Showing results by narrator "Gemma Lawrence" in All Categories

Assassin’s Creed: Gold follows Aliyah Khan, a card shark and hustler who’s been dealt a rough hand in life. Surviving through her smarts and street scams, Aliyah struggles to get by until she loses big time to a mysterious older man, Gavin Banks. Her only option to repay Banks is to become an Assassin. During her training, Banks tells Aliyah of the centuries-old battle between the Assassins and Templars, imploring her to help him decode a secret message inscribed on an illegal form of currency during the Great Recoinage of 1696.    

Peggy and Molly Gainsborough—the daughters of one of England’s most famous portrait artists of the 1700s and the frequent subject of his work—are best friends. They spy on their father as he paints, rankle their mother as she manages the household, and run barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly periodically experiences bouts of mental confusion, even forgetting who she is, and Peggy instinctively knows she must help cover up her sister’s condition.

Growing up in a quiet, middle-class suburb outside of Amsterdam, childhood best friends Anna and Olivia had their whole lives ahead of them. But every parent's worst nightmare came true when the teenagers fell in with the wrong crowd. Eleven years their senior, Ryan was charming and good-looking - and Anna and Oliva easy prey. Blind to his grooming, the girls were soon trapped in a terrifying cycle of sexual and physical abuse.

In the heart of Dressmakers' Alley, Madame Pauline’s sweatshop is rumoured to be a particularly unpleasant place to work. Filled with seamstresses paid a pittance who turn a blind eye to what darker activities are hidden behind locked doors. Young Winnie Brown is keen to prove her value to the Women Movement and secures a job as a seamstress to investigate the whispers of some unsavoury goings on. Her concerns are soon justified when she hears a desperate cry for help.

From early childhood, Dr. Hannah Mumby has loved wildlife, especially elephants. Her first wild elephant sighting at 24 changed the course of her life. Since then, she has devoted herself to studying these incredible animals and educating humanity about them. Hannah's field work has taken her around the world, where she has studied many elephant groups, including both orphaned elephants and the solitary elephant males. These remarkable animals have so much to teach us, Mumby argues, and Elephants takes listeners into their world as never before.

Sophy Pemberton is struggling to cope with the pressures of becoming a new mother. Her nine-month-old son never settles in her arms, and the unrelenting tiredness from late-night feeds is all consuming. So, when Liv Granger from the mother and baby group offers her services as a nanny, Sophy is overcome with relief. Now she can finally get some sleep. She can stop failing at being a mother. But Liv has a secret. She didn’t become Sophy’s nanny by accident.

Helen Macdonald is a falconer and poet. She keeps a goshawk called Mabel. As a child she fell in love with a rare book of intense nature writing, J.A. Baker's The Peregrine, which records a winter watching wild peregrines on the Essex coast. Her new play brings her birds and his together. Baker tramps the bleak coastal marshes scanning the skies for fleeting moments of bloody drama as a peregrine stoops at immense speed after a plover or a pigeon.

Sisters Bel and Marie are poles apart. Whilst Marie is a free spirit who spurns alcohol, casual sex and material possessions, Bel needs all of those things just to make it through to lunchtime. When their mother dies suddenly, leaving them a rundown house on the Norfolk coast, they are unexpectedly thrown together. Because there's a condition: before they can inherit it, they have to live in it for one year - together.

This third volume in The Princess Rules series sees the feisty princess take her baby brother and best friend, Bennett, on another round of adventures together. Can they rescue their new-found friend, the sea serpent, from a travelling circus? And hold back the pirate, Five-fathom Freida. Or will Florizella’s worst fairy godmother prove that in a fairytale world, you really do have to be careful what you wish for?

England, 1940. Shedding a tear as she says goodbye to her new fiancé when he leaves to fight, Lily Baker begins her own journey in the ATS. Thrilled after she wins the assignment to work in a coveted post, Lily is shocked to find out that one of her new colleagues might be a spy. And when she learns that her beloved is missing in action, she vows to do all she can to protect those around her.

Lily Baker wants more from life. Working at the local cinema, she saves her pennies so she can have a chance to get ahead. After she’s attacked one night while locking up the cinema, she loses her heart to her dashing rescuer…But this lovely man is as different from her as can be. When the town is divided, pitting the wealthy elite against the poor working class folk like Lily, she finds her allegiance is torn.

When Princess Florizella finds a baby boy delivered by stork to her parents’ palace, she is shocked to discover that he will one day be king and inherit her kingdom! For every prince is given a permit which allows them to do whatever they like in the same way that every princess is given a set of rules that they have to live by. As soon as Princess Florizella’s brother is big enough to have adventures, she takes him all over the land. Can she prove that girls having rules and boys having permits isn’t right?

When young Amy Rowlings meets Detective Sergeant Bodkin at the scene of a robbery on the way to work at The Mill, she is blissfully unaware of how much her life is about to change. She is drawn into the murky world of murder when the body of Edward Handsley is found lying on the floor of the factory. Edward, a libertine, philanderer, the son of the factory owner George, a young man with many enemies, many of them female. Bodkin is new to the area and Amy soon becomes an invaluable source of information. But when a family friend, Adam Smethwick, is arrested, Amy sets out to prove his innocence.

A Child's Book of the Future is a narrative nonfiction book that will offer an inclusive and hopeful vision of the future, with a diverse, multicultural approach that will appeal to children of all backgrounds and further appeal to the foreign market audience.

Twin sisters Lily and Daisy Kennedy live a life ruled by their controlling father, Des. Desperate to salvage his own shattered dreams, he forces his girls to perform in seedy London club, Eden's, in the hopes they will finally hit the big time. Their double act instantly pulls in the punters, but in the shadow of the spotlights, danger lurks. Lily, the golden girl, is stressed out by their new life, but rebellious Daisy relishes the freedom and excitement it brings.

When a large diamond goes missing from Silvershell Manor, who better to get to the bottom of the mystery than detective Violet Veil and her dog Bones. But nothing is quite as it seems when it comes to the missing heirloom and when a trail of origami birds leads them to Elizabelle Crane, a young casino owner and debt collector, Violet realises that it’s all just turned into a game of high stakes . . .

1938, England. When Lily Baker's mother finds a way for them to leave their run down part of town, and finally esape her aggressive father, Lily is feeling positive about a fresh start at a new life. While her mother will be a housekeeper, Lily has a chance to work in a factory, though she has even bigger dreams - and the tenacity to achieve them. But Lily’s father isn’t going to let go that easily, and she lives in fear of him ruining everything – the life she is building for herself. Will Lily and her mother find the strength to begin all over again?

Mia is telling me a story. It’s about a princess, who lives in a castle, on a street that bears a remarkable resemblance to ours. About a kind old lady who’s the queen. I’m distracted for a moment by her little hand softly slipping into mine. My daughter. My angel. But then she says something that pulls me from my reverie. She says that the queen doesn’t treat the princess well. She punishes her and doesn’t let her eat anything…Helen, my neighbour, has been so good to me. And more importantly, she’s so good with the children. Surely this is just another story of Mia’s, just make believe.

Violet Veil is ready for her next big case, and with trouble afoot at the Grecian Theatre, Violet and her dog, Bones, are hot on the trail. But just who is the mysterious fortune-teller, Lady Athena, whose predictions keep coming true? Is it all just a case of smoke and mirrors? Or is there something more sinister going on?

Courtney is a worrier - she's worried about everything, from her mum and dad's constant fights, to her Gran being ill, to the fact that her best friend, Lois, suddenly seems to be more interested in growing up and hanging out with mean girl Bex than with her. But then one day, during a particularly bad argument kicked off by her dad's discovery of a pig in their lounge (don't ask...), Courtney begins to feel a bit funny...a bit woozy...a bit like a dream is coming on - and then when she wakes up everything is better!