Showing results by narrator "Karen Cass" in All Categories

In A Clergyman's Daughter, Orwell leads us through a landscape of unemployment, poverty and hunger, where Dorothy's faith is challenged by a social reality that changes her life.

An engaging and practical guided tour of the simple and nature-inspired ways that Finns stay happy and healthy - including the powerful concept of sisu, or everyday courage. Sisu - a kind of everyday courage - is the Finnish approach to well-being that is turning lives around. In this beautiful book - part memoir, part guide - Katja shows how to embrace the daily practices that make Finns among the happiest people in the world. 

The beautiful Cotswold village of Rowan Vale is run as a living museum, allowing tourists to see history in action. But there’s more to the place than any visitor would guess...Fifty-something Shona grew up in the village and now runs its vintage, 1940s-themed teashop. Not everyone knows that the previous manager, her great-aunt Polly, still lives there too… as a ghost!

I thought I was sorted on the life front. I was a heart surgeon with a loving partner and two gorgeous little girls. Except my husband’s version of "loving" is lying, cheating, and sleeping his way around London. Which means I definitely deserve a refund. Unfortunately, moving on isn’t that simple. Just because I know how to operate on a heart doesn’t mean I know how to fix my broken one. Plus, I lost the receipt for him years ago, so I’m definitely getting shortchanged. But now that I’m single, am I ready to mingle?

Weeks away from the birth of her first child, Georgie should be enjoying the peace of her new life in the country, but boredom has settled in and nerves are running high. A viral news story about the rescue of a missing child warms her heart until she sees the photo: the woman who found the child is her own mother, Nancy, who disappeared twenty years ago. How could Nancy have abandoned her own children? Georgie needs to know before becoming a mother herself, even if it means calling on her estranged brother Dan for support.

Frances and her husband, George, have two points of interest in Paris. One is an impromptu holiday to visit the Paris Exposition. The other is personal. George's Aunt Julia has requested her nephew's help in looking into the suspicious death of renowned artist Paul Ducasse. Though Julia is not entirely forthcoming about her reasons, she is clearly a woman mourning a lost love. At the exposition, swarming with tourists, tragedy casts a pall on the festivities. A footbridge collapses. Julia is among the casualties. However, she was not just another fateful victim.

In a quiet English village, Marion Sharpe and her mother, two seemingly ordinary women, find their lives upturned when a young girl named Betty Kane accuses them of kidnapping and abuse. As the allegations escalate, the women become embroiled in a sensational legal battle that captures the attention of the public and the media. When even Inspector Alan Grant is baffled, Marion enlists the help of savvy barrister Robert Blair to clear their names. Together, they confront the disturbing truths lurking beneath the surface...

Spirited, beautiful, and thoroughly unconventional, Prudence Pinsent is a remarkable young woman. One fine morning she sets out for Suffolk to join her cousin Lord Wellende for a few days hunting. On the way Prudence encounters Captain Studde of the coastguard who is pursuing a quarry of his own. Studde is on the trail of a drug smuggling ring that connects Wellende Hall with the cloistered world of Cambridge.

1937. Katya Komarovsky is studying medicine in Glasgow, living among friends and eager to begin her career as a doctor. But when her spendthrift parents announce that they’ve run out of money and are facing ruin—and that she’ll now have to support them by working as a governess in Vienna—the life she’s dreamed of goes up in smoke. Furiously resentful, Katya rages at her wealthy employer, Thor, for stealing her future—and saddling her with twelve-year-old Gretchen, a deeply troubled child who has only a blazing musical talent to redeem her.

This is a story of friendship that defies all odds and survives and flourishes regardless of the impediments that arise. The friendship is born out of an almost tragedy and extreme bravery by one Elizabeth Bennet. In saving the lives of those in peril, she thwarts the designs of one of the villains of this tale and makes an enemy of the person. As in canon, our Anne is sickly. In this variation, it is because she had suffered a bad case of childhood scarlet fever. For the purposes of this story, the disease has seriously weakened her cardiovascular system.

It deeply irritated Leonora that she was always being caught in awkward situations with the village's new doctor, James Galbraith - especially since she was engaged to Tony. But James proved a sturdy support as she did her best to keep her parents' decrepit but much loved manor house running smoothly. There was little point in admitting her growing feelings for James, since he showed so little sign of caring for her....

*Previously published as Her Forget-Me-Not Ex* The cosy and charming second novel from Sophie Claire, author of The Christmas Holiday. The perfect listen for fans of Trisha Ashley and Cathy Bramley! It's taken years, but Natasha Brown's life is finally on track. Running a florists in the quaint...

After a year of country living, Rachel is finally getting into the swing of things. Her kids are happy and content at the village school, and she’s managed to navigate the choppy waters of the playground mafia. Or...so she thought. When playground mum Penelope moves herself and her kids into Rachel’s home, after discovering her husband has been having an affair, Rachel knows she must ask them politely to leave. The problem is, Penelope never takes no for an answer. As Rachel deals with Penelope, she also meets new mum Melanie. 

From relics of Georgian empire-building and slave-trading, through Victorian London's barged-out refuse to 1980s fly-tipping and the pervasiveness of present-day plastics, Rag and Bone traces the story of our rubbish, and through it, our history of consumption. 

Rather than protect their daughter like any good parent should, first Fanny and then Thomas Bennet push their sixteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth into a marriage with a much older man who happens to be a duke. Fanny is seduced by the fact he is a duke, even if he is not interested in Jane, something she cannot believe at first, and his willingness to dower her remaining four daughters. For Bennet, when the Duke offers to break the entail on Longbourn after a certain condition is met, his half-hearted opposition to the match dissipates.

Can love begin when the summer ends? Dragged to the charming island of Nantucket for her niece’s wedding celebrations, finance hotshot Olivia plans a week of spreadsheets and sunscreen – until she meets Connor: ten years younger, impossibly charming, and a single dad with a playboy past...

Frail butterfly enthusiast Maggie Muir has lived a lonely life in her huge remote house on the Cornish cliffs for many years. Once a mother with two beautiful children, the sudden death of Maggie’s daughter, forever a little girl in her fairy nightdress, ripped the family apart and caused her son Lucas to flee to the other side of the world. But now, Maggie is dying, and there is something she needs her son to know.

Amy Perfect is the crème de la crème of wedding planners, so who best to plan Georgina's wedding? Except that the man Georgina plans to marry is the same man who jilted Amy three years ago. Will her plan to give Georgina an imperfect wedding backfire? Is this the chance for Amy to win back the love of her life, or will insufferable Ben put a spanner in the works?

Livia Denby is on trial for attempted murder. The jury have reached a verdict. Two years earlier, Livia was a probation officer in Yorkshire, her husband Scott a teacher. Their children, Heidi and Noah, round out a happy family until the day Scott's brother dies. Grief and guilt leave Scott seeking answers, a search which takes him into the world of conspiracy theories. As his grip on reality slides, he makes a decision which will put the family on a collision course with tragedy.

'Make sure of a happier holiday by packing a Maeve Haran novel in your suitcase' – Jilly Cooper, bestselling author of Rivals For all those who imagine escaping to a château and living the dream . . . to find that even dreams can have their complications. Steph, Jo and Meredith have been...