Showing results by narrator "Joanna Bending" in All Categories

June 1914 and a young woman - Clara Waterfield - is summoned to a large stone house in Gloucestershire. Her task: to fill a greenhouse with exotic plants from Kew Gardens, to create a private paradise for the owner of Shadowbrook. Yet on arrival, Clara hears rumours: something is wrong with this quiet, wisteria-covered house. Its gardens are filled with foxgloves, hydrangea and roses; it has lily ponds, a croquet lawn - and the marvellous new glasshouse awaits her. But the house itself feels unloved. Its rooms are shuttered or empty.

When Englishwoman Frances McDonald sets up home in a remote South African hamlet, she is regarded with suspicion by the community. Confined by a marriage of convenience, she seeks an outlet by learning the local language and exhibiting her paintings. Soon war threatens to divide not only the country but the town itself and scupper Frances' hard-won acceptance.

In the village of Spire, murder is afoot. Wealthy landowner Alexander, Earl of Greengrass, is caught with his trousers down in the village graveyard before meeting a gruesome end. Luckily Susie Mahl happens to be on hand. With her artist’s eye for detail and her curious nature, she is soon on the scent of the murderer....

Struggling with long-buried family secrets and her own recent heartbreak, artist and pet portraitist Susie Mahl hopes her brief sojourn as an art tutor at a Scottish country house will prove a distraction. But Susie soon realises she has bigger problems than teaching her eclectic mix of students to draw a Highland cow. Beneath the beautiful landscapes of the Scottish Highlands and the grandeur of the Auchen Laggan Tosh estate lie hidden secrets. Can Susie work out what exactly is going on before it’s too late? And can anyone be trusted?

Flirtatious American blonde Miss Hailey Duke should never have accepted a summer weekend invitation to Fontaburn Hall. But when the Honourable Archibald Cooke Wellingham’s house party are woken, in the early hours of Sunday morning, it’s too late: Miss Duke’s blood is on their hands. With the aid of Detective Chief Inspector Reynolds, Sergeant Ayari and loyal friend Dr Toby Cropper, Susie Mahl, on a timely commission drawing six racehorses nearby, seizes the opportunity to play detective for a second time.

Harriet Montague is definitely too much of a gentlewoman to be frequenting the backstreet taverns of Algiers. But her father has been kidnapped whilst on an expedition to the tomb of an ancient desert queen, and she’s on a mission to find the only person who could save him. It’s just unfortunate that Lucas Saintclair, the man Harriet hopes will rescue her father from scoundrels, is the biggest scoundrel of the lot. With a bribe in the form of a legendary pirate treasure map, Harriet must endure a treacherous journey through the desert accompanied by Saintclair’s band of ruffians.