Showing results by narrator "Gemma Whelan" in All Categories

1969. Eloise Shepherd, one of MI6’s brightest rising stars, is working undercover in Soviet Russia as Magdalina Novikova. Her mission is to persuade nuclear physicist Stanislav Kalashnik to defect and bring his knowledge of Russian weapons back to the UK. On the verge of success, the operation fails suddenly and spectacularly. Seventeen years later, Kalashnik is chief engineer at the power plant near Pripyat known as Chernobyl. His concerns for the safety of the plant are growing. 

The sudden death of a pupil in Fleat House at St Stephen’s—a small private boarding school in deepest Norfolk—is a shocking event that the headmaster is very keen to call a tragic accident. But the local police cannot rule out foul play and the case prompts the return of high-flying Detective Inspector Jazmine ‘Jazz’ Hunter to the force. Jazz has her own private reasons for stepping away from her police career in London, and reluctantly agrees to front the investigation as a favour to her old boss.

Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she's blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks - and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her 11th birthday. But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears.

2059. The world has stopped turning. One half suffers an endless frozen night; the other, nothing but burning sun.Only in a slim twilit region can life survive. In an isolationist Britain, Ellen Hopper receives a letter from a dying man. It contains a powerful and dangerous secret. One that those in power will kill to conceal.

Welcome to Chapel Croft. For Rev Jack Brooks and teenage daughter Flo it's supposed to be a fresh start. New job, new home. But, as Jack knows, the past isn't easily forgotten. And in a close-knit community where the residents seem as proud as they are haunted by Chapel Croft's history, Jack must tread carefully. Ancient superstitions as well as a mistrust of outsiders will be hard to overcome.

Morrigan may have defeated her deadly curse, passed the dangerous trials and joined the mystical Wundrous Society, but her journey into Nevermoor and all its secrets has only just begun. And it's important to remember that not all magic is used for good.... 

An imposing, isolated hotel, high up in the Swiss Alps, is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But she's taken time off from her job as a detective, so when she receives an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother's recent engagement she has no choice but to accept. Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge. Though it's beautiful, something about the hotel, recently converted from an abandoned sanatorium, makes her nervous - as does her brother, Isaac.

Morrigan Crow and her friends have survived their first year as proud scholars of the elite Wundrous Society, helped bring down the nefarious Ghastly Market and proven themselves loyal to Unit 919. Now Morrigan faces a new, exciting challenge: to master the mysterious Wretched Arts and control the power that threatens to consume her. But a strange and frightening illness has taken hold of Nevermoor, turning infected Wunimals into mindless, vicious Unnimals on the hunt. 

In rural Somerset, in the middle of a blizzard, the unthinkable happens: a school is under siege. From the wounded headmaster in the library, unable to help his trapped pupils and staff, to teenage Hannah in love for the first time, to the parents gathering, desperate for news, to the 16 year old Syrian refugee trying to rescue his little brother, to the police psychologist who must identify the gunmen, to the students taking refuge in the school theatre, all experience the most intense hours of their lives, where evil and terror are met by courage, love and redemption.

Nine months ago, Beatrix Rose had her family brutally taken from her. Now all that matters is getting her daughter back. And Beatrix is no ordinary mother - she’s a skilled assassin who will do whatever it takes to find her child. Danny Nakamura deserted his post in Vietnam and disappeared into Hong Kong’s Walled City, vowing never to go home again. Decades later, his health failing, he’s suddenly found a reason to return to LA: the discovery of a daughter he never knew he had. But getting home won’t be easy....

Time travel meets history in this new drama adaptation by Marty Ross. When Max, a recent ancient history graduate, is offered a mysterious job at St Mary's Historical Research Institute, she quickly comes to realise this isn't any old stuffy research library. At St Mary's the historians don't just study the past - they revisit it. What begins as an academic exploration of events, such as the Peterloo Massacre, takes a dark and dangerous turn, and the historians of St Mary's soon learn that it's not just history they're fighting....

In all her 25 years, Venetia Lanyon has never been further than Harrogate. Nor has she enjoyed the attentions of any man aside from her two wearisomely persistent suitors. Then, in one extraordinary encounter, she meets a neighbour she knew only by reputation - the infamous Jasper Damerel. Before she realises it, Venetia is encouraging a man whose way of life has scandalised the North Riding for years.

Eighteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel finds herself a new job in a dentist's surgery after answering a classified advert in the Leicester Mercury for a 'mature lady with a strong interest in dental issues'. Working for an eccentric dental surgeon who's obsessed with becoming a Freemason, Lizzie's life is uneventful until Andy Nicolello turns up one day to deliver a crown. Lizzie seizes her chance to find love and soon begins calling him her boyfriend even though they have never so much as kissed or even sat next to each other on the sofa.

Winter, with its unsettling blend of the cosy and the sinister, has long been a popular time for gathering by the bright flame of a candle, or the warm crackling of a fire, and swapping stories of ghosts and strange happenings. Now eight best-selling, award-winning authors, master storytellers of the sinister and the macabre bring this time-honoured tradition to vivid life in a spellbinding collection of new and original haunted tales.

Everyday Kindness is a charity anthology of short fictional stories of kindness, edited by LJ Ross. These uplifting tales of hope and of small everyday kindnesses are intended to support wider positive mental-health goals and foster wellbeing through the act of listening to tales of goodwill inspired by others. Featuring authors across the spectrum of literature, some international best-selling and award-winning writers amongst them, this is a unique collection of words.

Flora's been in love with her husband for 20 years. The trouble is, he's been married to someone else for the past 15. Now she's been invited to spend the summer in the shady lanes and sandy coves of Cornwall. It should be blissful. There's just one small snag: she'll be staying with her former mother-in-law, Belinda. And Flora discovers she's not the only one invited when her ex-husband shows up out of the blue, complete with his new wife. So now there are two small snags.

With intolerance and inequality increasingly normalised by the day, it's more important than ever for women to share their experiences. We must hold the truth to account in the midst of sensationalism and international political turmoil. Nasty Women is a collection of essays, interviews and accounts on what it is to be a woman in the 21st century. People, politics, pressure, punk. Keep telling your stories.

A laugh-out-loud romance from the best-selling author of the Shopaholic series. Meet Audrey: an ordinary teenage girl with not-so-ordinary problems. Aside from her completely crazy and chaotic family, she suffers from an anxiety disorder which makes talking to her brother's hot new best friend a bit of a challenge. But Audrey has a plan to help her face her fears and take on the world again. First stop: Starbucks.

In all the years that Elinora Gassbeek has been matron of the Little Tulip Orphanage, not once have the Rules for Baby Abandonment been broken. Until the autumn of 1886, when five babies are left in outrageous circumstances: one in a tin toolbox, one in a coal bucket, one in a picnic hamper, one in a wheat sack and finally, one in a coffin-shaped basket. 

When six-year-old Alice Hilton disappears on New Year's Eve 1979 from Yew Tree Manor, suspicion immediately falls on local boy Bobby James. Bobby claims he knows nothing about it, but his family has a grievance against Alice's landowner father. Tragically the child is never found. Decades later, Willow James, an architect working on a development at Yew Tree Manor, discovers that the land surrounding the house is holding a secret.