Showing results by narrator "Gemma Whelan" in All Categories

The sudden death of a pupil in Fleat House at St Stephen’s—a small private boarding school in deepest Norfolk—is a shocking event that the headmaster is very keen to call a tragic accident. But the local police cannot rule out foul play and the case prompts the return of high-flying Detective Inspector Jazmine ‘Jazz’ Hunter to the force. Jazz has her own private reasons for stepping away from her police career in London, and reluctantly agrees to front the investigation as a favour to her old boss.

When Wren realizes her fiancé is in love with someone else, she thinks her heart will never recover. On the other side of the world, Anders lost his wife four years ago and is still struggling to move on. Wren hopes that spending the summer with her dad and step-family on their farm in Indiana will help her to heal. There, amid the cornfields and fireflies, she and Anders cross paths and their worlds are turned upside-down again.

1970s Yorkshire. Women are being terrorised by the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper, whose attacks are becoming more frequent and arbitrary. Twelve year-old Miv's family, afraid of the Ripper's increasing hatred of women, begins to talk about moving south. Miv, determined for this not to happen, decides to take the matter into her own hands and investigate the attacks alongside her best friend Sharon.

Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she's blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks - and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her 11th birthday. But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears.

In all her 25 years, Venetia Lanyon has never been further than Harrogate. Nor has she enjoyed the attentions of any man aside from her two wearisomely persistent suitors. Then, in one extraordinary encounter, she meets a neighbour she knew only by reputation - the infamous Jasper Damerel. Before she realises it, Venetia is encouraging a man whose way of life has scandalised the North Riding for years.

Last year, Tom and Caroline Johnson chose to end their lives, one seemingly unable to live without the other. Their daughter, Anna, is struggling to come to terms with her parents' deaths, unwilling to accept the verdict of suicide. Now with a baby herself, Anna feels her mother's absence keenly and is determined to find out what really happened to her parents. But as she digs up the past, someone is trying to stop her. Sometimes it's safer to let things lie....

When six-year-old Alice Hilton disappears on New Year's Eve 1979 from Yew Tree Manor, suspicion immediately falls on local boy Bobby James. Bobby claims he knows nothing about it, but his family has a grievance against Alice's landowner father. Tragically the child is never found. Decades later, Willow James, an architect working on a development at Yew Tree Manor, discovers that the land surrounding the house is holding a secret.

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has lain the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world. But when their father, the only man they've ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day two men and a boy wash ashore.

The String Diaries opens with Hannah frantically driving through the night - her daughter asleep in the back, her husband bleeding out in the seat beside her. In the trunk of the car rests a cache of diaries dating back 200 years, tied and retied with strings through generations. The diaries carry the rules for survival that have been handed down from mother to daughter since the 19th century. But how can Hannah escape an enemy with the ability to look and sound like the people she loves?

A collection of hilarious original audio stories for raising lots of laughs and giggles. These new stories are especially written for families to listen to, publishing to coincide with April Fool's Day! With over an hour of audio, this edition is filled with funny and engaging sound effects, guaranteed to raise laughs from little listeners everywhere.

An imposing, isolated hotel, high up in the Swiss Alps, is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But she's taken time off from her job as a detective, so when she receives an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother's recent engagement she has no choice but to accept. Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge. Though it's beautiful, something about the hotel, recently converted from an abandoned sanatorium, makes her nervous—as does her brother, Isaac.

For too long the people of Tír na nÓg have suffered under the dominion of the drunes: strange druids who have poisoned the land with their magic. Sláine has had enough of their tyranny and, through the Earth Goddess, he learns some shocking truths about the priesthood and his own future. Now Sláine must unite the four kings of Tír na nÓg and use their mystical weapons as he and the Sessair tribe prepare for all-out war!

Eighteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel finds herself a new job in a dentist's surgery after answering a classified advert in the Leicester Mercury for a 'mature lady with a strong interest in dental issues'. Working for an eccentric dental surgeon who's obsessed with becoming a Freemason, Lizzie's life is uneventful until Andy Nicolello turns up one day to deliver a crown. Lizzie seizes her chance to find love and soon begins calling him her boyfriend even though they have never so much as kissed or even sat next to each other on the sofa.

Morrigan Crow is cursed. Born on an unlucky day, she is blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks - and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on Eventide. But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor.

Beatrix Rose is looking for her daughter, Isabella. The Triad overlord Michael Yeung knows where she is but he needs her to do a small job first. Beatrix is sent to the jungles of Venezuela and an illegal goldmine run by the loathsome Aurelio Rincon. The task seems easy enough – find a local bandit who has been wreaking havoc at the mine and kill him. But there is a sinister secret hidden deep within the jungle and Beatrix quickly finds herself at war with a private army as she is caught between corrupt government officials and local rebels who believe she has been sent to save them.

A woman attends a funeral, standing in the shadows and watching in agony as her sons grieve. But she is unable to comfort them - or reveal her secret. A decade earlier, Heather gets her children ready for bed and awaits the return of her husband Liam, little realising that this is the last night they will spend together as a family. Because tomorrow she will be accused of Liam's murder. Ten years ago Heather lost everything. Now she will stop at nothing to clear her name - and to get her children back.

See the girl. Leah Wilde is 24, a runaway on a black motorbike, hunting for answers while changing her identity with each new Central European town. See the man, having come of age in extraordinary suffering and tragedy in 19th-century Budapest; witness to horror, to love, to death, and the wrath of a true monster. Izsák still lives in the present day, impossibly middle-aged. He's driven not only to hunt this immortal evil but to find his daughter....

Morrigan Crow and her friends have survived their first year as proud scholars of the elite Wundrous Society, helped bring down the nefarious Ghastly Market and proven themselves loyal to Unit 919. Now Morrigan faces a new, exciting challenge: to master the mysterious Wretched Arts of the Accomplished Wundersmith and control the power that threatens to consume her. Meanwhile, a strange and frightening illness has taken hold of Nevermoor, turning infected Wunimals into mindless, vicious Unnimals on the hunt. As victims of the Hollowpox multiply, panic spreads.

The gripping new thriller from the bestselling author of The Couple at No 9.

Kier Templer lives her life on the road. Dubbed 'the monster's daughter' after her mother's infamous crime, she's left her hometown and twin behind. One thing still ties her to her brother - the maps she creates and sends him of the places she's been. But then she vanishes from the Portuguese national park, with no map and no trace. Detective Elin Warner arrives in the park ready to go off-grid and forget the stalker who has been shadowing her steps. When she discovers Kier's final, disturbing map, Elin can tell Kier didn't vanish by choice, but in the wilderness she has to tread carefully.