Showing results by narrator "Sophie Robert" in All Categories

With her life turned upside down, it's almost a relief for Hallie to be asked to work a case. She is tasked with helping the Conclave Investigators follow up on a suspected theft, and also help track down one of their own—Special Investigator Girard Abbott has gone missing. But nothing is straightforward. The supposed victim of the theft doesn't seem interested in helping with the investigation. No one seems to know what's been stolen. Girard may not just be missing, but also injured—or worse. And then Hallie senses the stirring of ancient magic, powerful enough to threaten her entire city.

At just 19, Katheryn Howard is quick to trust and fall in love. She comes to court. She sings, she dances. She captures the heart of the King. Henry declares she is his rose without a thorn. But Katheryn has a past of which he knows nothing. It comes back increasingly to haunt her. For those who share her secrets are waiting in the shadows, whispering words of love...and blackmail.

Who was the real Diana? What was it like to be so privileged yet so anguished, so beloved yet so self-loathing, so spoiled yet so despairing? The Princess of Wales was all these things--far more complicated, conflicted, and intriguing a person than the wildly disparate saint or lunatic she is frequently portrayed to be.

Two older brothers had taught Nancy Ann how to look after herself well enough, and she could hold her own with the roughest of the village children. But soon she had to muster her courage and fortitude to the full when the far greater challenges of a controversial marriage thrust her into womanhood and into a whole new world of conflict and tragedy which had to be faced and overcome.

Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they've turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored.

From the opening story about a married woman who takes a trip to the city with a single purpose in mind - to sleep with another man - Antarctica draws you into a world of obsession, betrayal and fragile relationships.

To the outside world, Electra D’Aplièse seems to be the woman with everything: as one of the world’s top models, she is beautiful, rich and famous. Yet beneath the veneer, Electra’s already tenuous control over her state of mind has been rocked by the death of her father, Pa Salt, the elusive billionaire who adopted his six daughters from across the globe. Struggling to cope, she turns to alcohol and drugs. As those around her fear for her health, Electra receives a letter from a complete stranger who claims to be her grandmother.

She is a stay-at-home mother of three with boundless reserves of patience, energy and love. After being friends for a decade, this is how Liz sees Jess. Then one moment changes everything. Dark thoughts and carefully guarded secrets surface – and Liz is left questioning everything she thought she knew about her friend, and about herself.

When Ros comes home after three years away, shes ready to pick up with life exactly where she left it. But her friends have moved on, her parents have rekindled their romance and her bedroom is now a garden shed. All of a sudden, she's swept up in nostalgia for the way things were. Then her phone begins to ping, with messages from her old life. Including one number she thought she'd erased for good the man who broke her heart. Is this her second chance at one big love? Sometimes we all want to see what we've been missing.

London, 1749. Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. The Punchbowl and Pineapple, her confectionary shop on Piccadilly, is barely turning a profit. Henry Fielding, the famous author and new magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account, because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.

Moving away from their lovely apartment in Munich isn't nearly as wrenching an experience for Frau Greta Hahn as she had feared. Their new home is even lovelier than the one they left behind and life in Buchenwald would appear to be idyllic. Lying just beyond the forest that surrounds them is the looming presence of a work camp. Frau Hahn's husband has been assigned as the camp's administrator. When Frau Hahn's poor health leads her into an unlikely and poignant friendship with one of Buchenwald's prisoners, her naIve ignorance about what is going on so nearby is challenged.

A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building. None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced an unsettling occurrence within the building's walls. By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.

Hallie works as a skip tracer—hunting down people wanted by the law, for one reason or another. It's not glamourous, and it doesn't pay all that well. But it's legal work, and that's hard to come by in the cramped quarters of old town. When a childhood friend calls her in a panic, Hallie goes to help and gets a lot more than she bargained for. One of the elite has been murdered and the special investigators are looking for someone to blame.

It was history's most successful political partnership - as sensual and fiery as it was creative and visionary. Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin - wildly flamboyant and sublimely talented - was the love of her life and her co-ruler. Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, defining the Russian empire to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving Potemkin free to love his beautiful nieces, and Catherine her young male favourites.

The second book in Vanessa Nelson's exciting Fractured Conclave series.

Over the years of his reign, six different women took their place beside King Henry VIII of England as his wife and queen. But the real stories of the six Tudor queens belong to those who lived among them. Played out in glittering palaces and whispering courts, these are tales of the people who loved and served these women, and those who lied and betrayed them.

Nancy North and her boyfriend Felix are making the move across London to Harlesden. A new flat, a new area, a new start. Because while Nancy is fine now, she wasn’t fine before. But settling into the new flat and meeting the new neighbours isn’t helped by Felix’s hovering concern. She is all right. She is sticking to her breathing exercises and doctor-prescribed help. So, when their new neighbour Kira Mullen is found dead by suicide, Felix is understandably worried about Nancy’s frame of mind.

Elizabeth has always suspected her mother harbours a secret from her time as a young woman in Nazi Germany. But her mother, suffering from dementia, is lost to her now. When Elizabeth stumbles across a Nazi certificate amongst her parent's paperwork, it forces her to question the very foundations of her 1950s childhood and her first love. . . Elizabeth's quest to find the truth leads her to Germany where she's met with a wall of silence.

In little more than 50 years the regard with which the Royal Family are held has changed out of all recognition. Their private lives are now the stuff of soap opera and it seems any one who comes into contact with them sells their story to the magazines or to the newspapers. The Little Princesses was published in 1950 to a furore we cannot imagine today. Crawfie was demonised by the press, and the Queen Mother, who had been a great friend and who had, Crawfie maintained, given her permission to write the account, never spoke to her again.

For centuries, the most beautiful, able and aristocratic women in England competed for positions at court. Some who came to serve were remarkable for their learning and exemplary virtue, but others were notable for promiscuity and lack of scruple, drawn to court by a lust for money and power. Several ladies-in-waiting became royal mistresses, showing few qualms about betraying the queen consorts they ostensibly served.