Showing results by narrator "Julia Barrie"

It’s summer in Adders Fork. The sun is out, the sky is blue and things are going swimmingly for Rosie Strange. The Essex Witch Museum has been relaunched with a new Ursula Cadence wing and picnic grounds. Then developers roll into the sleepy village to widen the road. When the centuries-old Blackly Be boulder, said to mark the grave of a notorious witch, is moved, all hell breaks out. Within hours a slew of peculiar phenomena descends, and when a severed head is discovered atop the boulder, the locals storm the museum to demand someone take action.

Rosie Strange doesn't believe in ghosts or witches or magic. It's no surprise therefore that when she inherits the ramshackle Essex Witch Museum, her first thought is to take the money and run. Still, the museum exerts a curious pull over Rosie. There's the eccentric academic who bustles in to demand she help in a hunt for the bones of the notorious Ursula Cadence, a witch long since put to death. And there's curator Sam Stone, a man about whom Rosie can't decide if he's tiresomely annoying or extremely captivating.

Halloween in Essex, and things are going well for the writers on the Mystery and Suspense course at Ratchette Hall. Things, however, take a turn when early on All Saints' Day the course administrator is discovered murdered. The Essex Witch Museum investigators are quickly drafted in. As Rosie Strange and Sam Stone's investigation progresses they find more questions than answers: who is making the howling noises late into the night? What is the strange glimmering glimpsed in the woods?

A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn't have prevented it. Could she? In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief, and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever. Slowly Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future.

The La Fleur restaurant has a slew of unusual phenomena. Bonnet-clad apparitions pass through walls, blood leaks from ceilings and rats besiege the dining room. Experts from the Great Essex Witch Museum are called in to quell these strange sights. But before Rosie Strange and Sam Stone can do their thing, events turn darker. For La Fleur's chef has been strung up and slaughtered like a pig. More oddly, the only witness, the owner's daughter Mary, swears blind a ghost did it.

The true story of an abused childhood, of shocking brutality and life as the daughter of notorious serial killer and master manipulator Rose West. You're 21 years old. Police arrive on the doorstep of your house, 25 Cromwell Street, with a warrant to search the garden for the remains of your older sister you didn't know was dead. Bones are found, and they are from more than one body. And so the nightmare begins. You are the daughter of Fred and Rose West.  

In Katy’s opinion, weddings should follow some basic rules: 1) No-one should ever have sex. Of course. The married couple has the rest of their lives for that, and the guests should be too busy partying. 2) If you are heavily pregnant (as Katy is) you should obviously not be invited to three weddings in the space of one summer. Your husband’s accident-prone best friend, your attention-seeking colleague, your 73-year-old mother’s marriage to her Spanish toy boy - all without even an alcoholic drink to make them bearable.

Ghosts, witches and all kinds of creepy things seem to congregate in the town of Adder's Fork, where the world-renowned Essex Witch Museum has its home. It's not long before owner Rosie Strange and curator Sam Stone must take matters into their own hands.

Thirty years have passed since Greta Marchmont left the Marchmont Hall. Now she finally returns, with amnesia and no memory of her past. But a walk through the wintry landscape leads to a disturbing discovery: she comes across a grave in the forest, and the weathered inscription on the cross tells her that her own son is buried here. Greta begins to search for the woman she once was, and to do so she must summon all of her courage....

An achingly funny story about how to be your own hero when life pulls the rug out from under your feet. From the author of the bestselling You Had me at Hello. Delia Moss isn't quite sure where she went wrong. When she proposed and discovered her boyfriend was sleeping with someone else - she thought it was her fault. When she realised life would never be the same again - she thought it was her fault.

Childhood sweethearts Matthew and Katy agree they must never see each other again after they end up in bed together following a school re-union. So all is forgotten... until eight months later when a shock meeting at an antenatal class forces them to confront the fact that Matthew could be the father of Katy's baby…

A man lies dying in a hospital in upstate Vermont. The nurses know only that he is an academic at a nearby university, but they have been instructed to call the FBI should anyone visit their patient. News of this suspected Russian illegal soon reaches MI5, where Liz Carlyle has been contacted by Mischa, a top secret source who is requesting a clandestine rendezvous in Berlin. 

When Jessica Farris signs up for a psychology study conducted by the mysterious Dr Shields, she thinks all she’ll have to do is answer a few questions, collect her money and leave. But as the questions grow more and more intense and invasive, and the sessions become outings where Jess is told what to wear and how to act, she begins to feel as though Dr Shields may know what she’s thinking...and what she’s hiding. As Jess’ paranoia grows, it becomes clear that she can no longer trust what is real in her life and what is one of Dr Shields’ manipulative experiments.

Laura's life has just been turned on its head, and with an empty nest and a crumbling marriage she launches a new business from her own kitchen, making artisan jams, chutneys and relishes from her grandmother's cookbook to sell at the local farmer's market. So can her flair for cooking, her most special family recipes and a better understanding of her grandmother's past help her find a happy future?

Hunter's Moon is the ultimate 'forever' house. Nestled by a river in the Peasebrook valley, it has been the Willoughbys' home for over 50 years, and now estate agent Belinda Baxter is determined to find the perfect family to live there. But the sale of the house unlocks decades of family secrets - and brings Belinda face to face with her own troubled past.

Maisie doesn't understand why her mother can’t love her, but she knows that her life is hard and deeply unhappy. When her stepfather George, the only person she trusts, leaves, Maisie has no protector until she begins to escape. She could never be quite sure when she first met up with Hamilton; most likely it was when she started talking to herself. But she didn’t call him that then; that came much later when she was 14 and Doctor Kane had to pay her a professional visit....

Two weeks in a boathouse on the edge of peaceful Lake Orta, Italy is exactly what Ginny and Adam Trustlove need. But twenty-four hours later, the silence is broken when the Sale family arrives. It doesn't take long for Ginny and Adam to be drawn in, especially when the teenage Pippi introduces her beguiling new friend Zach. Not one of them suspects that his arrival in their lives might be anything other than accidental...

Dense fog masks foul play in the streets of London, as Ann Granger brings us her seventh Victorian mystery featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross and his wife, Lizzie. It is March 1870. London is in the grip of fog and ice. But Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross has more than the weather to worry about when the body of a young woman is found in a dustbin at the back of a Piccadilly restaurant. 

When a Member of Parliament shows up at New Scotland Yard requesting an investigation into the suicide of the son of one of his constituents in the beautiful town of Ludlow, the Assistant Commissioner sees two opportunities in this request: the first is to have an MP owing him a favour, and the second is to get rid of Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, whose career at the Met has been hanging by a thread for quite some time.

Ben is still desperately trying to forget that Katy had a one-night stand just before she announced she was pregnant. Nine months later a new baby explodes into their lives, creating utter chaos. Being a stay-at-home dad isn’t as simple as it seems; in fact it’s a disaster. Then help arrives in the most unlikely form: the wife of Katy’s ex-lover. Should Ben tell Katy about his secret rescuer, or is it his turn to keep a secret?