Mostrando resultados por narrador "Julia Franklin" en Todas las categorías

Infamous playboy Tristan Romero meets ordinary Lily at a lavish ball and arrogantly predicts that she will wake up the following morning between his designer silk sheets! Powerless to resist this wicked billionaire, Lily knows Tristan is only offering one night. But then she discovers she's pregnant, and Tristan's aristocratic duty demands he take Lily as his bride. Lily's shame over accepting a loveless proposal is heightened when she realises that, as the Spaniard's wife, she'll be expected to fulfil his every need.

When Bea Hanlon follows her preacher husband, Max, to a remote island in the Pacific, she soon sees that their mission will bring anything but salvation.... Advent Island is a place beyond the reaches of Bea's most fitful imaginings. It's not just the rats and the hordes of mosquitoes and the weevils in the powdered milk. Past the confines of their stuffy little house, amidst the damp and the dust and the sweltering heat, rumours are spreading of devil chasers who roam the island on the hunt for evil spirits. And then there are the noises from the church at night.

After losing all her family in the Great War, Nell is grateful to marry Stan Hibbert. However, five years on, she is just another backstreet housewife, making every penny do the work of tuppence and performing miracles with scrag-end. When she discovers that Stan is leading a double life, she runs away to make a fresh start. Two years later, Nell has carved out a fulfilling new life for herself and her young children in Manchester, where her neighbours believe she is a respectable widow. But the past is hard to run from, and Nell must fight to protect the life she has made for herself and her children.

Waspish, wise, and wickedly witty, this is a collection to treasure forever. Reviewers have been describing Fay Weldon's inimitable voice for years. Now, here is Fay Weldon in her own words, selecting and introducing her favourite short stories from across her career as one of Britain's foremost contemporary novelists.

When Laura Harcourt accepts a temporary position in the north of England she does not dream that it will change her life forever. Wainthorpe is a small town set amongst a dense concentration of woollen mills, where the thriving Cross Ings mill is one of the most prosperous. Its respected owner is Ainsley Beaumont, whose family wealth derives from centuries in the woollen trade. However, when Laura arrives she finds that behind the façade is a family still torn apart by the memory of a disastrous fire.

When Felix Kendall vanishes, his wife Kate is left in turmoil. As she and their children adjust to a hand-to-mouth existence, she looks back on their marriage and Felix's orphaned upbringing in search of clues, confronting the possibility that she has badly misread him. And as Kate gradually discovers strengths she never knew she had, Felix is coming to terms with just what he has lost.

Summer 1918. After their experiences on the front line of battle, young couple Amy and Edmond Derwent have now settled back in England. The Great War rages on, and Edmond, still struggling with the effects of the injury he sustained at Ypres, feels the guilt of remaining at home. But life at Larchbury is not without its own problems - food becomes scarce, and the Spanish Influenza causes deaths throughout England. Can Amy and Edmond keep their love strong?

DI Joanna Piercy is irritated at what she perceives to be an attempt to wrap her up in cotton wool during her pregnancy when she is asked to take on the case of Zachary Foster, a missing 96-year-old man suffering from dementia. Zachary has vanished from his residential care home on the edge of Leek during the night with his beloved old teddy bear. He can't have gone far, surely, but how did a frail, elderly man manage to abscond from a secure house at night? As Joanna investigates, it soon becomes clear that this apparently minor case is far more sinister than it first appears.

Young widow Julia Nance has found happiness again running her beloved Guesthouse, Fairlight, but with the arrival of war, even her last bookings are being cancelled. Step-daughter Elowen immediately offers to find work with arch rival Alma Jennings, but Julia prefers to keep her close, and searches desperately for alternatives. Offering up her beloved home to be requisitioned, looking for any opportunity for work herself, she finds herself thwarted at every turn, and unwilling to accept the help of unscrupulous brother-in-law Pasco.

Manchester, 1920. Carrie Jenkins reels from the revelation that her beloved father was shot for desertion during the Great War, not tragically killed in heroic action, as she had previously been led to believe. Worse, Carrie's sweetheart jilts her on the eve of their wedding, despite her pregnancy. Facing some tough choices and needing to provide a home for her baby and invalid mother, Carrie is forced to accept the unsettling advances of Ralph Armstrong. It is a decision she will regret.

I am the Dowager Countess of Kinsail, and I have enough secrets to scandalize you for life. I will never reveal the truth of my soul-destroying marriage--some things are too dark to be told. But at least no one can guess that I, a famously icy-hearted widow, am also the authoress of the shamelessly voluptuous romances currently shocking the ton! Only now I have a new secret identity, one that I will risk my life to keep - accomplice to Elliot Marchmont, gentleman, ex-soldier and notorious London thief.

Fancy Jones, best-selling crime writer, discovers that someone is trying to kill her. When she is invited to lecture at a writers’ conference in the Derbyshire Dales, she leaps at the chance to leave London and hopefully escape the threat of her assassin. Events turn sour when a body is found floating in a lake at the conference venue, and bizarre things start happening to Fancy. Suspicion falls on the other delegates but has her stalker followed her?

Blanche Longhurst is a pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary, delivering Spitfires from factories to air bases around the country during World War Two. She believes herself to be safe from the direct conflict but during one routine trip, bad weather causes her to lose her bearings and projects her into activities that go against her sense of morality. She finds herself in another war, in another country where the anti-Nazi offensive is filled with subterfuge and personal betrayal.

Thirty-nine-year-old Enora Andresson is a successful actress and a woman in her prime. But tests have revealed an aggressive brain tumour that could kill her. Already struggling with the wreckage of her marriage and a strained relationship with her teenage son, Malo, she hasn't anticipated the appearance of investigative journalist Mitch Culligan. Mitch is writing a book about entrepreneur and onetime drug baron Hayden Prentice - a multi-millionaire who once crossed paths with Enora, and whom Mitch believes has helped fund the push to take the UK out of Europe.

Born into poverty and hardship, Ruby Skinner's decision to approach the unscrupulous East End villain, Donald McCoy, for help, ends in disaster. In a desperate bid to move her ailing mother to the fresh air of the countryside, she realises that she has made a huge mistake, which will shape the rest of her life. Robert Thornton, a wealthy business man, also had the misfortune of suffering from the under hand dealings with McCoy, and when curiosity forces him to pursue Ruby Skinner, the barriers which divide the social classes of the 19th century are put to test by the power of love.

Eighteen-year-old Moll Chambers works her fingers to the bone doing all she can to support her family. With an ailing father and a wayward mother, Moll is the only one who can look after her siblings, Bo and Sissy. But Manchester is an increasingly dangerous place to live, overrun with a ferocious rivalry between gangs of so-called 'scuttlers': young men and women bent on a life of violence and crime. And they have her brother in their sights. Soon even Moll can't protect Bo from the lure of the criminal underworld.

1942: Saba Tarcan is a talented young singer with big dreams. So when an opportunity arises to entertain the troops in the Middle East, she jumps at the chance, cutting short a burgeoning love affair with a young RAF pilot, Dom. It soon becomes clear that entertaining won’t be Saba’s only mission. It's a move that will jeopardize not only her own safety, but also the love of her life.

Growing up in a small Wiltshire village, Abbie Morris knows what lies ahead of her - a life of drudgery as a menial servant, like that of her sisters. But everything changes when Abbie is twelve and their emotional, spirited mother casts them into a crisis for which no one is prepared. Six years later the Morris family have rebuilt their lives, and when Abbie and Beatie, Abbie's adored elder sister, set off for the county fair, the world seems a good place. But their new-found happiness is not to last.

When the body of a herdsman is discovered in a farm building, Detective Sergeant Den Cooper is more than happy to cast local farmer Gordon Hillcock in the role of chief suspect. After all, it is a well-known fact that there was no love lost between Gordon and the victim. And besides, Den has a little grudge of his own - Gordon is currently dating his ex-fiancée, Lilah. However, Den did not plan on Lilah’s determination to protect her new lover....

Forensic psychiatrist Dr Claire Roget finds it impossible to refuse when she receives a desperate phone call from an old acquaintance, obstetrician Charles Tissot. One of his patients, Heather Krimble, alleges that Tissot seduced her at a party and that he is the father of her unborn child. His career on the line, Charles begs Claire to expose Heather's fragile mental state and discredit her wild claims....