Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

In this eloquent meditation on ageing, Marie de Hennezel guides us through a true ‘art of growing old’. She recalls her encounters as a clinical psychologist with extraordinary people who 'grow old gracefully’ – and through her experience shows us how to make the most of this time in our lives, to avoid depression and to stay happy.

Each story is in some way inspired by a painting of Henri Matisse, each is also about the intimate connection between seeing and feeling - about the ways in which a glance we meant to be casual may suddenly call forth the deepest reserves of our being. Their subjects' lives unravel from simple beginnings - a trip to the hair dresser, a cleaning woman's passion for knitting, lunch in a Chinese restaurant but gradually the veneer of ordinariness is peeled back to expose pain, reveal desire, or express the intensity of joy in colour and creation.

On 7 November 1974, a nanny named Sandra Rivett was bludgeoned to death in a Belgravia basement. A second woman, Veronica, Countess of Lucan, was also attacked. The man named in court as perpetrator of these crimes, Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared in the early hours of the following morning. The case, solved in the eyes of the law, has retained its fascination ever since.

The secrets of an aristocratic dynasty are about to be revealed.... London, 1949. The New Look is in, Princess Elizabeth's wedding has raised morale and the capital is filled with a new energy. The Earl of Mowbray's niece, Alicia Stanton, is making her mark in the glamorous film world. Alongside her, Victoria Brown, a wartime evacuee, is starting out as a fashion photographer. Life is full of opportunity. But at Cavendon Hall, the stately home where they both grew up, the Second World War has exacted a terrible price....

Anna's family hope that a South African safari holiday will help her to get over her beloved husband's death. No one is more surprised than Anna herself when she finds herself strongly attracted to a fellow traveller, Lewis Masters, and despite her initial resistance, she is soon drawn into a new relationship. But back home, Anna's journalist son Jonathan is being repeatedly contacted by a young woman asking for his help, even though she's too frightened to say what is worrying her....

The summer of 1976 was the hottest in living memory. In the Botanical Gardens at Kew, a lost little girl, dizzied by the heat, thought she saw a woman lying dead on the ground. But when she opened her eyes, the woman had gone. Forty years later, Stella Darnell, the detective's daughter, is investigating a chilling new case. What she uncovers will draw her into the obsessive world of botany and towards an unsolved murder that has lain dormant for decades....

Aria Rose, youngest scion of one of Mystic City's two ruling rival families, finds herself betrothed to Thomas Foster, the son of her parents' sworn enemies. The union of the two will end the generations-long political feud - and unite all those living in the Aeries, the privileged upper reaches of the city, against the banished mystics who dwell below in the Depths. But Aria doesn't remember falling in love with Thomas; in fact, she wakes one day with huge gaps in her memory. And she can't conceive why her parents would have agreed to unite with the Fosters in the first place.

After the sudden death of David Bryant, the charismatic owner of a Derbyshire parkland, three people are left to mourn him in very different ways. Maggie, David's young widow; Louisa, who has harboured an infatuation with David since her youth; and Christopher, David'' eccentric teenage son from an earlier marriage. In the aftermath of disaster, they will each face decisions which will define them...

Three very different people, connected by a thread of violence...and hope. Kay, recently widowed and coming to terms with life on her own, feels she has hit rock bottom. For years she and her husband fostered difficult children - including Becca, whom trouble follows like a stray puppy. And now Becca seems to be in the worst trouble of her life. A girl has been attacked so savagely she can’t be identified. She’s alive, but only just. Becca, tossed out of university and just let go from her dead-end job, is certain she knows who the victim is. But no one will believe her.

BTB at her superb best. A sweeping saga set around the aristocratic Ingham family of Cavendon Hall and the Swanns who serve them, set on the eve of World War I. Two entwined families: the aristocratic Inghams and the Swanns who serve them. One stately home: Cavendon Hall, a grand imposing house nestled in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales. A society beauty: Lady Daphne Ingham is the most beautiful of the Earl's daugthers. Being presented at Court and then a glittering marriage is her destiny.

When a body is discovered locked inside a church crypt, its throat torn out, the victim is quickly identified as 20-year-old Matthew Flynn, son of one of the city's leading entrepreneurs, who disappeared a year earlier. For forensic psychologist Kate Hanson, the evidence reveals careful planning but also loss of control. It makes no sense. Nor can she and her team agree as to motive. Is it drugs? Money? Sex? The only thing that's clear is that Matthew Flynn had been keeping secrets from his family and friends. Then Kate discovers that another young man is missing. And the case takes a disturbing new twist....

Austria, 1944. Jakob, a gypsy boy - half Roma, half Yenish - runs for his life as he has been told to do. With shoes made of sack cloth - stained with another person's blood - and a stone clutched in one hand, a small wooden box in the other, he runs blindly, full of fear and nearly drained of hope. He knows when to trust a stranger and when to be wary. He knows how to read the land and the sky - when to seek shelter, when not to. He has grown up following the wind and sticking to the shadows. They are familiar to him. It is the loneliness that is new. He has never been so alone.

In 2018 Britain will celebrate the centenary of women getting the vote; during the intervening 10 decades the lives of women in this country have been transformed. Told in their own voices, The Century Girls celebrates seven centenarians who lived that change: what they saw, how they were treated, who they loved, what they did and where they are now. With stories that are intimately knitted into the history of these islands, The Century Girls is a time-travel adventure featuring society’s oldest, most precious national treasures.

When, a year after she went missing, the body of 19-year-old student Elizabeth Williams is discovered in a field near her college, Dr Kate Hanson and her colleagues are faced with a seemingly impossible challenge. With little in the way of forensic evidence, Kate realises that if she is to have any chance of discovering who killed Elizabeth, she must find out what motivated the killer, the reason behind the murder, the why.

This is the diary of Sarah Shaw for the year of 1971, which she recently uncovered whilst clearing out her loft. Working as a secretary for the BBC at the time, Sarah's diary describes the life of a suburban girl who certainly wasn't 'swinging' but who was, ironically, not only working on a cutting edge BBC survey on sex education but also in the throes of an unlikely affair with middle-aged, working-class, Irish lift attendant, Frank.

Gateshead, April 1866. The Apprentice of Split Crow Lane takes the forgotten case of a child murder in 1866 as a springboard to delve deeply into the pysche of the Victorians. What Jane Housham finds in this exploration of guilt, sexual deviance and madness is a diagnosis that is still ripe for the challenging and a sentence that provokes even our liberal modern judgment.

When Rose's daughter, Vivien, is found dead in a suspected suicide, Rose has questions nobody can answer. Wasn't Vivien living the perfect life? A caring husband, a sweet little girl of her own. But as the police investigation develops, their findings raise new questions. Did Vivien kill herself, or was she attacked? If so, who has something to hide?

Eli is an ordinary boy with an extraordinary gift. It will shape the course of his whole life. Cousin Francesca, a charming spinster and a favourite with the children, is harbouring kleptomaniac tendencies. Sarah Palliser, living alone next to a ramshackle graveyard, is more scared of the small box under her stairs than the ghosts outside her window.

In 2006, three-year-old Phoebe Piper went missing. Despite massive publicity, no trace of her was ever found. Seven years later, Molly Jackson, aged 10, finds her great uncle Dan dead in his bed. Molly remembers nothing of her early years, but she's been sure for ages that she is Phoebe. Now, finally, she has proof. Dan's death brings his sister Janice back to Norfolk where she's reunited with Molly's mother Suze, the daughter she gave up for adoption decades earlier.

Answers to the questions real mums and dads have during the first year. There isn't one perfect way of parenting: every single baby and family is unique. Feeling confident, authentic and positive about your role as a parent is key to building a loving relationship. This book helps you find your parenting style so you can be the parent you want to be. Written by Sarah Beeson MBE, who has over 40 years' hands-on experience of working as a health visitor, this book is full of the author's secrets and tried and tested strategies.