Showing results by narrator "Karen Bartke" in All Categories

Jack loves his childhood toy Dur Pig. DP has always been there for him, through good and bad. Until one Christmas Eve something terrible happens - DP is lost. But Christmas Eve is a night for miracles and lost causes, a night when all things can come to life...even toys. And Jack’s newest toy - the Christmas Pig (DP’s annoying replacement) - has a daring plan: Together they’ll embark on a magical journey to seek something lost and to save the best friend Jack has ever known....

Detective Lola Harris returns from a miserable solo holiday – an effort to get over her useless ex – only to find herself in charge of a high-stakes investigation. She rushes to a crime scene in the historic Gallowgate neighbourhood. The smell in the basement is thick and sweet, even through Lola’s forensic mask. The old wooden chair and the rope hanging from its arms are stained red. The earth below is saturated with blood. Six candleholders, their lights burned out, lend the scene an air of a completed ritual. And yet there is no sign of a body.

Detective Lola Harris is called to a local park where the body of a woman has been pulled out of the river. On the victim’s wrist is a tattoo. A dolphin and a heart. Lola knows who she is instantly – the woman half the Glasgow force have been searching for: missing juror, Kathryn Main. Kathryn was on the jury that convicted reality TV star Carter Craig of a double murder. Just weeks later, the verdict was overturned. Carter walked free. Three jurors were arrested for misconduct. A fourth, Kathryn Main, disappeared. Then, a witness comes forward with shocking new information.

Young, feisty, and beautiful, heads turn wherever Danica Campbell goes, even if she only has eyes for her fiancé, Ricky Fyfe. He might be 30 years older than her, but his job as a big-time club owner in Glasgow means he can afford to give Danica the life she deserves. Danica knows he has a history—after all, his adult daughter Teigan works at the club—and she knows that Teigan’s mum, Elle, disappeared decades ago. It doesn’t matter, because Danica knows that Ricky will do anything for her.

Jane, Carly and Rose Savage are savage by name, savage by nature. Having lost their mum too young, and with a bedridden father too ill to work, the sisters learnt early to stand on their own two feet. The family's flat in the rough streets of Glasgow's Haghill is their fortress, but when Carly's ex-boyfriend Cole Alexander is released from prison, trouble soon comes knocking at their door. The Alexanders have beef with the Savages, so the girls call for back up in the shape of their uncle Eddie and his two gorgeous but dangerous sons, Harry and Dean.

Cheryl Davidson was happy with husband Leo, watching her beloved son, Dean, grow into a handsome young man, dreaming of the paths his life would take. Until the day that Dean was murdered, his body dumped in an isolated scrapyard with a bullet in his head, and Cheryl's world exploded. Discovering that Dean had been mixed up in the Glasgow underworld, and worst of all, that Leo had brought him in, means that Cheryl's sanity is hanging by a thread. Overwhelmed by grief and with no one left to trust, Cheryl plans to take deadly retribution on the family that caused her son to be killed.

This curated collection travels through the beginnings of the Gothic Imagination, showcases the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, before unveiling the male gothic in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk and the dawn of the female gothic in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey showcases the Gothic Satire, and the collection concludes with Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time episode exploring the history of the genre and Gothic Legacy.

Janey Hallahan was born into the criminal life. After the death of her father, she became head of the family business - every day making dark decisions that make her family firm richer, no matter how dangerous. While Janey rules gangland with an iron fist, she always sticks to her own code of honour, and the innocent never get hurt. One of her workers, Danny McInroy runs an exclusive club in Glasgow - the kind of place where the ultra-wealthy can fulfil their darkest desires, for a hefty cost.

Carly Savage has lost the two people she loved the most – first her father and then Jack, local gangland boss and love of her life, was brutally attacked and died in Carly’s arms. Grief has changed her. Carly’s sisters Jane and Rose are worried she may never recover. But the need for revenge drives Carly now and she will stop at nothing to destroy her enemies, Cole Alexander and her cousin Dean. When the Savages’ boss, Queen of Glasgow Toni McVay’s reign comes under attack from Cole, Carly realises this is her chance.

In this sitcom, Harry Hill stars as the governor of Britain’s remotest prison. In Series 1, he has to contend with the prison inspectors, mysteriously malfunctioning CCTV cameras, escaping prisoners and even the prison being attacked by a pair of mating whales. In Series 2, he and the team pitch a new invention to Dragon’s Den, he tries to get his stomach around a food shortage and a self-destruct button is found in the prison.

Detective Lola Harris is persuaded to take a much-needed break in the remote Scottish Highlands. She’s expecting peace and quiet. But Ardaig Castle, an exclusive wellness retreat for the rich and famous, has its own dark secrets. Lola soon discovers that someone is sending poison pen letters to the staff. They’re growing more malicious each week. The latest reads: Why have you employed a killer among your staff?

Detective Lola Harris is turning over a new leaf. She’s determined to get into shape. Her new personal trainer is merciless when it comes to fitness. Thankfully, he’s also charming and exceptionally good-looking, which helps on a cold early morning run. But as they puff round a corner in peaceful Pollok Park, Lola glimpses something that shouldn’t be there: a high-end BMW. Doors gaping. And a man and a woman, roped together. Lola’s early morning run is now a crime scene.

When the patriarch of the Savage family dies suddenly, his three daughters, Carly, Jane and Rose are heartbroken. But you can’t keep a Savage sister down for long, and Jane and her gang The Unbeatable Bitches, along with their uncle Eddie, and cousins Dean and Harry are determined to fight to keep the Savage family on top. But Carly isn’t so sure. Perhaps her father’s death is the opportunity she’s been waiting for – to finally get away from the life of crime and violence in Glasgow’s Haghill. Exhausted by the jockeying for power, she pictures a quiet place where no one knows who she is.

Detective Lola is heading back over the river from a rare night out when she spots a crowd of people looking over the parapet. Someone’s gone in. A young man called Cammy witnessed everything. He swears it’s the work of the Clyde Pusher, but is terrified of the police. The Clyde Pusher is the stuff of urban legend. A hooded figure who throws men into the river to drown. Eight victims in five years. But according to the police, the Pusher doesn’t exist. There are no reliable witnesses, nothing to link the victims.

Ever since being adopted as babies, twins Sinead and Orla have been the only family they've ever known. Orla’s got the big house in Glasgow, the supportive husband and teenage daughter, Molly Rose, while Sinead's struggles have taken her to some very dark places. But all of that changes when Sinead receives a call. Their mother, Janey, is back in their lives. But she's far from what they expected and when the siblings discover their mum is the head of a dangerous gangland firm, their lives are turned upside down.

The Crowdies have worked the same landscape on the Scottish coast for generations. When Bern Crowdie passes away, everyone expects the farm to pass to his youngest daughter Nina who, with her young son Barnaby, has been living and working with her father for the past five years. Her older sister Bette left when she was eighteen, vowing never to return. Now a successful lawyer in London, it’s doubtful she’ll even make the funeral – or the reading of their father’s will.

Vowing once again to remove herself from society, Annie is once more living alone in her little cottage by the shores of a loch. But when an old enemy – now locked up in a high-security hospital – comes calling, begging her to find the son that she was forced to give up at the age of 17, Annie is tempted out of seclusion. Annie and Lewis begin an investigation that takes them back to the past, a time etched in Scottish folklore, a period of history that may just be repeating itself.

Five years after leading a strike at the sewing factory, newly pregnant Ellen is rushed off her feet at the Clydebank Clothing exchange, the heart of the community. Ellen is missing her husband James who is away with the Royal Navy, and worried about how to make ends meet. She desperately wants to confide in her best friend Sadie. However, Sadie is hiding a heart-breaking secret of her own which places strain on their friendship.

Like half of all the young women living in the Scottish town Clydebankin early 1911, Ellen works at the sewing machine factory. So does her big sister, Bridget, Bridget's fiancé Malcolm, and her new friend Sadie, who has come to work at the factory after the death of her father. For Sadie, the factory is a way to make ends meet, but Ellen has sewing in her veins. She is even making Bridget's wedding dress on her beloved sewing machine. But after the excitement of the wedding dies down, everything changes.

Firmly ensconced in the criminal underworld, Carly and Jane Savage, along with girl gang the Unbeatable Bitches, their uncle Eddie and their cousins Dean and Harry, are finally making good money, running dubious errands for the notorious Tallan brothers. Rod and Neil Tallan wield almighty power over their patch, and their reputation for ruthless revenge on traitors is legendary. The Savage sisters feel invincible until trouble arrives in the form of Jack Alexander. Recently released from notorious hellhole prison, nicknamed Monster Mansion, he’s dangerous, ambitious, and broodingly handsome.