Showing results by publisher "Orion Publishing Group Limited" in All Categories

Baby Frankie is born into an unusual family. Her mother is desperate to find someone to take care of her child and she doesn't have much time. Noel doesn't seem to be the most promising of fathers but despite everything, he could well be Frankie's best hope. As for Lisa, she is prepared to give up everything for the man she loves; surely he's going to love her back? And Moira is having none of it. She knows what's right, and has the power to change the course of Frankie's life....

It starts with a trip to a local amusement park. David Harwood is hoping a carefree day at Five Mountains will help dispel his wife Jan's recent depression, black moods that have led to frightening thoughts of suicide. Instead, a day of fun with their four-year-old son Ethan turns into a nightmare. When Jan disappears from the park, David's worst fears seem to have come true. But when he goes to the police to report her missing, terrified that she's planning to take her own life, the facts start to indicate something very different.

A silver wedding means a family gathering, difficult occasions at the best of times. But for the Doyles (Deidre, Desmond, and their children Anna, Helen, and Brendan) it will be more difficult than most. For each of them is keeping up a front; each of them is nursing a secret wound, or smarting over a hidden betrayal. As the day draws nearer, so the tension mounts, until finally the guests gather at the silver wedding party itself.

A mysterious boy is the focus of a novel that takes us from the September Massacres of 1792 to the death of Robespierre four years later. After rescuing Sido, the young daughter of an aristocrat, he flees to England, making secret journeys back to France to smuggle out refugees.

Overlooking Angel Sands, an idyllic bay tucked into the Pembrokeshire coastline, sits Paradise House. It is home to the Baxter girls, or the "Sisters of Whimsy" as they're known locally. Despite their own chaotic love lives, they're determined to find a suitable partner for their divorced father. But this will be no easy task, for he's a man so shy of women he would rather climb up onto the roof in a howling gale to fix a broken slate than go on a date.

When Billy Pickles' dad leaves home to live in New York, he gives Billy a moneybox. Billy's not sure where to put the money, and not sure why his dad has left.

So...'tis the season to be jolly, is it? Well, not in the household of the Grumpy Old Man it isn't. In the case of the GOM, 'tis the season to have to put up with even deeper layers of vexation than usual, and the only thing worth celebrating is that it looks as though you might, after all, be surviving to the end of what has been another crap year.

Ruby Genie is an orphan. Everyone expects her to have the same fantastic magical powers as her famous parents did, but Ruby can't do any magic at all, or so she thinks, and feels a complete failure. Then she begins to get smaller and smaller and smaller.

Autumn 1928. The Kaiser-i-Hind is en route to Bombay. In Cabin D38, Viva Holloway, an inexperienced chaperone, is beginning to feel as though she's made a mistake. Her advert in The Lady has resulted in three unsettling young charges to be escorted to India.

Among the many evening classes starting all over Dublin is an "Introduction to Italian". On the surface, it could be just one of hundreds in which some students will succeed and some will fall along the way. But the Italian class at Mountainview School has its own special quality, and the hopes and dreams of so many people are tied up in the twice weekly lessons.

Six months after nearly losing everything to the men who kidnapped his girlfriend's ten-year-old son, Elvis Cole is slowly coming back to life - when he receives an ominous phone call from the LAPD. An unidentified body has been found in a seedy Los Angeles motel room and Elvis is called to the scene. Finally, Elvis is told that before the man died, he said he was Elvis's father.

Clara Casey has more than enough on her plate. Her daughters Adi and Linda were no problem during the usually turbulent teens. Now in their twenties, Adi is always fighting for or against something: the environment or the whale or battery farming; while Linda lurches from one unsatisfactory relationship to the next. As if this wasn't enough, Clara, a senior cardiac specialist, has a new job to cope with - and now her ex-husband wants something from her.

Secrets of the Symbol builds upon the expertise and wisdom of Nobel prize-winning scientists, historians, technologists, and conspiracy theorists to help readers fully understand the mysteries behind The Lost Symbol.

Bingo Sac Grabbins is asked by the coughing wizard Gandef and some (oddly Welsh) dwarves to help them relieve the great dragon Smug of his gold.SF author and Tolkien scholar Adam Roberts has written a parody that is both hilarious and intelligent. With knowing digs at the fantasy genre in general and the mystique that has built around middle earth in particular this will make Tolkien's 21st century readers laugh in a way that Bored of the Rings made his fans of 1969 laugh.

Cass Wheeler - a British singer-songwriter, hugely successful since the early '70s, whose sudden disappearance from the music has been the subject of intense speculation among her fans - is in the studio that adjoins her home, taking a journey back into her past. Her task is to choose 16 songs from among the hundreds she has written since her early teens, for a uniquely personal greatest hits record, describing the arc of her life through song.

In the summer of 2002, Shannon Leone Fowler, a 28-year-old marine biologist, was backpacking with her Australian fiancé, Sean, in Thailand. They were planning to return to Australia after their excursion to Koh Pha Ngan, but their plans were tragically derailed when a box jellyfish - the most venomous animal in the world - wrapped around Sean's leg, stinging and killing him in minutes as Shannon helplessly watched.

Soho in the 1980s is electric. For Eliza, the heady pull of its nightclubs and free-spirited people leads her into the life she has craved - all glamour, late nights and excitement. But it comes at a heavy cost. Cassie is fascinated by her family's history and the abandoned Beaufont Hall. Why won't her mother talk about it? Offered the chance to restore Beaufont to its former glory, Cassie jumps at the opportunity to learn more about her past. Separated by a generation but linked by a forgotten diary, these two women have more in common than they know....

When Alice Forster receives an email from her dead sister she assumes it must be a sick practical joke. Then an invitation arrives to the virtual world of Soul Beach, an idyllic online paradise of sun, sea and sand where Alice can finally talk to her sister again - and discover a new world of friendships, secrets and maybe even love.

A brooding contemporary gothic love story, beautifully told with rich and sensual imagery. When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom, their whirlwind relationship leads them to purchase Les Genevriers, an abandoned house in a rural hamlet in the south of France. As the beautiful Provence summer turns to autumn, Eve finds it impossible to ignore the mysteries that haunt both her lover and the run-down old house, in particular the mysterious disappearance of his beautiful first wife, Rachel.

Sir Gadabout is a walking disaster. Voted the 'knight most likely to chop his own foot off in a fight', he shivers in his rusty armour when he has to face the brave Sir Lancelot in a joust.