Showing results by narrator "Jilly Bond" in All Categories

One of the earliest works of feminist philosophy, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman advocates for the education of women in a time where the opposite belief was predominately held. Written during the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft's work had a significant impact on those advocating for women's rights during the nineteenth century.

When a body washes up on the rocks below, everyone assumes it must be brutish Edward Parker. Weeks ago, he slipped over the cliff’s edge, never to be seen again. But on closer inspection, it’s not him. The dead man is Pat Duggan, son of a wealthy nightclub owner, and it’s not the sea that killed him—it’s a gunshot wound.

She’s a deliciously scandalous woman who is no man’s bride.... He’s a black sheep, forced to return home. Together, they enter a make-believe betrothal that shocks London society....

Mia is not sure what she is, but she isn't human. Smarter, stronger than her peers, all she knows are the rules: there can never be three for too long; always run, never fight. When she finds herself in Germany 1945, she must turn the Nazis' most trusted scientist with an offer: abandon the crumbling Nazi party, escape Germany with your life, come to work for the Americans building rockets. But someone is watching her work. An enemy who's smarter, stronger, and decidedly not human....

Nash, the “dangerous” Duke of Malvern, has always bristled against the rules of English society. Hot tempered and fearful of becoming like his brutish late father, he lives a life of too much responsibility and too little joy. And although he’s vowed to never marry, a duke has a duty—and there’s only one way to get himself an heir and a spare. So Nash reluctantly takes a look around at society’s available young ladies to see who might be willing to put up with his one-word answers and frequent glowers.

Jackie Moggridge was just nineteen when World War Two broke out. Determined to do her bit, she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary. Ferrying aircraft from factory to frontline was dangerous work, but there was also fun, friendship and even love in the air. At last the world was opening up to women... or at least it seemed to be.

Rina accepts an invite to Aikensthorpe, a country-house hotel with a sinister past. Her fellow guests are an eccentric bunch of magicians and scholars who want to re-enact a séance. Back in 1872, it left one man dead and another mad. But Rina won’t be drawn into all of that. She's relieved when Detective MacGregor comes to her rescue. But then a blizzard sets in...leaving them trapped in the house, cut off from civilization. And then the first of the bodies is found—a distinguished scholar, smothered in his sleep. Who will be next to die on this dark and stormy night?

Christian Lamb is one of the last surviving Wren officers to have served throughout the Second World War, from Blitz ravaged London, to the important radar and operations rooms and undertaking a vital role in D Day. Escaping both the Spanish Flu pandemic when she was born and the pandemic we are emerging from today, she has reached the impressive age of 101. Now she leads us through the story of her extraordinary life and the wartime experiences of her fellow Wrens.

Coming of age in Prague in the 1930s, Lena Kulkova is inspired by the left-wing activists who resist the rise of fascism. She meets Otto, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, and follows him to Paris to work for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. As the war in Spain ends and a far greater war engulfs the continent, Lena gets stuck in Paris with no news from her Jewish family, including her beloved baby sister, left behind in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Otto, meanwhile, has fled to a village in England, and urges Lena to join him, but she can’t obtain a visa.

Lady Olivia refuses to repeat her siblings’ scandalous mistakes. Instead, she will marry the lord rejected by her sister and help with his good works. When he resists, Olivia forms another plan: win his lordship’s admiration by helping his illegitimate best friend find a bride. How difficult can it be to transform the rakish Edward Wolcott into a gentleman? To ignore his virile good looks? To not kiss him in a moment of impulsive madness? Apparently, very difficult indeed.

Having left the big city behind, Sarah Vane is fully embracing her calmer life in the quaint coastal town of Merstairs. With more time for hobbies, she joins a very popular life drawing class at the local tea shop. But when their usual model, the ever-punctual Mr Williams, doesn’t turn up, Sarah’s worried. He’d been complaining of a cough just last week so she decides to check up on him. Arriving at his crooked little cottage, it appears the front door isn’t quite shut. Stepping inside, Sarah is shocked to find Mr Williams slumped in his armchair.

From organising the school summer fete - 'Because of our inability to recognise our climatic shortcomings from the outset, arrangements for outdoor jollities get completely out of hand' - to the sometimes rather odd passions of childhood - 'I collect stones with holes in them' - Miss Read captures the essence of rural life, and in particular of village schools, as only she can.

In a beautiful southern Spanish town, where the sea sparkles and orange blossoms scent the air, the gates of a brand-new apartment complex, La Joya de Andalucía, glide open to welcome the new owners. Anna and Austen MacDonald, an Irish couple, are preparing to enjoy their retirement to the fullest. But the demands of family cause problems they could never have foreseen and shake their marriage to the core.

Amelia Ravenscroft is desperate to escape her aunt’s home, where she endures a life of drudgery whilst fighting off her lecherous cousin. When she overhears Viscount Demarr confiding in a friend that he needs to marry "at once", she boldly proposes a marriage of convenience. Amelia soon proves herself a perfect fit for the role of Lady Demarr. But their blossoming relationship is blighted by suspicions regarding Amelia’s past. Will they find, all too painfully, that if you marry in haste you repent at leisure?

“We want you to lay a ghost,” Frances Fitzgibbon is told as she is ordered to investigate the past of her superior, Colonel Jack Butler, at a decisive moment in his career. But why? For as Colonel Butler pursues an elusive IRA/KGB assassin, Frances finds herself confronting dangerous questions, as more than one spectre is raised from the dark past.

In the nursery, only the toys that are old and wise truly understand what it means to be Real. The Velveteen Rabbit, a newcomer to the nursery, asks one of the most knowledgeable toys, the Skin Horse, what being real means. "Real isn't how you’re made," says the Skin Horse. "It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real. It doesn't happen all at once."

If you could change your life, would you? For fans of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, the story of a woman who runs a sewing shop in a small town in France, and a chance in a million... Jocelyne is 47 and runs her own dressmaking shop. She's a bit overweight, her husband is very ordinary and her best friends are the twins who run the hairdresser next door. Jocelyn has reached the point where she is examining her life and measuring it against what her teenage self had imagined.

Alison James thinks she might be living the wrong life. She loves her husband Marc and their children but somehow, in the process of building a perfect life for her family, she seems to have lost herself. And sometimes she worries that she's being punished for running away with her best friend's boyfriend.

Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of an impoverished family, must navigate a world of desire and romance once she meets Alec d'Urberville. The son of a rich widow, he takes a fancy to her and gets her a position as the poultry keeper on his family's estate. However, her good fortune is soon complicated by Alec's libertine ways, and Tess returns home shamed. Once recovered, she separates herself from the gossip by finding work at a dairy farm outside the village.

In 1904, when she was six, Polly Flint went to live with her two holy aunts at the yellow house by the marsh - so close to the sea that it seemed to toss like a ship, so isolated that she might have been marooned on an island. And there she stayed for 81 years, while the century raged around her, while lamplight and Victorian order became chaos and nuclear dread. Crusoe's Daughter, ambitious, moving and wholly original, is her story.