Showing results by narrator "Sherry Baines" in All Categories

Rumours about a war with Germany have been whispered around the Quality Street factory for months. It’s hard for everyone to get their heads around air raids, rationing and the threat of bombings, so to distract themselves, they girls are betting on who is most likely to announce wedding bells.

The Quality Street Factory is fizzing with the news that the King and Queen and the two young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, are going to visit the Mackintosh Factory where the country’s favourite wrapped chocolate is made. The factory floor is heady with excitement but plans are dealt a blow when a much loved staff member is the victim of a poisoning incident. Everyone is under suspicion, which only adds to Reenie Calder’s woes, anxious that her new promotion has only made her stick out even more like a sore thumb.

In 1975 Lucinda Marsh throws herself in front of a speeding train leaving her 12-year-old daughter Kitty alone, confused and abandoned – save for a selfish aunt, a violent father and her childhood sweetheart Harry Jenkins. When Kitty is sent to an orphanage after the death of her father, she meets Georgie, a lively cockney girl who, through the following difficult years, becomes her loyal friend. Convinced that her feelings for Harry will ruin the brilliant future that lies ahead of him, Kitty turns her back on his love.

Nell Reece has never known her mother, and her father's burden of guilt about his wife has kept him cowed for years, working as a common labourer on his sister's farm. For all her aunt's spiteful attempts to break Nell's independent spirit, she has never succeeded. But now Nell, pregnant and alone, is forced to leave behind the men in her life, believing she might never be able to return. With little but the clothes she wears, she travels across the Bedfordshire countryside of 1890. When she encounters a scruffy urchin called Kit, she takes him under her wing.

Despite a deathbed warning from her beloved mother, Phoebe Mulligan has no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of her uncle, Edward. Wrenched from all she holds dear, the tragic young girl is delivered to Blackburn town, where she must live in a household terrorised by the cold, forbidding presence of her mother's brother. Phoebe cannot understand why she is treated so harshly by Edward Dickens. She is not to know the guilty secret that lies in his past, a secret that casts a sinister shadow over his feelings for his lovely niece.

The Boxing Day hike is meant to bring their nature group together. As the sun sets, a gunshot rings out on the nature reserve. One of the seven is dead. And one of their number killed them.

In the hilltop villa with its spectacular views across rolling countryside to the straits of Gibraltar, Lucy anxiously awaits the arrival of her brother and sister. They're spending the weekend together to say farewell to Casa de Sueños, the house in the mountains of Southern Spain where they grew up. Her sister, Jo, landing at the airport with her fractious four-year-old, dreads the prospect of this time with her family, fulfilling their mother's last instructions that they celebrate her birthday party together.

Jenny Pepper never expected to end up like this. Tired of her job and her lacklustre marriage, increasingly marginal in her teenage daughter's life, Jenny stumbles into a vigilante rescue one night; suddenly her world is exciting again - and she's a hero. In secret - in costume - she walks the streets of her small town, seeking to right wrongs. But secret identities are tricky to maintain, and Jenny's need for adventure is beginning to cost her dearly. Then, amidst the petty crime, a terrifying villain appears.

Billy Shaw lives in a palace. Potter's Pleasure Palace, the best entertainment venue in Yorkshire, complete with dancing and swing-boats and picnickers and a roller-skating rink. Jasper Harper lives in the big house above the valley, with his eccentric mother, Edie, and Uncle Charles, brother and sister authors who have come from London to write in the seclusion of the moors. When it is arranged for Billy to become Jasper's companion, Billy arrives to find a wild, peculiar boy in a curiously haphazard household.

Beth is a woman in supreme control of all aspects of her life and family, with a stellar career and her house an oasis of calm. Her closest friend, Megan, is very different; somehow she swims through the chaos of her family with ease, the clutter on the stairs, the cat footprints on the kitchen work space. And while they could not be more different, Beth and Megan have a genuine friendship built on years of laugher, tears and true understanding of each other's strengths and weaknesses.

A smattering of queens, such as Queen Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great of Russia, are known and celebrated, but many more have been glossed over, maligned by historians or dismissed as mere bit players on the world stage. We are all familiar with the great Roman emperors, but what of Queen Zenobia, a rebel queen of the Middle East who took on the Roman Empire? William the Conqueror, the Norman invader of England in 1066, is an iconic figure in history, but how much do you know about his powerful ally and wife, Matilda of Flanders?

From the moment she learns of the stranger's visit, Molly Tattersall is filled with a sense of fear. Then her mother disappears, leaving behind a letter asking Molly to take care of her five brothers and sisters. Molly's wayward father rejects his responsibilities, leaving Molly to choose between the young man she has given her heart to and the family she adores. It is the cruellest decision of her life, with long-reaching and heart-breaking consequences. Only one thing is certain – Molly's life will never be the same again.

The Quality Street girls are gearing up for Christmas, but with the factory now making gas masks, as well as the nation’s favourite chocolate sweets, it’s anything but normal. They’re having to make other adjustments too. Reenie is in the doldrums after being demoted at work, while Mary has got her hands full getting used to married life and a ready-made family. New girl, Ada, isn’t sure she fits into factory life at all. Then, just as the Christmas party season gets into full swing, Toffee town gets a shock, and soon it isn’t just Christmas cheer that’s in short supply.