Showing results by narrator "Heather Wilds"

In 1937, seventeen-year-old Ella’s life changes forever when she is sent to spend the summer on the beautiful Île de Ré and meets the charismatic, creative Christophe. They spend the summer together, exploring the island’s sandy beaches and crystal-clear waters, and, for the first time in her life, Ella feels truly free. But the outbreak of war casts everything in a new light. Ella is forced to return to Scotland, where she volunteers for the war effort alongside the dashing Angus. In this new world, Ella feels herself drifting further and further from who she was on the Île de Ré.

Meet Zoe and Greg Milton, a married couple who have let themselves go a bit. Zoe was a stunner in her college days, but the intervening decades have added five stone, and removed most of her self-esteem. Greg's rugby-playing days are well and truly behind him, thanks to countless pints of beer and chicken curry. When Elise, a radio DJ and Zoe's best friend, tells them about a new competition, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn their lives around.

Lirael lost one of her hands in the binding of Orannis, but now she has a new hand, one of gilded steel and Charter Magic. On a dangerous journey, Lirael returns to her childhood home, the Clayr's Glacier, where she was once a Second Assistant Librarian. There a young woman from the distant North brings her a message from her long-dead mother, Arielle. It is a warning about the Witch with No Face. But who is the Witch, and what is she planning?

If you were one of King Henry VIII's six wives, who would you be? Would you be Anne Boleyn, who literally lost her head? Would you be the subject of rumor and scandal like Catherine Howard? Or would you get away and survive like Anna of Cleves? Meet them and Henry's other queens - each bound for divorce or death - in this epic and thrilling novel that reads like fantasy but really happened.

This is the second edition of a uniquely empowering, international word-of-mouth best seller about wild landscapes, female mythology, and the challenges facing modern women. It is a book for any woman who has ever lost her way and who sees a wasteland at the heart of modern existence and longs to live a more authentic, rooted life once again.

When siblings Dan and Hayley Daley inherit their late grandmother's derelict Victorian farmhouse, it seems like a dream come true. All they have to do is fix the place up and sell it for a tidy profit! Except - as anyone who has renovated an old house knows - things are never that easy. The walls are rapidly crumbling around them, the architect is a certified lunatic, the budget is spiraling...and then there's the disturbingly intelligent cow to worry about.

The wooded hills of Oxfordshire conceal the remains of the aptly named Ashdown House - a wasted pile of cinders and regret. Once home to the daughter of a king, Ashdown and its secrets will unite three women across four centuries in a tangle of romance, deceit, and destiny....

The Handfasted Wife is the story of the Norman Conquest from the perspective of Edith (Elditha) Swanneck, Harold's common-law wife. She is set aside for a political marriage when Harold becomes king in 1066. Determined to protect her children's destinies and control her economic future, she is taken to William's camp when her estate is sacked on the eve of the Battle of Hastings. She later identifies Harold's body on the battlefield, and her youngest son becomes a Norman hostage.

A violent drunk with a broken heart, Mackie looks for love in all the wrong places. When two hit men catch him with his pants down, he barely makes it out alive. Worse still, his ex-gangster uncle, Rab, has vanished, leaving him an empty house and a dead dog. Reluctant PI Sam Ireland is hired by hotshot lawyers to track Rab but is getting nothing except blank stares and slammed doors. As she scours the dive bars, the dregs of Glasgow start to take notice.

London, 1944. Two young nurses meet at a train station with a common purpose: to join the war effort. Scarlet longs for the chance to find her missing fiancé, Thomas, and to prove to her family - and to herself - that she's stronger than everybody thinks. Nursing is in Ellie's blood, but her humble background is vastly different from Scarlet's privileged upbringing. Though Ellie puts on a brave face, she's just as nervous as Scarlet about what awaits them in France.

Khamsin Coruscate, Princess of Summerlea and summoner of Storms, has spent her life exiled to the shadows of her father's palace. Reviled by her father, marriage to Wintercraig's icy king was supposed to be a terrible punishment, but instead offers Kham her first taste of freedom - and her first taste of overwhelming passion. As fierce, indomitable Wynter weathers even Khamsin's wildest storms, surprising her with a tenderness she never expected, Kham wants more than Wynter's passion - she yearns for his love.

An ordinary girl faces an extraordinary choice in this gripping, coming-of-age tale of secrets and courage set in Nazi Germany, perfect for fans of The Book Thief and Beneath a Scarlet Sky. Munich, 1931. Gretchen Muller has been cherished and protected by Adolf Hitler ever since her father, a senior Nazi officer, sacrificed himself to save the life of the Führer. And now Germany has the chance to be great once more, under the command of her 'Uncle Dolf'.

After her parents died in a car accident when she was just a child, Evelyn Lakewood was left alone in the world. Now grown up, she enrolls at Oxford University, where she begins to create a new, stable life. But when she encounters Jared Calmburry, who she later discovers is an orphan with his own tragic history, the equilibrium she was striving for is thrown off.

The Lady from Guatemala is a collection of stories from one of the most distinguished short story writers in English. From first to last, V.S. Pritchett's writing displays a shrewd understanding of class and character and a quick ear for the inner, deeper rhythms of dialogue. His subject matter is always human nature, its peculiarity, its tenacity... His prose is clear, his observation complex and multi-layered.

Behold the Rolling Stones: run-ins with the law, chart-topping successes, and now the World's Greatest Continually Operating Rock and Roll Band. 50 Licks tells the story of the Stones, right from its very origins. On July 12, 1962, London's Marquee Club debuted a new act, a blues-inflected rock band named after a Muddy Waters song-the Rolling Stones. They were a hard-edged band with a flair for the dramatic, styling themselves as the devil's answer to the sainted Beatles.

The chemistry between Oxford University students Evelyn Lakewood and Jared Calmburry was immediate. After uncovering their shared and magical legacy - that they are the sole descendants of Merlin and the Lady of the Lake - their connection seems fated. When Jared sacrifices himself to save Evelyn's life and is carried off by his demon nemesis, Morgana, Evelyn must marshal every ounce of courage she possesses.

Lori Golden's family have had more than their fair share of troubles. But through it all, Lori and her sister, Jessie, have always supported each other. Then Jessie is killed. And Lori's world turns upside down. Devastated, Lori struggles to cope with her loss, and to learn to live in a world without her bright, bubbly sister by her side. Around her, her already fractured family start to fall apart. And, as Lori and her mother try to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, secrets long thought buried are coming painfully to light.

In the midst of the Second World War, Eva receives the devastating news that her husband is missing and presumed dead. Neither wife nor widow, she lives in a numb state of limbo until, in the heat of an English summer, she meets Bill, a black American GI. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, neither can deny the love that overcomes them in the frantic weeks that follow, when every day could be their last.

When Constance Reid's new husband, Sir Clifford Chatterley, returns from war paralyzed and in a wheelchair, she sees her future wither. As their marriage grows loveless, she mourns the desires fated to go unfulfilled. But a stirring fascination with Oliver Mellors, the estate's coarse, taciturn gamekeeper, blooms into feelings she feared had died. Soon the lovers find themselves entangled in scandal, and their taboo affair becomes as pernicious as it is passionate.

When her father leaves the church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill owner and self-made man John Thornton.