Showing results by publisher "Soundings" in All Categories

Fisher College at Cambridge lies between St John’s and Trinity Colleges. Here one morning the bed makers and gyps, clamouring for admission on the last day of term were admitted to find, lying across the path, the body of one of the College porters. The murder of the porter begins a mystery which deepens when it is found that the unpopular Dean of the college is missing.

It is 1900, and Adeline Warburton and Arnold Haslington have fallen deeply in love. But though both are from wealthy families, their social status is too far apart for their families to approve of the match. And when Arnold marries another, Adeline’s reaction is immediate and altogether unexpected, as she travels to make a new life in China. But although they are separated by thousands of miles, the consequences of their youthful passion continue to haunt them and their children - Addy’s daughter, Nala, and Arnold’s son, Philip. As the years pass and the children grow, violent forces are set to bring them together, unaware of the secrets from the past that bind them.

1817. Dawn breaks on a summer's day in Chalk Farm, London, and the scene is set for a duel between a lady's two ardent admirers. Paul Skillen has been teaching Mark Bowerman how to shoot properly and, although he is not sanguine of his chances, stands as his second. Although the duel is broken up, the passions behind the duel seem to spill out into the full light of day when one of the two duellists is found dead, shot between the eyes.

The year is 1652. General George Monck has been through an awful lot since he sat as a prisoner in the Tower of London eight years before. He had led his men admirably through campaigns in Ireland and Scotland, but still storm clouds surround his future. He had been away from his beloved Anne for many months and had come to London to find whether Ratsford was alive, and still proving to be an obstacle to their proposed marriage, or dead.

Peter Maxwell didn't want to attend the GNVQ course. He didn't want to get mixed up in murder either - but perhaps it was all part of death's rich tapestry. And while a disparate gathering of teachers was breaking ice upstairs at the Carnforth Centre, someone else was in the basement - breaking skulls. But what the killer couldn't have foreseen was that one of the victims was an old flame of Maxwell's. So now it was personal. And when 'Mad Max' takes something personally, he doesn't get madder - he gets results.

During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces launched their first-ever round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. The aim was to smash the main factories and production centres of the Luftwaffe and draw the German fighter force up into the air and into battle. Officially called Operation ARGUMENT, this monumental air assault very quickly became known simply as Big Week.

Karen Slocombe isn’t sure why she visited SuperFare that day - as a committed member of the Food Chain group and a regular stallholder at local farmers’ markets, it’s a place she would normally avoid. Luckily for Karen, she leaves moments before a bomb explodes. Only a few days later, Karen finds herself in the midst of another horrific crime. When friends from the Food Chain group start warning Karen not to tell the police certain details, her suspicions are instantly aroused. Could the two events be linked?

After a traumatic event that almost ripped Jen Garner’s family apart, life is finally starting to get back to normal. Then a woman’s body is found in the river. Shortly afterwards, a young boy is discovered wandering the streets. He refuses to speak to anyone, just repeats one name over and over, to the confusion of most of the local authorities - but Jen knows exactly who he’s asking for, and it’s enough to make her blood run cold....

No turkey. No fruit to make a decent pudding. No money for presents. Your children away from home; your husband, father and brothers off fighting. How in the world does one celebrate Christmas? That was the situation facing the people of Britain for six years during the Second World War. From the family whose dog ate the Christmas roast, leaving them to enjoy “Spam with all the trimmings”, to the exhibition of handmade toys for children in a Singapore prison camp, these firsthand stories are by turns tragic, poignant and funny.

Nell has come to feel very at home in her beautiful corner of Wiltshire with her partner, Angus. What she could do with, however, is a challenge, and the prospect of bringing life back to an abandoned row of houses, Saffron Lane, is just what she’s looking for. Stacy, lost and alone after a divorce she didn’t see coming, is trying her best to start over. And Elise, battling her nieces who would force her into residential care, longs for a home where she can get back to her painting. When their paths cross, the future starts to look brighter - although not all goes according to plan.

The Second World War is dominated by heroic tales of men defending their country against a formidable enemy, but what about the women who also played their parts in fighting for freedom? Eileen Younghusband was just 18 when she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). She quickly demonstrated her keen intellect and mathematical skills, playing a crucial role in Fighter Command's underground Filter Room.

Winter has arrived in the town of Windermere and has brought with it the death of Frances Henderson, the best friend of Persimmon 'Simmy' Brown's mother. Simmy must cope with the loss of an important figure from her childhood as well as the confusion at being bequeathed something in Frances' will. When Frances' husband is violently murdered, Simmy must face the fact that the family she was once so close to as a child holds some dark secrets.

The colliery village of Bellingsworth is already divided over an impending strike, so the last thing it needs is a murder - but that's exactly what it gets, when a retired miner called Len Hopkins is found battered to death in his outside lavatory. Detective Chief Inspector Monika Paniatowski, called in to track down the killer with all possible speed, finds herself working in an atmosphere as thick with suspicion and distrust as the mine is with coal dust.

Devastated when her wedding is called off and an injury ruins her career as a violinist, Amber escapes to her parents' holiday home on a beautiful windswept island. The charming cottage is falling apart, and Amber loses herself in the renovations. But then she meets Kai, a seriously ill young boy who loves music. Amber is determined to help him, and as she teaches him to play, she can feel herself coming back to life.

In the house of a Roman Catholic bishop a man lies in a pool of blood. Out in the bishop’s diocese the quiet life of parish priest Father Vincent Ross is about to be thrown into turmoil by a terrifying revelation. There are ugly scandals being hidden by the church, and a murderer is on the prowl. The police and the authorities are groping in the dark, but Father Ross has been given special information that he cannot disclose to anyone.

A middle-aged man jumps under a tube train at Shepherd's Bush station, and a teenage girl is killed in a hit-and-run in a country lane puzzlingly far from her home on the White City Estate: two unrelated incidents which occupy DCI Bill Slider and his team during a slack period. At least it's a change of speed after the grind of domestics, burglaries and Community Liaison. But links to a cold case - another dead teenager, pulled out of the River Thames - create doubts as to whether they are indeed unrelated.

Abigail Beadle has given two decades of her life to caring for her late father and looking after the centuries-old family home. She has never married because Lucas Chadwick, the man she loved when she was young, left the village with his family. When her loathed stepmother dies, Abigail is glad to be released from the woman's nagging and bullying, but the will she left casts doubt on Abigail's inheritance. It is not until Lucas returns to the village and helps to get to the bottom of the complicated situation that Abigail begins to believe her life might be able to start at last.

1324: a disastrous autumn looms large. As the leaves begin to fall there are those who wish to bring the kingdom down as well. In Dartmouth, a man is found lying dead in the road. Dismissing his death as a drunken accident, the locals turn their attentions to more worrying matters - piracy. Rumours abound that spies are being sent to the great traitor Roger Mortimer. If this is true, civil war in England is inevitable. The kingdom’s most powerful and ruthless men demand that Sir Baldwin de Furnshill and Bailiff Simon Puttock uncover the truth, and quickly.

1787. Captain Edward Brazier is wounded and in desperate need of medical attention, but those from whom he could seek help have no idea where he is - although neither do his enemies. With his beloved Betsey currently imprisoned by her brother Henry, who is considering committing her to an asylum to take her off his hands, time is running out for Brazier to rescue her and end the tyranny of the local smuggling ring of Deal once and for all.

Winter 1644, the Tower of London. Colonel George Monck has been charged with high treason. A brilliant soldier, admiral and military governor, Monck joined the King's men in besieging Nantwich. But the Parliamentary side's more disciplined army successfully routed them, and Monck was thrown in jail. Brooding and despondent, Monck's troubles look to intensify when he starts an affair with Anne Ratsford, a married woman who is caring for him in The Tower.