Showing results by narrator "Annie Aldington"

Evie spent her early years left outside on the step. With a drunk for a father and a neglectful mother, all little Evie has ever craved is a safe home and a normal existence. Her young eyes had seen so much, but this never tainted her spirit. If it wasn't for her best friend, Gary, and a friendly dog called Whisky, Evie might never have made it to her 16th birthday.

As World War II breaks out, four friends from London’s East End consider the changes that war will mean for all of them. Tomboyish Becky Adams plans to join the ATS, her neighbours Bob and Jim the navy and army respectively. Only Becky’s brother, Will, is left out of the excitement; because of a slight physical disability, he is forced to stay behind, working as a cub reporter on a newspaper.

Acapulco, 1974: Rina Walker is on assignment. Just another quick, clean kill. She wakes to discover her employer's severed head on her bedside table and a man with an AK-47 coming through the door of her hotel room. She needs all her skills to neutralise her attacker and escape. After a car chase, she is captured by a Mexican drug boss who exploits her radiant beauty and ruthless expertise to eliminate an inconvenient member of the government.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. And your family should be closest of all. Patrick Brodie knows exactly how far he's prepared to go to get what he wants. And he wants it all. Now. Before long, Patrick has become a legend in his own lifetime. Violently. Lily Diamond is different from the kind of woman Patrick is normally attracted to. But together they are determined that their children will have everything they didn't. Until the unthinkable happens, and Lily is left on her own to look after their family in a dangerous world.

Just before Danny Cadogan's 14th birthday, his father leaves. Having drunkenly run up a gambling debt he cannot pay, Big Dan Cadogan takes the easy way out, leaving behind his wife and children to face the wrath of the men sent to collect the debt. Determined to protect his mother, brother, and sister, something changes in Danny and overnight, he turns into a young man set on making his way in a violent and dangerous world. He becomes a Face. Not just a Face, but the most feared Face in the Smoke.

A gripping thriller that will shock you to the core. Controlled all her life by her religious mother, 15-year-old Kelly Raven commits the ultimate sin. She soon discovers that running away to the cold, frightening streets of London is less harsh than her previous life. A drug dealer, two fraudsters, and a prostitute are her new family now, and she becomes the woman she was destined to be. Little does she know that Eddie Raven is coming for her, but she is no sweet four-year-old child, and he is certainly no doting father.

Not far from London, there is a village. This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England's mysterious past and its confounding present. It belongs to Mad Pete, the grizzled artist. To ancient Peggy, gossiping at her gate. To families dead for generations, and to those who have only recently moved here. But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort who has woken from his slumber in the woods. Dead Papa Toothwort, who is listening to them all. 

Billie Jo is the adored only child of wealthy villain Terry and Michelle, the drunken wife he hates. Knowing how much Billie Jo dreads her parents' fights, Terry imagines that she'll understand when he tells her he is going to leave Michelle to marry his pregnant secretary. But fate is about to deal a terrible hand and change everything in a way Terry has not planned for, leaving Billie Jo's protected world in tatters.

George Markham has a nasty little hobby, one that erupts into an orgy of viscous sexual depravity. Patrick Kelly is a hard man. His one soft spot is his daughter, and when she falls victim to the Grantley Ripper, Kelly wants revenge. The DI in charge of the case is Kate Burrows. She feels for Kelly but her growing involvement with a known villain is putting her career at risk...

Two childhood friends.... Best friends Tommy Boyle and Scratch always had each other's backs. Dragged up in care and cruelly betrayed by everyone they trusted, they made a pact to fight their way out of the gutter together. Two sides of the law.... Old loyalties die hard on the streets of London. Tommy throws his lot in with the notorious Darling family even if it means leaving Scratch to the wolves. She's destined for a different path, reinventing herself as copper Kim Regan. One deadly showdown.... Now they're on opposite sides of the law. 

'I'm not working on a factory floor or digging for victory, but in my own small way I do what I can for those I love.' It's 1943, and Peggy Reilly is at her best when the troubles of war come knocking at the door of Beach View Boarding House - especially when it concerns her younger sister, Doreen. Doreen is divorced from Eddie, but his letters have taken on a more threatening tone of late.

That was the last time any of them saw Minnie Bright: It was 48 hours before her crack-addicted mother reported her missing, and a few hours more before the police entered the house and found her small, twisted body hidden under the bed. Fifteen years ago, a little girl was murdered. Now journalist Jess Vaughan and detective Harry Lind are asking questions about what really happened that day. Questions that someone will kill to keep hidden. No one knows crime like Roberta Kray.

Ralph Boyd’s first glimpse of Daphne will be etched on his mind forever. Dark, teasing, slippery as mercury, she seems neither boy nor girl but sprite - something elemental. An up-and-coming composer, Ralph is visiting the writer Edmund Greenslay at his riverside home in Putney to discuss a collaboration. In its colourful rooms and unruly garden, Ralph finds an intoxicating world of sensuous ease and bohemian abandon that captures the mood of the moment. Entranced, he knows he will return.

Christine Banner is alone after her father's death. Determined to make her own way in the world, she stumbles onto an estate in the New Forest where she finds work that she loves. However, when the future looks uncertain, Christine's skill at handling some of the large and difficult warhorses shines through and captures the attention of the son of the estate owner. In the face of grief, sadness and disappointment, Christine's intelligence and strength will be tested until she finds the place she can truly call home.

The gripping new Second World War novel from Sunday Times top ten best-selling author of While We're Apart. After the death of her parents in a bombing raid, Mary Jones discovers a secret in the pages of her father’s diaries. Her search for the truth brings her to Cliffehaven on the south coast. Here she finds work at the Kodak factory, sifting through the airgraphs, which are being sent from all over the world by the men and women in the armed forces and by their loved ones.

The brand new novel from Sunday Times number one best seller and 'undisputed queen of crime writing' (Guardian) Martina Cole. The biggest selling female crime writer in the UK, Martina's unique and powerful novels have gripped their readers for 25 years, and include Dangerous Lady, The Take and Damaged.  

It’s 1983 and Stephanie Crouch’s life is dull. She is desperate to escape the run-down, pokey council house she shares with her overbearing family, but at fourteen years old she has nowhere to go. When Stephanie meets East End wide-boy Barry, his cockney charm and quick tongue soon have her head over heels in love. Finally Stephanie feels like her dreary life is on the up. But too young to control their fate, Stephanie and Barry are torn apart when he is whisked away to Spain by his family.

Best friends Sarah, Maisie and Freda are brought together by their jobs at Woolworths. With their loved ones away on the front line, their bonds of friendship strengthen each day. Betty Billington is the manager at Woolworths and a rock for the girls, having given up on love...until a mysterious stranger turns up one day - could he reignite a spark in Betty?

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Virginia Nicholson's Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in the Second World War. A special multi-voice recording featuring five actresses that bring to life the hundreds of personal testimonies, diary entries and books that make up this superb study. Read by Patience Tomlinson, Annie Aldington, Rachel Bavidge, Julie Maisey and Georgina Sutton.

The best things in life are never free. Cain Moran wanted Jenny Riley more than he had ever wanted anyone or anything before in his life. But loving Jenny Riley was the easy part; it was telling his wife he wanted a divorce that was going to be the killer.... Jenny is not just any girl. She cares nothing for Cain's hard-man reputation - she just wants to be with him. But Cain is not a free man. And he's about to find out that when his wife Caroline said 'til death us do part, she meant it.