Showing results by narrator "Helen Duff" in All Categories

It’s a beautiful day for a wedding. White roses scent the air and the summer sunlight streams in. A spoon chimes against a champagne flute and the room falls silent. And there he is - my husband - getting to his feet to propose a toast. He’s still handsome. His new wife is next to him, gazing upwards, oblivious. I’m not supposed to be here. All these years in the same town and I had no idea until I saw his name on the seating plan. He lived with me, once. Loved me. Small-town memories are long, but the people in this room don’t want to remember.

The second novel in the brilliant new series from the best-selling author of Prince of Thorns. In Mystic Class, Nona Grey begins to learn the secrets of the universe. But so often even the deepest truths just make our choices harder. Before she leaves the Convent of Sweet Mercy, Nona must choose her path and take the red of a Martial Sister, the grey of a Sister of Discretion, the blue of a Mystic Sister or the simple black of a Bride of the Ancestor and a life of prayer and service.

They came against her as a child. Now they face the woman. The ice is advancing, the Corridor narrowing, and the empire is under siege from the Scithrowl in the east and the Durns in the west. Everywhere, the emperor’s armies are in retreat. Nona faces the final challenges that must be overcome if she is to become a full sister in the order of her choice. But it seems unlikely that Nona and her friends will have time to earn a nun’s habit before war is on their doorstep.

At the Convent of Sweet Mercy, young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. Sweet Mercy hones its novices' skills to deadly effect: it takes 10 years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don't truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls as a bloodstained child of eight, falsely accused of murder - guilty of worse.

Margot and Will cross paths at the local dog rescue centre where - after a series of misunderstandings and a lot of consternation - they agree to foster Blossom (a gentle Staffy with a giant head, soft, floppy ears and kohl-rimmed brown eyes) together: one week on, one week off. Margot and Will don't get off to the best of starts: he thinks Margot is demanding and needy and Just So Much. And she thinks Will is emotionally unavailable, slightly brittle and very mistrustful. But the more they bicker, the worse Blossom behaves....

On the vastness of the ice there is no room for individuals. No one survives alone. To resist the cold, to endure the months of night when even the air itself begins to freeze, requires a special breed. Variation is dangerous, difference is fatal. And Yaz is different. Torn from her family, from the boy she thought she would spend her life with, Yaz has to carve a new path for herself in a world whose existence she never suspected. A world full of danger. Beneath the ice, Yaz will learn that Abeth is older and stranger than she had ever imagined.

The moment my husband showed me Cliffside - a sleek and modern glass home perched on the edge of the jagged Big Sur clifftops - I fell in love. And right there and then I made a pact with myself. I am never leaving this house. But when my husband was killed on the perilous roads leading up to the house, weeks after we moved in, I had a decision to make - leave the home I love and start a new life or stay and shut myself off from the world? I am never leaving this house. 

Beautiful Sophie, with lips as red as blood, skin as pale as snow and hair as dark as night, is about to come of age and inherit her father's throne. But Sophie's stepmother wants rid of her - beautiful she may be, but too weak and foolish to reign. And Sophie believes her, as she believes all the things that have been said about her - all the poisonous words people use to keep girls like her from becoming too powerful, too strong.

It's 1830. Convict girls Friday Woolfe, Harriet Clarke and Sarah Morgan have been transported to Sydney from London. Each of them is struggling to forget the brutal crime she committed, but their fates are no longer theirs to control. Vicious underworld queen Bella Jackson holds the girls' futures in the palm of her hand, biding her time. Once again the girls must join forces to save one of their own.

From the number one best-selling author of The Secret Wife, The Lost Daughter is a sweeping, moving story of the tenacity of love and the power of forgiveness. Spectacular, enthralling and romantic, Gill Paul's latest novel will stay with you forever.

Friday Woolfe is in London's notorious Newgate gaol, awaiting transportation for prostitution and theft. There she meets three other girls: intelligent and opportunistic thief Sarah Morgan, naive young Rachel Winter, and reliable Harriet Clarke. On the voyage to New South Wales, their friendship becomes an unbreakable bond - but there are others onboard who will change their lives forever. And in the land behind the sun, the only thing they have is each other....

It's 1831. Assigned to a good family in Sydney town and now learning the art of tattoo, convict girl Harrie Clarke is still haunted by the horror of the brutal murder she, Friday Woolfe and Sarah Morgan committed the previous year. Powerful and vindictive criminal Bella Jackson continues to demand money in exchange for her silence regarding their crime. And when things go from bad to much, much worse for Harrie, she is left teetering on the brink.

It's 1832. Convict girls Friday Woolfe, Sarah Morgan and Harriet Clarke have been serving their sentences in Sydney Town. Each of them has begun to make a life for herself, but when Harrie's adopted child, Charlotte, is abducted, the girls must risk their very freedom to save her. But will Friday's desperate battle with her own vices drive her to fail not only herself but those she loves and all who love her?

Stepsister takes up where Cinderella's tale ends. We meet Isabelle, the younger of Cinderella's two stepsisters. Ella is considered beautiful; stepsister Isabelle is not. Isabelle is fearless, brave, and strong-willed. She fences better than any boy, and takes her stallion over jumps that grown men fear to attempt. It doesn't matter, though; these qualities are not valued in a girl. Others have determined what is beautiful, and Isabelle does not fit their definition.

 Jenny has too much on her plate, literally - she’s pregnant with only one child, but she’s already eating for three. Not to mention trying to juggle her future life with a baby, a nightmare boss, a know-it-all sister, and a bizarrely laid back husband. 

When an influencer-turned-bridezilla shows up at the lighthouse to capture Insta-perfect wedding photos designed to entice sponsors to fund her lavish wedding, Gethsemane has her hands full trying to keep Eamon from blasting the entire wedding party over the edge of the cliff. But those wedding bells become funeral bells when members of the bride’s entourage start turning up dead.

When Melanie Scott is promoted to junior partner, she thinks she has put her past behind her, and while out celebrating her promotion, she meets the handsome and charming Hugo Field. Melanie has her doubts and is haunted by her mother’s critical voice, which reminds her that she’s messed up before. But when Oliver invites her for dinner, she buries the feeling and accepts his invitation. She deserves a chance at happiness, doesn’t she? However, the past she thought she had left behind resurfaces when she receives an email containing a name she thought she’d left behind. 

Gethsemane fought off an attack by a sleazy hotel developer who wanted to turn her Irish cottage into a tourist trap. But now she must face a vengeful ghost determined to exact revenge for a murder that took place centuries ago. This ghost's wrath spares no one - not Gethsemane's students, Inspector Niall O'Reilly, fellow teacher Frankie Grennan, or the group of ghost hunters that has descended on Dunmullach to capture proof that ghosts exist...proof that Gethsemane has to quash to keep Eamon, her resident ghost and friend, from becoming an internet sensation.

It is too hot to sleep. To work. To be questioned time and again by the police. At the beginning of a stifling, sultry summer, everything shifts irrevocably when Lily doesn't come home one afternoon. Rachel is Lily's Teacher. Her daughter, Mia, is Lily's best friend. The girls are 15 - almost women, still children. As Rachel becomes increasingly fixated on Lily's absence, she finds herself breaking fragile trusts and confronting impossible choices she never thought she'd face. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

Your life isn’t perfect, but you’re still happy. Your husband has stuck by you, and he’s a good dad. Your daughter, Becca, makes your heart explode with love. And then, in the time it takes to say ‘bad mother’, there’s no longer a place for you in your own family. Your right to see your child has disappeared. Life goes on in your house - family dinners, missing socks and evening baths - but you aren’t there anymore. Becca may be tucked up in bed in Rose Cottage, but she is as lost to you as if she had been snatched from under your nose.