Showing results by narrator "Carole Boyd"

A stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family’s sizeable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick’s mannerisms, appearance and every significant detail of Patrick’s early life, up to his 13th year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself.

Entertaining and different, this is an enjoyable study of a flawed yet characterful Prince of Wales seen through the eyes of the women in his life. Edward Vll, who gave his name to the Edwardian Age and died in 1911, was King of England for the final 10 years of his life. He was 59 when at last he came to the throne. Known as Bertie, the eldest son of Victoria and Albert, he was bullied by both his parents.

Marion Sharpe and her mother seem an unlikely duo to be found on the wrong side of the law. Quiet and ordinary, they have led a peaceful and unremarkable life at their country home, The Franchise. Unremarkable that is, until the police turn up with a demure young woman on their doorstep.Not only does Betty Kane accuse them of kidnap and abuse, she can back up her claim with a detailed description of the attic room in which she was kept, right down to the crack in its round window.

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination.

She set men's hearts on fire and scandalized a country. An ambitious, stunning, and seductive young woman, Mary Anne finds the single most rewarding way to rise above her station: She will become the mistress to a royal duke. In doing so, she provokes a scandal that rocks Regency England.

Catherine de Medici's father-in-law, King Francis of France, was the perfect Renaissance knight, the movement's exemplar and its Gallic interpreter. An aesthete, diplomat par excellence, and contemporary of Machiavelli, Francis was the founder of modern France, whose sheer force of will and personality molded his kingdom into the first European superpower. Arguably the man who introduced the Renaissance to France, Francis was also the prototype Frenchman - a national identity was modeled on his character.

Gwen and Rhys are on the run. Rhys was hoping this meant a windswept cottage on a cliff top, but he’s had to settle for a miserable caravan in the isolated village of Rawbone. With the locals taking an unhealthy interest in their daughter, Gwen and Rhys start to realise that something is very wrong. As they uncover the village’s terrible past, Gwen discovers that Torchwood will never leave her behind, and now she and Rhys stand alone in defence of the Earth. And the children of Rawbone can only bring her closer to the secret forces that want her out of the way.

Stephen Hawking is one of the most remarkable figures of our time, a Cambridge genius who has earned international celebrity as a brilliant theoretical physicist and become an inspiration and revelation to those who have witnessed his courageous triumph over disability. This is Hawking's life story by Kitty Ferguson, who has had special help from Hawking himself and his close associates and who has a gift for translating the language of theoretical physics for non-scientists.

In the summer of 1972, Famagusta, in Cyprus, is the most desirable resort in the Mediterranean, a city bathed in the glow of good fortune. An ambitious couple open the island's most spectacular hotel, where Greek and Turkish Cypriots work in harmony. Two neighbouring families, the Georgious and the Özkans, are among many who moved to Famagusta to escape the years of unrest and ethnic violence elsewhere on the island. But beneath the city's façade of glamour and success, tension is building.

This is a story from the Classic Women's Short Stories collection.

Unimpressed by the world of debutante balls, Monica Dickens shocked her family by getting a job. With no experience whatsoever, she gained employment as a cook-general. Monica's cooking and cleaning skills left much to be desired, and her first few positions were short lived, but soon she started to hold her own. Monica discovered the pleasure of daily banter with the milkman and grocer's boy, and the joy of doing an honest day's work, all the while keeping a wry eye on the childish pique of her employers.

Jane Eyre, an orphan, has to suffer appalling conditions when she is sent away to a correctional school. She lands on her feet, or so it seems, when she becomes adult and obtains a job working for Mr Rochester, a brooding and formidable man who initially scares her, but whom she begins to warm to. At the same time, strange things are happening in the house. What is Adele, his ward, afraid of? And what are the strange banging noises coming from the attic at night time?

Although she's surrounded by a loving family, Marie feels lost: living with a lie can be very lonely. Marie has been carrying a secret for years, one that could ruin the lives of those she loves most, and the guilt she feels weighs heavily. Her granddaughter, Cathy, is a most cheerful young woman, and in the first flush of love. The secret Marie is about to tell her will not only change her future but rewrite her past. Cathy now has a dangerous choice to make that could change her life forever.

By the end of World War I, Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel had revolutionised women's dress. But dress was the most visible aspect of more profound changes she helped to bring about. During the course of her extraordinary journey, from abject poverty to a new kind of glamour, she would help forge the idea of the modern woman. Unearthing an astonishing life, this remarkable biography shows how the most influential designer of her century became synonymous with a rebellious and progressive style.

When Lily Elliott's father dies she loses everything - not just a beloved protector and his wonderful ship the Lily-Jane, but also the way of life she has always known. As her mother sinks into a dream-world and the money which had always seemed sufficient turns out to have been mostly debts, Lily watches, bewildered, as destitution comes ever closer for the Elliott women and their loyal housekeeper. Then two rescuers appear.

One of the great novels of nineteenth-century England, Middlemarch is concerned with the blighted marriage of a young idealistic woman, but also presents a vivid portrait of England during the 1830s.

Mary Anne knew the grinding heel of poverty, and determined it would never grind her again. With beauty, brains, ambition, and the glittering decadence of Regency London to sustain her, she chose the only route that could take a cockney girl to the top, as mistress to the Royal Duke of York. But soon she provoked a scandal that rocked the country, placed the Duke on trial before Parliament, and risked losing Mary Anne everything.

In this rich and memorable evocation of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire are the lives, loves and sorrows of the central characters. There is Sarah Burton, fiery young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, a councillor tormented by his own disastrous marriage; Jo Astell, a socialist fighting poverty and his own illness; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman Alderman of the district (like Winifred's own mother).

As the effects of the war raging in Europe begin to be felt at home in London, Monica Dickens decides to do her bit and to pursue a new career, and so enrols as a student nurse at a hospital in rural Hertfordshire. By nature clever and spirited, she struggles to submit to the iron rule of the Matron and Sisters, and is alternately infuriated and charmed by her patients. That’s not to mention the mountains of menial work that are a trainee’s lot.

When Elizabeth Price engages private detective Roland ‘Orlando’ Gibbons to find out the truth about her husband’s suspected affair, she unwittingly sets off a chain of correspondence that reunites four formerly close-knit couples. They all live just a few suburban streets away from each other; they are all still married; so how – and why – did they become so estranged? In a series of letters, each protagonist is far more self-revealing than they would ever be in person.