Showing results by narrator "Tamsin Kennard" in All Categories

Last night, we celebrated our anniversary. Over candlelight, we talked about the children, our work, and I was so happy, and felt so loved. But the next morning, when I check my phone, there is a message. From a friend. And a string of photos appear of my husband, Will, with another woman: walking along the street holding hands. Going into fancy hotels. Standing at a window, his arms around her, her head on his shoulder…

What’s it like to live forever? Alicia is about to find out... Just because you don’t grow old, it doesn't mean you won’t die a violent death at the hands of your broodmates. Or the Queen who laid your egg. From the moment she hatches in the Derwent Sídhe, Alicia is fighting. For her life. To gain position. To become an adult. And then, the moment she drops her wings and emerges, the fun really starts.

The day I was told I’d never be able to have a child, my world came crashing down. My husband says he still loves me, but I lie awake at night, wishing we could have a family. One morning, my husband’s side of the bed is cold and empty. I hear a noise and head downstairs. In the middle of the rug in my living room is a wooden drawer. Swaddled inside, with perfect rosy cheeks and beautiful round blue eyes, a baby gazes up at me.

My mother is obsessed with every detail of my wedding–controlling my dress, my ring, my happiness. But when the day finally comes, will she really let me go?

I stare at the messages between my husband Rob and another woman, their plans to run away together bringing tears to my eyes as I stand, trembling, in our luxurious apartment. I thought I had the perfect marriage. As our three beautiful children sleep soundly in the next room, I think about our family holidays, our romantic date nights, and the day Rob proposed to me. In the last few months, I haven’t complained about his late-night meetings or got jealous about his weekends away. I trusted my husband. But now I’m questioning everything.

Jo Sorsby knows she is hiding from her past when she agrees to look after her uncle’s stationery shop. Spending her days glimpsing the lives of her customers as they experiment with what’s on offer is a welcome distraction from the life she has left behind. Yet far from home, Jo feels adrift... But when she meets Ruth, a vicar running from a secret, and Malcolm, a septuagenarian struggling to write his first book, she realises that she isn’t alone.

Fran made the biggest mistake of her life when she had an affair with Ben. Both their families live in the small, tight-knit town of Oakheart, and their daughters are the best of friends. The relationship is over, but her guilt haunts her every waking moment. She tries to push it down, but it's always there, simmering just beneath the surface. Fran has managed to keep the truth hidden from her husband… so far. But the cracks in their marriage are starting to show.

"Your daughter is dead." When Kat Cavanaugh hears the words every mother dreads, her perfect world shatters. She takes in the beautiful long blonde hair, torn yellow dress, and chipped blue nail-varnish. It can’t be real. And then the police add the word "suicide". But Kat refuses to believe them. Even when they show her the familiar looping handwriting and smudged ink on the note her little girl left behind. She knows her bubbly, vivacious daughter would never take her own life.

I couldn’t believe it when I got the call to offer me my dream job. It was right in the heart of the city with a flat provided. I jumped at the chance, and within days I had made new friends and began dating a wonderful man. For the first time in years, I feel safe. But soon strange things begin to happen in my flat: odd noises in the night, the feeling that I’m being watched. When I discover an old dress hidden behind my wardrobe and wear it to work, the atmosphere chills instantly. The dress belonged to a girl my boss would rather forget. The girl before me who vanished.

When I pick my beloved daughter Poppy up from school one afternoon, my mind races when I see the little girl holding Poppy’s hand. With the same heart-shaped face, long brown hair, and dark eyes, the two girls look identical. In fact, they look like sisters. Is the secret I’ve been holding on to for so long about to be revealed? 

If she had been found moments later, Amelia's heart would have stopped and never recovered. Instead she was taken from the desolate beach to the nearest hospital just in time to save her life. When her sister Lexi arrives from New York, Amelia's heart is beating, but the accident has implanted a series of false memories. These memories revolve around a man named Sam, and a perfect love story that never existed.

It’s the day I’ve been dreaming about my whole life. As I glide down the flower-strewn aisle overlooking the Greek orange groves, in my pearl-encrusted ivory gown, I finally see my fiancé Nik. We look like the perfect couple, but not all fairy tales have happy endings....

When Sophie’s life falls apart, she accepts an invitation from a childhood friend, Caroline, to visit her family’s beautiful beach house, miles from the nearest town. The silence is broken only by the rhythmic crash of the waves against the jagged black rocks below. But when Sophie arrives, she finds her friend much changed. Caroline - who used to be so warm and confident - is secretive and on-edge, spending long, unexplained hours away from her family. And then there’s Caroline’s little daughter Lucy - who stopped speaking soon after they moved in.

On a cold winter's morning, the body of a young boy is discovered in Epping Forest. The body is pristine and peaceful, his head resting gently on a pillow, an angel pendant clenched in his small fist. It is a murder as carefully planned as it is brutal, and there's one person DI Bishop needs back on his team to help solve such a calculated crime. Holly Wakefield, clinical psychologist for the Met Police, is better than anyone Bishop knows at getting inside the brains of psychopaths.

Conrad has a lot on his plate, and recovering from a punctured kidney is only the start. Top of his to-do list is a trip to Cornwall for an interview with Morwenna Mowbray, vessel and victim of Fae magick. Before he can go, Tom Morton has news on the missing book, the Codex Defanatus. And soon it becomes clear that all roads lead across the Irish Sea, to a country where Conrad has no jurisdiction, no allies, and where his enemies are not one, but two Fae queens.

Jem is a joyful mystery to Alice. She is something to give thanks for. And when she disappears from Alice's life, as suddenly as she entered it, a whirl of glamour, subversion and literary references, Alice is left bereft. But then she meets Giovanni, presumptuous and hectoring, passionate and beautiful, who leads her back to her childhood friend and the mystery and chaos still surrounding her. Alice finds herself being seduced all over again.

Mark and Melissa Cain are thrilled to have found Jade, a babysitter who is brilliant with their young children. Having seen her own house burn to the ground, Jade needs them as much as they need her. Moving Jade into the family home can only be a good thing, can’t it? As Mark works long hours as a police officer and Melissa struggles with running a business, the family become ever more reliant on their babysitter, who is only too happy to help. And as Melissa begins to slip into depression, it’s Jade who is left picking up the pieces. But Mark soon notices things aren’t quite as they seem. Things at home feel wrong, and as Mark begins to investigate their seemingly perfect sitter, what he discovers shocks him to his core. He’s met Jade before. And now he suspects he might know what she wants.

Find out what Conrad (and especially Vicky) get up to when they’re not cracking the big cases in this collection of novellas from Mark Hayden’s King’s Watch universe: Byways, the less travelled roads of magick.

Jemima Jago has moved back home to the enchanting Isles of Scilly. Ready for a fresh start in a quaint coastal village, she can be found in the stacks of Cornwall’s oldest library by day and stargazing in the cove at night. Jem finds the slower pace of life suits her perfectly, until she stumbles across a very curious crime.....   

I thought my sister was happy. I thought what we all thought: that Annie and Dom led perfect lives in a lovely cottage in a quiet village by the sea, with flowers at the front gate and an apple tree in the garden. Everyone knew them: generous, loving Dom, creative, joyful Annie. But I never saw Annie as she sat waiting for Dom well into the night. I didn’t see her smiling through her tears. I didn’t know what the perfect couple was hiding.