Showing results by narrator "Penelope Freeman" in All Categories

Black Country Orphan is a moving story of the courage and strength of women, by the Sunday Times bestselling author Annie Murray. The early 1900s: Cradley Heath, a town in the Black Country near Birmingham and centre of the world’s chain-making trade. Lucy Butler, a young girl crippled by a...

In the last year, Mel Stenning's seven-year-old daughter, Poppy, has had to get used to a new step-father, a new baby, and a new home. During a game of hide and seek, Poppy disappears, and Mel's new husband is suspected of having something to do with it. Mel also discovers that, the day before, the police had accused him of murder.

When Major Charles Davenport is evacuated to England to recuperate from a battle wound received at Tobruk, a letter is awaiting him from his wife in London, informing him that she wants a divorce. Mary Kennedy is a young Irish American who has moved to her grandparents’ cottage in Ireland to mourn the loss of her husband and child. Participating in a Red Cross morale-building effort, she corresponds with a young British soldier, but his letters cease abruptly.

Midsummer Madness follows the fortunes of talented actress Sophie Gresham as she struggles with the secret she is desperate to hide from her theatre company. Sophie is shocked when she realises that Joe Harrison, their tough guest producer from New York, is in fact the penniless actor she once helped out in the days when she had more heart than sense.

Laura Meredith never imagined herself appearing on TV - she’s too old, too flabby, too downright hormonal, and much too busy holding things together for her son, Stanley, after her husband left her for a younger, thinner replacement. But best friend Charlotte is a determined woman and when Laura is persuaded on to a daytime show to talk about her PMT, everything changes. Suddenly there’s a camera crew tracking her every move and Laura finds herself an unlikely star. But as things heat up between her and gorgeous TV director, Cal, they’re going downhill elsewhere.

A debut novel by a bestselling non-fiction 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...

London, May 1911. The new king, George V, is preparing for his coronation. The suffragettes are campaigning for women to get the vote. The East End seethes with unrest. And 18-year-old Kitty Challoner is looking forward to 'coming out' in London society. But Kitty's secure, sheltered world is about to be torn apart. Lydia Challoner is shot dead while out riding in Hyde Park, and during the ensuing murder investigation Kitty discovers that there was so much she didn't know about her mother.

London, April 1912. The third Irish Home Rule Bill is passing through Parliament, and the situation is growing ever more tense. Closely involved in the negotiations, cabinet minister Edmund Latimer finds himself under growing pressure, which only intensifies when his seven-month-old niece, Lucy, is snatched away in her pram in Regent's Park. Could there be a connection between Lucy’s kidnapping and the Irish talks? With her husband under intolerable strain, Edmund's wife, Alice, makes it her business to find out.

1939, Warsaw, Poland: Pilot Jan Grabowski receives orders that take him to the heart of the escalating conflict. He leaves behind his wife, Rulka, who sees Poland overcome by the Nazis. In constant danger and amid cruel reprisals, she joins the Resistance. Norfolk: Louise Fairhurst's war is very different. Evacuated with her class of 10-year-olds from London she finds herself acting mother as well as teacher to the children.

When Jean Sinclair's parents are killed in an accident she travels from the US to Scotland to trace her family roots, despite the disapproval of her fiancé, Don. There she meets Adam Crawford, a handsome but arrogant landowner and, despite her initial dislike, has a tempestuous physical union with him at a glamorous highland ball.

'An enchanting debut' Woman's Own November 1942 Dear Elizabeth, I've got myself a new project, to cheer myself up a bit. It has absolutely nothing to do with the war effort. We're completely starved of art in London these days. Anything decent was stashed away by the authorities years ago.But...

It’s 1946, and tensions are running high in the Morris household. It’s no secret that Frank is handy with his fists, but what will finally tip him over the edge as they all sit round the table for Christmas dinner?

Forced into retirement, history professor Ellen Kershaw finds herself at a loose end. So when she is contacted by a reclusive billionaire, with an unusual proposition, her interest is piqued. Theodore Shepherd is funding a museum for diaries, and he wants Ellen to curate it. A live-in position at a Gothic stately home in the middle of Dartmoor, it's just the escape she needs whilst she works out what to do with the rest of her life. Ellen soon finds herself immersed in the stories and diaries that await her.

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.

When sweet-talking Mick Brogan dies, his young wife Cathleen struggles to bring up their daughters in their rented rooms in 1960s North London. She is comforted by Father Jerry, her husband's cousin, and a priest generally acknowledged by the Irish community to be both a saint and the spit of Gregory Peck.