Showing results by narrator "Karen Cass" in All Categories

Award-winning and critically acclaimed historian Helen Rappaport turns to the tragic story of the daughters of the last Tsar of all the Russias, slaughtered with their parents at Ekaterinburg. On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down 23 steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was 22, the youngest only 17. Together with their parents and their 13-year-old brother, they were all brutally murdered. Their crime: to be the daughters of the last Tsar and Tsaritsa of All the Russias.

Fliss Brown has grown up living with her mother on the Rossi family’s Italian fruit farm. But when her mother dies, Fliss finds out she has a family of her own, and heads back to England with Nonna Rossi’s recipe for cherry and almond tart and a piece of advice: connect with your family before it is too late. Fliss discovers that her estranged grandfather owns a fruit farm himself, on the outskirts of Wynbridge, and she arrives to find a farm that has fallen into disrepair.

After the shocking events of last Christmas, Jess Croft is determined this festive season will be the one to remember, for all the right reasons. But when a stranger turns up on her doorstep claiming to be her estranged father, Jess is shocked. Moreso, when the man claims that the little girl with him is none other than Jess’s sister - a child she knew nothing about. Jess isn’t sure she wants these strangers to stay, but she can’t turn them away, especially when she learns that their lives are in danger.

It was Betty, defiant to the end, who sent Lorna back to Longhampton. If Lorna’s learned one thing from Betty it’s that courage is something you paint on like red lipstick, even when you’re panicking inside. And right now, with the keys to the town’s gallery in her hand, Lorna feels about as courageous as Betty’s anxious little dachshund, trembling beside her. Lorna’s come home to Longhampton to fulfil a long-held dream, but she knows, deep down, there are ghosts she needs to lay to rest first.

The brand-new Christmas romance from the Sunday Times best-selling author Heidi Swain! Perfect for fans of Carole Matthews, Sarah Morgan and Cathy Bramley.

Vera Holme, known as Jack, left a career as a jobbing actress to become Emmeline Pankhurst's chauffeur and mechanic. Evelina Haverfield was a classic beauty, the daughter of a Scottish baron and fourteen years older than Jack. They met in 1909, fell in love, lived together, and became public faces of the suffragette movement, enduring prison and doing everything they could for the cause.

The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is...don't make any afternoon plans.

Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way.

Sitting between her ex-husband and her new lover, Anna is coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy at the age of 40. Also at the table are her ageing grandmother, her promiscuous sister, her flamboyantly gay brother and a memory too terrible to contemplate.

Until, that is, a letter arrives from the person Anna scarred all those years ago. Can Anna reconcile her painful past with her uncertain future?

Juliet Ashton weaves a story of love, friendship and community that will move you to laughter and to tears. Think Cold Feet meets David Nicholls, with a dash of the joy of Jill Mansell added for good measure.

Tiga Whicabim is settling in to the witchy world of Ritzy City. Peggy is Top Witch, and Tiga is enjoying life at the Brews' house with Fluffanora. But when Fran the Fabulous Fairy visits Linden House and finds Peggy has gone, leaving evil Felicity Bat in charge - the girls realise something is very wrong. When witches all across town start to disappear, Tiga and Fluffanora set out to investigate and discover an unsolved mystery that might just be the key to it all.

Seven years after his sister vanished without a trace, Jude is on the road, determined not to return home until he has found her. He wants to reunite his broken family, but more than this he wants to know why Zoe left. They’d been enjoying the funfair - grasping a rare moment of happiness following their parents’ divorce - when after a ride together, Zoe had stopped speaking to her mother’s new partner. Though Mandy believed he was the man she’d waited all her life for, her love for her daughter trumped even that.

Frankie doesn't believe in true love. As relationships expert at popular magazine Stylife, she has learnt that dating disasters are far more common than happy-ever-afters. So when she is tasked to find out if meet cutes can work in real life, she is up for the challenge—but whether it's being a damsel in distress with a flat tyre or spilling coffee over a stranger, she isn't convinced this can really lead to love. But little does Frankie know that the ultimate meet-cute opportunity is just around the corner.

Summer, 1921. Lady Eleanor Swift, the best amateur sleuth in the country, is delighted to be in charge of the prize-giving at her village summer fair. But the traditional homemade raft race takes a tragic turn when the local undertaker, Solemn Jon, turns up dead amongst the ducks. Jon was the life of any party and loved by the entire village. Surely this was simply an awful accident? But when a spiteful obituary is printed in the local paper, Eleanor realizes there may be more to Jon’s death than first thought.

Madeleine Frost knows she has to get away from her partner Liam. His behaviour has become increasingly controlling and Maddie fears for her safety and that of her young daughter Poppy. Desperation leads Maddie to the hotel owned by her estranged father – the extraordinarily beautiful Wrea Head Hall. The reunion is tense, but Maddie’s father agrees to her staying. Maddie’s whereabouts must stay a secret; but as she spends time getting to know her new home, she discovers the house has its own shocking past and secrets of its own. Secrets that could cost her dearly.

The Josephine Tey Collection includes unabridged recordings of Tey's 8 major novels in one audiobook, including all 6 of the novels in the Inspector Alan Grant series.

1937. Katya Komarovsky is studying medicine in Glasgow, living among friends and eager to begin her career as a doctor. But when her spendthrift parents announce that they’ve run out of money and are facing ruin—and that she’ll now have to support them by working as a governess in Vienna—the life she’s dreamed of goes up in smoke. Furiously resentful, Katya rages at her wealthy employer, Thor, for stealing her future—and saddling her with twelve-year-old Gretchen, a deeply troubled child who has only a blazing musical talent to redeem her.

"I am always with you. I will always be here." This was the promise Ella’s mother betrayed thirty years ago when she walked into the sea, leaving her five-year-old daughter alone in the world. Ella’s been angry ever since, building up a wall to protect herself. But that all changes the day she opens a newspaper and finds those ten little words printed in a classified ad. Ella refuses to believe her mother could still be alive - that would mean she did want to live, just not with her daughter. So she throws herself into finding out exactly what happened all those years ago.

Eve has always lived on Ennisfarne, an idyllic island just off the coast of Northumberland and only accessible when tides are low. There she runs a bar overlooking Darling Cove, a heavenly horseshoe-shaped beach named after her seafaring ancestors, whose links to the Farne Islands stretch back centuries. Logan is a famous photographer desperate to evade the limelight after a difficult break-up. Renting a cottage from Eve, he chooses Ennisfarne in the hope of anonymity but is immediately spellbound by its natural beauty.

Adultery, murder and dangerous love collide in Jessie Keane's gritty debut thriller set in London's East End. Perfect for fans of Martina Cole and Lynda La Plante. For longer than she cares to remember, Annie Bailey has lived in the shadow of her older sister, Ruthie. Now Ruthie has her hands on Max Carter, the much feared head of the Carter family and a top class villain. Seducing Max wasn't a problem, but the guilt, shame and anger of rejection afterwards was.

Freya Fuller is estranged from her parents and has been following her childhood dream of becoming a gardener ever since. When an opportunity to design a winter garden opens up at a Victorian property in Nightingale Square, Freya jumps at the chance to make a fresh start. But while the majority of the residents are welcoming, local artist Finn seems determined to shut her out, and when Freya's family makes a surprise appearance, it seems that her new life is about to come crashing down.

From the best-selling author of Mince Pies and Mistletoe at the Christmas Market and The Cherry Tree Café comes a glorious summer treat of glamping, vintage tearooms and love.... When Lottie Foster’s grandmother’s best friend, Gwen, dies, she leaves Lottie her lovely home, Cuckoo Cottage. Lottie loves the cottage, but Matt, a charming local builder, points out that beneath its charm it is falling apart. Luckily he is always on hand to help with the problems that somehow seem to keep cropping up. But is he just a bit too good to be true?

Emmy Palmer is the star of Bragadon Forest, the biggest fantasy series on TV, adored by the public, living the life of glamour and luxury in London. But when scandal breaks, Emmy must escape the city and return to her seaside hometown to lie low and wait for the storm to pass. And as tragedy strikes for her family, it is good timing to go back to her roots.