Showing results by narrator "Becky Hindley" in All Categories

Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel is first on the scene as a stolen car crashes on a misty, wet Manchester morning. The driver is dead, but the biggest shock awaits her when she discovers the body of a child wrapped in plastic in the boot of the car. As Jessica struggles to discover the identity of the driver, a thin trail leads her first to a set of clothes buried in the woods and then to a list of children's names abandoned in an allotment shed.

In the middle of the night, 14-year-old Samuel is woken by the sound of a terrified scream from the kitchen of his home on a quiet street. The police - finding him sobbing on the kitchen floor, cradling his mother's lifeless body - hit a dead end before the investigation has even begun: because although he witnessed the murder, Samuel is blind. But when Detective Jessica Daniel meets the boy, the way he uses just his sense of sound to accurately locate her hand to shake it convinces her that this clever young teenager could hold the key to the entire case.

A best seller since it was first published in 1972, Alex Comfort's classic work celebrates human physical intimacy with such authority and clarity that a whole generation felt empowered to enjoy sex. It was groundbreaking and unique in the wide range of subjects it discussed and in its reassuring authority and sense of fun. No other book has come close in providing such a wise, witty, uninhibited - sometimes delightfully eccentric - guide to lovemaking. And the original illustrations are absolutely iconic.

In Nothing But Trouble, a gripping crime thriller by best-selling crime author Kerry Wilkinson, DI Jessica Daniel has to protect the streets of Manchester from escaped prisoners - and those trying to hunt them down. Niall O'Brien is a veteran living on the edge of a run-down estate, refusing to sell his house to developers. He's the only remaining resident, alone and frightened by a series of break-ins. He's been threatening to shoot the next intruder, but he can't be serious....

Dead bodies are piling up for Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel. Usually when a serial killer is on the loose, the pressure would be building to find the perpetrator, but the victims are all hardened criminals themselves. The national media can't believe their luck with an apparent vigilante on the streets while Jessica's new boss seems grateful someone else is doing their job for them. But things aren't so straightforward when forensics matches blood from the apparent killer to a man already behind bars.

A man who survived being drowned ends up in Manchester’s canal. Someone who was hit by a car is shoved in front of DC Archie Davey’s patrol vehicle. Killers generally aren’t a happy bunch, but this particular one seems to have a problem with second chances. Luckily for DI Jessica Daniel, things are looking up. She’s been assigned to work on the most crime-free estate in the city, and she’s back living with her best friend. Things could not be hunky-dorier. That is unless there’s a sinister reason why the estate is so free of trouble....

It started with a phone call. Just one word - ‘Jessica’ - and now Detective Inspector Jessica Daniel has a big problem. Her missing friend, Bex, called from a battered seaside payphone, and yet, by the time Jessica arrived, there was nobody there. One man claims he can help - but then he turns up on a beach stabbed to death. Jessica believes someone must be framing her. Someone who is always a step ahead. When she finds a boy whose tattoo matches Bex's, she becomes more desperate than ever for answers.

The 10th novel from the million-copy best-selling author. Three houses have been burgled in five weeks. The robbers barge in through the back, disable any way to contact the outside world, and then ransack everything - before distributing the stolen cash to local charities. It might be robbing from the rich to give to the poor, but Detective Inspector Jessica Daniel is not a happy bunny. The new DCI has a whiteboard with far too many things on the 'unsolved' side, and he wants the burglars found.

Laura and Owen buy a secluded cottage on the edge of the Peak District. Old mines riddle the hills surrounding their new home and soon after moving in, Laura starts to hear faint snatches of birdsong. Her husband, wrapped up in his new job, is rarely around. Nervous and alone, Laura fears she's developing tinnitus. Her doctor can find nothing wrong. Then an archaeological dig on a neighbouring hill unearths some disturbing finds...and Laura's life starts to become terrifying.

In Mauritius, a retired Law Lord is brutally murdered, while in Manchester, the Labour Party conference is beginning. DC Iona Khan's first case in the Counter Terrorism Unit appears to be a trivial use of false identity, when a Sri Lankan student asks questions about Manchester's tunnel system. But when she learns the identity of the conference's guest speaker, Iona must enter the world beneath the city to prevent a catastrophe.

It starts with the death of a teenage runaway, killed when she leaps from a motorway bridge into the speeding traffic below. The girl's identity remains a mystery - until the discovery of the dead girl's details matches the profiles of three other girls; all recently have been reported missing. A further shocking discovery causes the whole file to be handed over to Greater Manchester Police's Counter Terrorism Unit, with leading detective constable Iona Khan in charge.

Someone has left a severed hand in the centre of Manchester, and the only clue Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel has to go on is CCTV footage of a woman in a long, black robe placing it carefully on the ground. With a lengthy missing persons list and frantic families wondering if the body part could belong to their absent loved ones, she has plenty to deal with - and that's before a detached finger arrives for her in the post.

University dropout and would-be novelist Johnny Street and his worker-of-the-world mate Arthur Lane are the odd-couple partners in a one-horse, two-man family building firm (slogan: ‘Up Your Street, Down Your Lane’). Together, they travel the Yorkshire suburbs in their white van, tackling tricky household repairs with their unique combination of art and craft.

Julie and Dicky Otterman arrive at Grundy’s fair with an extraordinary new act: the motorcycle extravaganza The Wall of Death. This seemingly happy couple are the talk of the town, but all is not as it seems, and Dicky’s dark and violent nature means Julie lives in constant fear. There's always plenty happening at Grundy’s fair: Gemma knows Velda's secret. Renata is finally with Donny. New member well-spoken Tom catches the eye of Jenny, the Grundys' lost daughter, returned to the fair very recently....

It’s the 1950s, and Grundy’s Travelling Fair arrives in town. When night falls, the local town is drawn to the fair. But when the fairgoers head home, the Grundys are left behind. Hours are long and the work backbreaking. But family and friends hold things together.

Based in Devon in the 1940s, these two dramas follow the lives and loves of a group of young women, all from different backgrounds, but all determined to do their bit for king and country in the Land Army. Billeted in a hastily converted farmhouse, they face cramped conditions and gruelling work - but there's always dances at the village hop and the chance of romance with a GI....

Rock-a-Bye Rumpus is a delightful collection of sweet and fun action poems for the very young, specially chosen by best-selling author Julia Donaldson.

In the early hours of the morning, a man reports a fire on two old canal boats. One of the firefighters notices the use of accelerant at the scene and calls the police, but by the time Inspector Banks arrives, the fire brigade have put out the flames and only the smouldering wreckage remains. A body has been found on each barge, and all the evidence points towards a deliberate arson attack.

When Cameron and Eleanor Sexton arrive home to find their teenage babysitter missing, their immediate concern is for their young daughter. Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel is dispatched to find out what's going on, but with all apparently well, she thinks she's been sent on a fool's errand. Soon the teenager's body is discovered in an apparently random house on the other side of Manchester.

Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel has barely left her house in months, isolated from friends and colleagues. She may have given up on herself, but one man is sure she still has something to offer. DCI Jack Cole gives her a chance at redemption: an opportunity to help a neighbouring force by discovering what is going on with a reclusive community living in a stately home in the middle of nowhere. People are going missing, turning up dead with only vague links back to the house.