Showing results by narrator "Clare Wille" in All Categories

As England swelters during the hottest summer on record, Posie Parker, Private Detective, is summoned to Worton Hall Film Studios, where she steps into the heart of a sinister new mystery. Silvia Hanro, the blonde movie star du jour, has received death threats and a severed human finger alongside her morning coffee, and it’s all got too, too much.

The first chapter of a manuscript arrives on Publisher Marina’s desk. She assumes it’s just another novel by another aspiring writer. As the chapters arrive one by one, Marina is convinced they are about her past. There’s only one person who can know everything about the scandal, the trial, and the trauma that nearly broke her. This is one story that should never be told, and Marina is so desperate she will do anything to stop it getting out.

Wrong Place is the second gripping crime novel in the DC Maggie Neville series from Michelle Davies, following her critically acclaimed debut Gone Astray. Two women lie hospital beds, both subjects of police investigations. One, a vulnerable old lady, has been assaulted in her own home...

If you are susceptible to Miss Marple and Harriet Vane you must read The Adventures of Maud West. You will never know the difference between fact and fiction again. Jill Paton Walsh, author of the Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane mysteries Maud West ran her detective agency in London for more than...

In the quiet world of rural English clergy, lives are full of challenges, conflicts, desires and expectations. George Eliot’s first published work of fiction (1857) comprises three separate stories and has the hallmarks of her famous later works–her gentle wit and clever satire, her psychological insight, and her keen observation of human nature and frailty. These are beautifully written and poignant tales, set in and around the fictional Midlands town of Milby.

Prepare for tales of unexplained murders, long-concealed mysteries, strange visitors in the night, and a secret in Posie’s own past, about her parents, which haunts her to this very day. But something is afoot. Several of the guests are acting shiftily, and when a sparkling Christmas gift under the tree is revealed to be a ticking time bomb, designed to cause multiple murders and mayhem, Posie and Lovelace have to locate the perpetrator, fast. Who would want to cause such untold misery, and why?

When a Lesley Kinnock buys a lottery ticket on a whim, it changes her life more than she could have imagined . . . Lesley and her husband Mack are the sudden winners of a £15 million EuroMillions jackpot. They move with their 15-year-old daughter Rosie to an exclusive gated estate in...

The writer known as M. is living in exile while her home country wages war on a neighbouring state. Wracked by shame and severed from her language, M. finds herself unable to write, unmoored in a present where the future feels unknowable. When she travels to a nearby country for an event, a twist of fate leaves her stranded in an unfamiliar city, phoneless and untraceable. In this rupture, she feels a flicker of liberation – the possibility of starting over – but memories of childhood, books, films and tarot cards pull her back, the last fragments of a vanishing world.

As snow falls silently outside, settling on the spires and turrets of the ancient Cambridge colleges and the dark streets, and the shop windows gleam temptingly with delectable Christmas treats, Posie Parker, Private Detective, has cleared a small space in her hectic schedule to unravel a tragedy which occurred in her very own family.

Alentejo Blue is the story of the Portuguese village of Mamarrosa told through the lives of those who live there and those who are passing through: men and women, children and old people, locals, tourists, and expatriates. An old man reflects on his long and troubled life in this beautiful and seemingly tranquil setting, and anticipates the return of Marco Afonso Rodrigues, the prodigal son of the village and a symbol of this now fast-changing world.

As her reputation steadily grows, Posie Parker is asked to accompany the utterly charming Inspector Richard Lovelace of Scotland Yard on an undercover mission of entrapment. Their destination is a glittering New Year’s Eve party at the remote Maypole Manor in Kent, the cliff-top home of Lord Robin Glaysayer.

Two 19th century stage illusionists, the aristocratic Rupert Angier and the working-class Alfred Borden, engage in a bitter and deadly feud; the effects are still being felt by their respective families a hundred years later.

It’s snowing heavily outside, but in the little white Swiss Church in central London, packed to the rafters with Posie Parker’s beautifully-dressed wedding guests, and half of Scotland Yard, everything is just right. All going to plan. Or is it?

Posie Parker, now London’s premier female Private Detective, is getting married, and with her wedding dress carefully packed, she’s bubbling over with excitement to arrive in Venice, the most romantic city on earth! But very quickly Posie finds she is walking into an utter nightmare: her lodgings on the Grand Canal have been consumed by fire; the fascist police are in control of the city; her famous fiancé, Alaric Boynton-Dale is moody and preoccupied, and most bizarrely of all, her hostess, the Countess Romagnoli, confesses she has a stalker and fears for her life.

A vivid love story and adventure tale, Oroonoko is a heroic slave narrative about a royal prince and his fight for freedom. The eponymous hero, Oroonoko, deemed royalty in one world and slave in another, is torn from his noble status and betrayed into slavery in Surinam, where he is reduced to chains, fetters, and shackles. But his high spirit and admirable character will not be suppressed.

In the industrial heart of Victorian England–now Stoke-on-Trent–lonely Anna Tellwright is dominated by her miserly, bullying father and the strict Methodist community of Bursley. Inheriting a fortune does not free her from subjugation: every direction has an obstacle and Anna must choose between the ambitious Henry Mynors (duty) and the sensitive Willie Price (desire). Will she break free from society’s expectations or succumb to the life laid out for her? Bennett’s depiction of the Potteries brings to life a world of social pressures, moral dilemmas, and the struggle for personal freedom.

From the best-selling author of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, a ghost story, a psychological thriller and a tale of love rediscovered. Elizabeth has been married to Michael for ten years. She has adjusted to a fairly monotonous routine with her wealthy, decent but boring husband. Part of this routine involves occasional visits to Beinn Caorrun, the dank and gloomy house in a Scottish glen that Michael inherited. There are memories there that Michael will not share with her. But then Michael begins to change. It starts when he thinks he sees, in a picture, the figure of a girl on a landing.

In the lush Shropshire countryside, free-spirited Hazel Woodus is torn between two men: the gentle parson Edward Marston and the passionate, fox-hunting squire Jack Reddin. Her wild side, deep connection to nature, and love of animals–especially Foxy, her pet fox–make for clear internal conflict: she wants to find contentment in her chaste marriage to Edward, but the allure of Reddin is inescapable....

When Margaret Hale moves with her father from the comfort of the south of England to the industrial north, she is at first repulsed by what she sees; and then when she discovers the conditions under which the workers are forced to live, she is outraged. But this throws her into direct conflict with the powerful young mill-owner, John Thornton. Using personal passions to explore deep social divisions, North and South is a great romance and one of Elizabeth Gaskell's finest works.

French Riviera, winter 1992. On a freezing night, 19-year-old Vinca Rockwell runs away with her philosophy teacher with whom she's been having a secret affair. No one will ever see her again. French Riviera, spring 2017. Formerly inseparable, Fanny, Thomas and Maxime - Vinca's best friends - have not spoken in 25 years. But when they receive a notice from their old school detailing the plans for a new gymnasium and inviting them to a class reunion, they know they must go back one more time. Because there is a body buried in that building...and they're the ones who put it there.