Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

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....

Nestled within Paris' historic Palais Royal is a jewelry store unlike any other. La Fantasie Russie is owned by Pavel Orloff, protégé to the famous Faberge, and is known by the city's fashion elite as the place to find the rarest of gemstones and the most unique designs. But war has transformed Paris from a city of style and romance to a place of fear and mourning. In the summer of 1918, in places where lovers used to walk, widows now wander alone.

Chile - Culture Smart! provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs, and behavior in Chile, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. This concise guide will tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and successful business relationships.

Nadine, a 16-year-old runaway new to the city, is set up in a decaying Georgian house by her Finnish lover, Kai. Slowly she begins to suspect that Kai and his partner, Tony, have plans for her that have nothing to do with love. "Be careful", warns Enid, a sitting tenant in the house, whose own tragic past means that she knows all about survival. When Nadine discovers that she has been groomed for renting out to a government minister with special tastes, Enid's warning takes on a prophetic quality.

Winner of the Académie Française award 2010. "In a house on a suburban street in Nagasaki, meteorologist Shimura Kobo lives quietly on his own. Or so he believes. Food begins to go missing. Perturbed by this threat to his orderly life, Shimura sets up a webcam to monitor his home. But though eager to identify his intruder, is Shimura really prepared for what the camera will reveal? This prize-winning novel is a heart-rending tale of alienation in the modern world.

Stella Darnell is a cleaner. But when she isn't tackling dust and dirt and restoring order to chaos, Stella solves murders. Her latest case concerns a man convicted of killing his mistress. His daughter thinks he's innocent, and needs Stella to prove it. As Stella sifts through piles of evidence and interview suspects, she discovers a link between the recent murder and a famous case from forty years ago: the shocking death of six-year-old Sarah Ferris, killed in the shadows of an empty playground. Stella knows that dredging up the past can be dangerous. 

Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden, and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide, but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what really happened to Henrik takes her across the globe to Barcelona, where her son kept a secret apartment; Sydney, Australia, to find Aron, her estranged ex-husband and Henrik's father; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns the awful truth behind an AIDS hospice.

Returning to Penfleet after years in New York, Kate can't help but feel a pang of affection for the little town by the sea where she grew up. If only she were returning in happier circumstances. This last trip is full of farewells: to her childhood home, her once best friend and the life she left behind. Kissing the widow of the richest man in town wasn't one of Nathan's best ideas. Now he can't get Vanessa out his mind.

1979. Esme Munroe is now twenty-six years old and finally leaving the wild landscape of the Scottish highlands behind her for the big smoke. Arriving in London, she starts work at prestigious Art Gallery in Mayfair, and meets the gorgeous and worldly Suki, who takes her to the most glamourous bars and clubs in London. But the fast, frenetic pace of the city is easy to become lost in. Will Esme discover a long-hidden secret about herself and who she can really trust, before it's too late?

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.

The Orient Express. Luxury. Mystery. Romance. For one group of passengers settling in to their seats and taking their first sips of champagne, the journey from London to Venice is more than the trip of a lifetime. A mysterious errand; a promise made to a dying friend; an unexpected proposal; a secret reaching back a lifetime...As the train sweeps on, revelations, confessions and assignations unfold against the most romantic and infamous setting in the world.

Sitting in her Bloomsbury home, with her two birds for company, elderly Harriet Baxter sets out to relate the story of her acquaintance with Ned Gillespie, a talented artist who never achieved the fame he deserved. Back in 1888, after a chance encounter, young Harriet befriends the Gillespie family and soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes - leading to a notorious criminal trial - the certainties of this world all too rapidly disorientate into mystery and deception.

Rosemary Penfold's beautiful and evocative memoir of her life growing up in the fields of the English countryside is a moving testament to a forgotten world and a disappearing and misunderstood people. Born in 1938 in a traditional Gypsy wagon, surrounded by the love of her parents and extended family in a small but close-knit community, Rosemary paints a vivid and touching portrait of a way of life that no longer exits.

Emma is a literary classic by Jane Austen following the genteel women of Georgian-Regency England in their most cherished sport: matchmaking. Emma is spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied. After a couple she has introduced gets married, she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities and, blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives, proceeds to forge ahead in her new interest despite objections.

Michelle Clark has loved animals all her life, filling her home with a menagerie of stray cats and abandoned dogs. But when her outreach work with London's homeless community leads to a chance meeting with a desperate man, and a quest to find a missing Staffie named Poppy, she has no idea that her life will be transformed forever.

The story of Julie D'Aubigny is well known. Her tumultuous childhood, her powerful lovers, her celebrated voice. Connected to most of the nobility of 17th century Paris, feted for her performance, unwilling to live by the rules of her society, she took female lovers, fought duels with noblemen and fled from city to country and back again. But now the real truth can be told. She also made a deal with the devil. He gave her no powers or help, but he kept her alive for only one reason. To take revenge....

Tatiana Vytenis has worked hard to leave her past behind. Once a ruined Russian princess in hiding, she is now a sought-after model and engaged to Gérard de Sainte-Vierge. But fate still has a final hand to play. Hidden beneath their genteel exteriors, Gérard and his brother have a secret darker side, and her darling fiancé will gladly ruin Tatiana’s life to save his own reputation.

1918. Young, beautiful and impoverished, Katya arrives in Paris to begin a new life - leaving behind a terrible secret. She is swept up in the city's glamour - particularly the boutiques on the Champs-Élysées, with their glittering haute couture gowns. Dare Katya dream that she may someday wear - or even design - one of these dazzling creations? It feels like an impossible wish, until she meets businessman Harry Morten. Tall, handsome and well-connected, Harry could give Katya everything she wants...but at what price?

When Sam falls in love with Deptford thug Derek, and Anne’s best friend Kathleen takes her own life, they discover they are linked not just by a world of drugs and revenge - they also share the friendship of the uncanny and enigmatic Deborah. Seamstress, sailor, storyteller and self-proclaimed centenarian immortal, Deborah slowly reveals to Anne and Sam her improbable, fantastical life, a history of hidden Deptford and ultimately the solution to their crises.

Subtitled 'A Story of To-day', A Laodicean occupies a unique place in the Thomas Hardy canon. Departing from pre-industrial Wessex, Hardy brings his themes of social constraint, fate, chance and miscommunication to the very modern world of the 1880s - complete with falsified telegraphs, fake photographs, and perilous train tracks. The story follows the life of Paula Power, heiress of her late father's railroad fortune and the new owner of the medieval Castle Stancy. With the castle in need of restoration, Paula employs architect George Somerset, who soon falls in love with her.