Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

Thornfield Hall, 1821. Alice Fairfax takes up her role as housekeeper of the estate. But when Mr. Rochester presents her with a woman who is to be hidden on the third floor, she finds herself responsible for much more than the house. This is the story Jane Eyre never knew--a narrative played out on the third floor and beneath the stairs, as the servants kept their master's secret safe and sound.

Sitting in her Bloomsbury home, with her two birds for company, elderly Harriet Baxter sets out to relate the story of her acquaintance with Ned Gillespie, a talented artist who never achieved the fame he deserved. Back in 1888, after a chance encounter, young Harriet befriends the Gillespie family and soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes - leading to a notorious criminal trial - the certainties of this world all too rapidly disorientate into mystery and deception.

Brought to you by Penguin. When Alicia Carlyle returns to the home of her childhood after the tragic death of her husband, she is hoping to put the past behind her. But first she must come face to face with the woman who nearly destroyed her marriage and tore her family in two - her...

Adrian Mole is an adult. At least that's what it says on his passport. But living at home, clinging to his threadbare cuddly rabbit 'Pinky', working as a paper pusher for the DoE and pining for the love of his life, Pandora, has proved to him that adulthood isn't quite what he expected.

'Wonderful . . . all killer, no filler' Red Magazine 'Dazzling stories, as inventive as they are inspiring' Daily Mirror 'Where power and feminist rage meet' Stylist ______________________________ A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers...

The Phoenix and the Carpet is the sequel to Five Children and It and continues the adventures of Robert, Cyril, Anthea, Jane, and their baby brother, Lamb. They encounter a phoenix wrapped in a magic carpet, and thus begins a series of adventures: Captivating, extraordinary, and fun, even if some of them go horribly wrong.

When Amber Hewerdine consults a hypnotherapist as a desperate last resort, she doesn't expect that anything much will change. She doesn't expect it to help with her chronic insomnia . . . She doesn't expect to hear herself, under hypnosis, saying words that mean nothing to her: 'Kind, cruel...

The name of your first-born. The face of your lover. Your age. Your address... What would happen if your memory of these began to fade? When Claire starts to write her Memory Book, she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have of her. But how can she hold onto the past when her future is slipping through her fingers...?

Sasha North has gone missing. Everyone says she's run away, but I know better. We've been best friends since we were teenagers, since Sasha swept into the neighbourhood and brought colour to my life. Until a brutal attack changed both our lives forever. I know what happened that night. I know who wants revenge. And if Sasha has been taken. I know I'm next.

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr. Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr. Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma.

When archaeologist Louise Cantor’s son Henrik is found dead in his flat, she refuses to believe it was suicide. Clues that only a mother could detect lead her to believe something more sinister took place. Henrik had kept many things back from her and she is shocked to learn he had contracted HIV. The only lead is a letter and photograph from Henrik’s girlfriend in Mozambique. Louise’s quest to unravel the mystery surrounding her son’s death takes her to Africa.

Seagulls in the Attic left Tessa thrilled as Annie, her best friend from London, fell in love and married a local Cornishman. Alas the newlyweds decide to settle out of the county but Tessa and her husband are delighted when a new young couple arrive in the village fresh from the city. However what looks such a promising new friendship turns into a nightmare, as these are people who think money can buy them acceptance - and the village is soon in quiet revolt. Tessa finds herself in the thick of it - and realises that she has grown very strong roots in the community in the two years she has been in Cornwall.

Each story is in some way inspired by a painting of Henri Matisse, each is also about the intimate connection between seeing and feeling - about the ways in which a glance we meant to be casual may suddenly call forth the deepest reserves of our being. Their subjects' lives unravel from simple beginnings - a trip to the hair dresser, a cleaning woman's passion for knitting, lunch in a Chinese restaurant but gradually the veneer of ordinariness is peeled back to expose pain, reveal desire, or express the intensity of joy in colour and creation.

All seems tranquil as newly qualified Health Visitor Sarah motors into a small Kentish hilltop village in her new green mini. She’s barely out of the car when she’s called to assist the midwife with a bride who’s gone into labour in the middle of her own wedding reception. And so her...

Since Susannah Cates's husband was sent to prison three years ago, life has been a constant struggle to provide for herself and their teenage daughter. Nothing ever seems to go right, and the most she hopes for now is that nothing more will go wrong. Worried by her mother's unhappiness, 13-year-old Neve decides to take matters into her own hands. And when Susannah's closest friend, Patsy, discovers what Neve is up to, she immediately lends her support. 

In January 1987, Helen Honeysett goes on an evening run from her riverside cottage and disappears. Twenty-nine years later, Helen's body has never been found. Her husband has hired a detective to find out what happened all those years ago, but when the five households on that desolate stretch of towpath refuse to give up their secrets, Stella and Jack find themselves hunting a killer whose trail has long gone cold.

When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom, their whirlwind relationship leads them to purchase Les Genevriers, an abandoned house in a rural hamlet in the south of France. As the beautiful Provence summer turns to autumn, Eve finds it impossible to ignore the mysteries that haunt both her...

Shortly after her 13th birthday, Ritva is sent away to Seili, an island in the far north of Finland. A former leper colony, Seili is now home to 'hopeless cases' - women the doctors call mad. But Ritva knows she doesn't belong there. As biting winter follows biting winter, she longs to be near to her sister and wonders why her father ever allowed her to be taken to this desolate place. Hope arrives in the form of Martta, a headstrong girl who becomes Ritva's only friend.

Socially critical and emotionally complex, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is Hardy's masterpiece. It tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, forced by her family's poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy d'Urbervilles. Violated by the son, Alec, her hopes of rebuilding her life with the gentle and bookish Angel Clare founder when he learns of her past.

As night falls, 17-year-old Cassie Baker leaves Winchcome and takes her usual shortcut down a moonlit country lane. She never makes it home. With no body and no evidence, she's just another teenage runaway.