Showing results by narrator "Julia Franklin" in All Categories

Robyn Moss just wants a simple wedding. A quiet ceremony; a picnic on the beach; dancing barefoot on the sand until the sun goes down. But first, Robyn has one very important thing to do - before embracing her future, she needs to uncover her past. As she sets out to find her birth mother, a tangled thread of love, loss and betrayal that ties together three generations of women begins to emerge. As her wedding day approaches, Robyn discovers that where there is heartbreak, there is hope - and that in the end, love will always win.

Fearsome, eccentric and unpredictable, Patience Collier was an actress whose perfectionism shone through in her every performance, and who worked alongside many of the most celebrated actors and directors of her time. Drawing on material from Collier's extensive archive of diaries and letters as well as interviews with many of those who worked with her, The Performer's Tale paints an involving portrait of a gifted and eccentric woman weaving her way through the 20th century, mixing with artists, leftists and numerous figures from world of entertainment.

Actress Enora Andressen is catching up with her ex-neighbour, Evelyn Warlock, who's recently retired to the comely East Devon seaside town of Budleigh Salterton. The peace, the friendship of strangers and the town's prestigious literary festival...Evelyn loves them all. Until the September evening when her French neighbour, Christianne Beaucarne, disappears. Enora has met this woman. The two of them have bonded. But what Enora discovers over the anguished months to come will put sleepy Budleigh Salterton on the front page of every newspaper in the land.

Ada is a widowed writer, navigating loneliness in Oxford after the death of her husband. She has no children. No grandchildren. She fears she is becoming peripheral, another invisible woman. Eliza is a student at the university. She finds it difficult to form meaningful relationships after the estrangement of her mother and breakup with her girlfriend. Can they find what they are looking for in each other and cast off their isolation for good? 

1922. Lady Emily Fitzallan has returned to the country house where she spent her childhood for a family wedding. Leysmorton Manor brings back many memories, especially of her elder sister Clare, who vanished one day after going for a walk, never to return. But the disturbing discovery of a soldier's skeleton at the base of an ancient Yew tree brings the past shockingly into the present. Could the man's untimely death have its roots in Clare's disappearance, which occurred almost half a century ago…?

Rose and Myrtle Sylvester look up to their older sister, Peggy. She is the sensible, reliable one in the household of women headed by their grandmother, Grace Booth, and their mother, Mary Sylvester. When war is declared in 1939 they must face the hardships together and huge changes in their lives are inevitable. For Rose, there is the chance to fulfil her dream of becoming a clippie on Sheffield's trams like Peggy. But for Myrtle, the studious, clever one in the family, war may shatter her ambitions.

When she receives a wedding invitation from one of her former patients, forensic psychiatrist Dr Claire Roget is more than a little alarmed. Highly intelligent and manipulative, Jerome Barclay suffers from a severe personality disorder. Although she has never been able to prove it, Claire believes him to be highly dangerous, responsible for at least three suspicious deaths - and she fears for the safety of his new bride.

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.

These are the facts I collect. My son, Gabriel, met a woman called Mariela in a bar. She went home with him, where they had sex. They next morning she was found in an allotment. Mariela is dead. Gabriel has been asked to report to Camden Police station in six hours for questioning.

Professor Olivia Sweetman has worked hard to achieve the life she loves, with a high-flying career as a TV presenter and historian, three children and a talented husband. But as she stands before a crowd at the launch of her new best seller, she can barely pretend to smile. Her life has spiralled into deceit, and if the truth comes out, she will lose everything. Only one person knows what Olivia has done.

Kesterly-on-Sea is full of secrets. Some are darker than others; many are shameful. One is even deadly. Andee is an ex-detective whose marriage is breaking up. So when a young female student disappears without a trace, she throws herself into the search. Meanwhile the town's beloved Rowzee Cayne has just discovered that she is terminally ill and doesn't want to burden her family and friends with the news. Andee and Rowzee don't know it yet, but their journeys are going to help them uncover a secret.

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?

A new Regency romance, where scandal and seduction are rife! Richard, Lord Ledbury, has had his fair share of adventure on warring battlefields, but even this seasoned soldier isn’t prepared for the outrageous escapades going on in London’s ballrooms! Lady Jayne Chilcott is under orders to find a husband, and Lord Ledbury has caught her eye. But nothing is simple when courting under the glittering spotlight of the ton…

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.

Librarian Prunella Pearce has left heartbreak behind to start a new life in the village of Winterbottom, where there's little social life to be had aside from the meetings of The Winterbottom Women's Institute at the parish hall. But a bit of excitement ensues when the group is about to elect a new president—and the nominees for the position begin dropping like flies. One is found face down in a lemon drizzle cake stabbed with a crochet hook. Another dies spectacularly in the revolving doors of a Harrogate hotel.

Carrie Tollman awakes in the middle of the night with an intruder gazing down at her. He tells her he's killed before and he'll kill again. One word about what's happened, and he'll be back. Carrie is one of two carers looking after Enora Andressen's favorite scriptwriter. But Pavel is now paralysed, as well as blind, and it falls to Enora to track down this terrifying presence at Carrie's bedside.

Viola hasn't had much luck with men. Her first husband, Marco, companion of her youth and father of her only child, left her when he realised he was gay. Her second, Rhys, ended his high-octane, fame-filled life by driving his Porsche into a wall. No wonder her family always believes she needs looking after, and her friends think she really shouldn't be allowed out on her own...Which is why, at the age of thirty-five, she finds herself shamefully back at home, living with Mum.

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.