Showing results by narrator "Annie Aldington" in All Categories

Behind the cold, damp walls of the cottage, 17-year-old Malakai River is left to fend for his younger sisters. In her selfish quest for freedom, his mother shacks up with a small-time gangster and recklessly leaves the children behind. When Jean River returns a year later, she makes two shocking discoveries - a decomposing body of a young woman in her cottage...and Kelly Raven.

Bermondsey , London. With an absent father and a penniless mother, Cyril Reardon is determined to be the man of the house. As young as eight, Cyril is a charmer, a planner, and a risk-taker. A rare trip to the country, shows Cyril a completely different world and it opens his eyes to how the other half lives. A young man wants Cyril shot dead but receives a nasty scar and a few injuries that set him on a path of revenge.

After serving eight years inside for armed robbery, Mitchell Swan comes home to find his family in chaos and his violent father-in-law to blame. Within hours, he moves out, taking only his middle son and leaving his other two children, Jordan and Sonny, to be dragged up by their mother. Growing up in the same street but in reality worlds apart, Eden’s life is vastly different from the Swan brothers. She endures the unimaginable at the hands of Gabriel, her father - a Jehovah’s Witness elder. But no one believes her.

Mike Regan and Zara Ezra believe the so-called Governor is safely locked away - in Zara’s hangar. But less than 24 hours later, the Governor is loose and out there, wreaking havoc.

As snow falls outside Abbotsford vicarage on Christmas Eve, Rose Northwood finds a child lying destitute in the manger of the town's nativity display. Reminded of her younger brother, who died at Christmastime, she is determined to nurse the young boy back to health. But the child has lost his memory and can't recall where he came from…

Having spent her life watching her father run his East London firm, Zara Ezra has learnt a thing or two about being a gangster, and she’s ready to take over when the time comes. Mike Regan, a blast from Zara’s past, is the head of his own firm, but when his son is kidnapped in the middle of a gangland feud, Mike has no choice but to accept help from the Ezras to get his little boy back alive. With a rival firm playing increasingly dirty, murder moves to the top of the agenda and Zara has some big choices to make.

The war has had a devastating effect on the Sweet family, with young Charlie Sweet, lost at sea, presumed dead and bombs falling on nearby Bristol. Still there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon in the form of Mary Sweet’s upcoming wedding to her Canadian beau. But even that has failed to rouse their father from his grief. But in London a baby has been found in a bombed out house, sheltered in the arms of his dead mother. A child to make life worth living again...

Hard live. Hard Lessons. It's murder on the streets. When a prostitute's body is found lifeless, mutilated and brutally raped, DCI Annie Carr has never seen anything like it and never wants to again. Kate Burrows, retired DCI now consultant, has plenty of experience when it comes to murder - after all she caught the Grantley Ripper and broke the biggest pedophile ring in the South East. She is determined to help put the killer behind bars.

Frances Sweet can’t really remember her real parents. Brought up by her uncle, her cousins Ruby and Mary have always treated her like their little sister. As the war continues to keep her cousins separated from the men they love – Frances is growing up fast enough to catch the eye of dashing American soldier Declan. But she also has a greater longing – to find the mother who abandoned her years before.

Whitechapel in the 1930s was not an easy place to be brought up, and when the war came, those with nothing were hit the hardest. Queenie watched her family struggle and learned her lessons the hard way. When she was a little girl, there was one thing Queenie knew - she was going to get out of this.... And then tall, dark and handsome Alfie Butler walks into her life and gives Queenie her ticket out. One rushed wedding later, the real trouble begins. As the Krays make their mark on the East End, Queenie realises what it takes for an East End girl to really succeed.

Holding the letter in trembling hands, Daisy’s future crumbled before her – the words engraved on her heart forever. The village of Little Creek, the long winter of 1867. The first flakes of snow are falling when Daisy Marshall, secretly engaged to her master's son, finds herself jilted at the altar. Heartbroken, Daisy flees to the small village of Little Creek, nestled on the coast of Essex. There she is warmly welcomed – but the village is poverty-stricken, suffering under a cruel lord of the manor. And when cholera hits, the villagers are truly in dire straits.

London, 1854: 20-year-old Essie Chapman lives with her father in poverty-stricken Limehouse, working on the river as a boatman. Her life seems set before her, never to leave this part of London and forever at her father's beck and call. Then, one night, she must transport a mysterious man from a foreign ship to the banks of the Thames, a man who ends up renting a room in Essie's house, identifying himself only as 'Raven'.

The ravaged world of Tallarn plays host to the greatest armoured conflict in the history of mankind. The bitter and vengeful Iron Warriors led entire divisions of tanks and war machines across the befouled plains, until a macro-transporter plunged to the surface and ended a million lives. Stranded upon an unnamed, toxic battlefield that resembles nothing more than a graveyard of Titans, Warsmith Koparnos has precious little time left - will he find salvation amidst the dead god-machines, or succumb to violent madness?

Homeless Bodies and Other Stories is an original fiction podcast featuring audio-exclusive short stories from award-winning authors and Sunday Times best-sellers, inspired by objects & artefacts from Wellcome Collection's permanent exhibition, 'Medicine Man', in London.

In two run-down houses, at the side of a barren Black Country heath, live six children with no family but each other. Abandoned or orphaned, every day is a fight to find food and keep warm. But they are determined to stay free of the clutches of the workhouse and the horrors that would face them if they were ever torn apart. Dora Parsons lives with her mother, Mary, and her evil grandmother, Edith. Edith’s house may be comfortable and warm, and food is plentiful, but every day, Dora suffers at the hands of her spiteful gran.

After serving a lengthy sentence for the murder of her husband, Dolly Rawlins is free from prison. And she's only got one thing on her mind: the diamonds she stashed before the police caught her. But there are people waiting for Dolly on the outside ­- tough ex-prisoners who know about the diamonds, and they all want a cut. Also waiting for Dolly is DS Mike Withey. He holds her personally responsible for the death of his sister in the diamond raid 10 years earlier. And he wants her back inside. Dolly Rawlins has other plans.

Winnie Berry had been the landlady for the Battersea Tavern for over 25 years and loved every minute of it. Her husband Brian preferred the quiet of the upstairs, but Winnie liked to be in the thick of it: the atmosphere and the company. While her son has taken after his father in more ways than one, she can't help but love him - David might not be able to hold down a job, but she would do anything to keep him safe. After all, once upon a time she'd made a mistake - something she'd do anything to put right.

The latest crime thriller from best-selling author Kerry Barnes.

Acapulco, 1974: Rina Walker is on assignment. Just another quick, clean kill. She wakes to discover her employer's severed head on her bedside table and a man with an AK-47 coming through the door of her hotel room. She needs all her skills to neutralise her attacker and escape. After a car chase, she is captured by a Mexican drug boss who exploits her radiant beauty and ruthless expertise to eliminate an inconvenient member of the government.

The Vincents' nightclubs are popping up all over London. The O'Connells plan to get their hands on the Palaces...but gypsies have no place in the Vincents' business. Disregarding the warnings and the rumours of the disappearance of the entire McManners family, the O'Connells plot a scam so cruel even their own kind shuns them. Ruby Vincent is now 15, and she may look like her aunt Francesca, but she still has Jesse Right's blood running through her veins. Turning her back on the family, she goes in search of the truth.