Showing results by narrator "Karen Cass" in All Categories

Viviane de Faitaud has grown up alone at her family’s château, for her father, the Marquis de Valaine, lives at the court of Louis XVI in Versailles. After a hailstorm destroys the château’s orchards, gardens and fields, an ambitious young Welshman, David Stronach, accepts the commission to plan new gardens in the hope of making his name as a landscape designer. However, the love that blossoms between them is doomed: Viviane is betrothed to a duke, and David is forced to leave the property.

Sisters Cleo and Robyn may be close in age but their attitudes to life could not be further apart. While Cleo's a fully-fledged adult with a family, a business and a signature scent, Robyn is still waiting for the instruction manual to Adult Life and success is keeping her houseplant alive. Skating by at her job as an estate agent, she's adept at avoiding housework, ignoring admin, and evading her mother's anxious questions about her love life. But then Robyn's fired in the most publicly humiliating way imaginable - and her chaos catches up with her.

Ned Parker has spent years restoring his family’s fortunes, leaving no time for courting. Now childhood friend and self-appointed matchmaker Isobel has decided to transform this “scruffy brute” into an eligible gentleman. Though he has no interest in rejoining society, Ned senses Izzy needs the distraction and reluctantly goes along with her plans. Despite their differing views, a surprising new attraction grows…but Ned’s doing his best to avoid it!

Orphaned young, H is sent to live with her doting aunt in London. H’s life is a happy one until her lecherous cousin robs her of her innocence and the plague takes away the city and the people she loves. H is cast out – friendless, pregnant and destitute – into the rapidly emptying streets of London under quarantine. Forced to fend for herself, she is determined to gain back the life she lost. H will face a villain out for revenge, find love in the most unexpected places and overcome a betrayal that she never could have foreseen.

The Welsh borders, 1870s. On the cusp of adulthood, Eliza Mace is battling for her independence. Stuck in a crumbling manor house on the fringe of a small town, she is thwarted by powers that conspire to protect, control and deceive her. But when her father goes missing in mysterious circumstances, Eliza’s determination to uncover the truth is unstoppable. Joining forces with the charismatic new police constable, Dafydd Pritchard, she sets out to solve the case, but that’s no easy task. Her father has run up debts in town and beyond, and there are many who bear him a grudge.

Orly, Lenny, Mel and Thea have been best friends since school. But now it is 20 years later and inevitably they have drifted apart. It is Lenny's 40th birthday, plus Orly and Mel need cheered up, so Thea suggests a weekend away at a festival in their hometown. It's a chance for them all to reconnect. But their holiday soon takes a sinister turn, and not all of the friends will leave the festival alive....

Emily Klein doesn’t know she has killed her husband until the day of his funeral. At first, signs point to a tragic accident. Yet, as Emily pieces together the events before his death - events which led to her own memory loss - she begins to suspect that her husband’s death may have been the result of more than a terrible twist of fate.... But the accident is only the beginning. Because while Emily’s physical scars will heal, the trauma of the accident has awakened old ghosts. She hears strange sounds, catches things that can’t possibly be there in the corner of her eye.

Rosie Cooke is “in between”. In between consciousness and oblivion. Life and death. Though some say that when you’re near death your entire life flashes before your eyes, Rosie can’t remember anything at all - not even how she ended up in a coma. At least not at first. Then, something strange starts to happen. Rosie finds herself revisiting scattered moments from her past: a beach vacation, a play rehearsal, the day her brother was born. But why these memories? And what do they mean?

England, 1919: Rose and Ivy board a ship bound for Australia. One is travelling there to marry a man she has never met. One is destined never to arrive. Australia, 2016: Amongst her late-grandmother's possessions, Molly uncovers a photograph of two girls dressed in First World War nurses' uniforms, labelled 'Rose and Ivy 1917', and a letter from her grandmother, asking her to find out what happened to her own mother, Rose, who disappeared in the 1960s.

Spirited, beautiful, and thoroughly unconventional, Prudence Pinsent is a remarkable young woman. One fine morning she sets out for Suffolk to join her cousin Lord Wellende for a few days hunting. On the way Prudence encounters Captain Studde of the coastguard who is pursuing a quarry of his own. Studde is on the trail of a drug smuggling ring that connects Wellende Hall with the cloistered world of Cambridge.

From relics of Georgian empire-building and slave-trading, through Victorian London's barged-out refuse to 1980s fly-tipping and the pervasiveness of present-day plastics, Rag and Bone traces the story of our rubbish, and through it, our history of consumption.

Everyone thinks Lexi is crazy when she falls in love with Hollingsworth House, a crumbling old Georgian mansion in Yorkshire – and nobody more so than her husband, Dylan. But there’s something very special about the place, and Lexi can sense it. Whilst exploring the grounds, she stumbles across an old diary, and within its pages she meets Allie, an Australian nurse who worked in France during the First World War. Lexi finally realises her dream of buying Hollingsworth, but her obsession with the house leaves her marriage in tatters.

When the bohemian, sophisticated Innes Kent turns up by chance on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life for herself, with Innes at her side. In the present day, Elina and Ted are reeling from the difficult birth of their first child.

They say I'm a murderer. Six years ago, Kate Reynolds was found holding the body of her best friend, covered in blood, and clutching the knife that killed her. I plead guilty. Kate has been in prison ever since, but now her sentence is up. She is being released. But the truth is, I didn't do it. There's only one person who can help: Private Investigator Madison Attallee, the first officer on the scene all those years ago. But there's someone out there who doesn't want Kate digging up the past.

Italy, 1935. Alessandra Durante is grieving the loss of her husband when she discovers she has inherited her ancestral family home, Villa Durante, deep in the Tuscan Hills. The terms of the will are that she must live in the Villa Durante for at least 12 months, so, longing for a new start, she moves to Italy and sets about rebuilding her life. But the shadow of war hangs heavy over the Tuscan hills, and life will never be the same again.

Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and - on the brink of 40 - living a limited existence with her truculent mother: a small life from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young Swiss woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys.

Ruby has finished with university and is heading home for the holidays to save up for her trip around the world in January. Against her father’s wishes, she takes on a stall at the local market and sets about making it the best Christmas market stall ever. There’ll be bunting and mistletoe and maybe even a bit of mulled wine. But with a new retail park just opened on their doorstep, the market is under threat. So together with all the other stallholders, Ruby devises a plan to make sure that Wynbridge is the first port of call for everyone’s Christmas shopping needs.

Art expert Emma Lindhal is anxious when she's asked to appraise the antiques in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden's wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found. As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants. When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate.

Juliet has returned to the Isle of Wight from years abroad to visit her sick father and to be reunited with her three sisters - Cassie, a professional musician who seems to have lost her way in life; Mira, who is profoundly deaf, is married to the local vicar but their relationship is falling apart, and Rosalind, glamorous and charming but now deeply unhappy and secretive about her life. As Juliet’s father lies dying, he issues her with a warning. There is a killer on the loose, and they may be closer than she can ever imagine.

Recently widowed, Charlotte Pennyworth is relishing her independence and it rankles to have to rely on a man to help her with a sinister stalker. Former Yardman, Elliot Baker, is reluctant to take on Charlotte''s case but despite himself and his history with another woman, he is drawn to the bright, attractive widow. Sparks smolder between the PI and his client but neither is looking to form an attachment. Elliot thinks Charlotte is hiding something. Charlotte has no desire to marry again, especially to a private investigator, no matter how handsome, brave and kind he is.