Showing results by publisher "Soundings" in All Categories

When Zosia arrives at Foxglove Cottage holding her small son's hand in hers, she is desperate for a new beginning. Her new job is to help 70-year-old Hazel transform her tumbledown cottage and re-open the enchanting old café, steeped in folklore. When neighbourly Leon arrives to help them restore the café, Zosia can't help falling for his rugged charm. But her heart has been shattered before, so she distracts herself by translating an old diary that’s been in Hazel's family for generations. She discovers an extraordinary love story from World War Two hidden in the yellowing pages.

The newly formed Ministry of Fine Arts has a staffing problem - one minister dead within six months of its inception, his successor snuffed out shortly before the General Election. When a third victim, Permanent Secretary Edwin Pompfret is fatally crushed by the fall of a giant bust, Inspector Julian Rivers is drawn into a case of murder of artistic devilment.

Young Frances Field arrives in a scenic coastal village in Scotland, having escaped her dreary life as an orphan, treated as little more than a servant by an uncle and aunt. Once there, she encounters an array of eccentric locals, the occasional roar of enemy planes overhead and three army wives - Elise, Tommy and Tillie - who become fast friends. Elise warns Frances of the discomforts of military life, but she’s inclined to disregard the advice when she meets the dashing and charming Captain Guy Tarlatan.

It's the final year of training for three young nurses at The Nightingale Hospital. Helen is at a crossroads in her life as she battles with her domineering mother over both her love life and her future career. Dora can't stop loving Nick, who is married to her best friend, Ruby. Millie is anxious about her fiancé, sent to Spain to cover the Civil War, and things only get worse when she encounters a fortune teller who gives her a sinister warning.

In the little hamlet of Lark Rise times are changing and Laura is growing up. Although she must attend the nearby village school, she would far rather read and make up stories in her head. Real-life excitement comes, however, when she and her beloved younger brother Edmund are allowed to walk on their own to the grand market town of Candleford to stay with their relatives one summer. There, Laura discovers the joys of the shops, the ways of boy-talk with her cousins and the secret world of 'Bookworms Ltd' with her Uncle Tom, before an offer arrives that will determine her future.

Winter 1264. England is in turmoil. King Henry III's reign is under threat. In Oxford the barons prepare to challenge his rule. Searching for his lodgings down a dark alley, young student Thomas Symon hears a scream. It's a young girl, her throat slit. Mistaken for the fleeing killer, Thomas is saved from a vengeful town mob by a stranger pulling him into a dark passageway. The man is his new university tutor, renowned academic Regent Master William Falconer.

After a difficult few years with her husband Victor, Prue's life is about to change in a dramatic and unexpected way. Will she have the strength to carry on into a more positive future? Rookery House is bursting at the seams after Thea welcomes two WAAFs to stay while their accommodation is being built on the new aerodrome.

Three powerful Norman lords and a Saxon thegn watch their horses competing in a race near Woodstock. When one of the riders is murdered during the race, suspicion falls on the Saxon. Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret are guests at Oxford Castle while they deliberate on land disputes in the area. Caught up in the murder investigation, they feel that a man has been wrongly accused and, in trying to save him from execution, get themselves immersed in a sea of malice, treachery, lust and simmering hostility.

The stories in this collection will dredge up delight in crime fiction fans, as watery graves claim unsuspecting victims on the sands of an estuary and disembodied whispers penetrate the sleeping quarters of a ship's captain. This British Library anthology collects the best mysteries set on choppy seas, along snaking rivers and even in the supposed safety of a swimming pool, including stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, C. S. Forester, Phyllis Bentley and R. Austin Freeman.

East Anglia, 1861. Alone in a first-class carriage, the Swarbricks are robbed at gunpoint. But when the universally admired Swarbrick fights back, the train robber takes more than money and jewellery, killing the man working to unify East Anglia's tangle of railway networks. Inspector Colbeck is brought in from London, but as Swarbrick's glowing reputation begins to crumble, the line of investigation isn't clear.

Historian Annie Gray takes us down the street and through the ages, from medieval marketplaces to the purpose-built concrete precincts of the 20th century. Peeping through the windows of tailors, tearooms and grocers, we explore everything from the toyshops of yesteryear - where curiosities were sold for adults, not children - to the birth of brands we shop at today.

Halloween 1861. A special train with two carriages steams across the Lake District at night on its way to a place notorious for its record of supernatural incidents. Lighting inside the carriages is poor, and without warning, the lamp goes out in the last compartment of the second carriage, plunging it into darkness. When the special reaches the end of its journey, the passengers pour out on to the station platform. There are almost 60 of them in all, laughing and jostling.

Richard Temperley arrives at Euston station early on a fogbound London morning. He takes refuge in a nearby hotel, along with a disagreeable fellow passenger who had snored his way through the train journey. But within minutes the other man has snored for the last time - he has been shot dead while sleeping in an armchair. When the police arrive, Detective Inspector James discovers a token at the crime scene: 'a small piece of enamelled metal. Its colour was crimson, and it was in the shape of the letter Z'.

Winter 1795. Lieutenant John Pearce, reckoning to have finally ditched his old enemy, Admiral Hotham, has found a new one in Henry Digby, previously a friend. Meanwhile, Pearce's pregnant and recently widowed lover is adamant they cannot be seen together for the sake of their unborn child as she seeks respectability in society. Aboard HMS Flirt as part of the squadron led by Horatio Nelson, Pearce and his Pelicans soon join them on a reconnaissance which results in the destruction of a key French battery.

The House at Old Vine is the second in a trilogy of novels by Norah Lofts about the inhabitants of a Suffolk house from the late 14th century to the middle of the 20th.

Covering the turbulent years of 1496 to 1680, it follows six generations of the descendants of Martin Reed, who founded the "House" dynasty through his act of rebellion in The Town House, through persecution, war, and revolution, from the era of Christopher Columbus to the Restoration of Charles II.

Following a mysterious explosion, the offices of Excelsior Joinery Company are no more; the three directors are killed and the peace of a quiet town in Surrey lies in ruins. When the supposed cause of an ignited gas leak is dismissed and the presence of dynamite revealed, Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is summoned to the scene. But beneath the sleepy veneer of Evingden lies a hotbed of deep-seated grievances. Confounding Littlejohn's investigation is an impressive cast of suspicious persons, each concealing their own ax to grind.

When Ellie Roberts inherits a cottage on a remote Scilly Isle, she's shocked. She's never heard of the previous owner, Patience Ellis, so why did she leave Ellie her legacy? Overwhelmed with unanswered questions, Ellie travels to the isolated island. The house feels strangely familiar, and she has a memory of her beloved mother in the window seat overlooking the sea. The mother she lost when she was only a child. Determined to find out more, Ellie meets enigmatic local Branok Shore.

For the most part, the dead man received public sympathy. A decent, hardworking chap, with not an enemy anywhere. People were surprised that anybody should want to kill Jim. But Jim has been drowned in the Dumb River, near Ely, miles from his Yorkshire home. His body has been discovered before the killer intended – disturbed by a torrential flood. It's up to Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard to trace the mystery of the murder to its source, leaving waves of scandal and sensation in his wake.

December 1860. Headed for the morning shift at the Swindon Locomotive Works is an army of men pouring out of terraced houses built by the GWR, a miniature town and planned community that aims to provide for its employees from cradle to grave. Unfortunately, boilersmith Frank Rodman is headed for the grave sooner than he'd expected, or he will be once his missing head is found. Colbeck, the Railway Detective, finds his investigation into Rodman's murder mired in contradictions.

The Season is in full swing with parties nearly every night and Fanny is enjoying every moment. Then John Shaw comes to town on business and loses his heart to her. He sets about his wooing without delay and eventually brings his young bride to his farmhouse near the sea. Fanny is unhappy at first. John is hard to understand, and she misses the excitement and glamour of city life and the companionship of her sister. But she struggles hard to become a good farmer's wife and, with the help of a strange old book, learns to manage.