Showing results by narrator "Sarah Barron" in All Categories

Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators.... When patriarch Jim dies, it's left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events. Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn't the husband she thought he was.

In Glasgow, aspiring actress Jasmine Sharp is reluctantly - and incompetently - earning a crust working for her Uncle Jim's private investigation business. When Jim goes missing, Jasmine has to take on the investigator mantle for real. Soon she stumbles into a web of corruption and decades-hidden secrets that could tear apart an entire police force - if she can stay alive long enough to tell the tale...

Love is not a singular concept. In this collection, seven award-winning authors explore seven concepts of love: from philautia (self-love) to agape (love for humanity) and from storge (a natural affection for family) to mania (a frenzied, obsessive love).

This is a fact: Ryan Summers walked into Three Rivers College and killed 13 women, then himself. But no one can say why. The question is one that cries out to be answered - by Ryan's mother, Moira; by Ishbel, the mother of Abigail, the first victim; and by DI Helen Birch, put in charge of the case on her first day at her new job. But as the tabloids and the media swarm, as the families' secrets come out, as the world searches for someone to blame...the truth seems to vanish.

Private investigator Jasmine Shar has been hired to find Tessa Garrion, a young woman who has vanished without trace. What begins as a simple search awakens a malevolence that has lain dormant for three decades. As Jasmine uncovers a hidden history of sex, drugs, ritualism, and murder, she realises she may need a little help from the dark side herself if she's going to get to the truth.

On the quayside next to the Endless Beach sits the Summer Seaside Kitchen. It's a haven for tourists and locals alike, who all come to eat the freshest local produce on the island and catch up with the gossip. Flora, who runs the café, feels safe and content - unless she thinks too hard about her relationship with Joel, her gorgeous but emotionally (and physically) distant boyfriend. While Flora is in turmoil about her relationship, her best friend, Lorna, is pining after the local doctor.

Christmas on the remote Scottish island of Mure is bleak, stark - and incredibly beautiful. It's a time for hunkering down, getting cosy in front of whisky barrel wood fires and enjoying a dram with the people you love - unless, of course, you're accidentally pregnant to your ex-boss and don't know how to tell him. In what should be the season of peace and goodwill on earth, will Joel think Flora is a bearer of glad tidings?

Flora is forced to move back to the tiny island of Mure from the bright lights of London. It's tough: even the beautiful landscapes and bright blue sea can't lift her spirits - she's too busy looking after her dad and her feckless brothers. Then she chances upon her mum's collection of recipes and begins to cook her way through it. As she reconnects with her family and the place she was born, might she also find herself?

When Nancy spies her Christmas present from her husband sitting on the lawn, she realises the jewellery she thought was for her must be on someone else. Her best friend, Carmen, isn't surprised (she never liked Jonathan) and persuades Nancy to leave Edinburgh and come and stay in her luxury London flat - far too vast for Carmen since her husband, millionaire rock star Spike Todd, died. Soon Nancy's met gorgeous Connor O'Shea, who lives next door, and his daughter, Mia, is matchmaking.

The dead talk. To the right listener, they tell us all about themselves: how they lived, how they died--and who killed them. Val McDermid uncovers the secrets of forensic medicine with groundbreaking research and her own experience. Along the way you’ll wonder at how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine time of death and how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a grain of salt can be used to convict a killer.

Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor to an extraordinary waterworks being built miles from the city. But Isabel, denied the motherhood role that is expected of her by a succession of miscarriages, finds unexpected consolations in a place where she can feel the presence of her unborn children and begin to work out what her life in Victorian society is for.     

Ruby's singing career is on the verge of hitting the big time when her voice breaks. Fearing her career is over, she signs up for a retreat in Tenerife to recover. But an unexpected call from a stranger on a remote Scottish island takes her on a short trip to sort out some family business. It's time to go and see the grandfather she's never met. City girl Ruby knows she will be happy to leave the windswept beaches behind as quickly as she can, especially as a years-old family rift means she knows she won't be welcome at Teach Mhor.  

He's the best thing that ever happened to her. He's also the worst. He's Millie's fling.... When Millie Brady saves Orla Hart's life, she doesn't realise how drastically it will change her own - not least because the boyfriend who was asking her to move in with him at the time stormed off in a huff. Actually, Millie's relieved. She's happy to enjoy a man-free summer in Cornwall.

Jane Bell had dreamt of playing in the casinos of Monte Carlo, but in her punk phase she got herself pregnant, and now she’s 46. She's a grandmother, her dreams as dry as the dust her Dyson sucks up from her hall carpet. Then her son, Ross, a researcher working for an arms manufacturer, is forced to disappear and to part with the secrets of his research. Jane will finally get the adventure she’s always wanted but at a price....

Audrey Hart is on the Isle of Skye to collect the word-of-mouth folk tales of the people and communities around her. It is 1857, the Highland Clearances have left devastation and poverty, and the crofters are suspicious and hostile, claiming they no longer know their stories. Then Audrey discovers the body of a young girl washed up on the beach, and the crofters tell her that it is only a matter of weeks since another girl has disappeared. They believe the girls are the victims of the spirits of the unforgiven dead. 

Scotland, 1860. Reverend Alexander Ferguson takes up his new parish, an isolated patch on the Hebridean island of Harris. His time there will change his life, but the Sea House, on the edge of the dunes keeps its silence long after Alexander departs. More than a century later, Ruth and Michael buy the grand but dilapidated building for the family they hope to have. But their dreams are marred by a shocking discovery.

Maddy Harvey was a bit of an ugly duckling as a teenager, what with her NHS specs, unfortunate hair and wonky teeth. Thankfully she's blossomed since then. But when she meets Kerr McKinnon one starry summer's night and discovers, days later, who he actually is...well, that's when the problems really start. Because everyone in Ashcombe knows what happened 11 years ago, and as far as her mother's concerned, Marcella would rather tear that family to pieces with her bare hands than see Maddy associate with a McKinnon.

Sixteen-year-old Robert arrives home late. Without a word to his dad, he goes up to his bedroom. Robert is never seen alive again. A body is soon found on the coast of the Scottish Highlands. Detective Inspector Monica Kennedy stands by the victim in this starkly beautiful and remote landscape. Instinct tells her the case won’t begin and end with this one death. Meanwhile, Inverness-based social worker Michael Bach is worried about one of his clients whose last correspondence was a single ambiguous text message; Nichol Morgan has been missing for seven days....

When reporter Rebecca Connolly is told of Roddie Drummond's return to the island of Stoirm she senses a story. Fifteen years before he was charged with the murder of his lover, Mhairi. When he was found Not Proven, Roddie left the island. Now he has returned for his mother's funeral - and it will spark an explosion of violence. Rebecca joins forces with local photographer Chaz Wymark to dig into the secrets surrounding Mhairi's death, and her mysterious last words of Thunder Bay, where, according to local lore, the souls of the dead set off into the afterlife. 

A delicious romantic comedy by the best-selling author of The One You Really Want and Three Amazing Things About You about finding love again when you think you've lost it all.... When Izzy is knocked off her motorbike, she doesn't just lose her dignity - she loses as a result not one but two long-term boyfriends, her job and, to boot, her extremely bijou flat. Gina, who caused the accident, has more important things to worry about - her husband's mistress is pregnant, and she's suddenly on her own.