Showing results by narrator "Imogen Church" in All Categories

A collection of long-lost love letters from 1928 to 1930, recently discovered in a dusty cellar in Paris. Mademoiselle S., identified here only as Simone, was a well-educated and cultured lady living in Paris at the height of the glamorous Roaring '20s.

He was everything that Alice wanted in a man, or everything that she had thought she wanted. Until the moment arrived when they were destined to be joined at last, and she knew that she didn't want him at all. The sound that escaped her full lips was barely audible, no more than a whisper. And yet the single word that she spoke silenced the entire congregation instantly. 'No.'

"Dawn broke that morning in the same way that it did every other day, but I knew nothing would ever be the same again. The shore resembled a scene after battle. Bodies were scattered haphazardly across the sand, nude, lithe, breathing in unison as if the scene which we had all witnessed had unified the crowd in some unearthly way. I turned to look at Iris. She was laughing, as if the events of the previous night had filled her with giddy amazement."

A mysterious stranger. An intriguing invitation. Admission to an unknown world... When Rachel Alexander and her naughty labradoodle puppy, Candy, run into a dog walker called Gabriel one frosty morning, she has no idea that her life is about to change forever. Despite a high-flying PR job and her engagement to the devoted but unexciting James, she can’t stop thinking about the enigmatic stranger with the piercing blue eyes and commanding manner.

In my session with Imogen, the words were still not coming. I had to move past my own frustration and relax. But it is very hard to relax when you are looking into the eyes of a mute little girl who wants to be dead. You don't want to relax; you want to pull her into your arms, hold her, and then shake her until she tells you why. You long to say, "Why do you want to die? You're twelve years old."

It took years for Giselle to complete the journey from Orleans to New Orleans. Her mother had given birth to her a week or so earlier than her parents had expected, while the family were staying at their country villa in Orleans, in the French provinces by the curve of the Loire river. Throughout her childhood she would hear people, relatives and friends, speaking of New Orleans in America and she always imagined it as a newer, cleaner version of the sleepy regional city where she was born.

I always knew I was different from other women... An eminent psychiatrist has established there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When Dominik died, I experienced none of these. I initially found myself reeling in shock, and then all I could do was miss him, miss him, and miss him over and again.

London, 1862. A city of over three million souls, of stinking fog and dark, winding streets. Through these streets walks the poet Christina Rossetti, haunted and tormented by the ghost of her uncle, John Polidori. Without him, she cannot write, but her relationship with him threatens to shake London itself to the ground. A fascinating and vivid recreation of the stews and slums of Victorian London - a city of dreadful delight. But it is the history of a hidden city, where nursery rhymes lead the adventurer through haunted tunnels and inverted spires.

A seventeen-year-old London girl flies to Los Angeles for the funeral of her mother Lily, from whom she has been estranged since her childhood. Stealing a suitcase of letters, clothes and photographs from her mum's bedroom at the top of a hotel on Venice Beach, the girl spends her summer travelling around Los Angeles, returning love letters and photographs to the men who had known her mother.

A spate of pornographic polaroids and a violent accident bookend Josephine's last year at St John the Divine, an elite all-girls English boarding school. Divines are known for flipping their hair, harassing teachers, chasing boys and chain-smoking cigarettes. Joe and her friends are fiercely loyal, sharp-tongued and witty in the way that only teenage girls can be. When Joe is forced to board with Gerry Lake, the class pariah, she feels the ground beneath her shift. An unlikely friendship with a townie named Lauren further upends her world, as does a tragedy that changes everything.

When sisters Celine and Pip get a call telling them their reclusive mother has died, the two women assemble at her riverside home in Arundel to pick up the pieces. But someone is missing - their sister, Vanessa, brutally murdered years ago and the victim of an unsolved case. As the sisters confront ghosts from the past, the discovery of another body in similar circumstances throws new light on Vanessa's death.

Her path to the throne is paved with treason.... 1330. Philippa of Hainault may be married to King Edward III, but she’s penniless and powerless. England quivers in the clutches of the Dowager Queen Isabella and her darkly ambitious lover Lord Mortimer while her husband rots in jail, a prisoner at Mortimer’s hand. It will take a courageous young man to emerge from the shadows and rise up against this formidable pair. Philippa won’t sit back and see Edward puppeteered. She is determined to see justice done.

Rebecca is 42, has a beautiful child and a wonderful husband. But she just hasn’t been feeling herself recently.... Rebecca thinks a great night out should involve a packet of Marlboros, six double vodkas and snogging a colleague. Not gormlessly drinking a zero-alcohol No-hito while Instagramming a vegan chicken wing. Rebecca wants to ride on a Harley-Davidson, crowd surf till dawn, then collapse in a heap after swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniels...not sit in a soul-destroying meeting surrounded by 'blue sky thinking' and men half her age who interrupt all the time.

Holly Lawrence always wanted to be a spy, but the experience proved more dangerous than anything she imagined. Now, Holly lives in hiding under an assumed name. She avoids relationships and trusts no one. But Holly’s new life begins to unravel when she encounters a young mother and her two-year-old child...a child who reminds her of a past she has tried hard to forget. This time, someone is spying on her, and Holly will need to decide how far she is willing to go to survive....

Inspired by the eighteenth-century legend of the Beast of Gévaudan, The Red Winter is a lusty, dark, queer fantasy – perfect for fans of The Witcher and Susanna Clarke. ‘Charming, haunting, ambitious’ – T. KINGFISHER, author of Nettle & Bone A devastating love story. A bewitching twist...

How well can you really know another person? And how far would you go to find out the truth about him or her? When Julia learns her sister has been violently killed, she knows she must get to the bottom of things. Even if it means jeopardising her relationship with her husband and risking the safety of her son. Getting involved with a stranger online. Losing control. Perhaps losing everything. Set in Paris and London, Second Life is about the double lives people lead--and the dark places in which they can end up.

Sea, sky and smugglers coves... paradise for some but despair for beautiful Rebecca. Her father plans to marry her off to a tyrant. Intrigued by a soothsayer's words, she tumbles at the feet of bad boy Jac, an apprentice smuggler, good with women and horses. Desire mounts as powerfully as Rebecca s determination to rewrite her destiny. Is the local witch the answer to her prayers? Mystic Morwenna is Jac s ex-lover. Can she be trusted? The lovers must face greater danger before innocence is traded for passion.

When Ali McCain, an eighteen-year-old from Los Angeles, is accepted at Oxford, it’s a chance to fulfill his dreams. To study English literature in England; to meet true intellectuals; and to glimpse the life he might have lived had his father—British rock star Gel McCain, legendary front man of the Pale Fires—not abandoned him and his mother when he was a toddler. But not long after he arrives at the storied campus, Ali is drawn into a dark, disorienting world where events grow more and more curious by the day.

things haven't been going well for Beth since Charlotte died - her best friend, a favourite at the school pick-ups and the only person to ever run an interesting PTA meeting. But after being hit by a car while on an ill-timed evening jog, Charlotte is no longer there to help Beth pick up the pieces of her increasingly difficult life. That is, until Beth discovers that Charlotte left her toddler alone in the house during that fatal run. The Charlotte she knew would never do something so irresponsible, and suddenly Beth is questioning whether Charlotte's death was really an accident.

When neatly packed male body parts wash up by the River Elbe, Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley and her colleagues begin a perplexing investigation. As the murdered men are identified, it becomes clear that they all had a history of abuse towards women, leading Riley to wonder if it would actually be in society's best interests to catch the killers. But when her best friend Carla is attacked, and the police show little interest in tracking down the offender, Chastity takes matters into her own hands.