Showing results by narrator "Jilly Bond" in All Categories

News of Thomas à Becket’s martyrdom has spread throughout Christendom, and the blame is laid at the feet of Henry Plantagenet, King of England. Two years later, with Becket canonised, Henry’s position is precarious: punished at the Pope’s insistence for his part in Becket’s death, he now also has an enemy in his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, after her discovery of his longstanding infidelity with Rosamund Clifford.

When a bomb goes off in the West End, Home Secretary Victoria Osborne has a desperate sense of having failed to protect the public. A young Muslim reporter, Ahmed Khan, also has a deep-seated sense of anger and responsibility. He persuades his editor to let him go back amongst childhood friends in Leeds to try to find information.

Ever been talked into buying a camel? Or become a burglar by mistake? Or accidentally drugged a friend on a blind date? Keggie Carew has an unerring instinct for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of putting her foot in it, and making a hash of things. From the repercussions of a missing purse, to boiling a frog, or the holiday when the last thing you could possibly imagine happens, Keggie has been there. She also has an enviable talent for recycling awfulness and turning embarrassment into gold. In prose that will make you laugh, wince and curl your toes, Keggie Carew shares her most embarrassing, awkward, uncomfortable, funny, true, terrible and all-too-relatable moments. You will be glad none of it happened to you.

In June 1940, a covert new force - the Special Operations Executive (SOE) - was set up to wage a secret war. Its agents were tasked with sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines, and over the course of the next five years, 470 special agents would be sent into France. Only 25 female SOE agents would return. None before have told their story in their own words.

A powerful, posthumous novel from bestselling author Mario Reading. Relegated to an isolated provincial town in France after years spent fighting on the Eastern Front, German commander Maximilian von Aschau finds unexpected distraction in the form of beautiful and reserved Lucie Léré. He’s seen every horror of the human experience. She’s never left her village. Opposites in every way, Max and Lucie manage to find common ground. But love is the most dangerous element of war. It makes you vulnerable... and careless.

Migrants and millionairesses, refugees and aristocrats all looking for a way to improve their lives. After WW1 a world of opportunity was opening up for women.... Before convenient air travel, transatlantic travel was the province of the great ocean liners and never more so than in the glory days of the interwar years. It was an extraordinary undertaking made by many women. Some traveled for leisure, some for work; others to find a new life, marriage, to reinvent themselves or find new opportunities. Their stories have remained largely untold - until now.

Binny Cornwallis has lost something. Something that wasn’t really hers in the first place. With her best enemy Gareth and her beloved dog Max she turns detective to track it down, but the Cornwallis family are anything but helpful. Little brother James and his friend Dill are having an adventure of their own and big sister Clem is acting very strangely. And on top of all this, Binny suspects their next-door neighbour may be a witch....

When William X dies, the duchy of Aquitaine is left to his 15-year-old daughter, Eleanor. But such a position for an unmarried woman puts the whole kingdom at risk. So on his deathbed William made a will that would ensure his daughter’s protection: he promised her hand in marriage to the future King of France. Eleanor grows into a romantic and beautiful queen, but she has inherited the will of a king, determined to rule Aquitaine using her husband’s power as King of France. Her

Has Ella met her match? The glamour of the French Riviera quickly turns sour as she is caught up in an investigation that will have repercussions on both sides of the channel. When her mother telephones from France with news of her imminent arrest, Ella rushes to her aid, along with her aunt and an eccentric friend. But what starts as a simple disappearance quickly turns to murder, and Ella finds herself embroiled in a mystery that is far more complex than she’d anticipated.

Rosie lived peacefully in Moscow, and her mother told her fairy tales. One summer night, all that came abruptly to an end when her father and sister were gunned down. Now, Rosie’s only inheritance from her reclusive mother is a notebook full of eerie, handwritten tales, but there is another story lurking between the lines.

A World of Beauty: Tales from Pavlysh contains 19 charming little tales about the beauty of the natural world, and how nature supports all living creatures. A chicken hatches some duck eggs. A rowan tree welcomes some beautiful crested birds to feed on its berries. A blade of grass slumbers through the winter and awakens to joyfully greet the spring. In some of the stories, people engage with this beauty. A child admires the magic beauty of a snowflake, “a six-pointed star, so beautiful and shiny, that a fairy-tale master might have cut it from a plate of silver”.

Jack Andrews was having a tough time. He'd come back from the First World War to find his wife had 'got religion'. She'd got it so badly that she finally went off, left Jim and the three children and joined Father Peter's League of Repenters. She never really came home again. Jack and the children managed as best they could, but things were pretty tough when Aunt Edie turned up. The first thing she did was give her cousin, Maud Andrews, a piece of her mind for running off and leaving her family. But when that didn't do any good, Edie moved in and took over the Andrews family.

Sisters-in-law Kate, Heather, and Olivia are all hiding something. It's not easy being part of the high-achieving Fox family: the expectations and demands of their husbands and children; the jealousies and rivalries; and the endless Sunday lunches. So when mysterious Sasha enters their lives, bloodied from a painful divorce, buried frustrations rush to the surface. Three sisters-in-law. One devastating divorcee. Whose husband is about to play with fire?

Organised. Neat. Lonely. Kathy Simmonds is alone at Christmas this year, after her beloved husband John passed away a few months ago. She keeps her home spick and span, struggling with her grief for a family she has lost or lost touch with. But a chance phone call from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home opens the door to something new. She meets Scruff, a messy Jack Russell with a heart of gold who has been left for dead on the streets of London.

Stick and Fetch are on holiday, but even in a rickety old seaside hotel there are plenty of crimes to solve and mysteries to unravel. Such as, who is Major Mayhem? Why is that door frightened? And where could the small-bottle-of-shampoo robbers be hiding? This lovable pair is on the case and undeterred despite plenty of mishaps, misdeeds and misunderstandings along the way. A fun-filled adventure featuring two hapless investigators with a lot of hair.

A person or persons unknown bludgeon Stafford Mills to death with his own silver candlestick. Suspects abound and suddenly sleepy Osborne-Tye seems a sinister place. The clues pile up. So to the suspects, and the search for the killer becomes quite a challenge. Then a second body is discovered, turning everything on its head. Can DI Guido Black and D Sgt Eden Hudson unravel the clues and unpick the alibis to crack their first murder?

In 1921, Françoise Frenkel - a Jewish woman from Poland - opens Berlin's very first French bookshop. It is a dream come true. The bookshop attracts artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets - even the French ambassador himself. It brings Françoise peace, friendship and prosperity. Then one summer's day in 1939, the dream ends. It ends after Kristallnacht, when Jewish shops and businesses are smashed to pieces. It ends when no one protests. So, just weeks before the war breaks out, Françoise flees to France.

In 1421, Henry V and his young bride, Catherine de Valois, are blessed with the birth of a son - but their happiness is short-lived. Catherine is widowed, and when her father, the French king, also dies, her son inherits the crowns of France and England.

England, 1435. Eleanor Cobham has married into the highest ranks of the aristocracy; she is now the Duchess of Gloucester. She and her husband, the Duke Humphrey, set up a court of their own to rival the royal court in London, surrounding themselves with fascinating and influential people. But Eleanor craves the one thing she lacks: a son and heir - and through him a possible route to the throne of England.

Meet Sally Stick and her dog (and best friend), Fetch. Together, they're Stick and Fetch: Detectives. A girl. A dog. A detective agency. Sally loves nothing more than investigating a good mystery - and her shaggy canine companion, Fetch, loves nothing more than to be at her side when she does. There's just one small problem: they always gets the wrong end of the stick! The hapless pair remain undeterred, however, dashing from one crime scene to another on their bicycle, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake...yet always emerging blissfully unaware. A fun, madcap trio of stories featuring two lovable heroes with a lot of hair.