Showing results by narrator "Patience Tomlinson" in All Categories

Having sent his last wife to the block, the tyrannical Henry VIII sets his lustful sights upon an innocent and unworldly gentlewoman, the recently widowed, Katherine Parr. In mourning for her late husband, and yet desperately in love with another, Katherine is forced to choose between the man she loves and a crown of despair. In the years that follow, as Henry's terrified sixth wife and queen, she battles to contain her fear and revulsion of her bloated and monstrous new husband.

Miss Melinda Pink, intrepid rock climber, gothic writer and people observer, is awestruck by her first glimpse of the majestic Utah canyon country. But she’s soon aware of undercurrents of tension among the close-knit inhabitants of Salvation Canyon. When Birdie, a young half-Indian girl, disappears, her body found in a nearby river soon afterward, the tension explodes to the surface.

1835, England. Serafina Finn is conceived as the result of a love affair between a sea captain and a married woman, who dies giving birth to the child. Abandoned to an orphanage, Serafina grows up never quite knowing who she is. Eighteen years after her birth, and having heard rumours that his lost daughter is still alive, her father instigates a search. He hires Adam Chapman to track Serafina down. Adam falls in love with Serafina but must find evidence to prove her identity.

Nell Golightly is living out her widowhood in Cambridgeshire when she receives a strange request. A Tahitian woman, claiming to be the daughter of the poet Rupert Brooke, writes to ask what he was like. How did he sound, what did he smell like, how did it feel to wrap your arms around him?

When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth, irony and brilliant social observation which link the relationships and the inevitable conflicts as profound change comes to rural England.

When they met at a motorcycle club in 1912, Elsie Knocker was a 30-year-old motorcycling divorcee dressed in bottle-green Dunhill leathers, and Mairi Chisholm was a brilliant 18-year old mechanic, living at home and borrowing tools from her brother. Little did they know that theirs was to become one of the most extraordinary stories of the First World War.

After her father’s death, Theordora Buckleigh’s new adopted family want to give her a London season. But though she is a pretty girl, Theodora has limped from birth, and dreads exposure to the social round. She takes evasive action, accepting an invitation from Dorothy Wordsworth to stay with her and her poet brother William in Dorset. Here she will find love, danger and intrigue. Might Coleridge and the others be engaged in treason?

Melissa's life is in disarray. There are cracks in her marriage, and her mother, Elizabeth, is losing her memory. Elizabeth presents her daughter with a gift that suggests a very secret history - one that leads Melissa to Kalami, where Julian Adie, poet, traveller and novelist, once lived. But what is the connection between the hedonistic Adie and Melissa's mother? As Melissa chases Adie's shadow across the places he loved, she finds her mother may not have been the person she thought.

Sarah and Larch join together to discover the killer of harmless old Miss Bates. Then a gypsy girl is strangled in the woods: are the two murders connected? There are several suspects, and further attacks reveal some unsavoury goings-on and unveil further potential murderers. Ex-Scotland Yard detective Ben Marshall investigates, but Sarah continues her own research into an old scandal which finally leads to the truth. Or does it?

For Elaine, her first lvoe was all consuming, but when Chris, the love of her life, inherited a large sum of money everything changed. With the help of her friend, Mary, Elaine slowly began to forge a new life and fell in love again, with Ian. When an expected face from the past returns to haunt her she is forced to question the future for which she has worked so hard. Can life ever be the same again for Elaine and the people she loves? And, more importantly, has she ever really known the true meaning of love?

England, June 1944. Exactly one week after the Allied armies invade Nazi occupied Normandy, Hitler strikes back with his Vengeance Weapons: the terrifying V-1 Flying Bombs. In August, one of these "doodlebugs" falls on an Anglican convent near Camberwell, killing three nuns.

It’s 1993 and the small seaside town of Kingshaven is looking picture perfect when the peace is suddenly shattered by the blast of a bomb that has lain hidden since the war. It is not the town’s only long-buried secret. In London, graduate Cat Brown sees the story unfolding on the news. In Rome, Iris Quinn feels the tug of the place she ran away from 30 years before. In the now crumbling Palace Hotel, disturbing memories are triggered for grande-dame Liliana King.

Ten years ago, a missing person story causes a furore in Kent - and the national media. A beautiful young woman with a promising career as a singer walks home alone from a party and is never seen again. There is no evidence, forensic or otherwise, and no-one is ever arrested. A decade later Libby Sarjeant is talked into inspecting a derelict hotel in her home village of Steeple Martin. The body of a young boy is discovered - but is it anything to do with the mysterious disappearance from more than 10 years ago?

Colin Hardcastle has arranged for two men to meet and discuss the sale of a house. But when Nick Nash - the owner of the property - doesn't show, Colin cannot begin to imagine the events he has set in motion. Perplexed, Colin tells his friends in Steeple Martin, piquing the interest of Libby Sarjeant - and the Reverend Patti Pearson, who finds Nash's name strangely familiar....

February 1665. With winter passing, Mercia Blakewood is at last headed back to England from America, hoping to leave behind the shadow that death and heartache have cast. She expects a welcome from the King, considering her earlier, mostly successful mission on his behalf, but the reception is not exactly warm. Mercia faces more manipulation and must accept a clandestine and uncomfortable role at the heart of the royal court, posing as a mistress to find a spy and traitor.

In 1664, four years after Charles II is restored to the throne, Mercia Blakewood stands to lose everything: her father to the executioner's ax, her freedom to her treacherous uncle, her son to his resentful grandparents. But when her father leaves her a cryptic message in his last speech, she seizes her chance to fight back. With would-be lover Nathan Keyte and unlikely new friend Nicholas Wildmoor, Mercia must unravel her father's mystery to find a great prize long thought lost.

All was quiet in the Bodle home in Plumstead village on the morning of 2 November 1833. In the large ten bedroom farmhouse, the maid Sophia Taylor began preparing breakfast while, at the cottage down the track, Mary Higgins came down to set the fire. But all was not as it seemed that morning... When the local doctor was summoned several hours later he found four women suffering from severe vomiting and stomach pains whilst the master of the house was delirious with pain.

For the Spender family, the ancient, beautifully kept house had seemed a godsend, an incredible bargain, almost a gift from its owner - a kindly man who merely wanted someone to protect the family homestead, to make Gad’s come alive again. And it did. Soon a strong-willed, sensible woman would be overtaken by irrational feelings she could not control, all because of the unspeakable secret kept by the women who had lived at Gad’s Hall more than a century ago.…

In the spring of 1939, with the Second World War looming, two determined 24-year-olds, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, decided to open a marriage bureau. They found a tiny office on London's Bond Street and set about the delicate business of matchmaking. Drawing on the bureau's extensive archives, Penrose Halson - who, many years later, found herself the proprietor of the bureau - tells their story and the stories of their clients. We meet a remarkable cross section of British society in the 1940s.

It's not easy sharing a flat. Especially when you're 95 years old. Change is afoot at Sunset Grove retirement home, and its residents aren't impressed. Under threat from falling masonry, best friends Irma and Siiri are forced out of their home to negotiate 21st-century living in the centre of Helsinki. Their new surroundings throw up an endless number of daily challenges, from caring for the ailing Anna-Lisa to the mystery of which of the many remotes controls the TV.