Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

Filled with wit and humour, Nesbit's 1902 fantasy tells the adventure of five siblings sent to spend the summer with their uncle. One day, when the children wander from the strange house by the sea to play in old gravel pits, they uncover 'It', a prehistoric Sand-fairy. The unusual Sand-fairy grants the children one wish a day, each lasting until sunset. Though wishes can come true, they are not always as pleasant as they might seem, which the children soon discover.

People like Emmy Jackson. They always have. Especially online, where she is Instagram sensation Mamabare, famous for telling the unvarnished truth about modern parenthood. But Emmy isn’t as honest as she’d like the fans to believe. She may think she has her followers fooled, but someone out there knows the truth and plans to make her pay....

In The Case of the Stolen Sixpence, Maisie's big chance to prove herself finally arrives when crime strikes her Victorian London neighborhood. While the grown-ups turn a blind eye to the whodunit and justice goes un-served, Maisie and her canine sidekick, Eddie, search the streets for clues to crack the case.

All seems tranquil as newly qualified health visitor Sarah motors into a small Kentish hilltop village in her new green mini. She's barely out of the car when she's called to assist the midwife with a bride who's gone into labour in the middle of her own wedding reception. And so her adventures begin.... As a health visitor, Nurse Sarah is as green as grass, but she puts her best foot into wellies and braves the mad dogs, killer ganders and muddy tracks of the farming community.

Having given up a high-powered job, Tessa Hainsworth had no idea how hard she would struggle when she fulfils her dream of moving to Cornwall. Within months, she is almost ready to return to London: the family is running out of money – fast. But a chance encounter in the local post office leads her to accept the unlikeliest of job offers – as a postwoman.

Marian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, half French, half British, naive yet too clever for her own good. But when she is recruited from her desk job by SOE to go undercover in wartime France, it seems her hybrid status - and fluent French - will be of service to a greater, more dangerous cause. Trained in sabotage, dead-drops, how to perform under interrogation, and how to kill, Marian parachutes into southwest France with an urgent mission....

There is far more to Switzerland than beautiful scenery, chocolate, watches, faceless bankers, and spotless cities. The real Switzerland is full of surprises and anything but bland. This small, rugged, landlocked country at the heart of Europe has been a confederation since the first three cantons came together in a defensive alliance in 1291. Four national languages are spoken within its borders. Its present 26 cantons are largely autonomous and retain their individual characters.

One stolen baby. Two desperate strangers. One night of terror. When Nina almost dies during a disastrous blind date, her life is saved by a waitress called Angel. But later that evening, Nina is surprised by a knock on the door. It’s Angel - and she’s pointing a gun at her. Minutes later, Angel’s younger brother, Lucas, turns up, covered in blood, shielding a stolen newborn baby in his arms. Nina is about to endure the longest night of her life - a night that will be filled with terror and lead her to take risks she would never have believed herself capable of....

In January 1987, Helen Honeysett goes on an evening run from her riverside cottage and disappears. Twenty-nine years later, Helen's body has never been found. Her husband has hired a detective to find out what happened all those years ago, but when the five households on that desolate stretch of towpath refuse to give up their secrets, Stella and Jack find themselves hunting a killer whose trail has long gone cold.

1918. Young, beautiful and impoverished, Katya arrives in Paris to begin a new life - leaving behind a terrible secret. She is swept up in the city's glamour - particularly the boutiques on the Champs-Élysées, with their glittering haute couture gowns. Dare Katya dream that she may someday wear - or even design - one of these dazzling creations? It feels like an impossible wish, until she meets businessman Harry Morten. Tall, handsome and well-connected, Harry could give Katya everything she wants...but at what price?

Sarah Massey, talented lead actress in Circus Sweethearts, is a mess. She should be dancing on air - after all, her boyfriend just proposed. But she has lost his gift: a beautiful emerald necklace with a storied history. Rumor has it whoever loses the necklace will be cursed, and now everything around Miss Massey is falling apart. She turns to Maisie Hitchins and her dog, Eddie, for help. But when Maisie shows up at the London theater, things only get stranger.

In Book Three of Holly Webb's The Mysteries of Maisie Hitchins, 12-year-old Maisie and her dog Eddie are invited to join Maisie's friend Alice on a trip to the country. It's lovely to get away from the London smog, but there is something strange about the manor where the girls are staying. Odd noises, horrid smells, and sightings of a spectral cat keep them up at night. Has Alice's father rented a haunted house? There must be a logical explanation, and Maisie plans to use her detecting skills to find out what it is!

This is the story of the Hasting family - their secrets, their loves and losses, dreams and heartbreaks - captured in a seamless series of individual moments that span the years between the first World War and the present.

The novel opens in 1914 as William, a young factory worker, spends one last evening at home before his departure for the navy.… His son Billy, grows into a champion cyclist and will ride into the D-Day landings on a military bicycle.… His son in turn, Will, struggles with a debilitating handicap to become an Oxford professor in the 1960s.

In this fourth mystery about 12-year-old Maisie, the young detective must solve a crime for her friend, Professor Tobin. The professor travelled all over the world collecting strange and wonderful objects, and the British Museum is opening a special room to house his collection. But before the professor's donation, a thief steals a valuable Amazonian tribal mask! With just a single feather left behind, Maisie doesn't have much to go on, but the stakes in her newest case are higher than ever.

Perhaps England's greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë's, they were rather good at that too.

Traumatised by events in 1945, Yolande hasn't left her home since. And life has not been kinder to Bernard, her brother, who is now in the final months of a terminal illness.

Realizing that he has so little time left, Bernard's gloom suddenly lifts. With no longer anything to lose, he becomes reckless - and murderous...

Stella Darnell is a cleaner. But when she isn't tackling dust and dirt and restoring order to chaos, Stella solves murders. Her latest case concerns a man convicted of killing his mistress. His daughter thinks he's innocent, and needs Stella to prove it. As Stella sifts through piles of evidence and interview suspects, she discovers a link between the recent murder and a famous case from forty years ago: the shocking death of six-year-old Sarah Ferris, killed in the shadows of an empty playground. Stella knows that dredging up the past can be dangerous.

Sasha North has gone missing. Everyone says she's run away, but I know better. We've been best friends since we were teenagers, since Sasha swept into the neighbourhood and brought colour to my life. Until a brutal attack changed both our lives forever.

Rosemary Penfold's beautiful and evocative memoir of her life growing up in the fields of the English countryside is a moving testament to a forgotten world and a disappearing and misunderstood people. Born in 1938 in a traditional Gypsy wagon, surrounded by the love of her parents and extended family in a small but close-knit community, Rosemary paints a vivid and touching portrait of a way of life that no longer exits.

Mr. Fred Grange claims to work as a clerk for a biscuit company, but he's out and about on the London streets at odd hours, and girl detective Maisie Hitchins soon discovers something very precious hidden in his rooms. Maisie is determined to unmask him as a thief, but the truth is far more complicated - and dangerous. Before long, Maisie and her friends are led into a web of mystery lurking in the London Underground.