Showing results by narrator "Patience Tomlinson" in All Categories

1904, London. Lydia Daye adores her husband John, but his secret government job means he is often away. She consoles herself with her small son, Adam, and the knowledge that John's salary allows them to live comfortably. Dolly Ellerway lives just two miles away, but in a different world. Pregnant, she is delighted when the father of her child says he'll marry her, even though he can barely afford it.

It’s 1993 and the small seaside town of Kingshaven is looking picture perfect when the peace is suddenly shattered by the blast of a bomb that has lain hidden since the war. It is not the town’s only long-buried secret. In London, graduate Cat Brown sees the story unfolding on the news. In Rome, Iris Quinn feels the tug of the place she ran away from 30 years before. In the now crumbling Palace Hotel, disturbing memories are triggered for grande-dame Liliana King.

This riveting conclusion of Grace Winslow's fight for freedom carries her from England to America's Deep South. After learning that her husband, Cabeto, is on a South Carolina plantation, Grace dons a sailor's disguise and boards the only ship headed for America - a detestable slave ship. When her secret is discovered, Grace is locked up in the hold. In South Carolina, Grace is bought immediately, but soon sold to a man who is not a slave keeper.

Dear Mr Bigelow is an enchanting selection of weekly 'pen-pal' letters written between 1949 and 1961 from an unmarried woman working at the Pier Approach Baths in Bournemouth, to a wealthy American widower, living on Long Island, New York. Frances Woodsford and Commodore Paul Bigelow never met, and there was no romance - she was in her forties when he died aged ninety-seven - yet their epistolary friendship was her lifeline.

Barbara Bosgrove is looking forward to the annual Harvest Ball. Her widowed father will be her escort, but it is not long before George Kennett seeks her out for a dance. George vows to win Barbara’s hand in marriage and begins a slow and steady courtship. Little by little, Barbara is won over. Worn down by several years of marriage to the unfaithful George, Barbara feels she has lost all the vitality of her youth. But her old friend Simon is not prepared to let Barbara lose sight of the woman she really is.

Slavers burst into Grace Winslow's life with guns blazing and tear her family apart forever. She watches in anguish as her husband is led in chains aboard a tightly packed slave ship bound for America. An old enemy has a more sinister plan for Grace and prepares her for a different kind of servitude in London. But Grace will not be enslaved. And she will not give up on the man she loves. In her determination to be reunited with her husband, she finds God reaching out to her.

Miss Melinda Pink, intrepid rock climber, gothic writer and people observer, is awestruck by her first glimpse of the majestic Utah canyon country. But she’s soon aware of undercurrents of tension among the close-knit inhabitants of Salvation Canyon. When Birdie, a young half-Indian girl, disappears, her body found in a nearby river soon afterward, the tension explodes to the surface.

The eleventh book in the Libby Sarjeant series of British murder mysteries which features a retired actress as the female sleuth and is based in the picturesque village of Steeple Martin. Libby Sarjeant is invited to look into the provenance of a jewelled Anglo-Saxon reliquary which has appeared on a website. The nuns at St Eldreda's Abbey are curious, as it apparently contains a relic of St Eldreda herself.

On the ancient marshlands of Somerset - a place of mists and magic - a girl grows up in the shadow of the English Civil War, knowing that one day she will inherit the rich estate which belonged to her late mother. Her father, a stern but loving Puritan, once a distinguished soldier in Cromwell's army, fears for his daughter in the poisonous aftermath of the war, and for her vulnerability as an heiress. But above all he fears and misunderstands her scientific passion for butterflies.

1990. On the luxurious private island of Angel Cay, four privileged students toast the end of their exams. Self-assured Miles, clever Grace, talented Alex and beautiful Sasha have the world at their feet. But one dark night will change their perfect lives forever. As the friends move into glamorous careers – fashion, music, politics – each tries to put the past behind them. But no matter how far their stars rise, they cannot escape the dreadful truth.

After the fall of France in May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force was miraculously evacuated from Dunkirk. Britain now stood alone to face Hitler’s inevitable invasion attempt. For the German Army to be landed across the Channel, Hitler needed mastery of the skies – the RAF would have to be broken – so every day, throughout the summer, German bombers pounded the RAF air bases in the southern counties.

Having sent his last wife to the block, the tyrannical Henry VIII sets his lustful sights upon an innocent and unworldly gentlewoman, the recently widowed, Katherine Parr. In mourning for her late husband, and yet desperately in love with another, Katherine is forced to choose between the man she loves and a crown of despair. In the years that follow, as Henry's terrified sixth wife and queen, she battles to contain her fear and revulsion of her bloated and monstrous new husband.

Henriette d'Entragues isn't satisfied with simply being mistress of Henry IV of France, she wants a crown too. Despite his promises to marry her, the King is obliged by political necessity to ally himself with Marie de Medici, an Italian princess who will bring riches to the treasury. But Henriette isn't one for giving up easily. She has a written promise of marriage which she intends to use to declare the royal marriage illegal. All she has to do to achieve her ambition is to give Henry a son.

When they met at a motorcycle club in 1912, Elsie Knocker was a 30-year-old motorcycling divorcee dressed in bottle-green Dunhill leathers, and Mairi Chisholm was a brilliant 18-year old mechanic, living at home and borrowing tools from her brother. Little did they know that theirs was to become one of the most extraordinary stories of the First World War.

Ellie and her new husband Thomas are called to deal with Ursula, a young student who has staged a sit-in at church. Ursula challenges Ellie to solve three mysteries: a broken engagement, her friend Mia's disappearance, and a murder. As she investigates, Ellie begins to suspect that there is more to these events. Soon she finds her own friends and family targeted as a powerful group hunts her down.

After her father’s death, Theordora Buckleigh’s new adopted family want to give her a London season. But though she is a pretty girl, Theodora has limped from birth, and dreads exposure to the social round. She takes evasive action, accepting an invitation from Dorothy Wordsworth to stay with her and her poet brother William in Dorset. Here she will find love, danger and intrigue. Might Coleridge and the others be engaged in treason?

It's 1934. When Miss Pongleton is found murdered on the stairs of Belsize Park station, her fellow boarders in the Frampton Hotel are not overwhelmed with grief at the death of a tiresome old woman. But they all have their theories about the identity of the murderer and help to unravel the mystery of who killed the wealthy 'Pongle'. Several of her fellow residents - even Tuppy the terrier - have parts to play in the events that lead to a dramatic arrest.

1812. Clever, strong-willed Vivienne Fox is unexpectedly endowed with riches beyond her wildest dreams when a distant cousin dies, leaving her his fortune. Unwed at 24, Vivienne still hopes the right man is out there, but she despairs of ever finding him, and she is determined that rumours of her new-found wealth be quashed, lest she be courted for her purse rather than her heart. Renowned rake Lord Alex LeSayres comes to an unpleasant decision after the death of his father.

Max Tobin brings his all-male dance company to Steeple Martin, with his new ballet Pendle, based on the infamous Pendle Witch Trials, due to be performed at the Oast Theatre. There have been unpleasant incidents during rehearsals in London, and Max asks Libby Sarjeant and her friend Fran Wolfe to look into them. To everyone's surprise, the seriousness of the incidents escalates until, inevitably, someone is murdered.

No one at Gad’s Hall could admit what they knew about the room in the attic. The locked room that held the Thorley family’s most shameful secret. The terrifying room that had once been the living tomb of a beautiful young woman possessed by the darkest evil. Years had passed but the relentless diabolic force abided – waiting until it could once again possess an innocent and inflict its horror upon the living. It was a force countless centuries old. It was simply a matter of time before it would strike again.