Showing results by narrator "Dawn Murphy" in All Categories

>"Lily?" My stomach dropped as a tall, dark-haired man stepped into view. Had he been hiding between the trees? "No. Sorry." Gulping, I took a step back. "I'm not Lily." He shook his head, a satisfied grin on his face. "No. You are Lily." "I'm Summer. You have the wrong person." For months, Summer is trapped in a cellar with the man who took her - and three other girls: Rose, Poppy, and Violet. His perfect, pure flowers. His family. But flowers can't survive long cut off from the sun, and time is running out....

The Comfort Food Cafe is perched on a windswept clifftop at what feels like the edge of the world, serving up the most delicious cream teas, beautifully baked breads and carefully crafted cupcakes. For tourists and locals alike, the ramshackle cafe overlooking the beach is a beacon of laughter, companionship and security - a place like no other, a place that offers friendship as a daily special and where a hearty welcome is always on the menu. 

Single mother Roz has reached her breaking point. After the dissolution of her marriage, Roz's business has gone under, debts are racking up, the rent is late, and she's struggling to provide for her son, who is misbehaving in school. When Roz gets an eviction notice, she knows it's time for action - she has two weeks to find a solution, or they will be kicked out of their home.

Judith Tarr returns to the always fascinating character of Alexander the Great in this fantasy novel that springs from the legend that the Queen of the Amazons came to meet him in Persia, and became his friend.

Missing journalist Ellie Landy is found in the River Parrett by a news crew covering the worst floods the Somerset Levels have suffered in living memory. A paperback is found by the woman’s bed with a mysterious inscription mentioning 'Sandman' and a time of day. Police assume it is an accidental drowning. Kate disobeys orders from the top and probes the death, as she suspects this was no accident. When another woman dies in suspicious circumstances, Kate finds herself drawn ever deeper into a nightmare of murder, treachery and perversion.

Two years ago, psychotic undertaker Larry 'Twister' Wadman disappeared after blasting two police detectives to death with an incendiary device and embarking on a murderous rampage across the Somerset Levels. For most, memories have dulled, but the sole survivor of the carnage, Detective Kate Hamblin, cannot forget. Then a prostitute’s body is found dumped in a coffin in Twister’s now derelict funeral parlour, dressed in a police uniform. Kate realises that her old enemy is back and out to get her.

Kate returns from a disastrous honeymoon, only to be plunged into a macabre murder investigation. A teenage girl last seen leaving a party at the height of a local scarecrow festival is found strangled and partially stripped in her own barn. The gruesome crime is an exact copy of the 150-year-old murder of peasant girl, Martha Tinney, alleged by superstitious locals to have been committed by a spectral scarecrow, nicknamed Strawfoot. 

Detective Kate Hamblin is doing surveillance on the Somerset Levels, trying to catch a crazed arsonist. She leaves the van for a moment. Then it goes up in flames, killing her two colleagues. Kate is accused of abandoning them and is excluded from the murder hunt and effectively suspended from duty. She is desperate to nail the killer herself and clear her name. She risks all by entering into an unholy alliance with the murder team's chief suspect. Kate finds herself not only targeted in a personal vendetta by her own DCI, but stalked by the very killer she is pursuing.

Struck down by shingles, Cleo Byng postpones her wedding and heads north to recuperate at her infuriating Cousin Henry's house in the wintry Eyotshire village of Hazard. She's not sure what to expect, and Haphazard House turns out to be a dilapidated Elizabethan pile with few amenities and a doom-laden housekeeper, not to mention a strange pair who have been in residence for rather more than the usual life span and have a keen interest in modern technology.

Who needs love? Not Quinta, who's made a good life for herself, bringing up her difficult young daughter, absorbed in her work as a violin maker. And she certainly doesn't need anybody to tell her how to live her life: She has it all sorted out, down to the last dot and comma. If it isn't on a list, it doesn't exist. When her old friend Lydia appears, jilted and angry, Quinta's orderly life is shaken and her past begins to catch up with her.

What if... Dionysus appeared in an English village? Justinia Fitz Odo: musician, dreamer, and would-be-dutiful wife. A wild and wicked autumn wind howls off the Eyotshire fells, bringing a mysterious stranger to the ancient town of Unthrang where she lives; a stranger who intervenes in the lives of the inhabitants in the most unpredictable and shocking ways. Meanwhile in nearby Eyot, unholy machinations in the dignified precincts of the cathedral threaten to destroy centuries of musical tradition.

Groom, best man, guests, even a bishop - but where is the bride? An orphan fresh out of convent school, Prue Pagan has no home and nowhere to go. Then a chance meeting with her worldly-wise friend Cleo lands her a summer job in the north of England at Mountjoy Castle, where generations of the Mountjoy family have loved, lusted, and scandalised their neighbours. Prue's innocence is no protection against the wickedness of the English upper classes.

Unwanted visitors come in all shapes and sizes, from three selfish brothers to a crusader from the past. Mimi Mountjoy's life is suddenly filled with problems. Her business as a purveyor of fountains is threatened and her husband Edmund, who desperately needs to finish his book on the Templars, is afflicted with writer's block. Then Mimi's mother decamps abroad to escape her three unmarried sons - who promptly descend on their sister in Eyot, with extremely disruptive results.

Where would you rather be? Lonely and fog-bound in an ancient English castle... or sitting under the stars with friends on a magical Mediterranean island? Magdalena Mountjoy, furious with her impossible husband, the rakish Valdemar, doesn't hesitate when she has the chance to run away to Aeolus, a jewel of an island off the coast of Sicily. Yet every Eden has its serpent.