Showing results by narrator "Penelope Freeman" in All Categories

Soundings and Choc Lit present the audiobook edition of A Christmas Secret. When Hugo McCreadie steps into Isla Brodie’s pet portrait studio to get a 'Festive Furball Photo Shoot' for his sister’s cat Schubert, he does question his sanity. But he knows the photographs will be the perfect Christmas present for his eccentric sister, Nessa - and he finds himself quite taken with ditzy, animal-loving Isla Brodie, too. Will a Christmas secret from long ago prevent Hugo and Isla’s new friendship from going any further? Or will a certain big, black cat take matters into his own paws?

Hugo Kendal and his wife, Margaret, finally receive a royal pardon and are permitted at last to return to their beloved homeland. Most of the family warmly welcome the couple and the news that they are soon to become three. However, despite the smiles, Hannah Kendal cannot help but dwell on the threat that Hugo might pose to her husband Simon's position as Master of Heron.

February 1941. The world is at war, and Joyce Cooper is doing her bit for the war effort. But as the Blitz takes hold of London, Joyce is called upon to plot the devastation that follows in its wake. Night after night, she must stand before her map and mark the trail of loss and suffering inflicted upon the homes, families and businesses she knows so well. February 1974. Decades later, from her basement flat, Joyce watches the world go by above her head.

Running out on your wedding day never goes down well. When the pressure of her forthcoming marriage becomes too much, Jude bolts from the church, leaving a good man at the altar, her mother in a fury, and the guests with enough gossip to last a year. Guilty and ashamed, Jude flees to Pengarrock, a crumbling cliff-top mansion in Cornwall, where she takes a job cataloguing the Trevillion family's extensive library.

There were four of the Thorpe family in the Anderson shelter the night of the raid on Coventry. Mum and Dad, Florrie and little May. Jack was missing... he was one of those who did not return from Dunkirk. When Daisy and Marcus, sixth formers in Coventry, are given a project on the bombing of the city in 1940, they go to talk to May, now living in sheltered accommodation but full of memories of the war. The two youngsters both have their problems and as their lives unfold they strike up an unlikely friendship....

Polly always knew that Seth was a good catch - the darling of the interior design world, so cutting-edge they have to invent awards for him. With a handsome husband, a fabulous home and an exciting job in a Bond Street art gallery, Polly has everything she could possibly want - except a baby.

Spring, 1942. Lizzie is making plans for her wedding with fiancé Bill. But preparations during wartime aren't easy, and attacks on the Yorkshire port of Kelthorpe are only getting worse. Connie wants to be there for her sister, but she has troubles of her own—a secret that is driving a wedge between herself and those who love her. Meanwhile, Pamela faces new complications in her romance with Fred, and the arrival of two new RAF servicemen stirs up trouble.

She longed to be reunited with her family. The compelling new novel from the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Workhouse Girl. Eleven-year-old Stella Barry is forced into service when her family find themselves living hand-to-mouth.Leaving her mother and younger brother and sister behind, Stella goes to a big country house outside London. When she returns home one Sunday, she discovers they have disappeared.

On a bitter winter's day, an unnamed girl lies dangerously ill in hospital. When two coarse, rough-speaking individuals come to claim her, she can remember nothing of the events that brought her to her present state, not even her name. According to the men, she is their young sister, Lucy. As her health improves and her memory gradually returns, she realises she's been kidnapped. But she has no means of escaping the hideous confines of the filthy basement room in which they have imprisoned her in.

It is Christmas 1937 when sisters Rowan and Thea travel from London to Scotland to visit their dying father. Having lost their mother in a tragic sailing accident when they were young, the two women are accustomed to grief. But they have no idea that their father's death will expose a terrible deception.... For back in London is his wife, Sophie, and their two sons. Neither family knows of the other's existence, and when news reaches Sophie of Hugh's death, her whole world is turned upside down.

Primavera Blackstone has found contentment in a small Spanish village by the sea. A fiercely protective single mother, she doesn’t appreciate an offer of marriage. Nor does she welcome the arrival of a blast from her past, retired cop Ricky Ross, now a private detective and working for Jack Weighley, millionaire owner of a budget airline. Primavera teams up with Ricky to investigate a series of mystery assaults on Jack’s aircraft. Are they mere acts of vandalism, or the sinister work of Catalan extremists?

When Amy Marsham walks into his smart Harley Street practice, therapist Patrick McIIhenny knows that this will be no ordinary session. For Amy needs answers. In the calm of Patrick's office, they begin to untangle the events of one fateful week 10 years earlier: a week of infatuation and friendships pushed to breaking point: a week in which Amy's life changed forever.

London, 1899. As she prepares for a glittering ball, 20-year-old Gertrude Melrose considers her good fortune. Attractive, intelligent, with a loving family, her only concern is her brother, Edward, who seems intent on squandering his inheritance. A few days later the Melrose family's happiness is shattered when Edward's mounting debts threaten to destroy their prosperity, with the loss of both house and business.

Manchester industrialist William Rose was a poor lad who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, but in order to achieve his greatest ambitions he must become the epitome of Victorian respectability: a family man. But the only woman who's caught his eye is Octavia Marshall, one of the notorious ladies of Carson Street. Though once born to great wealth and privilege, she's hardly respectable, but she's determined to forge a new life as an entirely proper businesswoman.

1917. Kitty Maitland has found a safe and welcoming home at Dark River Farm, Devon, and is finally beginning on a path to recovery after her terrible ordeal in Flanders...until the arrival of two very different visitors. One, a charming rogue, proves both a temptation and a mystery - but she soon discovers he's not a stranger to everyone. The other newcomer, a young woman with a past linked to the farm, sows seeds of mistrust. Between the two of them, and the choices Kitty has to make, Dark River becomes a place of fear, suspicion and danger. Can it ever return to the haven it once was?

Wartime secrets threaten one woman's life in the latest thrilling drama from the author of The Gunner Girl and The English Agent. World-renowned war artist Dame Laura Knight is commissioned to paint propaganda portraits of factory girls and is sent to the ordnance factories in her hometown of Nottingham. At first she relishes the opportunity for a nostalgia trip, but when she starts work on a portrait of two particular women, Violet Smith and her coworker Zelah Fitzlord, memories begin to resurface that she has spent half a lifetime trying to forget.

Canterbury, 1853. Agnes Berry-Clay might have been born into rags, but she is growing up with riches. Given away as a baby by her real mother, she was rescued and raised by her darling Papa and distant Mama. Agnes wants for nothing, except perhaps a little freedom. But as times goes on, her life at Windmarsh Court changes. New arrivals and old resentments push Agnes to the peripheries, and finally the consequences of one fateful day shatter her dreams for the future. Heartbroken and surrounded by the threat of scandal, Agnes is faced with a terrible choice: stay and surrender or flee and fight to keep her freedom.

A debut novel by a best-selling nonfiction author, this is a witty, wholly entrancing story of the pleasures, pains and obsessions of contemporary life. Lisa Blaize - teacher and would-be fashion writer, mother and second wife - feels out of place when her high-flying husband becomes the headmaster of a school in a country town. Isolated and far from her metropolitan upbringing, she turns to the one place where she learns she can be uninhibited. But ‘Twitter may be my undoing’, Lisa discovers as her onetime private life becomes all too public. Soon she is dealing with an online stalker and her husband’s reputation is put at risk - but will she be able to give up her addiction?

1917. Driving an ambulance through the mud in Flanders, aristocrat Evie Creswell is a long way from home. At Oaklands Manor she was expected to look pretty and make a good marriage. But with the arrival of World War One everything changed. Evie shunned an aristocratic husband and instead wed artist Will Davies, who works as a butcher's apprentice. As she struggles to transport the wounded to hospital, avoiding the shells and gas attacks - her privileged home life, and her family's disappointment at her marriage, are a lifetime away.

East Kent, 1830. Catherine Rook takes her peaceful life for granted. Her days are spent at the village school and lending a hand on her family's farm. But rural unrest begins sweeping through Kent, and when Pa Rook buys a threshing machine it brings tragedy to Wanstall Farm. With the Rooks' fortunes forever changed, Catherine must struggle to hold her family together. She turns to her childhood companion, Matty Carter, for comfort, and finds more than friendship in his loving arms.