Showing results by narrator "Anne Dover" in All Categories

It's December 1953. As the village prepares for the festivities, for many people, a happy Christmas is by no means certain. Recovering from a car-crash, Stella Simmons, the winter wedding that she and her sweetheart had planned seems impossible. Elsewhere in the village, Jackie Tozer is dreaming of America and Hilary Napier, who thought the war had robbed her of her chance at happiness, has to ask herself if she could ever imagine leaving her life at the big house. The darkest time of the year finds everyone asking questions with no easy answer.

It's 1941 and Britain is at war. For the aristocratic Walsingham family this means their grand home being taken over by the armed forces. But for newcomers Ava, Maudie and Bella, this is a chance for something more. Each is ready to do their part for the war effort and soon become firm friends. But Lord Edward Walsingham seems like he is hiding something. And although he may be clever, he might have met his match in Maudie and the girls....

Yorkshire, 1928. Indomitable sleuth Kate Shackleton is taking a well-deserved break from her detective work and indulging in her other passion: photography. When her local Photographic Society proposes an outing, Kate jumps at the chance to visit Haworth and Stanbury, in the heart of Brontë country, the setting for Wuthering Heights. But when an obnoxious member of their party is murdered, the group is thrown into disarray. Is the murderer amongst them, or did the loud-mouthed Tobias have more enemies than they might have imagined?

1914. Mining engineer Tommy Birch goes off to war, leaving his new wife, Rita, behind in Pontefract. On the front line, Tommy runs afoul of a German mine and is reported as missing, presumed deceased by his fellow soldiers. But Tommy isn't dead. Found behind enemy lines, wearing only a pair of boots stolen from a dead German, Tommy is picked up by the enemy, who believe him to be one of their own.

After the sudden and brutal breakdown of her marriage, Jenny finds herself alone for the first time in her life when she leaves the comfortable farmhouse with her four-year-old daughter. Taking refuge in a seaside town in North Wales, Jenny finds a room in a boarding house. It's difficult at first, but as she gets to know her fellow residents, she gradually begins to see that life has much more to offer than she could ever have dreamed.

Handsome Frank Rossi took Matty Gilbie away from her working class roots in East London, promising her fame and fortune. As his wife, she would be half of a power couple. But the Wall Street Crash puts paid to all that, and as Frank becomes more violent, Matty flees in the dead of night. Once home in Bermondsey, she goes into hiding, but Frank is on the move, determined to find her and get her back.

"I dragged my heels all the way to the mill. ‘I can’t do it!’ I sulked. Mother sighed and shook her head. My heart sank. Of course, I’d seen the mill hundreds of times before, but now it was different - now, I was going in. I’d never seen a place so depressing; I wanted to cry." With tales from hardworking Audrey and mischievous Maureen to high-spirited Doris and dedicated Marjorie, The Mill Girls is an evocative story of hardship and friendship from when cotton was still king.

Demi desperately needs her luck to change. On the sleeper train down to Cornwall, she can't help wondering why everything always goes wrong for her. Having missed out on her dream job, and left with nowhere to stay following her boyfriend's betrayal, pitching up at her grandfather's cottage is her only option. Victoria thinks she's finally got what she wanted: Boscawen, the gorgeous Cornish estate her family owned for generations should now rightfully be hers, following her husband's sudden death.

There's an old Cornish saying: "Save a stranger from the sea, he'll turn your enemy...." When her reclusive grandmother becomes too frail to live alone, Gabriella Blythe moves into the remote waterside cabin on Frenchman's Creek which has been her grandmother's home for decades. Once a celebrated artist, Jaunty's days are coming to a close, but she is still haunted by events in her past, particularly the sinking of Lancasteria during the war.

It's 1945 and the war is finally over. For the Devlin family in Liverpool, the wartime years have been almost too much to bear. But at long last sisters Grace and Chrissie can return to their normal lives. Level-headed and hard-working, Grace wants nothing more than to meet a nice man and settle down. Vivacious Chrissie, though, craves fun and excitement - and there's not much of that to be had in the austere post-war years. So when Chrissie meets Pat Kilroy, a handsome Irishman, she's swept off her feet and eagerly follows Pat to Ireland. Chrissie soon realises she has made a terrible mistake, and Grace rushes to her side to help.

For Mary Callaghan, marriage has brought heartaches and disappointment. But with it have come joys, the greatest of which are her daughters. And what Mary wants most in the world for her girls is what she never had - a husband who will offer the security her own hard-drinking, free-spending, brash-talking Jack denied her. But when Daisy confesses she's pregnant, Mary knows the future looks grim, for the father's rough, pleasure-loving Sam O'Grady. As Nell watches her sister sink into bitter poverty, she begins to wonder if she could ever allow herself to fall in love, when her own mother and sister are suffering so much.

Rose Pritchard and her seven-year-old daughter Maddie have left everything behind to come to the village of Millthwaite, Cumbria, in search of the person who once offered Rose hope. Almost immediately Rose wonders if she's chasing a dream - but she knows in her heart that she cannot go back. She's been given a second chance - at life, and love - but will she have the courage to take it?

Born in 1800, George Hudson was raised from farmer’s son to the rich and powerful Lord Mayor of York - friend to royalty and owner of half of the railways in the kingdom. But Hudson was driven by greed as well as ambition and a dark secret lurked within his past - a youthful indiscretion…and an illegitimate child. That child, Milly, has been brought up, quietly and lovingly, by her mother, Jane, who dreams of taking revenge on her careless begetter. By a quirk of fate, both Jane and Milly work in the Hudson household. Will Jane’s revenge be sweet?

It is the autumn of 1945 and identical twins Joy and Gillian Lawrence are on their way home to Liverpool, having been evacuated to Devonshire five years earlier. Their mother has been killed in the blitz but the girls hope that with their beloved father’s help they will be able to manage. All goes well until there is a terrible accident and Joy loses her sight. At first she is bitter and resentful whilst Gillian is racked with guilt.

1273. Arriving in Byzantium, physician Anna Zarides resolves to prove the innocence of her brother, now in exile for conspiring to kill a nobleman. Unable to move freely in society as a woman, Anna must pose as a Eunuch and use her medical skills to manoeuvre close to the players involved in her brother’s fate. But time to find the truth is running out. A crusade to capture the Holy Land is brewing, and leaders have set their sights on Constantinople.

A love story, a modern nightmare and an honest and incisive portrayal of a woman who honours her husband's wish to die and finds herself in the dock for murder. When Deborah reluctantly helps her beloved husband Neil end his life and conceals the truth, she is charged with murder. As the trial unfolds and her daughter Sophie testifies against her, Deborah, still reeling with grief, fights to defend her actions. Twelve jurors hold her fate in their hands, if found guilty she will serve a life sentence.

1929, London. In the darkness before dawn, a London railway porter discovers a man's body as he unloads a special goods train from Yorkshire, all means of identification stripped away. Hitting a dead end, Scotland Yard call on indomitable sleuth Kate Shackleton, hoping her local Yorkshire knowledge and undoubted skills at winkling out information will produce the results they need. 1929, Yorkshire. Fears of unrest in the Yorkshire coalfields mean that Kate must conduct her investigation with the utmost secrecy.

Nothing ever happens in August, and tenacious sleuth Kate Shackleton deserves a break. Heading off for a long-overdue holiday to Whitby, she visits her school friend Alma, who works as a fortune-teller there. Kate had been looking forward to a relaxing seaside sojourn but upon arrival discovers that Alma's daughter, Felicity, has disappeared, leaving her mother a note and the pawn ticket for their only asset: a watch-guard. What makes this more intriguing is the jeweller who advanced Felicity the 30 shillings is Jack Phillips, Alma's current gentleman friend.

Maddy lives with her grandmother in a tumbledown farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales. The house has been in the family for generations, but her grandmother is struggling to cope. She is determined that no matter what happens, the two of them will not be forced into the workhouse. Though life is tough, Maddy manages to gain a scholarship to the local school. As war is declared, Maddy and her friends join up, leaving the beautiful Dales for the dangerous work of manning the Ack Ack sites.

Hull, 1930. A terrified woman runs through the dark, rain-lashed streets pursued by a man, desperate to reach the sanctuary of the local police station. Alice Goddard runs with one thing in mind: her daughter. In her panic she is hit by a car and rushed to hospital. When she wakes, she has no memory of who she is, but at night she dreams of being hunted by a man, and of a little girl. The weeks pass, but even her own mother is evasive about the girl’s whereabouts. Penniless and homeless, Alice must rebuild her life, hoping that one day she will be reunited with her lost daughter.