled with terror and lead her to take risks she would never have believed herself capable of....

Out of Practice is based around a large country medical practice, which proves to be a hotbed of rivalry, resentment and romance - and that's just the doctors. Think James Herriot meets House.

Historian and broadcaster Tessa Dunlop tells the story of the women of Bletchley Park through exclusive and unprecedented access to the women themselves. The Bletchley Girls weaves together the lives of 15 women who were all selected to work in Britain's most secret organisation - Bletchley Park. It is their story, told in their voices; Tessa met and talked to 15 veterans, often visiting them several times. Firm friendships were made as their epic journey unfolded on paper.

Sasha North has gone missing. Everyone says she's run away, but I know better. We've been best friends since we were teenagers, since Sasha swept into the neighbourhood and brought colour to my life. Until a brutal attack changed both our lives forever.