Showing results by narrator "Lucy Scott" in All Categories

Click buy: a French chateau. Condition: ‘may require improvement'. It seemed like a good idea. Selling everything we owned. Just Mark and me, swapping our tiny, little terraced London home – and the heartbreak of not being able to start a family – for an entire chateau in the middle of France… It’s everyone’s dream. And now it’s coming true for us. As I use the rusty key to open the big creaking wooden door of the tumbledown fairytale chateau that’s officially our new home, I wonder: what could possibly go wrong?

London, August 1881. The World's End Investigation Bureau is thriving, and Lily Raynor is delighted to have so much work—but she can't help wishing for a case that doesn't involve the overindulged upper classes. It's a wish she soon has cause to regret. The Reverend James Jellicote arrives seeking help on behalf of an elderly Jewish refugee. Yelisaveta and her young grandson arrived safely in London, only for the unspeakable to happen: eleven-year-old Yakov disappeared, without a trace. And soon, Lily and her assistant Felix have another impossible puzzle on their hands.

Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss, both recovering from recent unhappiness, meet and quickly fall in love. However, over their new-found bliss looms the spectre of Vera, Wemyss’s first wife who died in mysterious circumstances. After their wedding the couple return home and Lucy really does begin to be troubled by what happened to Vera. Considered a high-water mark by the author, the story is an extraordinarily black vision of a young wife who gradually begins to understand that her husband will accept nothing less than total intellectual and emotional servitude.

Maddy Wolfe’s life has just capsized. After her twenty-year marriage suddenly implodes, she heads to Brighton to search for her estranged son, Jamie. But he’s nowhere to be found and for the first time, she’s totally alone. That is, until she meets the Salty Sea-Gals, a group of feisty sea-swimmers. Seventy-two-year old Helga is determined not to slow down, while thirty-something Tor is still figuring out who she is. Bereaved Dominica is trying to find a reason to carry on, and busy mum Claire is learning to put herself first for a change.

In July 1955 Ruth Ellis was sentenced to death for the shooting of her lover. In this book, Robert Hancock sets the record straight. Using official documents including the transcript of her trial at the Old Bailey, he unlocks the full, secret background to the story of the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Meticulous and fair in its analysis, The Last Woman to Be Hanged is an absorbing portrait of the tragic life of a young woman, a vivid snapshot of an era and a gripping account of a notorious case that shocked the nation.

These stories explore almost every aspect of English domestic life during the Second World War: separation, fear, and obsessions with food, sewing parties, evacuees’ journeys, and the camaraderie of the Blitz. Above all, Panter-Downes portrays the changes and social revolutions which took place during wartime.

Lisbeth Fischer has lived in the shadow of her beautiful cousin Adeline for much of her life. Pampered while Lisbeth works in the fields, Adeline makes an enviable leap in status when Baron Hulot offers her his hand in marriage. Out of kindness, they bring Lisbeth to Paris, where she falls in love with the artist Wenceslas, her protege. However, when she is jilted for Adeline's daughter Hortense, her jealousy and rage exponentially intensify, and she resolves to bring the Hulot family to ruin, employing the cold seductress Valerie Marneffe as her vehicle for revenge.

The glittering fortunes of the Massot family, vastly wealthy owners of one of the last great aristocratic jewellery firms in Paris, were plunged into confusion seven years ago by the disappearance of Pierre Massot, the family's charismatic head. Now, his beautiful young wife, Sophie, has decided that the family and the firm must move on to survive. But some people have other ideas. A trail of scandal is waiting to be uncovered, one that could rip the Massots' carefully constructed world to shreds.

An inspirational tale of disaster, betrayal, karma, love, healing, and redemption that will keep you spellbound until the emotional conclusion.

Will Shakespeare is about to meet the girl who will change his life forever. After a mixed-up courtship with the Hathaway sisters ends badly, Will jumps at the chance to go to London, where he can pursue his dream of becoming an actor. There, Will meets the unusually tall (and strong) Meg who has earned the nickname "Long Meg" for her height. She's also fleeing her own past as an orphan turned thief. Disguised as "Mack", Meg was once a member of a band of boy thieves who betrayed her.

Sorceress, Princess of Colchis, Securer of the Golden Fleece. Medea - her very name is a byword for infamy. Legend has it that she murdered her own children for revenge. But love in Ancient Greece was often a dangerous game; and legends are not always what they seem. Medea, devoted wife of Jason, was also a loving mother, a loyal friend of Herakles and a brave adventurer with the Argonauts. A woman both betrayer and betrayed, the real story of Medea is strange, sensual and heroic.

It’s 1923 and in a decade that promises excitement and liberation, Pearl Glenham and her father are invited to a mysterious country house party on the Dorset coast, by a total stranger. Her father claims not to have any prior association with Highcliffe House, but upon arrival, it is apparent that he has a shared history with several of the guests, although he won’t admit it. Belatedly discovering that her father was blackmailed into attending, Pearl’s worries are compounded when their host fails to arrive…

Bella and Kate. Kate and Bella. From childhood they were bosom friends, Bella sensible and cautious, Kate gregarious and just a little dangerous. Yet in spite of their intimacy, their trust is fragile. Men came into their lives and things changed: a black seed was set in the heart of their relationship. Over decades, acts of both cruelty and love ferment until one shocking event tests them more than ever. Neither will escape unscathed.

Ursula and Bandares is the story of a young English servant girl and her wolfhound Bandares. Taken into the confidence of the secretly Royalist Lady of the House, Lady Grey, Ursula is coaxed into smuggling Royalist prisoners out from under the nose of the Lady’s Parliamentarian husband, Lord Grey.

1936. Devastated by the death of her brother Hugh, Emma seeks to keep his memory alive by embracing his dreams of a communist revolution. But when she marries an ambitious diplomat, she must live within the confines of embassy life in Paris and Nazi Berlin. 1979. Emma's grandson, Phil, dreams of a tour of Europe, but is nowhere near being able to fund it. So when his beloved grandmother determines to make one last trip to the places she lived, and to try to solve a mystery that has haunted her since the war, he jumps at the chance to accompany her.

There are those who never grow old because they are taken too soon. There are those who grow old without worries, enjoying everything life has to offer. There are those who desperately try to slow down the ticking clock. And then there's Betty - Betty, who mysteriously stops growing old on her 30th birthday, the same age at which her mother died. The years leave no trace on Betty's face, but as everyone around her is transformed by the relentless march of time, her once golden life begins to come apart.

Three-a-Penny describes what it is like to be a woman in a man's world - about the ups and downs of earning a living as a writer in the 1920s and '30s. Lucy Malleson wrote over 70 crime novels and was part of what is often referred to as the Golden Age of crime writing. But in order to be published she used a male pseudonym and successfully concealed her true identity for many years.

When Boyd moves back into the family home with his amicably estranged wife, Vita, and his young, beautiful girlfriend, Honey, it seems the perfect solution: Boyd can get his finances back on track and deal with his ailing mother; Honey can keep herself safe from her troubled past; and Vita can carry on telling herself she doesn't mind her marriage is over. But the house is small and full of memories, and living together is unsettling. For Vita, Boyd and Honey, love proves to be a surprising, dangerous thing and, one year on, their lives are changed forever.

Max Weston, 21, leaves for his first army posting in central Africa. What happens to him changes the lives of his family forever. At home, his parents struggle to cope. The overwhelming love Caroline has always felt for her only child is now matched by the intensity of Max's absence. The silence is broken by the arrival of Caroline's mother-in-law, Elsa, who at the age of 98 can no longer look after herself. After years of living in fear of putting a foot wrong in front of this elegant, cuttingly courteous lady, finally, Caroline has the upper hand.

Elizabeth Canham accepts a position at Burndale Academy, an isolated girl's school where she meets mysterious widower Griffin Fairfax, a man dogged by dark rumors who both frightens and fascinates her. Soon, a woman is found dead in the nearby woods - the victim of a brutal murder...a murder that bears terrifying similarity to others. Then Beth discovers all the victims were intimately connected to Griffin. Beth’s heart tells her Griffin cannot be the charming, seductive killer stalking the night, stealing women’s hearts...and lives.