Showing results by narrator "Nicolette McKenzie"

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....

Liza McCullen will never escape her past, but the unspoilt beaches and tight-knit community of Silver Bay offer the safety she craves for her young daughter, Hannah...until Mike Dormer arrives, and the peace of Silver Bay is shattered. The mild-mannered Englishman could destroy everything Liza has worked so hard to protect: not only the family business and the bay that harbours her beloved whales but also her conviction that she will never love again.

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.

Iris is getting old. A widow, her days are spent living quietly and worrying about her granddaughter, Grace, a headstrong young doctor. Iris receives an invitation to a WW1 reunion in France. She is overcome by memories of the past and her journey to France in 1914, when she followed her young brother Tom, intending to bring him home. But on her way to find Tom, Iris truly comes of age working in a field hospital at Royaumont. Discovering her passion for medicine and making friends with Violet while falling in love. But war is brutal, and there is a terrible price to pay.

Thirteenth-century France: Bridget has grown up mastering the mystical gifts of her ancestor, Mary Magdalene, whose unbroken female lineage has kept a legacy of wisdom alive for a thousand years. But the all-powerful Catholic Church has sworn to destroy Bridget for using her healing talents and supernatural abilities. Her duty to continue the bloodline leads her into the arms of Raoul de Mountvallant – a Catholic.

Stella and her mother-in-law, Margie, are two very different women. Stella is kind, compassionate and a little chaotic. Margie is prickly and demanding, with bitter memories of the past. When Margie needs help recovering from a major operation, she reluctantly returns to the family farm, where for decades, until Stella's arrival, she was the one in charge. But the two women gradually form an unlikely bond, as the ambitions, secrets, and tragedies that have shaped their lives are slowly uncovered....

Absorbing and escapist, The Villa on the Riviera is perfect summer listening for fans of Rachel Hore and Santa Montefiore. Polly Smith is struggling to make a living as an artist when her friend and patron, Oliver, invites her to the south of France. But her world is unexpectedly turned upside down when she digs out her birth certificate to apply for a passport. Her parents are not who she believed them to be - even her name is different.

Fabulous family saga of secrets held through two generations, set against the atmospheric background of the Lake District at Christmas. The year 1936 is drawing to a close. Winter grips Wetmoreland and causes a rare phenonmenon: The lakes freeze. For two local families, the Richardsons and the Grindleys, this will bring unexpected upheaval, as the frozen lake entices long-estranged siblings and children to return home for the holiday season.

For Mattie Willit, caught in a thunderstorm running away from her bullying stepfather, rescue comes in the form of Jacob Kemble, a widowed farmer living with his two young children. She is escaping from an enforced marriage; he, struggling with the memory of a loveless one. As Jacob nurses Mattie back to health, the two come know and love each other. Meanwhile, wealthy and elderly Miss Emily Newington needs their help to save her from her greedy cousin who is plotting to take her house.

The villagers of Thrush Green celebrate Christmas traditionally, in a way that has hardly changed over the generations. Children eagerly hang up their stockings, families go to church together and everyone enjoys the treats of the festive season. And when it snows as the carol singers make their way round the cottages on the green, it looks as if Christmas will be perfect this year. But not everything is as peaceful as it seems.

After being driven from home by their brutal father, the Willett sisters find themselves facing greater heartache in the wider world. Nell, the middle daughter, has left home to be with her lover, Cliff, fearing what reprisals might come from marrying against her father’s wishes. The couple head for Lancashire, but Nell’s happiness is short-lived.

Robert arrives in Colombia with a surprise for his wife, Rosemary: Tara, a Jack Russell puppy. Join this adventurous couple - and their amazing, seafaring canine crew of one - as they cruise around the world on their yacht, Deusa. Their exciting and sometimes hair-raising adventures on land and sea include tales of tsunamis, modern-day pirates, corrupt customs officials, several instances of 'dog overboard!', many new friends - and near disaster off the Australian coast....

Shifting Colours is a story of secrets, love and loss. Set against the violent backdrop of apartheid South Africa and then the calm of late twentieth century Britain, the novel traces the lives of Celia and Miriam- a mother and daughter separated by land, sea and heart-rending circumstances.

At just 14, Mollie Moran left the Norfolk countryside to take up a position in the kitchens of a stately London townhouse. Getting through the endless chores, sneaking out with her best friend Flo the kitchen maid to go dancing at night, and flirting with Alan the footman and Harrods errand boys, Mollie quickly rose through the ranks. We see the “upstairs, downstairs” world through Mollie’s eyes: the politics and scandals, the friendships and secret liaisons, the many comings and goings.

When Kobie Krüger, her game-ranger husband, Kobus, and their three young daughters moved to one of the most isolated corners of the world, a remote ranger station in the Mahlangeni region of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park, she might have worried about loneliness and boredom. Yet the years she and her family spent there proved magical and, occasionally, hair-raising.

It's never easy to face the fact that a man you once loved passionately has found the girl of his dreams, as Alice discovers when Joe introduces her to his new girlfriend Ginny. Jealous, Alice is repelled by Ginny - an ethereal beauty with a sinister group of friends. Then Alice finds an old diary hidden away in Ginny's room and reads about a mysterious, bewitching woman, Rosemary Virginia Ashley, buried in Grantchester churchyard half a century ago - buried but far from forgotten.

From the author of The Frozen Lake comes an enthralling novel of love, betrayal, and idealism as three very different young women go up to Oxford in the years immediately before World War Two. Vee - the clergyman’s daughter. Boyish, alluring, she plans to use her time at Oxford to put right everything that went wrong in her loveless childhood.

In the modern economy, businesses must have heart. The marketing industry is broken. Consumers are tired of interruption, push, mass media and the manipulation of marketing and advertising generally. They want to deal with honest, ethical companies that have heart and purpose and that care about serving all their stakeholders instead of their pockets. Conscious Marketing proves that marketing can really work if the paradigm is shifted radically.

Meriel grows up in England a tomboy, helping her beloved grandfather with DIY. At school she discovers a talent and love for art, but her mother forces her to become an accountant. She’s good at that, too, but her heart isn’t in it. Ben and his wife have a dream of designing a country retreat, but when she’s killed in an accident, he’s left to struggle on alone. After her grandpop dies, Meriel emigrates to Australia, where she meets Ben.

Feo's life is extraordinary. Her mother trains domesticated wolves to be able to fend for themselves in the snowy wilderness of Russia, and Feo is following in her footsteps to become a wolf wilder. She loves taking care of the wolves, especially the three who stay at the house because they refuse to leave Feo, even though they've already been wilded. But not everyone is enamored with the wolves or with the fact that Feo and her mother are turning them wild.