Showing results by narrator "Jan Cramer" in All Categories

'Out of the blue, my perfect life imploded. Let's look at my situation, sans rose tinted specs. I have: no husband, no self-esteem, no money, a six-year-old son, a boisterous puppy, a crush on my son's teacher...and an online dating profile, apparently! I am the subject of village gossip, pursued by the mafia (playground variety), turning 40 in a matter of weeks. And...my life has just gone viral!' A deliciously romantic and humorous book about love, loss and starting again.

Author Callie Logan never expected to swap her life in London for one in rural Suffolk but, after the breakdown of her marriage, she decides that a fresh start is just what she needs. Finding Owl Cottage in the tiny village of Newton St. Clare, Callie determines to give up on love and throw herself into her work. But fate seems to have other ideas and she soon has two very different men vying for her attention.

Summer 2018. Britain is basking in a rare heatwave. And Hazel and Dorothy Wilding are working together to clear their family farm high on the North Yorkshire moors. The sisters have been estranged for 42 years. And they’re not happy to be forced together now. Dorothy has always been a dutiful daughter. She’s a regular chapel-goer. She never married. And she’s stayed on the farm all her life, working in the family B & B. Hazel, is lesbian. She lives in London, where she runs her own business in partnership with her gay best friend Vinny.

Northern England 1979 - Social worker Elizabeth has finally plucked up the courage to end 14 years of unhappy marriage. Lost and lonely, she buries herself in work to keep her emptiness at bay. Then an unexpected phone call brings troubled teenager Jan to her door and Elizabeth shocks her friends and family by taking the traumatized young woman into her home as a lodger.

Jo and Ed are unlikely best friends. He is the only son of wealthy parents. She was born on 'the wrong side of the tracks'. He loves sport, messing around with cars, and drinking. She's ambitious and hardworking. They are, in fact, a perfect team. They've stood by each other for almost 30 years. They've built a successful business together. There's just one problem. Jo is having an affair with Ed's wife. And now someone knows their secret.

It's December 1992, and children are going crazy for the Tracy Island toy - almost as crazy as the parents! Christmas day is fast approaching and Coco Pinchard is desperately trying to track one down for her four-year-old son Rosencrantz. Throw into the mix a horrible boss, a lazy husband, and the prospect of her in-laws arriving for the festivities, and Coco wishes she could cancel Christmas and sail off to a desert island somewhere - preferably with the gorgeous-yet-unattainable Tom from work.

Having grown up in rural Norfolk, author Victoria Connelly never thought she'd ever live in London. But after surviving 11 years in the noisy suburbs, she finally persuades her husband to move to Suffolk - to a county with no motorways, a village with no shops, and a cottage with no main drainage.

Hattie travels on the 18.53 train home every night. She sits in the same seat, in the same carriage, and sees the same people. The unwritten rule is you don’t talk to your fellow passengers, but Hattie has been watching them all for months now to distract herself from her own troubles.

Julia Ottley has a secret. She’s burst onto the literary scene with the highest ever advance paid to a British debut author. Her novel - featuring a fabulous tower of translucent icy crystal - is garnering rave reviews. But as she embarks upon her new life, she discovers that nothing can be hidden forever, especially when living within walls of glass. She fights to keep her secret, but as the stakes steadily rise, she faces a stark choice. How far is she really prepared to go to stop her life from coming shattering down?

Journalist Anna McCall has never understood people who collect things. So, when she's asked to interview local collector and eccentric, William Kitson, she isn't exactly looking forward to the experience. But she soon falls under the charm of Fox Hill Manor as well as its owner, even though she thinks there's something very strange about the collection there.

Gina Gambino wants revenge. Her life has been turned upside down with the murder of her two hoodlum sons, but she knows who's done it. Her target is Don Francini, leader of one of the most powerful mafia families in Palermo. Using her brain and her body, Gina worms her way into his household, becoming first his housekeeper then his mistress, weaving a complicated web of poison and murder. It seems her plans are going well until one disastrous night.

Ben Stratton and Bryony Nightingale. Everybody thought they’d be together forever. But when Ben leaves the small market town of Castle Clare to travel the world, Bryony is heartbroken, seeing his departure as the ultimate betrayal. Throwing herself into her work, Bryony is determined to forget Ben. Then, after six long years, the unexpected happens, and Ben returns, determined to win Bryony back.

It's the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but it's also a special year for Katherine Roberts and Warwick Lawton because they're getting married. But can Katherine put aside her fear about the future and can Warwick put his pen down long enough to actually make it up the aisle?

Keen to move out of the elephant's stomach, that stew of gray mists called weather in Wales, Jean Gill offered her swimming certificate to a bemused Provençale estate agent and bought a house with good stars and its own spring water. Or, rather, as it turns out, a neighbor's spring water that is the only supply to the kitchen, which, according to the nice men from the Water Board, is emptying its dirty water directly and illegally onto the main road.... And there's worse....

Emma Storey is 32, trying to balance her love life, friends, and work. She has been in a relationship with Chris for two years and is eagerly anticipating his proposal over a romantic meal. But the proposal doesn't go quite to plan, and Emma's world is flipped upside down.

Which of the worlds was real? And where were the boundaries? As a child, Helen and her friend Rianna had wandered freely through Charnwood Forest into an enchanted otherworld of brightly-coloured creatures and strangely beautiful, charismatic people. Then Rianna moved away and the enchantment vanished. Now, fifteen years later, she has returned suddenly, secretive and haunted. And soon Helen finds herself drawn back across those half-forgotten, ever-shifting boundaries between reality and fable.

Life at Caldoon Castle in the Highlands of Scotland isn't easy for Catriona Fraser and her two children, especially since her husband died. So, when Iain MacNeice and his two daughters book the castle for the Christmas holidays, Catriona's prayers seem to be answered.

Gayle Hargreaves has never read a Brontë novel so, when a film crew descends on her small Yorkshire town and her life is thrown into disarray, she isn't impressed. And she's even less impressed when the handsome actor playing Mr. Rochester starts flirting with her. But she can handle it, can't she? After all, she just isn't the sort to fall for a man in period costume.

In the windswept hills of medieval Cornwall, the powerful Book of Seasons passes from mother to daughter, entrusted to those who will carry on the sacred traditions of healing and wisdom. Young Megge is meant to inherit this legacy and embrace the path of the healer. But when she touches the book, she is consumed by fear of what she will become if she accepts her birthright. Terrified of the power she does not understand, Megge resists her destiny, even as unrest spreads through her village, and long-buried family secrets rise to the surface.

When Magali Rousseau sets out as a private detective, she expects to take pictures of dodgy salesmen and adulterers. Wrong. Her very first case, and it's murder. Then comes another. And another. Until she finds herself trapped with a killer whose only aim is to make her his tenth - and final - victim.