Showing results by narrator "Cathleen McCarron" in All Categories

Dr Will Raven is a man seldom shocked by human remains, but even he is disturbed by the contents of a package washed up at the Port of Leith. Stranger still, a man Raven has long detested is pleading for his help to escape the hangman. Back in the townhouse of Dr James Simpson, Sarah Fisher has set her sights on learning to practise medicine. Almost everyone seems intent on dissuading her from this ambition, but when word reaches her that a woman has recently obtained a medical degree despite her gender, Sarah decides to seek her out.

Lauren and her father, Niall, live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she’s gone. In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren’s mother a decade ago.

You know that ‘till death do us part’ bit in the wedding vows? Well Zoe Dalton believed it. She walked up the aisle thinking that she was strolling to her happy ever after. One month later, her heart is in pieces, she’s returning the wedding gifts and there’s a husband-shaped space next to her in bed. He’s gone, after Zoe discovered a devastating secret. But Zoe has lost so much more than her marriage. Her three sisters are not only her siblings, they’re her best friends, too. Now she’s discovered that one of them may have been the reason her husband betrayed her.

When pop megastar Zach Crystal dies in a fire at his remote mansion, his mysterious demise rips open the bitter divide between those who adored his music and his endless charity work, and those who viewed him as a despicable predator who manipulated and abused young and vulnerable girls. Online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the accusations of sexual abuse and murder that were levelled at Crystal before he died. But as Scott begins to ask questions and rake over old graves, some startling inconsistencies emerge.

Follow the path to the freezing north. Follow your ambition. Follow your heart. Flora Mackie first crossed the Arctic Circle at the age of 12. Years later, in 1892, determination and chance lead her back to northern Greenland as a scientist at the head of a British expedition, defying the expectations of those who believe a woman has no place in that harsh world. Geologist Jakob de Beyn was raised in Manhattan. Yearning for wider horizons, he joins a rival expedition.

Mary Shields is a moody, acerbic probation officer dealing with some of Glasgow’s worst cases, and her job is on the line. Liam Macdowall was imprisoned for murdering his wife, and he’s published a series of letters to the dead woman, in a book that makes him an unlikely hero - and a poster boy for Men’s Rights activists. Liam is released on licence into Mary’s care, but things are far from simple. Mary develops a poisonous obsession with Liam and his world, and when her son and Liam’s daughter form a relationship, Mary will stop at nothing to impose her own brand of justice.

1988. The body of Moira Mackie, a St Andrews University student, is found on a clifftop path. Her ex-boyfriend is found days later, hanged in his uncle’s garage with a suicide note confessing that he killed her. The case is abruptly closed. Thirty years later, Ros Maitland has seemingly moved on from the horrific murder of her housemate Moira. Then her daughter takes up a place at the same university, and old demons reawaken. Was Moira murdered in a lover’s quarrel? Or was her death part of something far larger, uglier and more calculated?

When a body is discovered in the remote depths of the Highlands, DCI Karen Pirie finds herself in the right place at the right time. Unearthed with someone's long-buried inheritance, the victim seems to belong to the distant past - until new evidence suggests otherwise, and Karen is called in to unravel a case where nothing is as it seems. It's not long before an overheard conversation draws Karen into the heart of a different case, however - a shocking crime she thought she'd already prevented. As she inches closer to the twisted truths at the centre of these murders, it becomes clear that she's dealing with a version of justice terrifyingly different to her own....

Elvie McCulloch's sister, Sophie, has been missing for 57 days. She went out for a run - and never came home. Several young women in the area have disappeared in similar circumstances, and Elvie's family fears the worst. Teaming up with retired detective Billy Hopkirk, Elvie determines to find out the truth. But as the pair alternately collaborate with and infuriate investigating police detectives Anderson and Costello, they find themselves up against a terrifying enemy. Someone they call The Night Hunter.

1910, Edinburgh. Jessie MacRae has been sent to a tenement building by her recently deceased father to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancee. The harrowing events that follow lead to a curse on the building and its residents—a curse that will last for the rest of the century. Over nine decades, 10 Luckenbooth Close bears witness to emblems of a changing world outside its walls.

Luna Lark used to love her name, but that was before people started saying it differently. Luna doesn't want pity, what she wants is a fresh start. Somewhere she can make headway on her next novel, mend her broken heart and - most importantly - keep herself to herself. For that Luna needs the most remote place she can find: Ondingside, a magical little island off the wild coast of Scotland. And when the town is cut off on her first night by a freak July snowstorm it feels like fate.

Verity is embarking on a better-late-than-never gap year now that her sons have flown the nest, and dreams of turning a lifetime's hobby of knitting and crocheting into a profitable new enterprise at Lerwick Manor's gallery. Nessie has returned to Shetland after two years spent retraining as a blacksmith on the Scottish mainland. She's determined to do whatever it takes to reignite the traditional craft and prove that gender is no obstacle taking on her family's heritage.

Blind since birth, widowed in her 20s, now lonely in her 40s, Marianne Fraser lives in Edinburgh in elegant, angry anonymity with her sister, Louisa, a successful novelist. Marianne's passionate nature finds solace and expression in music, a love she finds she shares with Keir, a man she encounters on her doorstep one winter's night. Whilst Marianne has had her share of men attracted to her because they want to rescue her, Keir makes no concession to her condition.

Investigative journalist Oonagh O'Neil's instincts tell her when a story is worth pursuing. And the death of an elderly priest on the altar of his Glasgow church, just as she is about to expose the shocking truth behind the closure of an infamous Magdalene Institution, tells her a sinister cover up is in play. DI Alec Davies is appointed to investigate the priest's death. He and Oonagh go way back. But now they're united in uncovering not only what happened to the lost babies secretly born in the Institution, but what happened to the young women that survived by vowing loyalty to one another...forever.

Detective Inspector Costello has resigned. No notice, no good-byes. Convinced that George Haggerty murdered his wife and son despite his cast-iron alibi, Costello has gone solo, determined to expose a ruthless killer without being hampered by police protocol. But is she right about Haggerty's guilt? And where has she disappeared to? DCI Colin Anderson has no time to ponder the loss of his partner of 20 years. With a badly beaten body found on a remote mountain pass, a woman with a serious head wound who won't communicate in any way and a substantial pool of blood discovered at the edge of Loch Lomond, Police Scotland have their hands full.

The body is found in the early hours of the morning, drifting lifelessly on the outgoing tide. Twenty-three-year-old medical student Aasha Ariti had been enjoying a night out to celebrate the end of lockdown. Anthony Poole, the last person to have seen her alive, is the prime suspect. Before detectives Anderson and Costello can make further headway, they are pulled off the case to investigate the murder of a pensioner in his own home. The body of 81-year-old Jimmy Pearcey reveals evidence of prolonged, excruciating torture in the hours before he died.

It’s just a normal morning for Anna McDonald. Gym kits, packed lunches, getting everyone up and ready. Until she opens the front door to her best friend, Estelle. Anna turns to see her own husband at the top of the stairs, suitcase in hand. They’re leaving together and they’re taking Anna’s two daughters with them. Left alone in the big, dark house, Anna can’t think, she can’t take it in. With her safe, predictable world shattered, she distracts herself with a story: a true-crime podcast.

Pippa has long felt like the odd one out in her family. Natalia has recently returned to Lerwick, hoping to reconnect with an old flame. Autumn is dedicated to her job in hospitality and relishes her role as general manager of Lerwick Manor's new hotel. No guest request is too big or too small, but her own unrelentingly high standards could push Autumn to her limits. Will the beauty of Shetland help these three women find the friendship, support and healing that they all need?

Glasgow's citizens are in a celebratory mood for the annual West End Festival parade. But beneath the jovial surface lurks something darker. A confused young woman is found wandering among the stilt walkers and jostling crowds, claiming to have been abducted by aliens. Before DCI Anderson and DI Costello can investigate further, a body is discovered, and it becomes horrifyingly clear that a depraved killer has taken advantage of the busiest day of the year to carry out a gruesomely macabre plan.

Flora Mackie first crossed the Arctic Circle at the age of 12. In 1889, the whaler's daughter from Dundee - dubbed by the press as "The Snow Queen" - sets out to become a scientist and explorer. She struggles to be taken seriously, but determination and chance lead her back to northern Greenland at the head of a British expedition, despite the many who believe that a young woman has no place in this harsh world of men.