Showing results by narrator "Josie Charles" in All Categories

The Gingerbread Café is always full of Christmas magic. Come rain or shine (or even a July heatwave), there's always a hot chocolate bursting with cinnamon and marshmallows waiting for you. For introverted Gretel, it's been the perfect escape from 'real life'. The owner, Nell, is Gretel's last link to her late mum, and hiding out at the café feels so much safer than making new friends. So when Nell suddenly passes, Gretel is left heartbroken. Then she discovers that Nell has left the café to her—but there's a catch.

As friends and family gather for the funeral of charming and charismatic Seb Cooper, three women sit in the congregation, mourning his loss. Three women who loved Seb in their own different ways. Three women whose lives have now changed forever. But only one woman knows what really happened at the end...and only one truly had his heart.

Pippa Mason is ready for a fresh start. She has bought Pumpkin Cottage in the picturesque Wye Valley village of Riverdean, where her late mother grew up, and plans to renovate a run-down bed and breakfast. Despite the complications of the project and a very surly builder, Pippa is settling into village life and starting to fall for the charms of local, outdoorsy Jake when problems start coming thick and fast.

Lady Theodosia Balfour has certainly gotten the short end of the stick—her stepsister, the newly crowned Princess Beatrice, is telling everyone in polite society that Theo, her sister, and their mother are evil, wicked, and horrid people who treated her like a slave. Though Theo knows this isn't exactly true, it seems her life is thoroughly ruined by the rumor. With the Balfour family estate on the verge of bankruptcy, Theo's only path forward is a forced betrothal to the Duke of Snowbell, a foul-tempered geezer who wishes only to use her as a brood mare for spare heirs.

Every day, in her basement flat in a quiet street, Rene arranges her collection of objects just so. She takes her pills, looks at her photographs and remembers her free-spirited sister, Lauren, before she vanished. But lately the memories are shifting. When a letter arrives out of the blue, the opening words send ice through her veins. Lauren is alive. She’s waiting. And she needs Rene to find her before it’s too late.

Clara Seymour is trying to find her feet in London, living away from home for the first time. Brought up by her domineering mother, treasuring time any time with her adoring father, Clara's world is brought to a standstill when her dad abruptly dies. Then, a mystery comes to light in a letter from him. I am sure you are aware that before I met your mother I had a previous marriage. But what we never discussed is that we had a daughter. So begins a journey of discovery that takes Clara to remote Norway and a landscape as brutal as it is bewitching.

I never imagined I'd be living in Jemima Eden's world. As her new assistant, I'm suddenly part of a life I've only ever dreamed of. After years of barely scraping by, juggling temp jobs and failed auditions, it feels like my chance to finally be someone. But the closer I get to Jemima, the more I realise that her glossy life is just another performance. Behind the dazzling smile and happy marriage to her thoughtful husband George, there's a darkness I never expected.

Navigating this new world of motherhood is hard. And the only sanity these three friends have is their 3am mums’ club, where they can chat and support each other in the dark of the night as their babies, finally, finally sleep. But in the still of the night, secrets are revealed that could turn all their lives upside down…more than they already are!

Meet the cat who went to see the Queen, the bird who loves shiny things and the horse that turned into a pig. This collection of short stories by Enid Blyton is filled with exciting animals ready for adventure!

Pandora has real problems. She still lives with her parents, she’s working a dead-end job, and, oh yeah, she’s a vampire who must get married by her birthday in three months’ time or she won’t inherit the ancient family fortune. One slight catch: she’s single. But then she finds her perfect fake husband: Victor, a PhD student with mountains of student debt. She can marry him, inherit, pay off his debt, and divorce him. The only slight problems are that Victor doesn’t know she’s a vampire and absolutely cannot find out, and Pandora’s family absolutely cannot find out the wedding is fake.

At the tender age of twenty-one, Pico’s world is one of linguistic puzzles and academic pursuits. A student at the University of Copenhagen, she is thrilled to get a summer job working for enigmatic antique dealer Antonio Bartram. When Antonio suddenly disappears leaving behind nothing but a series of cryptic messages, Pico decides to use her linguistic prowess to decode the clues – with fateful consequences.

When school teacher Rose loses her dream job at a London primary school, her self-confidence takes a knock. Worse still, her stockbroker fiancé, Ollie, sees it as the perfect opportunity for her to join his firm, which only adds to the feelings Rose has that their relationship might be coming to an end. An unexpected phone call, and an elderly aunt who’s taken a fall, means Rose must drop everything—including Ollie—and return to Blossom Heath, the Sussex village she grew up in. With no job to rush home to, Rose decides to stay in Blossom Heath for the Summer.

Bella Marble is a true, hopeless, despairing romantic. Above all things, even above her wish to be a writer, she wants love. But when her beautiful best friend moves out of their flat share to live with the most boring ogre in history, and her perfectly paired parents tell her their own love story is coming to an end, Bella's illusions of a happily ever after start to shatter. If they can't find 'the one', what chance does she have? Disenchanted, Bella throws herself into looking for love in all the wrong places.

New Beginnings at The Cosy Cat Café tells the story of Tori who, after being dumped and left stranded by her long-term boyfriend Ryan on a trip of a lifetime to Asia, returns home to the sleepy Sussex village of Blossom Heath with her tail between her legs and her dreams shattered. Donning her frilly apron to help her Mum, Joyce, behind the counter at The Cosy Cup Café, Tori starts to believe – with the help of a hunky fireman and a clowder of rescue cats - that perhaps the secret to her future happiness might lie closer to home than she ever thought possible.

When beautiful but broke Jemima Evans meets the wealthy Greg Trelawney, who whisks her away to his isolated home overlooking the rugged Cornish coast, it seems her luck has finally changed. But when she arrives, she finds she only has eyes for Greg’s enigmatic and wealthy friend Rebecca Sheridan, who is famous for drawing young women into her dark orbit, before discarding them. Desperate to keep Rebecca's attention at any cost, Jemima finds herself caught in a dangerous web of lies and obsession…

Daisy has realised you really can hit rock bottom when you lose your job, your boyfriend, and become estranged from your sister all at once. Seeking to claw her way out from the very definition of a bad year, her plan is to start by simply looking like she's clawing her way out of rock bottom. On Instagram. Obviously. But when she takes a stopgap job as a nanny to help a single father with his two young girls, being immersed in a close-knit, loving family starts to poke holes in her plan.

Amy has been sent to live with her aunt at Meadow Hill Manor in Belper, Derbyshire, to help her ‘recover’. Rumours abound that the house is haunted, but Amy doesn’t care. It’s just another place to live and Amy is determined not to care about anything. What would be the point? Amy’s obsession with shutting the world out is interrupted when she hears strange noises in the house. Here she finds herself drawn to a mysterious, magical power hidden within the building. Should she ignore it, or should she face her fears and embrace this strange, new magic?