Showing results by narrator "Janine" in All Categories

Three very different women come together at an isolated cottage on the North Pennines to complete an environmental survey. Three women who each know the meaning of betrayal. Rachael is the first to arrive at the cottage, but when she gets there she is shocked to discover an apparent suicide. But then another death occurs, and a fourth woman enters the picture – the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, who must piece together the truth from these women’s tangled lives.

When I receive a scholarship to Bradford Hills Institute, I'm determined to make a fresh start. The exclusive school is world-renowned for educating and training Variants—the 18 percent of the population fortunate enough to have superhuman abilities. As a human, I'm lucky to be admitted. I am so done with fake identities, running, and lying, but once again I find myself surrounded by secrets. Some I've been keeping my whole life. Some have been kept from me. Some I find myself dragged into....

DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation so she has more tolerance for them than most. When one of them goes missing she feels duty-bound to find out what happened. But her path leads her to more than a missing friend... It's an easy job to track the young woman down to the Writer's House, a country retreat where aspiring authors gather to workshop and work through their novels. It gets complicated when a body is discovered and Vera's neighbour is found with a knife in her hand.

A hot summer on the Northumberland coast and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers. This stylized murder scene has captured Inspector Vera Stanhope’s attention. And then another body is discovered in a rock pool, the corpse again strewn with flowers. Vera must work quickly to find this killer who is making art out of death. As local residents are forced to share their deepest, darkest secrets, the killer watches, waits and plans to prepare another beautiful, watery grave.

Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter, a young ecologist named Patrick, to look after the place while they’re away. But Patrick is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley - a beautiful, lonely place to die.

The first time I set foot in Fire Chief Declan Everhart's small town, he declared me trouble. Maybe it's because I'm a pop star hiding in his house for the holiday season. Or maybe it's the way I can't help but tease the Grinch. More than likely, though, it's because his best friend Cade touched me right in front of him, lighting a fire so hot it threatens to incinerate us all. Now, I can't keep my hands to myself.

Ten years ago fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel was murdered, her cold body discovered lying in a ditch. Her father’s girlfriend was found guilty of the crime. Now, evidence has emerged that proves her innocence and means that Abigail’s killer still roams free. Abigail’s best friend at the time of the murder has now returned to the East Yorkshire village of Elvet to raise her young family. Shocked by the new revelations, she begins to realize that she didn’t know her friend as well as she thought. Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope is tasked with uncovering the truth.

Silent Voices is the fourth book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - which is now a major TV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera. When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, she wonders briefly if, for once in her life, she's uncovered a simple death from natural causes. But a closer inspection reveals ligature marks around the victim's throat - death is never that simple...

Driving home during a swirling blizzard, Vera Stanhope's only thought is to get there quickly. But the snow is so heavy that she becomes disorientated and loses her way. Ploughing on, she sees a car slewed off the road ahead of her. With the driver's door open, Vera assumes the driver has sought shelter, but when she inspects the car she is shocked to find a young toddler strapped in the back seat. Afraid they will freeze, Vera takes the child and drives on, arriving at Brockburn, a run-down stately home she immediately recognises as the house her father, Hector, grew up in.

The man's body is found in the early-morning light by a local dog walker on the common outside Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The victim is Josh, a staff member, who was due to work the previous night but never showed up. DI Vera Stanhope is called out to investigate the death. Her only clue is the disappearance of one of the home's residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spence. Vera can't bring herself to believe that a teenager is responsible for the murder, but even she can't dismiss the possibility.

Sophie doesn't have big ambitions. She only wants a job that will keep her landlord off her back, enough extra cash for whiskey at the neighborhood bar and a bit of free time to hang out with the naughty old lady next door. When a chance encounter with a quiet stranger leads to a job offer at the San Francisco City Morgue, Sophie jumps at the opportunity. She never expected to find her calling on the graveyard shift surrounded by dead bodies and the strange characters that make up the morgue's staff.

Bradford Hills feels more like home than any other place Evelyn Maynard and her mother lived while on the run. But with everyone reeling from the violent clash between Variants and humans, her new home doesn’t feel safe any more. Navigating four increasingly complicated supernatural bonds in secret doesn’t help. Ethan and Josh can’t keep their hands off her. Tyler is supportive but continues to keep her at arm’s length. Alec has both saved and destroyed her yet seems oblivious to the turmoil he’s caused.

Gabe Harris was the walking, talking personification of a hero. And a hero was what I needed. My life went from boring to hair-raising with a stroke of a key. I knew better than to poke around on the dark web. But when my friend Kalee Solberg came home months after she’d been presumed dead, I couldn’t stop myself from looking into who was behind her capture.

Ford Hall is gorgeous so you can’t blame me when I do something bad and convince him to kiss me on New Year's Eve. Or when I do it again in the daylight. He may be completely off limits but I’m going to make him my lover.

Everything in my life is rigidly planned, nothing ever takes me by surprise, until her. Wren Jacobs. I swear the woman was put on earth to drive me insane. She's too young, too beautiful, my daughter's best friend, and one of my best friend’s daughters. In other words, completely off limits. And for one weekend she's the art curator assigned to help me pick up my newest painting.

When prison inmate and former police officer John Brace says he’s willing to give up information about the location of a dead body in return for protection for his family, Vera knows that she has to look into his claims. But opening up this cold case strikes much closer to home than Vera anticipates as her investigation takes her back in time to The Seagull, a once-decadent and now-derelict nightclub where her deceased father and his friends used to congregate.

As the snow falls in Newcastle, Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter, Jessie, travel home on the busy Metro. When the train stops unexpectedly due to bad weather, Jessie notices that one woman doesn’t leave, and when trying to wake her they find that the passenger has been fatally stabbed. With no witnesses DI Vera Stanhope looks into the victim’s past and discovers she lived for years on Harbour Street, in a run-down Northumberland fishing town.

Former Delta operator Myles Simms doesn’t know when to quit. The concept so foreign to him that he can’t give up on Delilah Watts, a woman he’s never met—a woman who might be the enemy—yet he’s compelled to save her.

Fifty years ago, a group of teenagers spent a weekend on Holy Island, forging a bond that has lasted a lifetime. Now, they still return every five years to celebrate their friendship and remember the friend they lost to the rising waters of the causeway at the first reunion. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now.

Driven by a promise to keep her identity secret, tenacious Evelyn Maynard is all alone in the world. But a scholarship to the exclusive Bradford Hills Institute offers her a safe haven and a fresh start. Or so she thought. Eve is one of the only humans at her new school, brimming with those born with Variant DNA—and coveted superhuman abilities. Bound by shared tragedy, Ethan, Josh, Tyler, and Alec—and their unique powers—are revered among Variants. But something has always been missing, and she may have just arrived with a scholarship and a glint in her enchanting, curious eyes.