Showing results by narrator "Karen Cass" in All Categories

Then - In charge of her little sister at the beach, Claire allowed Eleanor to walk to the shop alone to buy an ice cream. Placing a coin into her hand, Claire told her to be quick, knowing how much she wanted the freedom. Eleanor never came back. Now - The time has finally come to sell the family farm and Claire is organizing a reunion of her dearest friends, the same friends who were present the day her sister went missing. When another girl disappears, long-buried secrets begin to surface.

Most people, including many policy makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers, have encouraged us to be more empathetic - to feel the pain and pleasure of others. Yale researcher and author Paul Bloom argues that this is a mistake. Far from leading us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it and draw upon a more distanced compassion.

England, 1920. Eleanor Swift has spent the last few years travelling the world: taking tea in China, tasting alligators in Peru, escaping bandits in Persia and she has just arrived in England after a chaotic 45-day flight from South Africa. Chipstone is about the sleepiest town you could have the misfortune to meet. But then, from the edge of a quarry, through the driving rain, Eleanor is shocked to see a man shot and killed in the distance. Before she can climb down to the spot, the villain is gone and the body has vanished.

England, 1920. Lady Eleanor Swift, adventurer extraordinaire and reluctant amateur detective, is taking a break from sleuthing. She’s got much bigger problems: Eleanor has two left feet, nothing to wear and she’s expected at the masked ball at the local manor. Her new beau Lance Langham is the host, so she needs to dazzle. Surrounded by partygoers with painted faces, pirates, priests and enough feathers to drown an ostrich, Eleanor searches for a familiar face. As she follows a familiar pair of long legs up a grand staircase, she’s sure she’s on Lance’s trail. 

Like many women, Clare Pooley found the juggle of a stressful career and family life a struggle, so she left her successful role as a managing partner in one of the world's biggest advertising agencies to look after her family. She knew the change wouldn't be easy, but she never expected to find herself an overweight, depressed, middle-aged mother of three who was drinking more than a bottle of wine a day and spending her evenings Googling 'am I an alcoholic?'

Summer, 1921. Lady Eleanor Swift, the best amateur sleuth in the country, is delighted to be in charge of the prize-giving at her village summer fair. But the traditional homemade raft race takes a tragic turn when the local undertaker, Solemn Jon, turns up dead amongst the ducks. Jon was the life of any party and loved by the entire village. Surely this was simply an awful accident? But when a spiteful obituary is printed in the local paper, Eleanor realizes there may be more to Jon’s death than first thought.

Autumn, 1920. Lady Eleanor Swift, accidental amateur detective and retired explorer, is determined to take a break from investigating murders. So when a local politician dies suddenly at an elegant dinner party at Farrington Manor, she tries her hardest not to listen to the raft of rumors around the village that he might have been poisoned by the fudge. It’s the anniversary of the disappearance of her beloved parents, and she’s promised herself not to get mixed up with any more mysteries. She isn’t sure they’d have approved.  

The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is...don't make any afternoon plans.  

Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way.   

Sitting between her ex-husband and her new lover, Anna is coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy at the age of 40. Also at the table are her ageing grandmother, her promiscuous sister, her flamboyantly gay brother and a memory too terrible to contemplate.  

Until, that is, a letter arrives from the person Anna scarred all those years ago. Can Anna reconcile her painful past with her uncertain future?  

Juliet Ashton weaves a story of love, friendship and community that will move you to laughter and to tears. Think Cold Feet meets David Nicholls, with a dash of the joy of Jill Mansell added for good measure.

Forget hygge - it's time to blow out the candles and get out into the world! Journalist Katja Pantzar did just that, taking the huge leap to move to the remote Nordic country of Finland. What she discovered there transformed her body, mind, and spirit. In this engaging and practical guide, she shows listeners how to embrace the "keep it simple and sensible" daily practices that make Finns one of the happiest populations in the world, year after year. The Finns have a word for that, and this empowering book shows us how to achieve it.

Everything in Lorna’s life runs like clockwork, from her six a.m. run to the strict 60 minute counselling sessions she gives. It’s the only way she can deal with the terrible secret she carries. When a new client arrives for his first appointment, Lorna feels her perfect life unravel in a matter of seconds. It’s Andrew, the man she’s spent the last year desperately trying to forget. It seems he can’t forget her either....

Venice, 1943. The world is at war, and Stella Jilani is leading a double life. By day she works in the lion’s den as a typist for the Reich, by night she risks her life as a messenger for the Italian resistance. London, 2017. Luisa Belmont finds a mysterious old typewriter in her attic. Determined to find out who it belonged to, Luisa delves into the past and uncovers a story of fierce love, unimaginable sacrifice and ultimately the worst kind of betrayal.

When Ella wakes up in a hospital following a hit-and-run incident, she is scared and confused. Close to tears, her eyes fall on a get-well-soon card on the window sill, and the nurse reassures her that her loving husband will be back soon. But Ella has never been married. In fact, she has lived alone her whole adult life; working hard, rarely socializing, quietly harboring a terrible secret from her past.

Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.

Escape the cold winter nights with Sunday Times top five best seller Heidi Swain's Summer at Skylark Farm! Amber is a city girl at heart. So when her boyfriend, Jake, suggests they move to the countryside to help out at his family farm, she doesn't quite know how to react. But work has been hectic, and she needs a break, so she decides to grasp the opportunity and make the best of it. Dreaming of organic orchards, paddling in streams and frolicking in fields, Amber packs up her things and moves to Skylark Farm.  But life is not quite how she imagined....

Jude is the owner of a unique antiques shop in Cambridge. She makes it her mission to match customers with the special something that they are missing, a talisman to bring them what their heart desires. Unfortunately, Jude’s life is not overflowing with love. However, when she 'inherits' a niece that she never knew existed, doubling her meagre family overnight, Jude's life is soon set to get a lot less lonely and a lot more interesting.

When Mary Corbet walks into private investigator Jennie Redhead's rundown Oxford office one pleasant spring day in 1974, she is a desperate woman. Although she's convinced her daughter has been murdered, she can get neither the police nor her husband to agree with her. Jennie is not convinced either, but more out of compassion than conviction agrees to take the case. The only clue she has to go on is a fragment of an obscure 17th-century poem she finds in Linda's bedroom. 

Virtual working - also known as remote working, telecommuting, flexible working, or homeworking - is an important and growing trend in the global employment landscape.  Its popularity has increased due to globalization and outsourcing. However, unlocking the benefits of virtual work depends largely on the organizational culture, management, and leadership to support it. Virtual Leadership identifies the challenges of virtual work and explains how to develop the facilitative leadership mindset to effectively manage people remotely.

Peach is excited to hear that her sister, Di, is getting married. Of course, she would have preferred her little sister to be engaged to someone she's known longer than a week - and the fact that his name is Charles doesn't bode well - but who is she to judge? After all, her own love life is non-existent, and who doesn't love a destination wedding? 

Blood carries life, yet the sight of it makes people faint. It is a waste product and a commodity pricier than oil. It can save lives and transmit deadly infections. Each one of us has roughly nine pints of it, yet many don’t even know their own blood type. And for all its ubiquitousness, the few tablespoons of blood discharged by 800 million women are still regarded as taboo: menstruation is perhaps the single most demonized biological event.

Late one night in April 1958, a filing assistant at Miss Brickett's receives a letter of warning, detailing a name, a time, and a place. She goes to investigate but finds the room empty. At the stroke of midnight, she is murdered by a killer she can't see - her death the only sign she wasn't alone. It becomes chillingly clear that the person responsible must also work for Miss Brickett's, making everyone a suspect.