Showing results by narrator "Anne Dover" in All Categories

One Of The Old Guard focuses on a small rural community as anxious lovers, parents, grandparents and children wait for loved ones to return home from the front.

Tilly Trotter has devotedly served Mark Sopwith at Highfield Manor for twelve years. She is his wife in all but name. Theirs is a scandalous yet happy arrangement. But when Mark dies, Tilly is left pregnant with his illegitimate child. Cast out of the manor house by Mark's spiteful grown-up daughter, Tilly is forced to face the prejudices of the local village. No stranger to hardship, she makes do as best she can, but when a villager's vicious attack leaves her baby son, Willy, half blinded, she knows that it is time to leave her native Tyneside.

York, 1879. Greta Costello must rely on her wits to survive. She finds refuge as a Saturday girl for an old jeweler, Saul Abrahams, and her eye for detail, her long fingers, and her appreciation of beauty persuade Saul to train her as a pearl stringer. This skill will lead her through hardship and pain toward a new life. Scotland, 1879. Jem Baillie knows the immense power of a perfect pearl. His father was a fisher on a tributary of the Tay River in Perthshire, Scotland, and together they found the rarest of pearls, a great white pearl they call Queenie.

Dympna Byrne lives a simple life with her family on the Connemara coast. She adores her father Micheál, and does her best to help her family by working hard and expecting little. But beneath the surface there are hidden secrets. Dympna’s mother idolises her clever eldest son, yet her attitude to Dympna is puzzling. So when her family find themselves in desperate need of money, it is Dympna who crosses the water to Liverpool to seek a better life.

Orphaned and destitute, will Grace find her own way in the world? When Grace's Ma passes away and her Da's ship sinks with all hands, Grace is utterly alone in the world. She's sent to an orphanage in Blackpool, but the master has an eye for a pretty young lass. Grace won't be his victim, so she runs, destitute, into the night. In Blackpool, she finds a home with the kindly Sheila and Peggy - and meets a lovely airman. But it's 1938, and war is on the horizon. Will Grace ever find the happiness and home she deserves?

Val Neyler, driving an ambulance through the blazing heart of London, is in an impossible position, for the man she loves is a fighter pilot with the Luftwaffe. And Jenny, whose husband, Simon, is flying Spitfires, finds herself working as a landgirl on a Devon farm. Cara, by contrast, develops her social life, and Maude, in the WAAF, falls in love with two men at once.... And Tina, matriarch of the family, loves them all, scolds them all, and tries to understand the new generation growing up in the troubled times of war.

Living on the edge of the beautiful Norfolk Broads with her father, the only ripple in Tess Delamere's calm life is the disturbing dream about her dead mother which haunts her. She yearns to know more, but the arrival of a new stepmother heralds the end of Tess' hopes that her father might divulge the past. As she grows up, Tess slowly starts to put together the pieces herself. But the outbreak of war brings tragedy and upheaval, changing Tess' priorities....

Harriet and Fletcher Tuke have worked hard to raise their children well. Daniel, the eldest son, has always accepted that his birth father died soon after he was born, and Fletcher has raised Daniel as his own. But as Daniel comes of age and begins to fall in love with childhood friend Beatrice Hart, he can’t help but wonder about his heritage – his olive skin and dark eyes reminding him daily of the difference between him and his siblings, and between his and Beatrice’s families.

Marianne seems to have everything. She is married to a handsome Naval officer, Neil Sheridan. They have a daughter, Libby, and a beautiful home near Prince's Park in Liverpool. When war comes, Marianne takes war work and moves in with her mother, Mrs Wainwright, and younger sister. Neil disapproves because the Wainwrights live close to the docks, which are bound to be a bombing target, but Marianne is firm.

Roddy Greenbank was brought by his father to the remote Northumberland community of Langley in the autumn of 1807. Within hours of their arrival, however, the father meets a violent death and the boy is left with all memory of his past life gone. Adopted and raised by old Kate Makepeace, Roddy found his closest companions in Hal Roystan and Mary Ellen Lee. These three stand at the heart of a richly eventful narrative that spans the first half of the 19th century, their lives lastingly intertwined by the inexorable demands of a strange and somewhat cruel destiny.

Ellie is a sweet-natured brunette, generous of heart with a sparkling smile and an accent that reveals her East End background. Bonny is beautiful and spoilt, with cascades of blond hair, the brightest pair of blue eyes and a mouth like Cupid's bow. The two girls meet in London at the end of the war when, seduced and abandoned by two American airmen, they pool their wits and resources and set off to make a living on the stage.

1930, Yorkshire. Intrigued by a mysterious letter from a stranger offering important information, private investigator Kate Shackleton arrives in the mill village of Saltaire. At nearby Milner Field mansion, overshadowed by its reputation for misfortune and untimely deaths, she expects to meet the letter writer, Ronnie Creswell. Kate soon hears the shocking news that Ronnie has been killed. At first his death appears to be a tragic accident at the mill, but soon it becomes clear that Ronnie's demise was no mishap.

Twenty-one years have passed since Charlotte Booth fought to keep Ferndale Mill and her home at Windfell Manor following her traumatic first marriage. Now, highly regarded in local society and happily married to her childhood sweetheart, Archie Atkinson, she seeks only the best for their children, Isabelle and Danny. But history has a habit of repeating itself, and Danny's head is turned by a local girl of ill repute, despite his promise of marriage to the far more respectable Harriet Armstrong.

Emmy Dickens lives with her widowed mother in a neat house in neglected Nightingale Court, but Mrs Dickens has always impressed upon her daughter that her main aim in life must be to escape from the court. Emmy sees that marriage is her best way out, and when Peter Wesley, First Officer aboard a cruise ship, asks her to marry him, she is over the moon. Life goes well for the newlyweds; they set up home and start a family. But when Peter is killed and Emmy is left almost penniless, her problems begin....

Rose Pritchard and her seven-year-old daughter Maddie have left everything behind to come to the village of Millthwaite, Cumbria, in search of the person who once offered Rose hope. Almost immediately Rose wonders if she's chasing a dream - but she knows in her heart that she cannot go back. She's been given a second chance - at life, and love - but will she have the courage to take it?

As a longstanding fan of best-selling author Jivan Childering, aspiring young novelist Jessica Lord is dismayed on encountering the man himself to find him standoffish. But, some months later, many thousands of miles away in Western Australia, Jessica's path is destined to cross with Jivan's once more, and she begins to see a different side to this talented yet reserved and private man. For his part, Jivan finds himself increasingly drawn to the unpretentious Jessica and impressed by her single-minded determination to follow her dreams.

As the worst storm of the century breaks across the Northwest, sweeping through Snowdonia and across the Mersey to burst upon Liverpool, two women, Molly and Ellen, give birth to girls in a Liverpool maternity hospital. Molly lives on a hill farm in Snowdonia while Ellen is married to Sam O'Mara, a dock worker who is quicker with a punch than a kiss. After one punch too many, Ellen throws her husband out and eventually leaves Liverpool to live with Molly. Ellen and her daughter throw themselves into their new life with enthusiasm, unaware that they are being watched by someone hiding in a ruined cottage.

In the drab Yorkshire town of Garsthwaite, Lacey Barraclough works hard in the textile mill, determined to fight for improvements to the dismal working conditions. But she hadn't reckoned on falling in love with the boss' son, Nathan. Before Nathan and Lacey can make a life together, World War I breaks out and Nathan enlists to fight. When Nathan heads off to the Front, Lucy must find a new way to face the future. As hard times come to Garsthwaite, will there be a home for the returning heroes to come back to?

High above the Mediterranean, on the French Riviera, stands a beautiful pink stucco villa. Once a playground for the rich and glamorous, now—in the aftermath of World War I—it is a convalescent home for sick and wounded nurses. Scottish Flora Garvie is here recovering from four traumatic years on the ambulance trains. And here she will meet again charismatic but troubled Kit Carlyle, a regimental chaplain who no longer believes in his calling and certainly doesn't believe himself worthy of Flora's love.

Hull, 1874. Clara had always wondered about the beautiful, mysterious Jewel Newmarch, who was adopted as a baby and turns heads wherever she goes - her exotic looks point to her origins far away from the streets of Hull. Even at her twin sister Elizabeth’s wedding, Clara knows that Jewel is the belle of the ball. And as Jewel looks on at the happy, newly-married couple she feels a restlessness and intense longing to know her own roots.