Showing results by narrator "Anna Parker-Naples" in All Categories

In the aptly titled Offbeat, Richard Matheson, a modern master of strange fiction, offers 13 excursions into the unsettling and bizarre. In these stories you will encounter a major league pitcher with a horrific secret for his astonishing success; an ordinary man who wakes to find himself in a silent, empty world; a death row prisoner with an extraordinary explanation for his innocence; and a novelist whose fictional creations transcend the printed page.

Barbara - a child of the Blitz - has more secrets than she cares to admit. She has protected her children from the harsh realities of life and told them little of the poverty of her childhood, nor of the darker side of her marriage to one of Britain's most famous photographers. With such an incomplete picture, her youngest, Sophie, has struggled to understand who her parents really are, and in turn, Barbara sometimes worries, to build her own identity.

It was the job she had dreamed of since childhood. But on her very first day, when an unnerving encounter drags up memories Sophie Greenwood would rather forget, she wonders if she has made a mistake. A fatal mistake. What is her ambitious young assistant really up to? And what exactly happened to Sophie's predecessor? When her husband and daughter are pulled into the nightmare, Sophie is forced to confront the darkest secrets she has carried for years.

For eight long years, Detective Inspector Lorne Simpkins has tracked the vicious criminal known as The Unicorn. But the killer has frustrated MI6 at every turn and has remained successful at Impeding Justice. When Lorne is targeted in a trap that results in the death of her partner, the tragedy shakes her confidence to the core. Before she has time to recoup, her teenage daughter is kidnapped. More than Lorne's professional reputation rests on her bringing The Unicorn to justice.

As soon as Octavia caught a glimpse of Jeremy, she knew she just had to have him. It didn't matter that he'd just got engaged to an old school friend of hers, Gussie. An invitation to join Gussie and Jeremy for a cosy weekend on a canal barge came like a gift from the gods. However, the other part of the foursome was tycoon Gareth Llewellyn, and he certainly managed to thwart her plans....

You follow the hidden creek towards a long-forgotten house. They call it Keepsake, a place full of wonder...and danger. Locked inside the crumbling elegance of its walls lies the story of the Butterfly Summer, a story you've been waiting all your life to hear. This house is Nina Parr's birthright. It holds the truth about her family - and a chance to put everything right at last.

Ever since the Switch, when the oxygen levels plummeted and most of humanity died, the survivors have been protected in glass domes full of manufactured air. Protected…or trapped? Or controlled? Alina's a revolutionary who believes we can save the environment. Quinn's a Premium who's never had to worry about having enough air. His best friend, Bea, is an Auxiliary who's never worried about anything but having enough air. When the three cross paths, they will change everything.

Three teen outlaws must survive on their own in a world without air, exiled outside the glass dome that protects what's left of human civilization. Gripping action, provocative ideas, and shocking revelations in a dystopian novel that fans of Patrick Ness and Veronica Roth will devour. Bea, Alina, and Quinn are on the run. They started a rebellion and were thrown out of the pod, the only place where there's enough oxygen to breathe. Bea has lost her family. Alina has lost her home. And Quinn has lost his privileged life. Can they survive in the perilous Outlands?

As far as rash decisions go, it was formidable. But Lady Jocelyn Rathbourne's will remains strong. If the only way to save her family's estate and reputation is by aiming a small pistol at the Duke of Calydon, then so be it. For Lady Jocelyn demands satisfaction - and she will have it at any cost. Even if it means demanding the hand of the intense and foreboding Duke himself....

Eleanor Blackwood discovers a woman's body in the same spot in the woods where her mother was strangled eighteen years previously. But before the police can get there, the body vanishes. Is Eleanor's disturbed mind playing tricks on her again, or has her mother's killer resurfaced? And what does the number on the dead woman's forehead signify?

The headless body of a wealthy widow is discovered decomposing in Chelling Forest. Then a second victim is found. Detective Inspector Lorne Simpkins and her partner, DS Pete Childs, are assigned the case. Before they can discover the identity of the killer they must make a connection between the two victims. After a third murder, Lorne receives a grisly surprise. Clearly, a vicious serial killer is on a rampage, and Lorne has become the killer's fixation.

Free from prison.... but still trapped in a nightmare... Having been locked up for a murder that she didn't commit, Sophia O'Hagan is now determined to take back what's hers. Sophia has been robbed of eight years of her life: a life that she should have spent with her beloved Tommy. Now, Tommy has gone and Sophia's family has been torn apart. She knows that she will never know true freedom until she confronts the painful ghosts of her past.

At age 20, Molly Shakespeare knows a lot. She knows Descartes and Kant. She knows academia and Oxford. She knows that the people who love you leave you. She knows how to be alone. But when Molly leaves England's gray skies behind to start a new life at the University of Alabama, she finds that she has a lot to learn - she didn't know a summer could be so hot, she didn't know students could be so intimidating, and she certainly didn't know just how much the folks of Alabama love their football.

After being cruelly jilted by a lord who claimed to adore her, Miss Payton Peppiwell swore her future husband would be as ordinary as she. Now if only her family would listen to her. Then she meets Mikhail Konstantinovich, an untitled horse breeder, in a highly improper and scandalous encounter. Never had Payton expected to be so attracted to the dark, intriguing man, who seduces her to recklessness with a mere stare.

All of the young ladies whispered about the Duke of Mondvale in hushed tones, their eyes following his tall, dark figure with barely disguised lust. For the newly-ostracized Lady Constance Thornton, he is magnetic and altogether desirable. Irresistibly so. Since her reputation is already ruined in London society, why shouldn't she be impudent and dance with the scandalous "Lord of Sin"? Little does she know of his plans.

If you're an entrepreneur with a message and you want to reach your best clients, raise your credibility as an expert and become an authority in your industry, then writing your book is vital....

On a bright day at the Epsom Derby, 4 June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison was hit by the king’s horse in one of the defining moments of the fight for women’s suffrage - what became known as feminism’s first wave. The second wave arose in the late-1960s, activists campaigning tirelessly for women’s liberation, organising around a wildly ambitious slate of issues - a struggle their daughters continued in the third wave that blossomed in the early 1990s. Now, 100 years on from the campaign for the vote, a new tide of feminist voices is rising.

With money in her pocket and a new boyfriend at her side, life on the estate has never been better. Until Louise uncovers a deadly secret; now nothing will ever be the same again. Jerell Morgan was born evil. Even his Bible preaching grandma, who raised him back home in Kingston, Jamaica, couldn't drive away the wickedness that festered inside him as a child. Now busy making a name for himself, Jerell is prepared to do whatever it takes to live the life that he has always dreamt of.

Eva, Peggy and Kathleen were sisters, living in a terraced house on a rough street. As they grew up, they dreamed of escaping their violent father. Peggy was a studious girl who became a Communist. Beautiful Kathleen married an abusive man and later - during the Second World War - fell in love with a GI. Feisty Eva became a thief as a child so she could help their mother put food on the table - and never lost her rebellious streak or her desire to protect her family. As the years passed, the sisters all lived close together, supporting each other through hard times.

Annie is the eldest daughter of a laundress in Acton, London, raised to keep the rich families of Kensington spick-and-span. As she grows up in poverty in the 1920s and 1930s, her life centres on the family business, working long hours of hard physical labour. When she's not in the laundry she's looking after her younger brother and two stepsisters. But she's haunted by thoughts of her real father and what happened to him. All she knows is that he died in the Great War - her mother will not talk about him, and his very existence is shrouded in secrecy.