Showing results by narrator "Elizabeth Knowelden" in All Categories

As a widowed mother of three, new love seems impossible for Freya - until she meets Duncan, and suddenly she feels alive again. While Freya’s older children are less than welcoming, six-year-old Sophie helps Duncan find his place in the family - but even Sophie harbours fears that threaten to overshadow any chance of a new start. The past is hard to leave behind when pictures of Freya’s idolised late husband hang in every room, and the more Duncan tries to find the source of Sophie’s anxiety, the more he is convinced that Reuben was not the perfect husband and father Freya remembers.

On a chilly morning in rural Suffolk, Cassandra Hawke is woken by a gunshot. Her mother is clinging on to her life, the weapon still lying nearby. Everyone thinks it’s attempted suicide - but none of it makes any sense to Cass. She’s certain there’s more to it than meets the eye. With her husband and father telling her she’s paranoid, Cass finds an unlikely ally in student paramedic Holly. Like Cass, she believes something is wrong, and together they try to uncover the truth. But is there more to Holly’s interest than she’s letting on?

Nazi England, 2014. Jessika Keller is a good girl - a champion ice skater, model student of the Bund Deutscher Mädel, and dutiful daughter of the Greater German Reich. Her best friend, Clementine, is not so submissive. Passionately different, Clem is outspoken, dangerous, and radical. And the regime has noticed. Jess cannot keep both her perfect life and her dearest friend, her first love. But which can she live without?

For nineteen-year-old Estelle Thompson, going to the cinema is more than a way to pass the time...it's a way out. In 1931 in Calcutta, Anglo-Indian girls like Estelle are considered half-breeds, shunned by both English and Indian society. Her only escape is through the silver screen, where she can forget the world around her. When Estelle catches the eye of a dashing American heir with connections to a major motion-picture studio, he also captures her heart. Soon, Estelle has a one-way ticket to London and a recommendation for a screen test.

When the teenage son of Holly Gold's school friend brutally murders his parents before killing himself, her sleepy home town is rocked by the sudden tragedy. Appalled, Holly investigates. What could have caused the happy-go-lucky boy she remembers to commit such a heinous crime? When another teen commits suicide, she uncovers a horrifying link between the recent deaths and a dark conspiracy to hide the truth.

The year is 1590, and Queen Elizabeth's Spanish Armada victory has done nothing to quell her brutal persecution of the English Catholics. Katharine de L'Isle is living at Lufanwal Hall, the manor of her uncle, Sir Edward. Taught by her cherished uncle to read when a child, Katharine is now a 31-year-old widow. She has resigned herself to a life of reading and keeping company with her cousins and their children.

Following the death of their matriarch, the lives of Chye Hoon's family are turned upside down. Now that the British have fled and the Japanese have conquered, their once-benign world changes overnight. Amid the turmoil, Chye Hoon's daughter-in-law, Mei Foong, must fend for her family as her husband, Weng Yu, becomes increasingly embittered. Challenged in ways she never could have imagined and forced into hiding, Mei Foong finds a deep reservoir of resilience she did not know she had and soon draws the attentions of another man.

In 2031 mankind's survival instinct is put to the test when a civil war in China spirals into a global conflict. Nations are torn apart. Millions are killed. And for many, like Air Force pilot Alec Killian, survival will mean shedding some of their flesh in exchange for biotech and machine.

When Justin walks out on Alice on their honeymoon, with no explanation apart from a cryptic note, Alice is left alone and bewildered, her life in pieces. Then she meets Evelyn, a visitor to the gallery where she works. It's a seemingly chance encounter, but Alice gradually learns that Evelyn has motives, and a heartbreaking story, of her own. And that story has haunting parallels with Alice's life. As Alice delves into the mystery of why Justin left her, the questions are obvious. But the answers may lie in the most unlikely of places...

Meghan Smith has always been a protective mother. Her baby son, Harry, has a life-threatening condition and is never far from her sight. But on the evening of her wedding anniversary, as she and her husband celebrate in the garden with friends, Harry disappears from his cot without a trace. In an instant, the perfect life she always longed for is in tatters, her family exposed to interrogation and accusation in the glare of media attention.

Coventry, 1939. Days before the outbreak of World War II, a terrorist bomb explodes on a busy street, killing and maiming innocent civilians. A man is hanged on the evidence given by a young witness. As time goes on, the witness doubts her recollection of events, but her testimony has already had far-reaching consequences. Over sixty years later, in the wake of the 7/7 London bombings, Sara returns to her childhood home to find that her sister, Polly, missing for more than ten years, has finally come back too.

Eighteen years ago, a dimensional break ripped open the sky, drawing humans into an ancient conflict. Otherworldly souls rained down and fused with those of people, dividing the population into the green-eyed, magical Gifted and the dark-eyed, nonmagical Ashkind. A devastating war followed, and the Gifted have managed a fragile peace ever since, largely through a brutal law enforcement organization known as the Department. Fifteen-year-old Rose's father, David, has a leading role in the Department.

After discovering her mother’s secret life, Cara doesn’t have much faith in marriage. So when the love of her life, Simeon, proposes, she struggles to say "I do." She adores him, but why risk the perfect relationship by signing on a dotted line that could ruin everything? If her parents’ marriage taught her anything, it was that a gold ring doesn’t equal happiness, and she has no desire to follow in their dysfunctional footsteps.

Jacob Flanders is a uniquely ambiguous protagonist: he is defined almost entirely by others’ impressions and is nearly unknowable as a result - but that does not at all detract from the vitality of Virginia Woolf’s story. In her experimental first novel, she tracks Jacob through the seemingly mundane early years of his life - from a boyhood trip to the Cornwall coast to his college years at Cambridge to his time as an adult in London and Greece - before arriving at his shocking, even tragic, entry into war.

They are chameleons. Beyond the law, beyond morality, they’ve survived by adapting, whatever the circumstances - and by trusting nobody but themselves. Stephanie Patrick, more comfortable under an alias than she was with herself, has traversed the world and forgotten who she is. Now, she wants to put her past behind her. Konstantin Komarov. The FBI call him the Don from the Don. Today, at the heart of a financial empire created by the Russian crime pandemic, he’s as comfortable in Manhattan as he is in Moscow or Magadan. Between them exists Koba, an old alias for a new threat.

Rachel Waring is deliriously happy. Out of nowhere, a great-aunt leaves her a Georgian mansion in another city—and she sheds her old life without delay. Gone is her dull administrative job, her mousy wardrobe, her downer of a roommate. She will live as a woman of leisure, devoted to beauty, creativity, expression, and love. Once installed in her new quarters, Rachel plants a garden, takes up writing, and impresses everyone she meets with her extraordinary optimism. But her new neighbors begin to wonder if she might be taking her transformation just a bit too far.

When her marriage breaks down, Mel moves back to her hometown to live with her twin, Abbie. Mel just needs some space so she can recover from a painful separation and get ready to begin a new phase in her life. But something is wrong with Abbie - where she used to be outgoing and gregarious, now she’s sullen, hostile and secretive. Even more disturbing, Mel is being followed by a sinister man she has never seen before. She doesn’t know what he wants, but she’s pretty sure it’s nothing good. And Mel is right to be worried.

On the balcony of our gorgeous villa, I clink glasses with my handsome new husband, Owen Turner. As I gaze into his mysterious brown eyes, a shiver runs down my spine. I can barely believe it: true love, palm trees, turquoise sea, white sand. Everything should be perfect. Except last night, Owen and I had our first argument. My husband drank too much, and he said something that made me wonder if there's a darker side to the man I married.

Once upon a time, in an ancient château nestled above a golden river among the vineyards of Bordeaux, Sara and Gavin opened a wedding venue where fairy tales come true…But when Sara discovers Gavin in the arms of a wedding guest, their own happiness crumbles to dust. Faced with five beaming couples yet to say ‘I do’, she realises it’s up to her to host the rest of their first make-or-break season alone. For the summer to go off without a hitch, Sara must bury her broken heart and her fear that she’ll soon be packing her bags for London, and lean on her local team of helpers.

It’s Christmastime, 1919. Three years before, seventeen-year-old Margot Allan, a respectable vicar’s daughter, fell passionately in love. But she lost her fiancé, Harry, to the Great War. In turn, she gained a desperate secret, one with the power to ruin her life and her family’s reputation, a secret she guards at all costs. Now Margot’s family is gathering at the vicarage for the first time since the War ended. And Harry, it turns out, isn’t dead. He’s alive and well, and looking for answers.