Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

When Amber Hewerdine consults a hypnotherapist as a desperate last resort, she doesn't expect that anything much will change. She doesn't expect it to help with her chronic insomnia. And she doesn't expect to hear herself, under hypnosis, saying words that mean nothing to her: 'Kind, cruel, kind of cruel'. These are words she has seen somewhere before, if only she could remember where….

Recently divorced, Jay Morton returns to her hometown and secures a job helping to set up a museum at the sinister-looking Pendle House, now derelict and overgrown. While searching for artefacts in the attics, Jay stumbles across some extraordinary original masks and is intrigued by their malevolent and threatening eyes…Those very eyes haunt Donna in her nightmares

Marigold Green calls herself ‘hideous, quaint and barmy’. Other people call her Bilgewater, a corruption of Bill’s daughter. Growing up in a boys’ school where her father is housemaster, she is convinced of her own plainness and peculiarity. Groomed by the wise and loving Paula, upstaged by bad, beautiful Grace and ripe for seduction by entirely the wrong sort of boy, she suffers extravagantly and comically in her pilgrimage through the turbulent, twilight world of alarming adolescence.

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.

As the clouds of war gather over Cavendon Hall, the next generation must step forward.... The great house of Cavendon Hall has stood on the Yorkshire moors for centuries. Two families, the aristocratic Inghams and the Swanns who serve them, have been bound by loyalty since the first stone was laid. But when war looms, the survival of the great Cavendon estate must rest with the Earl's eldest daughter, Daphne, and her sister in-law, Cecily Swann.

In 1945, two brothers die in the icy Barents Sea and a book is all that survives of them. More than 60 years later, Donny and his mother set out for Suffolk to meet his mysterious great aunt. There is an accident and Donny is taken into care. But are the officials all that they seem and why won't they believe Donny's story? Soon he discovers that his life has been built on a lie.

When celebrity chef Brede Ziegler is discovered stabbed to death on the steps of the Olso police headquarters, it sends a shockwave through the city. Police investigator Billy T. takes on the case, but it seems nobody really knew the dead man. While Billy T. struggles to break the case, Hanne Wilhelmsen returns to Oslo after a six-month absence following the death of her partner. Hanne discovers that not only had Ziegler been stabbed, but he had also ingested a lethal dose of painkillers.

Shortly after her 13th birthday, Ritva is sent away to Seili, an island in the far north of Finland. A former leper colony, Seili is now home to 'hopeless cases' - women the doctors call mad. But Ritva knows she doesn't belong there. As biting winter follows biting winter, she longs to be near to her sister and wonders why her father ever allowed her to be taken to this desolate place. Hope arrives in the form of Martta, a headstrong girl who becomes Ritva's only friend.

Soho in the 1980s is electric. For Eliza, the heady pull of its nightclubs and free-spirited people leads her into the life she has craved - all glamour, late nights and excitement. But it comes at a heavy cost. Cassie is fascinated by her family's history and the abandoned Beaufont Hall. Why won't her mother talk about it? Offered the chance to restore Beaufont to its former glory, Cassie jumps at the opportunity to learn more about her past. Separated by a generation but linked by a forgotten diary, these two women have more in common than they know....

Set against the rolling backdrop of a century of British history from the First World War to today, this is a family portrait captured in snapshots. First there is William, the factory lad who loses his life in Gallipoli. Then there is his son Billy, a champion cyclist who faces the D-Day Landings on a military bicycle, followed by his crippled son Will, who becomes an Oxford academic in the 1960s. Finally there is his daughter Billie, an artist in contemporary London.

A brooding contemporary gothic love story, beautifully told with rich and sensual imagery. When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom, their whirlwind relationship leads them to purchase Les Genevriers, an abandoned house in a rural hamlet in the south of France. As the beautiful Provence summer turns to autumn, Eve finds it impossible to ignore the mysteries that haunt both her lover and the run-down old house, in particular the mysterious disappearance of his beautiful first wife, Rachel.

Since Susannah Cates's husband was sent to prison three years ago, life has been a constant struggle to provide for herself and their teenage daughter. Nothing ever seems to go right, and the most she hopes for now is that nothing more will go wrong. Worried by her mother's unhappiness, 13-year-old Neve decides to take matters into her own hands. And when Susannah's closest friend, Patsy, discovers what Neve is up to, she immediately lends her support.

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.

Summer 1939 - When war breaks out, Sylvie is marooned with her cousin Nell's family in the Chiltern hills and cannot return to her Normandy home. During the early days of rationing, blackouts, and the threat of bombers in the skies, Sylvie and Nell have to grow up quickly. Yet as the war rages around them, it's the competition and jealousy between the two that dominates their lives. When the girls fall in love with the same man, their relationship is truly tested. But the war pulls them all apart and changes the course of their lives – until their secrets are revealed.

Name: Sally Marshall Status: single mother Age: 32 Nationality: ten years in France, yet still English through and through I like: living in Paris, playing with my daughter Lila (four years old), the company of good friends, the smell of baking bread...So reads Sally’s ad, posted on a French online dating site called Rendez-Vous. Sally left Nicolas, her French boyfriend of ten years and Lila’s father, after she discovered that he was having an affair with his secretary.

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....

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....

Maria King knows a secret London. Born blind, she knows the city by sound and touch and smell. But surgery has restored her sight - only for her to find she doesn't want it. Jonathan Dark sees the shadowy side of the city. A DI with the Metropolitan Police, he is haunted by his failure to save a woman from the hands of stalker. Now it seems the killer has set his sights on Maria and is leaving her messages in the most gruesome of ways.

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...