Showing results by narrator "Rachel Atkins" in All Categories

I would like to make myself the heroine of this story and my character to be noble - an innocent victim led astray. But alas, sir, I would be lying.... Tully Truegood: orphan. Magician's apprentice. Whore. In prison, accused of murder, Tully begins to write her life story. A story that takes her from a young daughter-skivvy in the back streets of 18th-century London to her stepmother Queenie's fairy house - a place where decadent excess is a must....

Desperate to escape their stepfather’s house, sisters Amy and Lillian stow away aboard a train full of children being evacuated from London and the threat of Hitler’s bombs. Arriving in the seaside town of Worthing, they are taken in by kindly Norah and her husband, Jim. With their future now entrusted to strangers, can the girls finally find a safe harbour in these dark days of war? And will they find the strength to confront what they have been running from, when their past finally catches up with them?

It's 1956, and the Berkshire Constabulary has never had a woman detective before. That is, until bright and ambitious WPC Gwen Crockford passes out of Hendon Detective Training School with flying colours... After five years serving as one of Britain's first policewomen, Gwen Crockford becomes one of its first female detectives. Swapping crime prevention for detection, she must soon become comfortable with attending murder scenes and post-mortems, investigating sex crimes and going undercover.

Eleven days in the life of a mother as she tries to navigate herself and her family through the aftershocks of a scandal. Six years ago, aged 15, Rosalind's daughter, Stephanie, ran away with teacher Nathan Temperley, triggering a media frenzy and resulting in Temperley's arrest and imprisonment. Although the family - Rosalind; her husband, Dan; Stephanie; and son Freddy - don't talk about what happened, their lives have been shaped by it and everything that came after.

When 21-year-old Gwendoline Crockford signed up to join the Berkshire Constabulary in 1951, she had little idea of what she was getting herself into. Whether carrying a human skeleton out of the woods, finding a missing child, investigating thefts, or chasing an escaped zebra, every day brought fresh adventures. In this nostalgic, tender and honest account of post-war British society, we follow a bright, determined woman navigating a man's world, serving as many people as she can.

On the day the comet came, a girl named Heloise was born. She would live a fine life and inherit a fortune but would meet a cruel, untimely death. Years later, strange dreams plague Katya Nemcová, a teenager burdened with a rare and curious gift. Memories come to Katya in her dreams - images and stories from a past that isn't her own. Are these ghosts real? And what of the memory she seems to have of Heloise's treasures, two centuries old?

London, 1946. Alice Diamond, the Queen of the Forty Thieves, rules over her gang of hoisters with a bejewelled fist. Nell is a slum girl from Waterloo, hiding a secret pregnancy and facing a desperately uncertain future. Sensing an opportunity to exploit Nell's vulnerabilities, Alice takes her under her wing, and before long, Nell is experiencing the secret world of hoisting, with all the dangers—and glamorous trappings—that comes with this underworld existence.

The Awakened Life: Wicca and Witchcraft teaches you how to look inside yourself and let the God and Goddess empower you with spirituality, knowledge and self-esteem, and help you appreciate the profound beauty of living in tune with nature. Along your path, you'll learn about the many types of witches, traditions and deities of the Craft. You'll learn about the magickal tools and objects and how to use them.

Heathcote, England, 1984. A mysterious figure is sneaking into homes through backdoors and open windows. Known locally as 'the Fox', he knows everything about everyone, leaving curious objects in their homes or taking things from them. When beloved Anna disappears, everyone believes the Fox is responsible. For the villagers, finding Anna will be difficult - but stopping the Fox from exposing their darkest secrets might just be impossible.

Marisa Merico, the daughter of one of Italy's most notorious Mafia Godfathers, was dazzled by her father, Emilio DiGiovine. To her he was all powerful, sophisticated and loving; to the rest of the world he was staggeringly ruthless. Marisa knew her father would do anything for her, but she hadn't expected just how much he would ask in return.

Original tales by remarkable writers. Hometown Tales is a series of books pairing exciting new voices with some of the most talented and important writers at work today. Some of the tales are fiction and some are narrative nonfiction - they are all powerful, fascinating and moving and aim to celebrate regional diversity and explore the meaning of home.

A new home, a new circle of friends, a new chance at happiness? Suzanna and Barney Blake are swapping city life for the countryside, determined to breathe new life into the Honeycote Arms and a marriage touched by tragedy. Recently separated Ginny Tait is also seeking solace in country living, desperate to rein in her rambunctious twin daughters. They all think that moving to a calm, quiet and beautiful village in the Cotswolds will solve their problems. But in Honeycote, things are never quite as they appear....

Will Nancy and Jack be allowed to embrace the future, or will their histories forever bind them to the past? Drama teacher Nancy O'Brien puts her ambitions on hold to support her family and returns to her idyllic seaside hometown, St Nicholas Bay. Jack, a young widower desperate to come to terms with his loss, hopes that setting up home there with his baby son might enable him to survive the future. As Nancy and Jack become closer, not everyone is thrilled.

In the 17th century, a wall is built around the deer park of a great house. Wychwood is a world in itself, its ornamental lakes and majestic avenues planned by Mr Norris, a master of the new art of landscaping. A world where, after decades of civil war, everyone has something to hide or something to fear, where dissidents hide in the forest and Londoners fleeing the plague are at the gate.

During the oppressive heat wave of 1976, a young journalist, Ed Peters, finds an Edwardian photograph in a junk shop in the Brighton Lanes. It shows an alluring dark-haired girl, an actress whose name was Leda Grey. Leda Grey is living still, in a decaying clifftop house once shared with a man called Charles Beauvois, a director of early silent film. As Beauvois' lover and his muse, Leda often starred in scenes where stage magic and trick photography were used to astonishing effect.

Charlotte Alton has put her old life behind her. The life where she bought and sold information, unearthing secrets buried too deep for anyone else to find, or fabricating new identities for people who need their histories erased. But now she has been offered one more job. To get a hit-man into an experimental new prison and take out someone who according to the records isn't there at all. It's impossible. A suicide mission. And quite possibly a set-up. So why can't she say no?

London, 1922. Orphan girl Alice dreams there's more to life than toiling long hours in Pink's jam factory. Inspired by stories about the legendary Queen of Thieves, Mary Carr, who terrorised the streets of Victorian London, Alice decides to set up her own gang: The Forty Thieves. Sly seamstress Kate Felix from Whitechapel has the same plan and will stop at nothing to keep Alice and her pals off her turf in the West End shops. But Alice is determined to win at all costs, hitting the headlines as the Bob-Haired Bandit.

In a heartbeat everything can change. This is the gripping, true story of how a young woman was murdered and a family lost a daughter. Like most young girls her age Nadine lives a life filled with family, friends and thoughts about the future. At seventeen she meets Gerold and they fall in love. But a darkness gradually falls upon their relationship and after almost three years Nadine calls the relationship off. Gerold does not accept this decision and keeps contacting her, despite her rejecting his advances.

One fateful night. One unthinkable family tragedy. One survivor. This is Alison's story. Perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train and Apple Tree Yard, this stunning psychological thriller follows one woman's search for the truth about her family history. Alison is as close to anonymous as she can get: With no ties and a backroom job, hers is a life lived under the radar. But once Alison was someone else: Once she was Esme, a teenager whose bedroom sat at the top of a remote house on a bleak estuary.

When two bodies wash up on a river bank in the Balkans, Simo Subotic is called in to investigate. It soon becomes clear that their deaths were the result of torture not seen since the Bosnian War. Meanwhile, after a drug bust prematurely ends the Tour de Balkans, former Olympic cyclist Heather Bishop is in freefall after her journalist boyfriend Ryan Mackinnon goes missing. Her desperate search for him uncovers not only Ryan's dark past, but that of a region still reeling from the trauma of war.