Showing results by narrator "Rosalyn Landor" in All Categories

Hayley Okines is like no other 13-year-old schoolgirl. In Old Before My Time, Hayley and her mum, Kerry, reflect on her unusual life. Share Hayley’s excitement as she travels the world meeting her pop heroes Kylie, Girls Aloud, and Justin Bieber and her sadness as she loses her best friend to the disease at the age of 11. Now as she passes the age of 13 - the average life expectancy for a child with progeria - Hayley talks frankly about her hopes for the future and her pioneering drug trials in America which could unlock the secrets of ageing for everyone....

One of the most daunting ghost stories to ever be written, Henry James' The Turn of the Screw follows the transformation of Miles (age 10) and Flora (age eight) from well-behaved children to deceitful liars. When a governess comes to their country estate to look after the children, she and Flora are separately visited by a ghost; however Flora denies the experience and Miles claims to never have been visited by one, even when evidence supports an evil plot between the children and the ghosts.

In this lyrical, impressionistic account, written as a love letter and elegy from Vanessa to Virginia, Sellers imagines her way into the heart of the lifelong relationship between writer Virginia Woolf and painter Vanessa Bell. With sensitivity, imagination, and fidelity to what it known of both lives, Sellers has created a powerful portrait of sibling rivalry.

The greatest mystery surrounding Sherlock Holmes comes to light: Was he actually a woman? At last the master - or rather, mistress - of disguise puts pen to paper to reveal this decades-long deception, and in so doing, discovers another fact she kept secret even from herself. The complex mind of the brilliant consulting detective is finally opened to the public in the chronicle of a new case never recorded by Dr. Watson - a case featuring Constance Moriarty, the beguiling daughter of Holmes’ infamous nemesis.

Anne Green can't move a muscle, can't open her eyes, can't scream. She lies paralyzed in absolute darkness, terrified by her final memory - being hanged. Is she in purgatory? Hell? Was she buried alive? An innocent woman caught up in a nightmare, Anne Green is trapped with her racing thoughts, her burning need to revisit the events - and the man - that led her to the scaffold.

Victorian scandals don't come much more intimate and revealing than a wife seeking an annulment from her famous husband because their marriage has not been consummated. When Effie Ruskin sought escape from her desperately unhappy life with art critic John Ruskin, she shattered the Victorian illusion of the perfect marriage.

Lady Susan is a short, epistolary novel by Jane Austen. Lady Susan Vernon is a selfish, attractive, and unscrupulous woman, who tries to trap the best possible husband while maintaining a relationship with a married man. As a widow, she seeks a match for herself, as well as husband-hunting for her daughter. Lady Susan is not only beautiful but intelligent and witty; she's highly attractive to men and her suitors are always significantly younger.

Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron, a poet, and Anna Isabella Milbanke, a mathematician. Her parents separated when she was young, and her mother insisted on a logic-focused education, rejecting Byron's mad love of poetry. But Ada remained fascinated with her father and considered mathematics poetical science.

The body of a woman has been discovered in Castle Farthing Woods, and it appears that although she had been dead for years, nobody had ever reported her missing. DI Harry Falconer of the Market Darley police is perplexed - and not only in his working life. He has recently resumed his relationship with psychologist Dr. Honey Dubois - but while visiting a local village in the course of his investigations, unsettling memories of a former love are revived.

Sometime Never tells the story of a chance meeting between Nancy Timperley and the mysterious David Voland, at the site of a past tragedy. Just why is Nancy there, and what does David know of her past and the tragic events of so many years ago?

Jack had two dying wishes: that his wife scatter his ashes somewhere "exotic", and that she not give up on life once he was gone. He intended to spur her on to new adventures, but despite clinging to her red suitcase, Geraldine Verne hasn’t left the house for three months. It takes an accident for Geri to accept help from her friends, but when Meals on Wheels arrive she is mortified. Yet heartbroken volunteer Lottie brings with her more than cottage pie and custard. Like Geri, she too is struggling to cut loose.

Here's the delightful new novel from Clare Naylor, whose sleeper hit Dog Handling was one of Cosmopolitan's Best Beach Reads for 2002. Fresh and fun, The Goddess Rules is an outrageous, wry, and razor-sharp portrait of a girl who thinks her life is just fine, until she meets a woman who swears by the belief that life is meant to be fabulous.

Set in Provence, London, and New York, this is a daughter’s wonderfully evocative and witty memoir of her mother and stepfather—Dee Wells, the glamorous and rebellious American journalist, and A. J. Ayer, the celebrated and worldly Oxford philosopher—and the life they lived at the center of absolutely everything.

Crash has never let the circumstances of his birth, or his lack of a last name, bother him. His associations may be unsavory, but money, friends, and infamy open far more interesting doors than respect ever could. His sole regret? Once lovely, sweet Daisy Whitlaw learned the truth about how he made his fortune, she cut him off. Daisy's father is dead, her mother is in ill health, and her available funds have dwindled to a memory. When the local parish announces a charity bequest to help young people start a trade, it's her last chance.

In this astonishing novel, a brilliant mélange of fact and fiction, Juliet Gael skillfully and stylishly captures the passions, hopes, dreams, and sorrows of literature’s most famous sisters - and imagines how love dramatically and most unexpectedly found Charlotte Brontë. During the two years that she studied in Brussels, Charlotte had a taste of life’s splendors - travel, literature, and art. Now, back home in the Yorkshire moors, duty-bound to a blind father and an alcoholic brother, an ambitious Charlotte refuses to sink into hopelessness.

This third volume of Orson Scott Card's five-volume anthology of short stories features ten fantasies and fables full of princesses and giants, bears and monkeys, magic and revelation. Discover the pitfalls of paradise, how to handle a dragon, the true secret of happiness, and much more. Card offers background commentaries for each story in a series of afterwords and introductions.

Spunky, sweet-natured Jessica Monroe is 34-years-old and perfectly happy being single. A producer at a top-rated morning show with a coterie of fun friends and a busy nightlife, she isn't in any rush to meet a man. Her girlfriends, however, disapprove. And when they secretly place a personal ad on a hot singles Web site on her behalf, Jess is reluctantly hurtled into the topsy-turvy world of online dating, where frogs masquerade as princes, but your soul mate might be just one click away.

When Betsey disembarks from the London train in the seaside resort of Idensea, all she owns is a small valise and a canary in a cage. After attempting to forge a letter of reference she knew would be denied her, Betsey has been fired from the typing pool of her previous employer. Her vigorous protest left one man wounded, another jilted, and her character permanently besmirched. Now, without money or a reference for her promised job, the future looks even bleaker than the debacle behind her.

In addition to tales from some of today's top stars — including Laura Lippman, Susan Wiggs, Marcia Muller, Carolyn Hart, Nancy Pickard, and Elizabeth George herself — Two of the Deadliest showcases work from an impressive array of exceptional newcomers, as together they explore the dark depths women and men will sink to when driven by passion, avarice, and a lethal hunger for power.

Lady Adelaide Robins, the charming and beautiful daughter of an impoverished earl, was raised on the foggy moors of Yorkshire. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine she would travel to London, capture the heart of a duke, and receive a proposal of marriage. Is she ready for a life of luxury and privilege as a duchess? Or will her heart forever belong to another?