Showing results by narrator "Lucy Paterson" in All Categories

Escape into Rosamunde Pilcher's world, and meet characters who will become instant friends. The big bedroom was lovely: all pale blue and white, satin and muslin, cool and airy, the windows looking out over the garden to the creek. But to 14-year-old Emily, beautiful though it was, it was all wrong. Her stepmother's bedroom now: everything changed since her own mother had died. And stretched out on the bed: Stephanie, very white and pained. The new baby on its way, a month early.

Can you ever re-create that first great love? Victoria Bradshaw fell in love with London playwright Oliver Dobbs when she was just 18. But he left her and disappeared from her life. Now, years later, he is a widower standing on her doorstep with his two-year-old son in his arms. And Victoria is foolish enough to want to take him back. Their early spring journey to a castle in Scotland becomes an odyssey of emotional discovery....

First, there were the flamingos. And then there were two families. Sherry and Leslie and their daughters, Rae and Pauline - and Eve and her son, Daniel. Sherry loves her husband, Leslie. She also loves Eve. It couldn't have been a happier summer. But then Eve left, and everything went grey. Now Daniel is all grown up and broken. And when he turns up at Sherry's door, it's almost as if they've all come home again. But there's still one missing. Where is Eve? And what, exactly, is her story?

Anna and Zoe are twins. Identical in appearance, utterly different in personality, they share a bond so close that nothing - or no one - can rip them apart. Until Anna meets charismatic Nick. Anna is trusting, romantic and hopeful; she thinks Nick is perfect. Zoe is daring, dangerous and extreme; she thinks Nick is a liar. Zoe has seen Anna betrayed by men before. She'll stop at nothing to discover if Nick is as good as he seems. The problem is, lies may hurt. But honesty can kill.

On a cold evening, Zeb, a single mum in her thirties, is found wandering aimlessly on a remote road. She is dazed, confused, and bloodied. She doesn't know where she is or how she got there. She has travelled far from home and someone has attacked her. Memory loss means she can trust no one, and, with her assailant unidentified, Zeb is desperate to be reunited with her son and to ensure his safety. But what will her search for the truth uncover? Will it bring answers or more questions? And what if the person she can rely on the least is herself?

Gem Golding only has two choices. A stranger holds a knife to her skin, his demands terrifying in the deserted parking garage. Should she surrender? Or should she fight back? This attacker is no ordinary criminal. This night, like so many of them, is all a game to him. He makes the rules - rules that determine whether his victims live or die, rules that will set Gem's fate in motion. He's waiting for her to decide. But how can you win the game when you don't know how to play?

1946, Norfolk, England: She gazes out across the beach, its beauty marred by the sharp barbed wire, hiding deadly mines beneath the sand. Back in the village, everyone is nervously awaiting the arrival of the German prisoners, who will change everything. After the death of her beloved brother on the front lines in Europe, it is hard for Fran to see these young men as anything but his killers. But prisoner Thomas, with his gentle nature and piercing blue eyes that see into Fran’s very soul, will force her to question everything she thought she knew.

Words can be a way to unlock our feelings. Poetry allows us to be in touch with our emotions and helps us unlock and explore our vulnerability. You'll Never Walk Alone is a collection of the kind of inspirational texts—mainly poems—that can accompany us, whatever we are feeling, from sorrow to delight. The texts are not just about words which can console us or comfort us—though they often do this too. Rather these are poems that allow us to enjoy a full range of emotions.

Caroline Cliburn was to be married next Tuesday, and yet she suspected that gratitude was the wrong reason to become a bride. Perhaps that was why she and her younger brother Jody had taken the long drive north to Scotland in search of her missing brother Angus.... When a sudden spring blizzard leaves them stranded by the roadside, it is the snow that gives both her and a lonely young Scot one last chance to find the healing warmth of love.

Enter Rosamunde Pilcher's world of simple joys, of crisp country air and crackling log fires, the pleasures of family reunions and rediscovered friendships. Through thick mist and a cold east wind, Lavinia returns to Scotland. Up at the big house, Mrs Farquhar is dying. Seeing Lachlan again, Lavinia remembers her childhood holidays there: swimming in the loch, the picnics, bottle-feeding the lambs down at the farm and the evenings when they danced reels. Most of all, she remembers Mrs Farquhar's grandson Rory.

What do the attacks in London Bridge, Manchester and Westminster have in common with those at the Charlie Hebdo offices, the Finsbury Park Mosque attack and multiple US shootings? They were all carried out by men with histories of domestic violence. Terrorism begins at home. Terrorism is seen as a special category of crime that has blinded us to the obvious - that it is, almost always, male violence. The extraordinary link between so many tragic recent attacks is that the perpetrators have practised in private before their public outbursts.

Emma Litton can't get on with her life until she finds out just what place she has in her father's heart. She'd been at school in Europe since she was 14, then found a job in Paris, always wondering what her famous artist father was doing in Japan or America or at their cottage in Cornwall. Even after she meets Robert Morrow, a handsome gallery owner, and rediscovers her stepbrother, Christo, she still feels compelled to probe into the truth about her past.

The Safe House is a scintillating psychological thriller by the Top Ten bestselling author, Nicci French. You open your home and your heart to a victim. But your house is anything but safe.... Samantha Laschen is a doctor specialising in post-traumatic stress disorder. She's moved to the coast to escape her problems and to be alone with her young daughter. But now the police want her to take in Fiona Mackenzie, a girl whose parents have been savagely murdered.

Each week, six women meet at The Bluebell Inn. They form an unlikely and occasionally triumphant ladies darts team. They banter and jibe, they laugh. But their hidden stories of love and loss are what, in the end, will bind them. There is Mary, full of it but cradling her dark secret; Lena - young and bold, she has made her choice; the cat woman who must return to the place of her birth before it's too late. There's Maggie, still laying out the place for her husband; and Pegs, the dark-eyed girl from the travellers' site bringing her strangeness and first love....

Mary has raised a family in this house. Watched her children play and laugh and bicker in this house. Today she is getting married in this house, with all her family in attendance. The wedding celebrations have brought fractured family together for the first time in years: there's Phoebe and her husband Michael, children in tow. The young and sensitive Rosie, with her new partner. Irene, Mary's ex-mother-in-law. Even Emma, Mary's eldest, is back for the wedding - despite being at odds with everyone else.

Rebecca Neumanner's marriage is on the brink of collapse as her desire to be a mother becomes an obsession. Then she receives news from her estranged family in Rhodes. Called back to the beautiful Greek island of her birth, she realises how little she knows of the grandmother she has eluded for over a decade. Bubba has never spoken of the Nazi occupation during her youth, but there have always been whispers. What desperate measures did she take that terrible day in 1944 when her family was ripped apart? Can the rumour she had blood on her own hands really be true? But Bubba intends to take her secrets to the grave.

Are you brave enough to wake the sleeping tiger? Selina Bruce has impulsively left behind her lawyer fiancé in London and flown alone to a tiny island off the Spanish coast. She is searching for the father she has never known, but what she finds is an unexpected truth about herself and the man she plans to marry. For exotic San Antonio offers Selina more than the penetrating brilliance of the noonday sun. It offers the mysterious George Dyer, who holds the key not only to her past...but to her heart.

It's New Year's Eve and the stage is set for a lavish party in one of Edinburgh's best postcodes. It's a moment for old friends to set the past to rights—and move on. The night sky is alive with fireworks and the champagne is flowing. But the celebration fails to materialise. Because someone at this party is going to die tonight. Midnight approaches and the countdown begins—but it seems one of the guests doesn't want a resolution.

It's been years since Nadja Kulka was convicted of a cruel crime. After being released from prison, she's wanted nothing more than to live a normal life: nice flat, steady job, even a few friends. But when one of those friends, Laura von Hoven - free-spirited beauty and wife of Nadja's boss - kills her lover and begs Nadja for her help, Nadja can't seem to be able to refuse.

If you will be a great man's mistress, you must pay the price.... The Savoy, 1372. Widow Lady Katherine Swynford presents herself for a role in the household of merciless royal prince John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, hoping to end her destitution. But the Duke's scandalous proposition leaves her life of pious integrity reeling.... Seduced by the glare of royal adoration, Katherine becomes John's mistress. She will leave behind everything she has stood for to play second fiddle to his young wife and ruthless ambition.