Showing results by narrator "Maggie Mash" in All Categories

Phyllis Kimber's entire future is called into question after her father is killed in Earl Redfern's employ. But the earl knows something about Phyllis that means she will always be looked after. As lady's maid to Martha, Phyllis is the American heiress's only confidant in England: she knows Martha doesn't love the recently widowed Lord Melton, the man Martha's socially ambitious father is determined she marries, but there's another secret - a secret that makes Phyllis give up everything to protect her friend.

The death of her mother in 1813, brings added responsibility to 17-year-old Anna Mason. A self-confident girl, she has to shed her girlhood sooner than she would have expected as she assumes many of her mother's tasks in running the household of Hawkshead Manor. Julian Kirby, a family friend, is entranced by Anna but she doesn't feel she is able to return his affections while her father remains so devastated by his wife's death.

1990, Blackpool. Thirty-three-year-old Helen Burnside is shocked when she learns that her beloved Great Aunt Alice has died of a sudden heart attack, and even more surprised when she is bequeathed her Yorkshire cottage. Although they were close, Alice was an enigmatic figure, estranged from most of her family. What led to the long-held animosity between Alice, her mother, Ada and her sister, Lizzie, and why did she leave Blackpool for Yorkshire all those years ago?

New Year's Eve, 1940: Evie Chase, determined to make a difference to the war effort, joins the ATA, the civilian pilots who ferry Tiger Moths and Spitfires to bases across Britain. Two other women nervously join up: Stella Grainger and Megan Jones. Billeted in a tiny cottage, they must learn to live and work together. Brave, beautiful and fiercely independent, they find romance, confront loss, and forge friendships that will last a lifetime.

Zannah and Adrian are planning a May wedding. But before that they must endure the one thing that happens before all weddings—the meeting of the families. Will the gathering go smoothly? Will they like each other—the slightly bohemian Gratrixes from Cheshire and the wealthy Ashtons from the Home Counties? The meeting will take place on neutral territory, at a lunch party in the home of Zannah's great-aunt Charlotte in London. A mood of festivity and celebration prevails. Then Adrian's stepfather arrives and Zannah's mother turns frighteningly pale and hurries away from the party.

New Year's Day, 2000. Hunters stumble upon a half-circle of dead bodies lying in the snow near a holiday chalet. The judge and commissaire in charge of the investigation have encountered this suicide sect before. In the chalet they find a leather-bound book. The book of The Faith leads them to the composer, Friedrich Grosz, who is connected to every one of the dead. Surely he must be implicated?

In 1972 Elizabeth Romer moved to a farmhouse in Tuscany, where she discovered a life moulded by the past and tasted the simple, sublime flavours of traditional Italian cooking for the first time. Here, she introduces the Cerotti family, who farm one section of the valley, and vividly describes, month by month, the Tuscan year. From January's prosciutto and salami, to cheese-making in March, to threshing the corn in high summer, to the game and chanterelles of autumn and the chestnut woods of November and December.

Eighty-two-year-old Nettie still hears the occasional gossiping, but most have forgotten what she did. Now, living alone in a run-down farmhouse, she surrounds herself with memories of her late husband and estranged daughter, Catherine. When Catherine's friend James appears out of the blue, Nettie is grateful for the company and keen to learn more about her daughter. But soon James starts asking Nettie questions she doesn't want to answer, about some things she can't remember and others she's tried to forget.

From the internationally best-selling author of A Woman of Substance. Three generations of beautiful women and their journeys from rags to riches. Audra is an impoverished children's nanny from Leeds who sacrificed everything for her daughter. Christina is a talented art student who won world renown as a fashion designer - yet who has known heartache. Kyle is a rebellious young woman who chafes against her mother's success - and in whom her grandmother's spirit of duty and sacrifice is reborn.

In England in the 1930s, eighteen-year-old Helen Carstairs braves the prejudice of friends and family to marry Heine, a young German photographer who has fled the growing horror of the Nazis. But the storm clouds are gathering in Europe. When fighting breaks out Heine is interned, their small son is evacuated and Helen is left to face the Blitz alone. And the agony of war threatens to divide a family already tormented by conflicting passions of loyalty, shame, betrayal - and love.

Previously published as Sisters of Fortune. Sophie and Rosa Moran are born into a working-class family struggling to rise above poverty. Their father is a lowly employee at Thackreys' Bank, a powerful family-run concern. Sophie and her sister first come into contact with the Thackrey family - especially young Lydia - as children through their father's job. In spite of the social differences between them, they form an enduring friendship.

Nancy de Freitas is the glue that holds her family together. Caught between her ageing, ailing mother, Frances, and her struggling daughter, Louise, a frequent user of Nancy's babysitting services, it seems Nancy's fate is to quietly go on shouldering the burden of responsibility for all four generations. Her divorce four years ago put paid to any thoughts of a partner to share her later years with. Now it looks like her family is all she has. Then she meets Jim.

In working-class Leeds in the 1920s, Jess is starting on her journey through life. Growing up in the aftermath of the Great War, she is torn between her downtrodden father and her cantankerous, ambitious mother. After a disastrous spell as housekeeper to the local priest, she works happily in the office of her uncle's shoe factory and falls in love with her childhood sweetheart, Wilf.

Annie Delancey is happily married, in her early 50s, with three grown children. But Annie guards a secret. At age 19 she had a baby boy and gave him up for adoption. She still thinks of him every day. One day she receives a letter from Kent Social Services; her son, Daniel, wants to make contact. A part of her is overjoyed - she longs to meet him. But another part fears what this revelation will do to her family, none of who know about her past.

Berlin 1941. Marie Jalowicz Simon, a 19-year-old Jewish woman, makes an extraordinary decision. All around her Jews are being rounded up for deportation, forced labour and extermination. Marie takes off her yellow star and vanishes into the city. Always on the move, never certain who could be trusted and how far, her quick-witted determination and the most amazing and hair-raising strokes of luck ensured her survival.

Luke Livingstone is a respected solicitor, a father and grandfather, a pillar of the community. Yet Luke is struggling with an unbearable secret, and it's threatening to destroy him. All his life, Luke has hidden the truth about himself and his identity. It's a truth so fundamental that it will shatter his family and leave him outcast. But to continue living, he must become the person - the woman - he knows himself to be, whatever the cost.

In the middle of a rainy Swedish summer, a little girl is abducted from a crowded train. Despite hundreds of potential witnesses, no one noticed when the girl was taken. Her mother, left behind at the previous station, alerted the crew immediately. But as the train pulled into Stockholm Central Station, the girl was nowhere to be seen.

A captivating story of two young women, bound together by the tragedy of two very different wars. Perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Maureen Lee. With the end of the First World War, Rose is looking forward to welcoming home her beloved husband ,Alfie, from the battlefields. But his return is not what Rose had expected. Traumatised by what he has seen, the Alfie who comes home is a different man to the one Rose married. As he struggles to cope with life in peacetime.

The spy novel that anticipated the Snowden revelations. Carina Dymek is on a fast track for promotion at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when she is approached by a stranger and given a USB stick containing a report to circulate in her department. Unwittingly, she delivers a time bomb of classified information that sends her career up in flames and puts her on the radar of the security service,

With grey post-WWII skies hanging low over Britain, factories lining the streets and smoke stacks dotting the horizon, there was one way that ordinary families could escape: The ever-cheerful holiday camps of Butlin's. Rich in period detail and highly evocative, Wish You Were Here! follows the lives of seven of the camps' key figures through the highs and lows of the holiday season: From redcoats searching for stardom to young families who returned year after year, to pensioners who rediscovered an inner youth.