Showing results by narrator "Antonia Beamish"

Paula has had Robert's back since they got together as drama students. She gave up her dreams so he could make it. Now he's one of the nation's most popular actors. And Paula's just discovered he's having an affair. She's going to remind Robert just what he's sacrificing, and then she's going to break his heart like he broke hers. It will be her greatest acting role ever. Revenge is sweet. Isn't it?

Vivienne Shager has it all. A high-flying job. A beautiful apartment. Friends whose lives are as perfect as her own. But on the afternoon of her 27th birthday, Vivi has a heart attack. Now Vivi’s life shrinks back to how it began, as she moves back to the small seaside town she grew up in. With her time running out, there is one thing she wants to know the truth about.

Tamsin and her best friend, Michelle, have been inseparable since they were teenagers. Even now they spend all their time together, along with Patrick, Michelle's handsome husband. So when Tamsin hears a rumour that Patrick is having an affair, she is furious and plots a scheme to catch him in the act using her assistant, Bea, as live bait. It should be foolproof. After all, Tamsin can trust Bea with anything...or can she?

When Penelope Kite swaps her humdrum life in Surrey for a picturesque farmhouse in the south of France, she imagines a simple life of long lunches and chilled rosé.... What she doesn't imagine is the dead body floating in her swimming pool. Convinced that the victim suffered more than a drunken accident, Penelope plunges headlong into local intrigue and long-simmering resentments to uncover the truth.

The explosive follow-up from Sarah Pinborough, author of the number one Sunday Times best seller Behind Her Eyes. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die...’ Promises last only if you trust each other, but what if one of you is hiding something? A secret no one could ever guess. Someone is living a lie. Is it Lisa? Maybe it’s her daughter, Ava. Or could it be her best friend, Marilyn?

Max Walker is the golden boy. He's attractive, intelligent, athletic. He's even nice to his little brother. Max is going to pass his exams with flying colours; he’s going to make his parents proud.

Why do you love your child? Is it because they're a straight A student, a talented footballer? Or is it simply because they're yours? Sarah and Phil love both their children, James and Lauren. The couple have the same hopes and aspirations as any parent. But their expectations are shattered when they discover that their perfect baby daughter has been born with a flaw: a tiny but life-changing glitch that is destined to shape her future, and theirs, irrevocably.

Paris, near the turn of 1933. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking. Pointing to his drink, he says, 'You can make philosophy out of this cocktail!'

East Yorkshire: Single mum Alice Lake finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement, she invites him in to her home. Surrey: 21-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night, she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed....

Mia Hamilton lived the perfect life with her husband, university teacher Zach, and their two-year-old daughter. But everything changed when Zach committed suicide on the same night one of his students vanished. Five years later, just when Mia is beginning to heal, stranger Alison walks into her life, saying her husband didn't kill himself. Fragile, slight Alison leads Mia on a path into Zach's past, and Mia begins to think she never really knew her own husband.

What are the odds that the stranger sitting next to you on a plane is destined to change your life? Especially when they appear to be your opposite in every way. She's a life-long optimist, he's a resolute cynic. In the time it takes to fly from London to Chicago, each finds something in the other that they didn't even realise they needed. When they get off the plane their true journey begins...

It's New Year's Eve, and at a house party, three women bond over dodgy cocktails and fortune cookies, and vow to make this year their best one yet. But as the months unfold, Gemma, Saffron, and Caitlin find themselves tested to their limits. Under pressure, they are each forced to rethink their lives. But dare they take a chance on something new?

Three sisters and a brother meet up in their grandparents' old house for three long, hot summer weeks. The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past, but now they may have to sell it. And under the idyllic surface, there are tensions. Secrets are uncovered, and passions erupt as a way of life - bourgeois, literate, ritualised - winds down to its inevitable end.

An awe-inspiring account of the afterlife and what happens when it spills over into the world of the living. The new novel from the most exciting new voice in the genre since Neal Stephenson. Loss is a thing of the past. Murder is obsolete. Death is just the beginning. In 1938, death is no longer feared but exploited. Since the discovery of the afterlife, the British Empire has extended its reach into Summerland, a metropolis for the recently deceased. Yet Britain isn't the only contender for power in this life and the next.

Laura has it all. A successful career, a long marriage to a rich husband, and a 23-year-old son, Daniel, who is kind, handsome and talented. Then Daniel meets Cherry. Cherry is young, beautiful and smart, but she hasn't had the same opportunities as Daniel. And she wants Laura's life. Cherry comes to the family wide-eyed and wants to be welcomed with open arms, but Laura suspects she's not all that she seems.

Admittedly, it wasn't murder. A moment's carelessness, a tragic accident - and two children are dead. Yours. Living in a small island community, you can't escape the woman who destroyed your life. Each chance encounter is an agonizing reminder of what you've lost - your family, your future, your sanity. How long before revenge becomes irresistible? With no reason to go on living, why shouldn't you turn your darkest thoughts into deeds?

When Karen Finch's 17-year-old daughter, Sophie, arrives home after a night out drunk and accompanied by police officers, no one is smiling the morning after. But Sophie remembers nothing about how she got into such a state. Twelve hours later Sophie's friend Amy has still not returned home. Then the body of a young woman is found. Karen is sure that Sophie knows more than she is letting on. But Karen has her own demons to fight. She struggles to go beyond her own door without a panic attack.

Five-year-old Jimmy Higgins is brazenly snatched from the middle of a busy airport; but this is no ordinary kidnapping. Jimmy’s mother is Scarlett, a reality TV star who, dying of cancer, entrusted the boy to her friend Stephanie Harker. Now Stephanie, reaching into the past to discover the motive behind the abduction, soon encounters a shocking tale of murder and conspiracy, and is faced by the most difficult choice of her life.

The heartbreaking story of the passionate love affair between Boris Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya - the tragic true story that inspired Doctor Zhivago. Though Stalin spared the life of Boris Pasternak, the writer's lover, typist and literary muse Olga was sent twice to Siberian labour camps because of her association with him, miscarrying their child on her first visit. When released, she always assumed that Boris would leave his wife for her, but he failed to do so.

Listening to Shaking a Leg is like spending time with the funniest, wisest friend you've ever had - a person whose breadth of interest ranges from food to feminism to science fiction and everything in between. Bursting with ideas, culturally astute and sparklingly witty, this comprehensive volume of Angela Carter's journalism is the most down-to-earth and entertaining companion to latter 20th-century thought you'll ever need.