Showing results by narrator "Patience Tomlinson" in All Categories

It was odd that Harriet should always have been so fond of curates. They were so immature and always made the same kind of conversation. Now the Archdeacon was altogether different...'Together yet alone, the Misses Bede occupy the central crossroads of parish life. Harriet, plump, elegant and jolly, likes nothing better than to make a fuss of new curates, secure in the knowledge that elderly Italian Count Ricardo Bianco will propose to her yet again this year.

When Barbara realizes time is running out, she writes letters to her four daughters, aware they'll be facing the trials and triumphs of life without her at their side. But how can she leave them when they still have so much growing up to do?

Because the best adventures are still to come… Escape to the sun with the #1 bestselling author of The Cruise in a feelgood rom com full of romance, fun and mischief, which will sweep you away to the azure waters of the Mediterranean with every turn of the page… Set sail on the Diamond Star...

Less Than Angels follows the loves, works and hopes of a group of young anthropologists. Catherine Oliphant is a writer and lives with handsome anthropologist Tom Mallow. Their relationship runs into trouble when he begins a romance with student Deirdre Swann, so Catherine turns her attention to the reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate, who has a fondness for wearing African masks. Added to this love triangle are the activities of Deirdre's fellow students and their attempts to win the competition for a research grant.

Norfolk, 1939. When the residents of Great Plumstead, a small and charming community in Norfolk, offer to open their homes to evacuees from London, they're expecting to care for children. So when a train carrying expectant mothers pulls into the station, the town must come together to accommodate their unexpected new arrivals....

October 1940. When VAD nurse Evie narrowly escapes being killed in an air raid during the London Blitz, it propels her to make a life-changing decision to break free of her troubled and unhappy life. She escapes to the Norfolk countryside to start afresh, with a job at the newly opened Great Plumstead Hall hospital, and a wonderful new home at Rookery House. The community of Great Plumstead welcomes evacuees to the village—mothers and children bombed out of their London homes. Sisters Prue and Thea, along with members of The Mother's Day Club, help the new arrivals settle in.

Born on a Somerset pea-field in 1941, the second of eight children in a Romani family, Maggie Smith-Bendell has lived through the years of greatest change in the travelling community's long history. As a child, Maggie rode and slept in a horse-drawn wagon, picked hops and flowers, and sat beside her father's campfire on ancient verges, poor but free to roam. As the twentieth century progressed, common land was fenced off and the traditional ways disappeared.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Virginia Nicholson's Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in the Second World War. A special multi-voice recording featuring five actresses that bring to life the hundreds of personal testimonies, diary entries and books that make up this superb study...

Thea welcomes her best friend, Violet Steele, to Rookery House. Violet has been in charge of an ambulance station in London's East End during the Blitz, and is in need of a holiday. Will a week in the countryside give her the rest she deserves? VAD nurse Evie Jones receives unwelcome news that stirs up her past and forces her to make an uncomfortable decision. Though she has a surprise when her friend Ned Blythe returns to start a new job in the hospital gardens. Can Evie let go of the past and give her future happiness a chance?

Sir Godfrey Tallboys was a knight-errant, famous for his success at tourneys, but far from wealthy. In an attempt to make his fortune he left his wife Sybilla and travelled to Spain to fight a minor rusade against the Moors. But treachery lurked in that far distant land and soon Sir Godfrey became a prisoner, a helpless slave in a hostile country. Back in quiet Suffolk he was reported dead. And so it fell to Sybilla to fend for the whole family.

Thomas Nesbitt is a divorced American writer in the midst of a rueful middle age. Living a very private life in Maine - in touch only with his daughter and still trying to reconcile him to the end of a long marriage that he knew was flawed from the outset - he finds his solitude disrupted by the arrival, one wintry morning, of a box postmarked Berlin. The return address on the box - Dussmann - unsettles him completely.

Flo Butterworth and the village singing group are asked to perform a carol concert at the local hospital. This stirs up bad memories for Flo, who lost her family at Christmas in the Blitz. VAD nurse, Evie Jones, is faced with a dilemma that throws her life into turmoil. Will Evie find a way to solve the problem and keep all she holds dear?

From the best-selling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Tulip Fever, a deliciously funny, poignant and wry novel, full of surprising twists and turns. James is getting on a bit and needs full-time help. So Phoebe and Robert, his middle-aged offspring, employ Mandy, who seems willing to take him off their hands. But as James regales his family with tales of Mandy's virtues, their shopping trips and the shared pleasure of their journeys to garden centres, Phoebe and Robert sense something is amiss.

After a difficult few years with her husband Victor, Prue's life is about to change in a dramatic and unexpected way. Will she have the strength to carry on into a more positive future? Rookery House is bursting at the seams after Thea welcomes two WAAFs to stay while their accommodation is being built on the new aerodrome.

"The horror on the train, great though it may turn out to be, will not compare with the horror that exists here, in this house." On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid for tea - but no one is at home. Trapped together for Christmas, the passengers are seeking to unravel the secrets of the empty house when a murderer strikes in their midst.

Tangled Threads is a gripping romantic saga from Margaret Dickinson. For Eveleen Hardcastle life gets no better than growing up on Pear Tree Farm in the Lincolnshire countryside. Her family works hard for the Dunsmore estate and Eveleen finds it impossible to resist the charms of their...

Spring, 1943. After a visit to see her mother in Sussex with Ned, it's time for VAD nurse Evie Jones to say a fond farewell to Rookery House and seek a new home in Great Plumstead. When an unusual opportunity arises, will it be all she hopes for? Marianne is visited by her husband's sister, stirring up bad memories from the past. Scared that Alex's family will once again try to take her young daughters away, Marianne vows to do all she can to keep them safe and living with her at Rookery House.

After learning of a suspicious attempt to burn down a beloved old pub, The Crooked Horse, amateur detective Libby Sarjeant and her friend Fran reluctantly agree to investigate. But when a local antiques dealer mysteriously disappears after apparently taking out his boat, it appears there are dark and sinister forces at play. Can Libby and Fran uncover a connection between the fire and the missing man? And will unravelling a deadly case put them in terrible danger?

March, 1941. After Flo Butterworth loses everything in Manchester's Christmas Blitz, she decides to leave the area and join the Women's Land Army. Putting the past firmly behind her, she arrives at Rookery House in Norfolk hoping for a new start and a chance to do the gardening work she loves. The grip of war has intensified and growing more food is vital to keep the nation going. Thea buys an extra field to grow crops, and in the village, her sister Prue leads members of The Mother's Day Club and Women's Institute as they take on a derelict allotment.

A S Byatt's fairy tales and fables are among the best-loved features of her fiction. Innumerable listeners have asked for the two marvellous fairy tales in Possession - 'The Glass Coffin' and 'Gode's Tale' of the Breton Naie des Trepasses - to be published separately. Here they take their place with three other stories with medieval and oriental settings.