Showing results by narrator "Nicolette" in All Categories

Seventy-seven-year-old Judith Potts is blissfully happy. She lives alone in a faded mansion in Marlow, sets crosswords for The Times, and there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink. One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. When the local police don’t believe her story, Judith and two unlikely friends decide to investigate for themselves. Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.

Verity Beresford is worried about her husband. Oliver didn’t come home last night so of course Verity goes straight to Judith Potts, Marlow’s resident amateur sleuth, for help. Oliver, founder of the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, had hired The Marlow Belle, a private pleasure cruiser, for an exclusive party with the MADS committee but no one remembers seeing him disembark. And then Oliver’s body washes up on the Thames with two bullet holes in him – it’s time for the Marlow Murder Club to leap into action.

Successful horse trainer Alissa Morgan–Jones has the world at her feet, until a tragic fire destroys everything. Widowed, in debt and under suspicion for arson, Alissa's life is in tatters. Her mother–in–law's isolated farm gives her the opportunity to pull her life back together and get herself back on her feet. Four years after fleeing the city and the scandal that ruined his career, disgraced lawyer Cameron Blakely has a successful new business and a new life.

Bram Deagan dreams of bringing his family from Ireland to join him in Australia, where he now runs a successful trading business. But when a typhus epidemic strikes Ireland, it leaves the Deagan family decimated. And, with other family members scattered round the world, it is left to Maura Deagan to look after her orphaned nieces and nephew. Forced to abandon her own ambitions, and unsure whether she is ready to become a mother-figure to three young children, Maura recognises that their only hope is to join Bram in far away Australia.

Australia, 1946: 650 brides are departing for England to meet the men they married in wartime. But instead of the luxury liner they were expecting, they find themselves aboard an aircraft carrier, alongside a thousand men. On the sun-baked decks, old loves and past promises become distant memories, and tensions are stretched to the limit as brides and husbands change their minds. And for Frances Mackenzie, it soon becomes clear that the journey is more important than the destination....

Marvellously atmospheric tale of strangers summoned to a grand but neglected villa on the Italian coast. Each of them has been named in a will, but nobody knows their benefactress.... Four very different people are named in a will. Delia, an opera singer robbed of her voice by illness; George, an idealistic scientist who cannot face what his skills have created; Marjorie, desperately poor and unable to dislodge her writer’s block; and Lucius, ostensibly in control but whose personal life is in chaos.

At twenty-nine years old, single, living in a very small country town, and working in the same job she'd had since she left school, some would say Bel Buckley's life was mediocre at best. But life had sort of panned out that way. She'd always planned to leave - she just hadn't gotten around to it.

Kate Kelly has always been overshadowed by her famous brother Ned, but the talented young woman was a popular public figure in her own right. This moving biography tells her astonishing story in full for the first time. Kate Kelly, the daring sister of legendary bushranger Ned Kelly, was mysteriously found dead in a lagoon outside the town of Forbes in 1898.

Jenny Hayward cannot believe that she's become a divorced fifty-year-old woman with adult children. When did that happen? It wasn't that long ago that her three daughters were still young, and Jenny was following her dream studying for her nursing degree. In the last two years, since her husband walked out, Jenny hasn't had the time to be interested in other men until she is thrust unexpectedly into the world of dating when her daughters and her best friend secretly set her up with a profile on a dating app. Initially outraged, Jenny finally agrees that it's time to move on.

Singapore in the 1860s is exotic and yet terrifying for a penniless Englishwoman, alone and vulnerable after her mother's death. Too pretty to obtain a governess' job, Isabella Saunders accepts an offer from Singapore merchant Mr Lee to teach him English and live with his family. Two years later Bram Deagan arrives in Singapore, determined to make his fortune as a trader. Mr Lee sees a way to expand his business connections and persuades Isabella to marry Bram. Bravely, she sets sail for a new land and life.

It’s been an enjoyable and murder-free time for Judith, Suzie and Becks – AKA the Marlow Murder Club – since the events of last year. The most exciting thing on the horizon is the upcoming wedding of Marlow grandee, Sir Peter Bailey, to his nurse, Jenny Page. Sir Peter is having a party at his grand mansion on the river Thames the day before the wedding, and Judith and Co. are looking forward to a bit of free champagne.

Bec and Kate are sisters, but they couldn't be less alike. Bec lives the domestic dream with her surgeon husband, Stuart, and three perfect children. So why is she so attracted to free-spirited Ryan? Kate's life is hardly a dream. But when she meets Adam - tall, kind, funny - things start looking up. Until she finds out he's been keeping secrets from her. Then there is the incident both sisters are desperate to ignore. Will they discover that some mistakes can't be put right?

Uncompromising and fierce, Commissar Severina Raine has always served the Imperium with the utmost distinction. Attached to the 11th Antari Rifles, she instills order and courage in the face of utter horror. The Chaos cult, the Sighted, have swept throughout the Bale Stars and a shadow has fallen across its benighted worlds. A great campaign led by the vaunted hero Lord-General Militant Alar Serek is underway to free the system from tyranny and enslavement, but the price of victory must be paid in blood.

Geoffrey Lushington, Mayor of Marlow, dies suddenly during a Town Council meeting. When traces of aconite – also known as the queen of poisons – are found in his coffee cup, the police realise he was murdered. But who did it? And why? The police bring Judith, Suzie and Becks in to investigate as Civilian Advisors right from the start, so they have free rein to interview suspects and follow the evidence to their heart’s content, which is perfect because Judith has no time for rules and standard procedure. But this case has the Marlow Murder Club stumped.

Reggie Macleod had her life sorted. As a kid in a small school with only twelve students; she vowed she was going to live in the city and be something important. And she'd followed her dream. Then her world changed with one phone call from her brother. Returning to River Styx, the cattle property where she grew up on the New England Tablelands, Reggie came home to help after her parents barely survived a car accident. It was only going to be for a couple of months … that was almost three years ago.

Claudia Hampton - beautiful, famous, independent, dying. But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world...and in the process, my own'. And it is her story, from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. But Claudia's life is entwined with others, and she must allow those who knew her, loved her, the chance to speak. There is Gordon, brother and adversary; Jasper, her untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool conventional daughter; and then there is Tom, her one great love.

Lottie Fairchild has two loves: history and, well, history. She's fascinated by the legends of love and curses handed down through her own family. Owner of a successful antique shop in her small country town Banalla, Lottie is on the committee that is about to launch a new festival celebrating the town history and their local figure of fame, gentleman bushranger Jack McNally. Altogether, Lottie is happy. Mostly. But when festival guest speaker Professor Damian Loxley arrives, a week early and on a motorbike, Lottie is caught off guard.

Ebony Blakely has her life nearly exactly where she wants it. She's a country vet with a successful business in Hunters Ridge, a town that she loves, and has a close group of friends. The only thing missing is romance. Unfortunately, the man she wants treats her as a good friend, and no matter how much she tries to change that perception, he just won't get it.

Bram Deagan has a thriving trading business, a growing family - and a gift for matchmaking. His dearest wish is to see his friends Dougal and Mitchell happily married, too. In England, Eleanor Prescott has been widowed and often thinks of Dougal McBride, the ship's captain who was a true friend to her. Does she dare return to Western Australia to find him? Jacinta Blacklea is also a widow, desperate to protect her young son. When she hears of a man in Australia looking for a wife, she determines to grasp Mitchell Nash's invitation with both hands.

Eva Kershaw thought she would never marry and is happy living a quiet life with her dear friend Alice. But Alice is ill, and her nephew, Gus, has thrust himself into their household. Alice's dearest wish is that Eva should not make the same mistakes she did, and she alters her will so that Eva and Gus are strongly compelled to marry. Eva obliges to fulfil her dead friend's wishes. But Gus is not all he seems to be: he is not Alice's kind nephew but a robber, a confidence trickster, and not even Gus Blake. And Eva is in terrible danger....