Showing results by narrator "Helen McAlpine" in All Categories

After two decades of looking after others, this is the day that Agnetha McMaster is reclaiming her life. It's her turn, her time, but will she have the courage to start again? Ten years ago, Mitchell McMaster divorced Agnetha and married her best friend, Celeste. Now he suspects his second wife is having an affair. This is the day he’ll discover if karma has come back to bite him. Thanks to a DNA test, this is the day that Hope McTeer will finally meet her biological father. But will the reunion bring Hope the answers that she’s looking for? 

Carly Cooper is 30, single and after coming close to saying ‘I do’ to six different men, she’s wondering if she accidentally said ‘goodbye' to Mr Right. But there is a problem. Her ex-boyfriends are scattered all over the world and Carly lives in 1999: an era before Facebook, Google, smartphones, 4G and Broadband, when it was impossible to track people down with a few clicks of a mouse. On a mission to discover if she walked away from her 'happy ever after', Carly quits her job, her flat, her whole life and sets off on a quest to track down all the men she has ever loved.

Laney Cochrane loves her life. With her friends Millie and Tash, she runs a proposal agency, organising the perfect setting for their clients to pop the question. Finding that forever love is something Laney knows all about. Her marriage to Cameron is blissfully content, and she has never doubted they’ll live happily ever after. Then Cara Deacon walks into their office. When Cara enlists their help to set up a romantic engagement to her boyfriend, they visualise a breathtaking scene under a moonlit Manhattan sky. 

The year 1819, Isle of Mull, Scotland: When Allan MacDougall tells his sweetheart, Harriet Campbell, he loves her on the eve of his departure to the New World, it breaks her heart. Because there is no way for her to go with him. She promises to wait for him, even though it could be years before they are reunited. They vow to write, but when crucial letters go astray, they feel further apart than either could have imagined. 

Scotland, 1912. Antonia McCulloch’s life hasn’t gone the way she planned. She and her husband, Malcolm, have drifted apart; her burgeoning art career came to nothing; and when she looks in the mirror, she sees disappointment. But at least she will always have Balmarra, her family’s grand Scottish estate, and its exquisite glass house, filled with exotic plants that can take her far away. When her estranged brother’s wife, Cicely Pick, arrives unannounced, with her young daughter and enough trunks to last the summer, Antonia is instantly suspicious. 

Lou Cairney's life has never been dull. But through twenty years of ups, downs and really bad hairstyles, Lou has had the best friends a woman could hope for in Lizzy and Ginger. Growing up together, they shared their dreams and their disasters, broken hearts and career crashes and they survived it all thanks to love, hope, a large dollop of humour and cocktails. Until now; Lou needs her friends more than ever. Her past has just caught up with her in a shocking way. 

School nurse Anna Pierce has been accused of hitting a pupil. Tori Carmichael is the girl accusing her. One of them is lying. But why?

To begin with, what the hell is a novel? It's basically a tiny world, where characters are born, live and (sometimes) die. To write one all you need is a notebook and a pen - but along the way you'll want to learn about good writing habits, planning, mastering descriptions and dialogue and how to pull it all together. This book will guide you through the process and orient you towards the goal of publication. From absolute beginner to novelista, this book will change the way you write and think about writing.

While Katie's glad it's not a man's world anymore, she'd be quite pleased if there were more men in it - or at least single ones, anyway. More likely to get murdered than married, according to gleeful media reports, Katie resigns herself to the fact there's no sex in the city and heads for the hills - or the Scottish Highlands, to be precise. Despite the fact she's never been a girl for wellies and Fairlish is in the middle of nowhere, the tiny town does have one major draw: men. Lots of them.

Suze has a niggling feeling that her husband Karl's marital sat-nav has taken a wrong turn and led him down the road to temptation. What's a suspicious wife to do? Mel knows that her sweet, docile husband Joe would never, ever cheat. But when Suze, her sister-in-law, hires a honeytrap to test Karl, the results blow Mel's world apart. Mel, Joe, Suze, Karl. They're family. They're friends. And they're about to discover whether or not they can navigate those other f-words - fidelity and forgiveness.

Megan Melvick has returned home after a three-year absence to visit her dying sister, Melissa, for the last time. As she approaches the grand Scottish country estate where she grew up, the memories come flooding back. Just what did happen on the night of Melissa's wedding five years before? Where has Megan and Melissa's mother disappeared to? And why does Melissa whisper that solitary word before she finally slips away: Sorry. In order to overcome her demons, Megan must confront her painful recollections of that terrible night, the night of Melissa's wedding.

Inary Monteith’s life is at a crossroads. After a stolen night with her close friend Alex, she's just broken his heart by telling him it was all a terrible mistake. Then she has to rush home from London to the Scottish Highlands when her little sister's illness suddenly worsens – and in returning she must confront the painful memories she has been trying so hard to escape. Back home, things become more complicated than she could ever have imagined.

Innocent in the ways of the world, an ingenue when it comes to pop and fashion, the Elect of God of a small but committed Stirlingshire religious cult: Isis Whit is no ordinary teenager. When her cousin Morag - Guest of Honour at the Luskentyrian's four-yearly Festival of Love - disappears after renouncing her faith, Isis is marked out to venture among the Unsaved and bring the apostate back into the fold.

From the best-selling author of the Sarah Midnight Trilogy comes an instant classic - a beautiful and poignant love story about letting go and moving on. Eilidh Lawson’s life has hit crisis point. Years of failed fertility treatments, a cheating husband and an oppressive family have pushed her to the limits. Desperate for relief, she seeks solace in the only place she’s ever felt at home - a small village in the Scottish Highlands.

If someone took away your perfect life, how far would you go to get it back? Ellen's family is her world. So when her husband leaves her for another woman, she is almost destroyed. But not quite, because Ellen has a plan, a way to make those who have hurt her suffer. Leila is the other woman. She finally has everything she ever wanted. But Leila's brother has come back into her life, raking up a past that needs to stay buried. One of them will pay for their actions with their life, but which one?

Set Me Free is the new bestseller from Daniela Sacerdoti, following up the huge successes of her first two novels, Watch Over Me and Take Me Home. In London, Margherita’s marriage has slowly been falling apart since her little Lewis’ birth, a surprise baby much wanted by her but not by her husband. To add to her problems, her adopted daughter, Lara, is going through a rough patch, and all of a sudden she’s gone from quiet and introverted to constantly angry.

The human body is like an exceedingly well-fortified castle, defended by billions of soldiers - some live for less than a day, others remember battles for decades, but all are essential in protecting us from disease. This hidden army is our immune system, and without it we could not survive the eternal war between us and our microscopic enemies. Immune explores the incredible arsenal that lives within us - how it knows what to attack and what to defend and how it kills everything from the common cold to the plague bacterium.

From peaceful Scotland to war-ravaged Europe, two female doctors from very different backgrounds fight to succeed and survive. Upper-class Lucy Graham is expected simply to marry well. Poverty-stricken Rosie Nesbitt struggles just to get by. Both girls share the unlikely dream to become a doctor, and each will do anything to succeed. When their paths cross at a party filled with eligible bachelors, it soon becomes clear that their chosen career isn't the only desire they share.

When you've forgotten how to live, help can arrive in mysterious ways.... Successful artist Isabel Ramsay has never come to terms with the tragic death of her mother. Haunted by what happened, Isabel finds her own life spiraling out of control until, one winter's day, she gives up, unable to bear the pain of living any longer. Yet somehow she wakes up, remembering a vision of a mysterious woman who has saved her.

Life in front of the camera is harder than it looks... When Ted is spotted by a model agency, she can't believe it. At the same time her gorgeous sister, Ava, is diagnosed with cancer. With her world turned upside down, Ted has a lot of growing up to do, some of it in five-inch platforms.