Showing results by narrator "Maggie Mash" in All Categories

From Sunday Times best-selling author Santa Montefiore comes a novel about losing yourself, but finding your future.… Ellen Trawton is running away from it all - literally. She’s getting married to a man she doesn't love, her job is depressing, and her mother is getting on her nerves. So she escapes to the one place she knows her mother won't follow her - her aunt's house in rural Ireland. Once there, she uncovers a dark family secret - and a future she never knew she might have.

When 17-year-old Mary O'Connor collapses one Sunday in church she is taken to live with Dr Roberts and his wife in a beautiful Yorkshire village for her health. Though initially employed as a maid, Mary soon becomes the daughter the couple were never able to have. With Britain at war, unable to remain idle, Mary finds employment in the local steel works but when her fiancé Tom Downing is killed in action Mary is convinced it is retribution for their night of sin during Tom's Christmas leave.

July 1942, and 23-year-old nightclub singer Kate Watson has made a home for herself in bomb-blitzed London. A motley crew of friends has replaced the family she's not spoken to in years. Until Kate's sister Sarah walks back into her life, asking her to return home to Dorset for one month to look after her daughter, Lizzie. Reluctantly Kate agrees, though it means facing the troubled past she hoped she'd escaped.

Lucy Gabbitas has just left school and is excited about joining her sisters at the local umbrella factory. But then her beloved father dies of lung disease leaving Lucy and her brothers and sisters broken-hearted. With barely enough to make ends meet, the family receive no sympathy from their tyrannical mother, Annie, and their first Christmas without him holds little comfort and joy. Things seem to be looking brighter for Lucy when she meets John Grey and falls in love. That is until Annie becomes seriously ill and dies, and Lucy is forced to put her family first.

Told with warmth and humour, The Ever Open Door is the story of a hard working, down-to-earth community in a small Yorkshire town during the Second World War and its aftermath.Burly steelworker Jim Butler and his wife Sally are quite content in their little house on Potters Row. Jim's only complaint is that Sally is too soft hearted for her own good, always at the beck and call of any neighbour, friend or even stranger. Sally, on the other hand, accuses Jim of being a soft touch for anyone after a drink or two at the Rising Sun.

Bryony and Hannah are sisters, but they couldn't be more different, and war has brought even more of a rift between them. Bryony is happiest at Combe Lodge, the family home, while young, headstrong Hannah has fled to Jersey. At Combe Lodge, everyone else is pitching in with the war effort. The family home fills with evacuees, and Bryony is doing her bit, flying planes at the nearby Combe Lodge Airlines. But Bryony knows that she needs to reach out to Hannah. Only she will be able to keep her flighty younger sister's feet on the ground. But is Bryony too late to help her? Will Hannah ever come home?

Phoebe Stanbury was killed in the summer of secrets.... One balmy June evening in 1881, Phoebe Stanbury stands before the guests at her engagement party: this is her moment, when she will join the renowned Raycraft family and ascend to polite society. As she takes her fiancé's hand, a stranger holding a knife steps forward and ends the poor girl's life. Amid the chaos, he turns to her aristocratic groom and mouths: 'I promised I would save you.'

In the summer of 1936, Montse is 15 years old and her country is on the brink of civil war. Her tiny village in the north east of Spain is a world away from the tensions beginning to overspill in other parts of the country, but when her brother José returns from working in a nearby town, brimming with anarchic zeal, Montse is captivated. Swept away by the fervour of the revolution, caught between love, family and honour, her sheltered life will be abruptly changed forever.

High in the hills of Valencia, a forgotten house guards its secrets. Emma Temple is the first to unlock its doors in 70 years and it seems like the perfect retreat. But for her grandmother, Freya, a nurse who stayed here during Spain's devastating civil war, the house evokes terrible memories. Emma is drawn deeper into Freya's story: one of crushed idealism, lost love, and families ripped apart by war.

January 1945, West London: Sylvia Simpson has become an invaluable member of the Marigold's crew - but as the V-I and V-2 rockets draw closer, someone from her past is about to rock the boat. Now Sylvia must choose between keeping the promises she has made and remaining loyal to the people she loves the most. Polly and Verity are waiting for their sweethearts' safe return and have their own battles to fight on the home front. It will take all their resolve to keep their heads above water, but as long as they stick together there will always be hope.

Born into hardship in a Northumbrian mining village, Annie Manon needs all her strength to survive the bleak years following the First World War. As her family fractures around her, she longs to make something of her life. Through hard work and determination Annie eventually leaves the poverty and despair of her childhood behind her. But then war breaks out once more, taking her further away from her dreams and those she loves most. And it is all Annie can do to keep hope alive....

God was everywhere once. Prayer was part of public life; places of worship marked our landscape. Equality is the new deity now, and much of Europe is already becoming a no-God area. In this short essay, Christina Odone explores whether God is no longer welcome in the West and whether religious followers have been silenced in our newly secular society.

September 1613. In Belvoir Castle, the heir of one of England's great noble families falls suddenly and dangerously ill. Within a few short weeks he will suffer an excruciating death. Soon the whole family will be stricken with the same terrifying symptoms. The second son, the last male of the line, will not survive. It is said witches are to blame. And so the Earl of Rutland's sons will not be the last to die.

London, 1926. Two baby girls are born just hours and miles apart. One you know as the Queen of England, but what of the other girl - the daughter of an undertaker named in her honour? Betsy Sunshine grows up surrounded by death in war-torn London, watching her community grieve for their loved ones whilst dealing with her own teenage troubles...namely her promiscuous sister Margie. As Betsy grows older we see how the country changes through her eyes, and along the way we discover the birth of a secret that threatens to tear her family apart.

Louise’s mother is missing in the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand. The only trace Louise can find is her mother’s distinctive bag. Inside it is a beautiful atlas belonging to a writer named Claire. But what is the connection between Claire and Louise’s missing mum, and can the atlas help Louise find her? Louise explores the mementos slipped between the pages of the atlas and uncovers a life-changing revelation, a passionate love affair and a tragedy.

Hester Fielding was once the leading ballerina of her day. Her life is the stuff of drama: a bleak Yorkshire childhood transformed by the discovery of her amazing gifts as a dancer; a dangerous love affair that can only lead to heartbreak; and a secret that would topple her from her pinnacle of fame if it ever came out. Now Hester has returned to Yorkshire, to Wychwood, where, each year at Christmas, a ballet is performed on Twelfth Night in the little theatre.

In June 2014, Julia White - a beautiful and intelligent young woman - blows up a coffee shop in central London, killing 24 people before turning herself in to the police. Apart from publishing a potentially ironic manifesto, she refuses to explain the reasons for her actions.... Clare Hardenberg, an investigative journalist, has been commissioned to write a biography of Julia, but at the start of the novel she is on her way to prison herself. What has brought her to this point?

A joyful and hilarious tale of some very spirited septuagenarians as they overcome innumerable obstacles to save their beloved mutt from a heartless exterminator in a land where bureaucracy reigns above all else. Picaresque at its very best. Perhaps you're not a member of the Azov House of Culture Elderly Club. Perhaps you missed the talk on the Cabbage Root Fly last week. Galina Petrovna hasn't missed one since she joined the club, when she officially became old.

Annie Delancey is happily married with three grown children. But she guards a secret. Aged eighteen she had a baby boy, and gave him up for adoption. Out of the blue, she receives an official-looking letter from Social Services. Herson wants to make contact. As the son she has never known comes back into her life, his presence begins to expose the cracks in the family that Annie now has to try, desperately, to hold together.

Resurrecting buried scandals, audacious hoaxes and private tragedies, Emma Donoghue has written a sequence of short stories about peculiar moments in the history of the British Isles. Here artists mix with poisoners and countesses rub shoulders with cross-dressers, vicars and revolutionaries; the Second Coming is proclaimed in Scotland; and a miniature girl becomes a tiny skeleton in a London museum.