Showing results by narrator "Ellie Heydon" in All Categories

Everyone's invited. Everyone's a suspect. And everyone's talking about it. In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year. The beautiful one. The golden couple. The volatile one. The new parents. The quiet one. The city boy. The outsider. The victim. Not an accident - a murder among friends.

Annie Higgins has given up on love: she’s too busy trying to get her own business off the ground. But - infuriated by the advertising agency across the hall making fun of her job - Annie accepts their crazy challenge: to make a random stranger Instagram-famous in just 30 days. 

A spellbinding collection of 15 stories from multi-million copy internationally best-selling author Rosamunde Pilcher, published posthumously two years after her death. Each of the 15 stories is a perfect slice of romance written with warmth and passion, featuring some wonderfully memorable, smart and feisty female characters that will transport listeners to another time and place.

Anna is distraught when her beloved mother, Ines, passes away. She inherits a box of papers, handwritten in Italian and yellowed with age, and a tantalizing promise that the truth about what happened during the war lies within. The diaries lead Anna to the small village of Rofelle, where she slowly starts to heal as she explores sun-kissed olive groves, and pieces together her mother’s past: happy days spent herding sheep across Tuscan meadows cruelly interrupted when World War Two erupted and the Nazis arrived....

Linda Martin understands what is to be lonely: her parents died when she was young, and she was raised in an orphanage. When she is hired as a governess to the orphaned young Philippe, Comte de Valmy, Linda finds a kindred spirit in the lonely little boy. But Philippe is the heir to a vast estate in Savoy, and his dangerously handsome uncle may be willing to kill to ensure that Philippe never inherits it.

We all know someone like Becca. She has the job everyone wants, a designer wardrobe, a hot-shot lawyer boyfriend, holidays to exotic locations. And she flaunts her perfect life all over social media. It drove her colleague Lizzie mad, but she couldn't stop looking. They were never really friends - and yet Lizzie knew everything about her. Or did she? When chance and a terrible mistake pull Lizzie back into Becca's orbit years after they lost touch, she'll realise that you can't always believe what you see online...and that finding out the truth might be the worst thing you can do.   

For young mother Fosca Sentino, accepting refuge from ex-British soldier Richard - in Tuscany to escape his tragic past - is the only way to keep her little family safe. She once risked everything to spy on Nazi commanders and pass secret information to the resistenza. But after a heartbreaking betrayal, Fosca’s best friend, Simonetta, disappeared without trace. The whole community was torn apart, and now Fosca and her son are outcasts. 

When her fiancé is tragically killed in an accident, 26-year-old Alba is convinced she’s to blame. Heavy with grief and guilt, she flees to her childhood home - the tiny village of Rofelle, nestled in a remote Tuscan valley. Out hiking one day to fill the long, lonely hours, she finds a mahogany box filled with silverware, hidden near the vine-covered ruins of an isolated house left abandoned after World War II. Could finding the rightful owner ease Alba’s heartache, and somehow make amends for her own wrongs?

Florence Connelly is broken-hearted; her beloved grandmother has just died and her marriage has collapsed. But things change when she opens a box of vintage 1960s dress patterns, discovered inside her grandmother's wardrobe. Inside each pattern packet is a fabric swatch, a postcard from Europe and a faded photograph of a young woman wearing the hand-made dress. Why did Flo's grandmother never speak of this mysterious woman - Nancy Moon? Her life in tatters, Flo decides to remake Nancy's dresses and to head across to the Continent to re-create Nancy's Grand Tour of 1962. 

Returning early from a disastrous date night with my husband, I know something is wrong the moment the wheels crunch the gravel drive of our home. Inside, the TV is on and a half-eaten meal waits on the table. My heart stops when I find our little girl is alone in the house and our babysitter, Sasha, is missing....

Armed with a super-sized backpack full of optimism, Jess sets off in search of sun, sea and a much-needed new beginning. Things don’t get off to a good start. Instead of sunshine, she’s met with torrential rain. Her job prospects are as dismal as the weather and that friend-of-a-friend she was meant to stay with has fallen through. Just as Jess is homeless, jobless and wishing she’d gone for the waterproof mascara, she runs into the last person she expected to see. Sam.

In a tiny hamlet nestled in the Tuscan mountains, farmers gather after a hard day in the meadows, and children’s laughter rings across the square: But one little boy does not join in their play. Behind his deep brown eyes hides a heartbreaking secret.... 

High in the rugged Pyrenees lies the Valley of the Storms, where a tiny convent clings to the beautiful but lonely mountainside. Jenny Silver arrives seeking her missing cousin, and is devastated when she learns of Gillian's death following a terrible car accident. But Jenny's suspicions are aroused when she's told the blue flowers ornamenting her cousin's grave were Gillian's favourite. Jenny knows Gillian was colour-blind - and so starts her mission to uncover what really happened to her.  

Me and Will. Will and Me. A perfect match. He said he would always be there for me, but it’s been a year since he drained his coffee, walked out the front door and vanished. Did he leave me? Or did something terrible happen? I’m scared someone finally found out about what happened on the drive home that night...I lie awake at night trawling the internet for rental properties, desperate for an escape. Until I see my husband’s gorgeous face smiling back at me from a photograph on the fireplace in someone else’s home, and something inside of me snaps....

Drawing on the infamous Lord Lucan affair, this compelling novel explores the roots of a shocking murder from a fresh perspective and brings to vivid life an era when women's voices all too often went unheard. In the summer of 1974, Mandy River arrives in London to make a fresh start and begins working as nanny to the children of one Lady Morven. She quickly finds herself in the midst of a bitter custody battle and the house under siege: Lord Morven is having his wife watched. 

Legend has it that when the Gabriel Hounds run howling over the crumbling palace of Dar Ibrahim, high in the Adonis Valley of Lebanon, death will follow on their heels. When rich, spoilt Christie Mansel arrives at the decaying palace to look after her eccentric Aunt Harriet, she arrives to the sound of howling dogs. The palace is riddled with hidden passages and the servants are unwilling to let anyone see Harriet during the day. It seems the palace hides an extraordinary secret...one that somebody is willing to kill to keep.

Gemma isn't sure what upsets her more. The fact she just caught her boyfriend cheating, or that he did it on her brand-new Heal's cushions. All she knows is she needs to put as many miles between her and Fraser as humanly possible. So, when her best friend suggests a restorative few days in the West Country, it seems like the perfect solution. That is, until the country enters a national lockdown that leaves her stranded. All she has for company is her dog, Mabel. And the mysterious (and handsome!) stranger living at the bottom of her garden.

It all started with one little lie.... Jane and Marnie have been inseparable since they were 11 years old. They have a lot in common. In their early 20s, they both fell in love and married handsome young men. But Jane never liked Marnie's husband. He was always so loud and obnoxious, so much larger than life. Which is rather ironic now, of course. Because if Jane had been honest - if she hadn't lied - then perhaps her best friend's husband might still be alive.... This is Jane's opportunity to tell the truth. The question is: Do you believe her?

London, 1938. Sixteen-year-old Natalie Leeman makes the heartbreaking decision to leave her family behind in Vienna and travel to England to join her cousin Leah in service. Natalie is placed with a wealthy suburban family, the Caplins, as a nanny to their energetic six-year-old. At first, Natalie is delighted by the huge house and beautiful gardens, but things aren’t as perfect as they seem. While Natalie dotes on their child, she is increasingly wary of Mr. Caplin, whose gruff manor and fascist politics scare her. 

Help busy young minds wind down and switch off before bed with this relaxing audio collection. Developed with The Children's Sleep Charity, and parent-tested, Puffin Sleepy Tales are specially designed to help children aged 7+ feel calm and positive at the end of a long day. They're the perfect relaxation tool for the hour before bed, and can be listened to before or after a bedtime story, as part of your nightly routine. Read slowly and soothingly, each tale is 15 minutes long, so you can put your audiobook sleep timer on with no need to return to the screen.