Showing results by publisher "Isis Publishing Ltd" in Literature & Fiction

Lennox is a troubled teenager with no family. Ava is eight months pregnant and fleeing her abusive husband. Heather is a grieving mother and cancer sufferer. They don't know each other, but when a meteor streaks over Edinburgh, all three suffer instant, catastrophic strokes...only to wake up the following day in hospital, miraculously recovered. When news reaches them of an octopus-like creature washed up on the shore near where the meteor came to earth, Lennox senses that some extra-terrestrial force is at play.

In March 1940 Laura boards a ship and travels through the torpedoed waters of the Mediterranean to chase after Harry whom she has fallen in love with. He was out in Uganda, but has joined up to fight with the King's African Rifles. Will she succeed in her quest? Strong-willed and proudly independent, she has many dramatic life-changing upheavals to face on the way to Uganda and beyond. Love at War is based on a true story, the loves, dramas and losses of a resourceful, exceptional girl.

At the age of 32, Richard the Lionheart has finally succeeded Henry II to the English throne. And, against his father’s wishes, he intends to make Berengaria, daughter of the King of Navarre, his Queen. But first he must fulfil his vow to his country to win back Jerusalem for the Christian world. Leaving England to begin his crusade, Richard entrusts his kingdom to his brother, John, who casts covetous eyes on the crown, and his sister, Joanna, who is willing to defy even a king.

On the morning of 20 June 1837, an 18-year-old girl is called from her bed to be told that she is Queen of England. The young queen’s first few years are beset with court scandal and malicious gossip: There is the unsavoury Flora Hastings affair, a source of extreme embarrassment to the queen; the eternal conflict between Victoria and her mother; and the young queen’s hatred for Sir John Conroy, her mother’s close friend. Then there is the Prime Minster, Lord Melbourne - "Lord M" - worldly cynic and constant companion to the queen, himself a veteran of many a latter-day scandal.

George Worth is a grumpy lifestyle columnist. He hates fashion, mobile phones, computers and Young People. At night he goes home to a borrowed Labrador and feelings of guilt about his dead wife. Justin Smith is a Young Person. A bright newcomer, he’s always on his mobile to his girlfriend, surfing the Net and keeping abreast of the latest trends. Then comes the day when Justin’s girlfriend throws him out and he finds himself having to share a flat with George. As the women around them watch and wonder, both men start to work out what really matters among the distractions of modern life.

Anna Kennedy loves her career. A young associate with a top media law firm, she’s the lawyer to the stars, hiding their sins from the hungry media. When Anna fails to prevent a damaging story being printed about heart-throb movie star Sam Charles, she finds herself fighting to save not only his reputation, but also her own. But Anna is about to uncover a scandal more explosive than even Sam’s infidelities. A party girl is already dead and those responsible are prepared to silence anyone who stands in their way.

It’s the perfect wedding: tropical sunshine, glamorous guests, a beautiful bride and a handsome Hollywood millionaire. But the day is about to take a shocking turn. Lisa Costello has all the expensive clothes and exotic vacations that come with dating a rich man. But her relationship with Josh Steen is a sham. Yet nothing could have prepared Lisa for the morning after their decadent wedding in Thailand. Josh is dead – and it looks like Lisa killed him.

Daisy Lane is battling to keep her family together. About to be released from prison, her oldest son Eddie is desperate to escape his past. But Eddie soon discovers that giving up the life of a gangster isn’t going to be easy. Daisy’s youngest son Jamie is determined to step out from under the shadow of his older brother and make a name for himself. And when Jamie gets wind of his brother’s plan to pull off a heist, his involvement threatens to be Eddie’s undoing.

Worn down by a job he hates and a stressful family life, middle-aged, middle-class Bradley picks up a teenage escort and commits an unspeakable crime. Now she's tied up in his warehouse and he doesn't know what to do. Max is homeless, sleeping rough and barely existing - known for cadging a cigarette from anyone passing and occasionally even the footpath. Nobody really sees Max - but he has one friend, and she's gone missing. In order to find her, Max is going to have to call on some people from his past and reopen wounds that have remained unhealed for a very long time.

Once upon a time in what was then reasonably Great Britain, there was a world in which the not too serious business of politics was practised without those people known today, nonsensically, as spin doctors, and without whispers against those who were supposed to be friends, but who were in fact blockages on the ladder of ambition. This audiobook is a wistful recollection of those days. None of it actually happened. But it would be nice to think that it might have.

It's 1666. The Great Plague has passed. Londoners celebrate survival in different ways. They drink. They gamble. They indulge in carnal delights. But 666 is the number of the Beast, the year foretold when Christ will return. A gang of fanatics - the Saints - choose to hasten that prophesied day. They will kidnap, rape, murder. Above all they will kill a king. Two men - the highwayman William Coke and the thief-taker Pitman - are recruited to stop them.

Chief Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud's wife is found dead in front of the fireplace in the family living room. The cause of death is instantly apparent – she has been brutally decapitated. Halvorsrud immediately falls under suspicion. Then a journalist at one of Oslo's largest newspapers is found beheaded. What links these two horrifically violent crimes?

February 1941. The world is at war, and Joyce Cooper is doing her bit for the war effort. But as the Blitz takes hold of London, Joyce is called upon to plot the devastation that follows in its wake. Night after night, she must stand before her map and mark the trail of loss and suffering inflicted upon the homes, families and businesses she knows so well. February 1974. Decades later, from her basement flat, Joyce watches the world go by above her head.

At 44, loyal English wife Lara Winters discovers that Brock, her husband of 21 years, has been cheating on her. Devastated, desperate, she flees her home in London and heads for the farthest place she can imagine from her old, blinkered life. She escapes to Byron Bay, Australia. On her first day in the laid-back town, Lara almost runs over the red-haired, slightly raddled Ruby in the car park. Relieved to be still alive, the warm-hearted Aussie leases Lara a small cottage on her semi-rural property where Lara’s adventures of self-discovery begin.

When Australian expat Simone moves to London to start a career, getting pregnant is not on her agenda. But she's excited to start a new life with her baby and determined to be a good mother. Even though her boyfriend Paul's cold and grey apartment in the Barbican Estate seems completely ill-suited for a baby. Even though Simone and Paul have only known each other for a year. Even though she feels utterly unprepared for motherhood. The arrival of Paul's cousin, Rachel, in the flat should be a godsend.

News of Thomas à Becket’s martyrdom has spread throughout Christendom, and the blame is laid at the feet of Henry Plantagenet, King of England. Two years later, with Becket canonised, Henry’s position is precarious: punished at the Pope’s insistence for his part in Becket’s death, he now also has an enemy in his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, after her discovery of his longstanding infidelity with Rosamund Clifford.

Five women, best friends for decades, meet once a month to talk about books...and life, love and the jagged bits in between. Dissecting each other's lives seems the most natural thing in the world - and honesty, no matter how brutal, is something they treasure. But each woman harbours a complex secret, and one weekend, without warning, everything comes unstuck. Izzy has to make a decision that will change everything whilst Veronica, recently divorced and dedicated to raising the best sons in the world, has forgotten who she is.

Disgraced former Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago and his larger-than-life employer the journalist William Philpott have escaped America - and Philpott's near imprisonment for libel - by the skin of their teeth. They return to Laurence's home town of Helston in Cornwall in the hope of rest and recuperation, but instead find themselves in the middle of a tumultuous election. Only two men may vote in this rotten borough, and when one of them dies in suspicious circumstances, Laurence is ordered to investigate on behalf of the town's political patron, his old master the Duke of Leeds.

A short story from the British Library Crime Classic collection Final Acts. A cabaret act sees thirteen knives thrown to outline Jean La Morse's body; if he moves when the thirteenth is thrown above his head, he will likely die. With plenty of men vying for the hand of the woman he loves, the act is becoming more and more dangerous...

Someone had once told Emma Molinero, the daughter of an itinerant carnival performer, that she was made for trouble. Her earliest memories were of life with a travelling show - part fair and part circus - that toured the shires at the dawn of the Victorian era. But at the age of seven she found herself an orphan who, in accordance with her Spanish father's dying wishes, must now leave the warm and friendly community to live with an unknown English grandmother far to the north in County Durham. With her she took the whips and knives used with such dexterity by her father for his act.