Showing results by narrator "Kim Hicks" in All Categories

Lauren is adopted and keen to know more about her mysterious past. But when she discovers that she may have been snatched from an American family as a baby, her life suddenly feels like a sham. Why will no one answer her questions? How can she find her biological mum and dad? And are her adoptive parents really responsible for kidnapping her?

The last in the popular crime series featuring Fran Varady, from the author of the acclaimed Mitchell & Markby mysteries. Edna, the dotty bag lady Fran Varady used to see living in a churchyard with only feral cats for company, has crossed her path again. Now Edna is staying in a hostel, spending her days roaming, as before. But Fran begins to see a method to her madness, and even though no one will believe her, she is certain Edna is being followed. Who could be interested in a harmless old lady?

Fran Varady fell into private detective work by accident rather than design. Now she's got a 'real' job at a trendy pizzeria, she's back on track with her acting ambitions and she's even found a nice flat to rent. But things aren't as straightforward as they seem. The job, for a start: there's something rather sinister about the way the pizzeria is run. And the play rehearsals aren't going well. As if all this doesn't bring problems enough, Fran has rashly undertaken to help a young boy, illegally in the country, find an elusive people trafficker called Max.

For many years Colette has avoided returning to her homeland - the magical island of Belle-Île-en-Mer in Southern Brittany - afraid to confront the painful memories she left behind. She is living on the Cornish coast when she hears about her mother Thea's failing health and realises that the time has come for her to go home. But can Colette ever forgive Thea for what she has done?

Six years have passed since the end of Sister, Missing and Madison is now a teenager. During a visit to older sister Lauren, she learns that their biological father was an anonymous sperm donor and sets out to track him down. Her search bears fruit sooner than she expects, but is the father she discovers all he seems? As Madison gets drawn into a mysterious investigation involving missing girls and secret hideaways, she finds herself in more and more danger...

Lady Audley is universally adored: Beautiful, kind and charming, she enamors all whom she meets. It is not until the strange disappearance of widower George Talboys that her behavior takes an odd turn. George's friend, Robert Audley, Lady Audley's nephew-in-law, is on the case; an upper-class layabout turned detective, he is determined to get to the bottom of things.

Fractured skulls. Gas masks. Brain buckets. Vats of acid. Pickled body parts. Not the usual tools of trade, but for chief forensic medical scientist Derek and forensic secretary Pauline they were just part of a normal day in the office inside the world-famous Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy's Hospital in London. Derek has played a pivotal role in investigating some of the UKs most high-profile mass disasters and murder cases. 

It’s two years after the events of ‘Girl, Missing’ and life is not getting any easier for sixteen-year-old Lauren, as exam pressure and a recent family tragedy take their toll. Lauren’s birth mother takes Lauren and her two sisters on holiday in the hope that some time together will help, but a few days into the holiday one of the sisters disappears, under circumstances very similar to those in which Lauren was taken years before.

Twelve years ago, Grace Kitto was a successful TV producer, wife and mother. She was also clinically obese and on the path to Type 2 diabetes. Until one day when she left work determined to stick to one of her serial diets, but soon found herself eating an ice cream, as if on autopilot. It sparked an epiphany - she realised the solution to her many failed diets lay in her unconscious. In the powerful, instinctual part of her brain.   

Even the best laid plans have a habit of unravelling - and no plan at all is a recipe for disaster. When two Christmasses collide, it looks like it's going to be anything but goodwill toward men.

Sex, drugs, cinema and stardom in a glorious technicolour romp through London's Swinging '60s. Summer, 1967. As London shimmers in a heat haze and swoons to the sound of Sgt. Pepper, a mystery film - Eureka - is being shot by German wunderkind Reiner Werther Kloss. The screenwriter, Nat Fane, would do anything for a hit but can't see straight for all the acid he's dropping.

It's a crisp early October weekend, and business is slowing down as fall descends at the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium and adjacent Mrs. Hudson's Tea Room. Wealthy philanthropist and prominent Sherlockian David Masterson has rented Suffolk Gardens House, where he plans to entertain his friends in a traditional English country-house weekend. As the chosen caterers, Jayne Watson and Gemma Doyle get to work preparing lavish meals and setting up Sherlockian books and props for entertainment. 

An Apple a Day turns the spotlight on sayings that we take for granted, examining their often surprising or fascinating origins, their use, and why they are true – or sometimes aren’t... From wise words originating with the Old Testament and other ancient texts, by way of practical sayings that have gone into the language, to relatively modern gems often coined by poets, writers or philosophers, An Apple a Day shows that most proverbs are as useful today as they ever were when they were newly minted.

Hannah is a hotel worker, who struggles with depression after a trauma in her childhood and a toxic ex-boyfriend. Callum is a student, questioning his own sanity since a strange young man appeared on the other side of his mirror. When Hannah disappears, her brother Callum determines to find her. His journey leads him to Epping Forest and a mysterious waterfall. But Hannah has fallen through a portal to another world.

In August 2014 Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given 'two or three years' to live. She didn't know how to react. All responses felt scripted, laden with cliché. Being a writer, she decided to write about it (grappling with the unoriginality even of this) and to tell a story she had not yet told: that of being taken in, aged 15, by the author Doris Lessing and the subsequent 50 years of their complex relationship.

The 6th of January is Sherlock Holmes’s birthday, and lucky for Gemma Doyle, January is also the slowest time of the year at both the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium and Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. It’s a good time for Gemma and her friends to travel to England for a Holmes Convention. For Gemma, the trip provides an opportunity to visit her parents. Jayne Wilson is excited about seeing all the sites London has to offer, and Ryan Ashburton just wants to spend some time with Gemma. But the trip is immediately derailed when Gemma’s father Henry recognizes his brother-in-law.

Three women rent a holiday house in Cornwall for the summer. Each brings with her children, baggage (in every sense), and expectations, in this sparkling follow-up to Goodbye, Jimmy Choo. There's control freak Imogen; fluffy and easygoing Sophie; and Jo, a friend of Sophie's who was roped in at the last minute when the first choice of housemate pulled out. A sardonic East London GP, all she really wants to do is put her feet up. Can these three polar opposites ever get along?

Fran Varady isn't keen to help seedy club owner Mickey Allerton track down Lisa, a dancer who's done a bunk. But since Mickey's holding Fran's dog, Bonnie, hostage till the job's done, she doesn't have much choice. She quickly locates Lisa, and they arrange to meet - but when Fran gets there early, the first thing she sees is a body floating in the river. It's Ivo, one of Mickey's nastier bouncers.

Once again Anthony Quinn shows himself a master at writing fiction that works on every level. London, May 1945. Freya Wyley, 20, meets Nancy Holdaway, 18, amid the wild celebrations of VE Day, the prelude to a devoted and competitive friendship that will endure on and off for the next two decades.

Daughters of Eden focuses on the lives and fortunes of four very different young women at the outbreak of the Second World War. Marjorie, left at a boarding school by her emigrating mother; plain Poppy, pushed into marriage with a mean-spirited aristocrat; Kate, despised by her father, but determined to prove herself; and man-mad Lily, who turns out to be the bravest of them all. That all of them are chosen to work undercover for the espionage unit at Eden Park is a surprise, not least to them.