Showing results by narrator "Jane Collingwood" in All Categories

A modern re-imagining of the Gothic Classic Northanger Abbey by the bestselling crime author Val McDermid. The second book in The Austen Project. Seventeen-year-old Catherine ‘Cat' Morland has led a sheltered existence in rural Dorset, a life entirely bereft of the romance and excitement for which she yearns. So when Cat's wealthy neighbours, the Allens, invite her to Edinburgh Festival, she is sure adventure beckons.

Your blood-red skies are filled with smoke. Your bleach-white histories with lies. You walk sleeping. Wake senseless. Breathing deep of toxic blooms and forgetting all that has gone before. But I remember. I remember when two brothers waged bloody war over the right to sit in their father’s empty chair. I remember when the skies above Shima were not red, but blue. Filled with thunder tigers. I remember when they left you. And I remember why. Let me tell you, monkey-child…

A mesmerising novel about obsessive love. Persephone Triebold has grown up in the strange desolation of the Scottish Highlands, raised by her anxious father and memories of her dead mother. Inexperienced in the rules of friendship, sex and love, Persephone takes the opportunity to replace uninhabited mountain ranges with city life and leaves to study for a degree in London.Parties, new friends and the polluted splendour of the capital intoxicate Persephone at first, but fail to supply her with the grand passion she wants.

This sharp, funny collection of stories begins in the 1950s in an insular northern village 'scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.' The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In Third Floor Rising' she watches, dazzled, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity. With a deceptively light touch, Mantel locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.

The Wayland family - Lara and Marcus and their three children - leave England to spend a long, hot summer in Trout Island, Upstate New York. A chance meeting at a party reacquaints the family with Marcus's old actor friend, Stephen, with whom Lara once had an affair. Lara feels herself drawn towards Stephen and they pick up their secret relationship where they left off. Lara knows she's playing a dangerous game; what she doesn't know is that it's also a deadly one.

For anyone who is even thinking of getting married. The Stag and Hen Weekend is the story of Phil and Helen, a couple in their 30s about to commit their lives to one another . . . that is of course if they can just manage to get through their respective stag and hen weekends (his: Amsterdam; hers: a country house and day spa in the Peak District) without falling apart. Told in the unique form of two separate stories that have common characters as well as themes and conclusion. Feisty, fun and thought provoking.

Spitalfields, 1840. Catherine lives with her Uncle in a rambling house in London's East End, with little to occupy the days beyond her own colourful imagination. Then news reaches her of a disturbing murderer known as The Man of Crows. Catherine becomes more and more involved as she hungrily devours the news, and is soon snared in a deadly trap, where nothing is as it first appears...

How far would you go to keep someone else's secret when you're the one who stands to lose it all? Anna Kennedy loves her career. A young associate with a top media law firm, she's the lawyer to the stars, hiding their sins from the hungry media. When Anna fails to prevent a damaging story being printed about heart-throb movie star Sam Charles she finds herself fighting to save not only his reputation, but also her own.

It was supposed to be the perfect summer... On the luxurious private island of Angel Cay, four privileged students toast the end of their exams. Miles, Grace, Alex and Sasha have the world at their feet. But one dark night will change their perfect lives for ever. As the friends move into glamorous careers, in fashion, music and politics, each tries to put the past behind them.

This is a story about a woman. And the truck driver who mistook her for a prostitute. The old man she robbed and the hunters who smuggled her across the border. The woman whose name she stole, the wife who turned a blind eye. This is the story of a mother searching for her child. This is a story you cannot stop thinking about.

Marion Bishop's life has fallen apart. Her daughter Hope was killed in a hit-and-run accident six months ago, and now Sam, her beloved husband, has walked out. Left alone with her grief, Marion has begun to contemplate the unthinkable.

Chief Inspector Banks is back - in an original tale that makes up part of a new crime collection of seven short stories by Peter Robinson, never published in the UK before. With settings ranging from the Pacific Northwest in the Sixties to the Yorkshire of the Second World War and present-day Toronto to Eastvale at Christmas, these stories feature hippies, policemen and models, little girls dancing ballet, PIs and soldiers.

It is 1951, and sisters Ginny and Meredith have travelled from England to Spain in search of distraction and respite. The two wars have wreaked loss and deprivation upon the family and the spectre of Meredith's troubled childhood continues to haunt them. Their journey to the rugged peninsula of Catalonia promises hope and renewal. While there they discover the artist Salvador Dali is staying in nearby Port Lligat. Meredith is fascinated by modern art and longs to meet the famous surrealist.

Stories of ultimate revenge, from freshly sold human meat and uncontrollable robots, to life-sucking MP3 players and reality TV where death is the penalty - all told with dark humour and gruesome relish, and made even more fiendish by retro illustrations, chilling facts and a puckish message from the author. This is Anthony Horowitz at his most wicked.

Bec and Izzy have been best friends their whole lives. They’ve been through a lot together - the death of Bec’s mother, the birth of Izzy’s daughter, Bec’s engagement. But there’s a darker side to their friendship, too - and Bec is about to reach breaking point. Then Izzy is found broken and bloodied at the bottom of the stairs. It could have been an accident - perhaps she fell - but if the police decide to look for a killer, then Bec is sure to be their prime suspect.

Samantha Brooks' boyfriend has made a mistake: Jamie has booked himself a one-way flight to South America. Solo. But Sam isn't giving up without a fight. She hatches a plan that involves dirty tricks, plotting, and a single aim: to win him back. But by the time Jamie finally wakes up, a gorgeous new pretender has entered Sam's life. Which begs the question...does she still want him back?

When Nell's on-off boyfriend, Aidan, calls her into his office, losing her job is the last thing she expects. Heartbroken and unemployed to boot, she makes a radical decision to blow her redundancy cheque and escape to the untested waters of San Francisco. But is the glamour of the city too good to be true? And can Nell leave her past behind?

It is Autumn in Linköping and the heavens have opened, but not even these biblical rains can wash away the blood of crimes, past and present. Then the brutally-stabbed body of self-made Internet billionaire Jerry Petersson is discovered floating face down in the moat surrounding his home, the imposing Skogså Castle. Malin Fors, the brilliant but flawed star of the Linköping police force, is already struggling to keep her life together following the recent murder attempt on her teenage daughter, Tove.

Beth Lowe has been sent a parcel. Inside is a letter telling her that her long-estranged mother has died. There is also a scrapbook Beth has never seen before. Entitled The Book of Summers, it's stuffed with photographs and mementos compiled by her mother to record the seven glorious childhood summers that Beth spent in rural Hungary. It

Bea treads carefully on the thick carpet, quite deliberately like a servant. Her elder sister, Clemmie, tells her that it is "not done" to worry about being heard but Bea enjoys this oh-so-silent rebellion against convention. She teases back, "This is the twentieth century, Clem, things are about to change." London, 1914.