Showing results by narrator "Helen Phillips" in All Categories

Varangantua is in turmoil. After the district of Korsk is obliterated in a fiery cataclysm, the city’s enforcers must pick up the pieces. As sanctioner teams comb the wreckage for survivors, dogged probators such as Agusto Zidarov and Lycia Calix seek to uncover the truth about what happened. Their stories become intertwined with those of petty criminals and desperate citizens, even drawing the vaunted attention of agents beyond Alecto itself, painting a picture of sprawling conspiracy.

When the anonymous invite arrived, we knew exactly who it was from. Elle Romero, the beautiful, charismatic Texan who burst into our lives when we were teenagers. We'd gone our separate ways and lost touch. Until now. Elle, the legendary prankster, is back. She's invited us all—me, Claire, Lizzie and Megan—to a swanky country house for a reunion. We arrive excited for a weekend of reminiscing and reconnecting. A chance to step out of our uneventful lives for a while. But when Elle fails to show up at her own party, we begin to wonder if she's up to her old tricks.

When Christmas-hating Sam moves to Holly Cross, he thinks he's found the perfect home, until he discovers that, each year, Holly Cross transforms into the most Christmassy village in the whole country... Blythe is just one sale away from being Real Estate Agent of the Month, so she twists the truth to sell a home to city boy Sam, who is looking for the perfect house in the perfect location. Little does he know he's just bought a cottage in the middle of the most Christmassy village in the country. And if there's one thing Sam loathes, it's Christmas.

As the eldest daughter of the Earl of Cottesmore, Lady Mercedes Stanhope didn't expect to be still without a husband at the start of her third season. And neither did she expect to be the target of a kidnapping attempt on her journey home from Scotland. But most of all, she didn't expect to experience such an emotional connection to the man who came to her rescue…

Old friends Shelley, Lena and Pearl have reached their limit with the festive preparation that has always fallen to them, and five days before Christmas, they’ve booked a mini break… without their families. Up until Christmas Eve, they’ll be sipping prosecco in the Highlands while their kids wrap bacon around 100 chipolatas and their partners brave the supermarkets. It’s exactly what they need… until they’re snowed in. Facing the prospect of Christmas 500 miles from home, each woman is forced to confront her real reasons for needing to escape.

Violet Zennor was raised fighting in underground arenas. Ruthless and skilled, she becomes an heiress after her father's death. But her freedom is short-lived. Her father planned to send her to the Darklands, where her stillborn brother was sold. Despite pressure, Violet refuses. After an assassination attempt, she realizes she must confront her father's legacy. Seeking help from Miren, Ellie, and Asher, she prepares for the ultimate journey: into the Darklands, to the Anchorhold. This gripping tale explores a sinister fantasy world where blood is power and magic is a weapon.

In recent years, "white feminism" and girlboss feminism have taken a justified beating. We know that leaning in won't make our jobs any more tolerable and that white women have proven to be, at best, unreliable allies. But in a time of rising fascism, ceaseless attacks on reproductive justice, and violent transphobia, we need to reckon with what Western feminism has wrought if we have any hope of building the feminist world we need.

Mother and daughter move into a crumbling house haunted by the ghost of a girl who performed in Victorian freak shows, through which wind whistles eerily, floorboards creak ominously and things go bump in the night. In the present day, following the break-up of a controlling marriage, single mother Nell moves into the crumbling Victorian Merry Hall with her teenage daughter, Fern. She’s determined to make a new life but the noises, moving objects, and strange smells in her new home make her increasingly unsettled.

Where will the magic take you? When Magician Winnifred's enchanted house gets stuck upside down in ten-year-old Callie's garden, the pair strike up an unlikely friendship—until Winnifred realizes that it is Callie's intense homesickness that is causing her magic to malfunction. Now all of Winnifred's most precious magical possessions are unprotected. Can Callie and Winnifred restore the Wanderdust before malicious pixies and dangerous giants steal everything?

Born from an ancient race of gifted aliens, the whole universe is depending on Emily to rise up to the challenge and become the Chosen One that she is destined to be. There’s one hitch...she has no idea who she is or where she comes from. Being hunted by her kind’s mortal enemy, her home planet is savagely attacked. Can she survive?

Lydia, home from Paris on New Year’s Day in a welter of hangover and humiliation, finds herself swearing off drink, drugs and sex for the next 12 months. Through her unfamiliar sobriety, she’ll see a landmark year for all the Bennet sisters, including a disruptive 40th birthday, an engagement and a funeral: and, maybe, coming to terms with the results of a run-of-the-mill run-in with a jacknifed lorry on a wet stretch of the M1…

I always thought I was going to be a girl who did something. I was going to run my own business and find fame and fortune! Fall in love… But here I am. Still waiting for it all to happen, sitting on the floor, surrounded by lilies and roses, trying to do my best friend’s wedding flowers because – in her words – ‘how hard can it be, Frankie?’. The answer is actually ‘very hard’ but it’s not the only thing that’s tough right now. My boyfriend won’t commit, I barely have a job, and once again I have the hangover from hell… What I don’t know is that life’s about to throw me a curveball.

Are we more like a coffee bean, a carrot or an egg? What happens to us when we are boiled in the trials and tribulations of life? Jessica Miller is fascinated by the somewhat perplexing tendency of humans to end their own lives, but she secretly believes such acts may not be that bad after all. Jessica is coming to terms with her own relationships, and reflecting on what it means to be queer, when a single event throws everything she once believed into doubt. Can she still defend the act?

Lila Cartwright is thriving after dumping her toxic ex–well, mostly. That is, until she bumps into him and his new girlfriend, forcing her to grab the nearest man and introduce him as her boyfriend. Unfortunately, that man is her infuriatingly moody (yet undeniably attractive) colleague, Rhys Aubrey.

For years, Detective Cecilia Wreede has hunted The Badger: a killer who drags victims from their homes and vanishes without a trace. Annika Granlund, a struggling publisher, has troubles of her own: a failing business, a marriage on the rocks, and the haunting memory of a childhood monster she once called The Scraper. Then an anonymous manuscript lands on her desk, describing The Badger's killings in chilling detail. To save her company, Annika must publish it.

When Bee loses her job, home and boyfriend – all on the same day that a man accidentally spills coffee all over her; she decides life can’t get any worse. So when her mother finally tells Bee the name of the father she’s never met – a musician named Luke Friday – she decides to take a risk and go in search of him.

Anyone can pick up a pair of needles and a ball of yarn. And everyone can be mindful. Mindfulness in Knitting casts fresh light on this renowned calming craft, and reveals how the act of “knit and purl” can be the epitome of conscious living. Ethical textile artist Rachael Matthews unpicks...

When Lucy and Alpha's parents split up, they move with mom to their grandad's home in the forest. Mom has a new job at a rewilding center, reintroducing wolves to the wild. Lucy loves the forest where she can stargaze with her telescope. But Alpha hates the forest and hates dad. All she wants is for life to go back to normal. Things between Lucy and Alpha have never felt worse. When a new wolf cub arrives at the center, Lucy names him Claw and they form a special bond. But Alpha thinks he should roam free, and together with her friends, they plot to release him.

Twenty-nine-year-old teacher Emily needs her father to believe her life is a success. He may have walked out on the family when she was a child and let her down when she needed him most, but her life is perfect despite him.

In 21st century Britain, what does it mean to be working class? This book asks 24 working class writers to examine the issue as it relates to them. Examining representation, literature, sexuality, gender, art, employment, poverty, childhood, culture and politics, this book is a broad and firsthand account of what it means to be drawn from the bottom of Britain's archaic but persistent class structure.