Showing results by narrator "Charlie Norfolk" in All Categories

Everyone in the village admires Anna because she’s a wonderful mother. Juggling family life with a small sewing business, she’s the one they turn to for a warm hug after a hard day. Her kind, polite daughters are a credit to her - even Bay, her stepdaughter, whom Anna loves as much as her own two girls. But normal family life changes overnight when Anna’s middle daughter’s beauty catches the eye of a stranger in a café. As jealousy erupts between the siblings, Anna’s perfect blended family begins to unravel around her. 

In a childless and unhappy marriage, Clare Royland is rich and beautiful - but lonely. And fueling her feelings of isolation is a strange, growing fascination with an ancestress from the distant past. Troubled by haunting inexplicable dreams that terrify - but also powerfully compel - her, Clare is forced to look back through the centuries for answers. In 1306, Scotland is at war. Isobel, countess of Buchan, faces fear and the prospect of untimely death as the fighting surrounds her. 

It’s 1946. The war is over, and Juliet Ashton has writer’s block. But when she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - a total stranger living halfway across the Channel, who has come across her name written in a second hand book - she enters into a correspondence with him, and in time with all the members of the extraordinary Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Through their letters, the society tell Juliet about life on the island, their love of books - and the long shadow cast by their time living under German occupation.

When the Berlin Wall goes up, Karin is on the wrong side of the city. Overnight, she’s trapped under Soviet rule in unforgiving East Berlin and separated from her twin sister, Jutta. Karin and Jutta lead parallel lives for years, cut off by the Wall. But Karin finds one reason to keep going: Otto, the man who gives her hope, even amidst the brutal East German regime. When Jutta finds a hidden way through the wall, the twins are reunited. But the Stasi have eyes everywhere, and soon Karin is faced with a terrible decision.

Cumbria, 1967. Grieving the loss of her son, Cordelia Hemlock is in a village graveyard when lightning strikes a tumbledown tomb - and gives her a glimpse of a new corpse that doesn't belong among the crumbling bones. But when the body vanishes, the authorities refuse to believe some hysterical outsider. Cordelia persuades Felicity Goose, the only other person to have seen the corpse, to join her investigation. But the villagers don't take kindly to their interference. There are those who believe the village's secrets should remain buried...whatever the cost.

In the third Shoal book, the nova war has begun to spread as the Emissaries force the Shoal into a desperate retreat. While Dakota goes in search of the entity responsible for creating the Maker caches, Corso, left in charge of a fleet of Magi ships, finds his authority crumbling in the face of politically-motivated sabotage.

England, 1538. The nation is reeling after the ruthless dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII. Cast out of Dartford Priory, Joanna Stafford - feisty, courageous, but scarred by her recent encounter with rebellion at court - is trying to live a quiet life with her five-year-old charge, Arthur. But family connections draw her dangerously close to a treasonous plot and, repelled by violence and the whispered conspiracies around her, Joanna seeks a life with a man who loves her.

London, May 1537. As those closest to the throne are locked in a fierce fight against those desperate to save England's monasteries from destruction, young Joanna Stafford faces a far more personal battle. When Joanna learns her cousin is about to be burned at the stake for rebelling against Henry VIII, she makes a decision that will change not only her life, but quite possibly the fate of a nation. It will mean turning her back on everything she knows, for Joanna is a novice at Dartford Priory - and to save her family, she must break the sacred rule of enclosure.

In the 25th century, only the Shoal possess the secret of faster-than-light travel (FTL), giving them absolute control over all trade and exploration throughout the galaxy. Mankind has operated within their influence for two centuries, establishing a dozen human colony worlds scattered along Shoal trade routes. Dakota Merrick, while serving as a military pilot, has witnessed atrocities for which this alien race is responsible.

Ellen May Ngewthu is a soldier and leader of the Cassini Division, the elite defence force of the utopian Solar Union. Here in the twenty-fourth century, the forts of the Division, in orbit around Jupiter, are the front line in humanity's long standoff with the unknowable post-humans godlike beings descended from the men and women who transformed themselves with high technology centuries ago.

Dakota and Corso discover not only that the Shoal are caught in an aeons-long conflict with a rival star-faring species, but that the Bandati have resolved to make an alliance with this race by giving them deadly knowledge acquired from the Magi starship; forging an unholy alliance with the Shoal-member Trader. Dakota is determined to stop them - but the destruction of millions of inhabited worlds appears inevitable.

Every summer throughout her childhood, Florence would return to her family home on the west coast of France,where she would be joined by her exotic, hopelessly glamorous cousins. Life here, under the benevolent eye of her grandmother, Mimi, was a heady existence of illicit drinking, stolen kisses and the bittersweet pains of her first love. But now Florence is living completely alone with her new baby.

Ten-year-old Danny knows he's going somewhere, but he just doesn't know where. On his way he flattens a stuffed otter, messes with a dog called The Beast and feeds biscuit to blue Louis. But however far or fast he goes, Danny can't outrun the memories that have chased him ever since his identical twin brother died. Where can Danny hide when every day his own face reminds him of Finn? The poignant story of a bereaved boy who embarks on an emotional journey and ultimately finds his way home.

When Olivia's husband, Carlos, begins having violent nightmares in which he leaps, fighting, from his bed and rampages through the house, her family's idyllic life in Lisbon is shattered. Things escalate when Carlos unwittingly injures Olivia and Leo, their seven-year-old son, and they can no longer hide the purple bruises staining their skin. But what is causing the warm-hearted, gentle Carlos to have such explosive nightmares?

When her mum is taken into hospital, Pearl goes to live with a foster family. But all Pearl really wants is to be back with her mum on their narrow boat. And when her mum runs away from the hospital, Pearl knows she must go back to the boat to find her.

When the Berlin Wall goes up, Karin is on the wrong side of the city. Overnight, she’s trapped under Soviet rule in unforgiving East Berlin and separated from her twin sister, Jutta. Karin and Jutta lead parallel lives for years, cut off by the Wall. But Karin finds one reason to keep going: Otto, the man who gives her hope, even amidst the brutal East German regime. When Jutta finds a hidden way through the wall, the twins are reunited. But the Stasi have eyes everywhere and soon Karin is faced with a terrible decision.