Showing results by narrator "Angela Ness" in All Categories

Isla's got the designer clothes and dream job as head stylist at an exclusive salon. She's been so single-minded in this quest that she's forgotten to have a life outside of it. When her aunt is in desperate need at her own salon, Isla heads to the remote island of Auchenmor to help. Finn is 35, and reality has just hit him hard. Now his best friends are about to have a baby, and everything is changing. When into his life walks Isla...

When Alice Mistlethwaite is shipped off to boarding school in Scotland, it's nothing like she imagines. Run by the mysterious Major, there are no punishments, and the students are more likely to be taught about body painting or extreme survival than maths or English! Then Alice's dad goes missing, and she must run away to find him. Can she persuade her new friends to help? So begins an epic quest across wild Scottish highlands and islands, where the children will face danger and excitement at every turn.

With intolerance and inequality increasingly normalised by the day, it's more important than ever for women to share their experiences. We must hold the truth to account in the midst of sensationalism and international political turmoil. Nasty Women is a collection of essays, interviews and accounts on what it is to be a woman in the 21st century. People, politics, pressure, punk. Keep telling your stories.

When Tuppence was born, I thought I was complete. Even when my marriage to Leon began to falter, at least I had my baby girl to look after. Adults have problems all the time, but children have a way of making them seem so insignificant. But then Tuppence goes missing and I realise how my life has been teetering on the brink for so long. Now it's just me and my husband again, the two of us and all our problems, and we're forced to work together as a team to get our beloved daughter back.

The Queen of Scottish Gangland Thrillers is back! Donnie Black. Charming, successful... and utterly terrifying, he rules the Glasgow underworld with an iron fist. Nothing - or no one - will stop him and he's not afraid to get his hands dirty to grow his fortune. Layla Black. She's been married to Donnie for twenty years, enjoying the lavish world he has worked hard to create. But behind the perfect image, Layla is crumbling, numbing her pain with alcohol. But Layla doesn't know the secrets Donnie keeps - and the truth will send her spiralling.

Have you ever been on a train and wondered what would happen if you didn’t get off — just carried on to the end of the line? In the throes of a spectacular mid-life crisis and feeling rather unappreciated at home, Katie Frock takes an unplanned journey to London, leaving her supposedly grown-up family behind to figure out how to work the washing machine. Far away in Fancy London, Katie makes new friends, becomes the Banksy of the culinary world and accidentally gets mixed up in some very shady business.

Tensions are rising in the run up to the island event of the year—the Vik Show. Not only has the secret recipe for Mrs Hay's peppermint slices been stolen, but someone has had the bad manners to leave a dead body in the distillery. And what does any of this have to do with the disappearance of Elsie the librarian? A perfect storm of past secrets and political conspiracy is brewing, and it's up to the local weight-loss group, Losers Club, to save the day.

When she wangles the job of skippering a Viking longship for a film, Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived - even though it means returning home to the Shetland Islands, which she ran away from as a teenager. Then the 'accidents' begin - and when a dead woman turns up on the boat's deck, Cass realises that she, her family and her past are under suspicion from the disturbingly shrewd Detective Inspector Macrae.

DCI Alison McCoist is back: newly promoted and even less popular. Chuck Gardner is the proud owner of both a confidential paper-shredding business and a serious betting habit. When Chuck finds some scandalous paperwork and McCoist investigates a rat-nibbled corpse under a flyover, they are both sucked into a deadly stramash of gangland wars and police corruption.

Nothing stays buried forever. Lifeboat volunteer DI Shona Oliver receives a Mayday call coming from Kilcatrin Island. Upon the beach is the badly burned body of a man, and a boy lies gravely injured nearby. Strewn around them are scores of Second World War incendiary bombs, presumably washed up by the tide from Beaufort's Dyke, an offshore arms dump deep in the Irish Sea. The dead man is a local fisherman – his son the other victim – and it rocks the tight-knit community on the shores of the Solway Firth. As lead detective, Shona has to maintain a professional distance.

Edinburgh student Rose MacLeod has been losing time for as long as she can remember. Days and weeks disappear, leaving terrifying gaps in her memory. Now she is seeing horrifying visions - waking nightmares of violence and death. Around the world young women like her are being killed, and Rose has a ringside seat. Mal Fergusson was raised to hunt demons across Scotland. With his father dead and his brother in a coma, he no longer believes in the grand battle between good and evil. Instead, he scrapes a living as an investigator and hit man for the supernatural Mafia of Edinburgh.

Oh dearie me, the remote Scottish island of Vik is overrun with treasure hunters, Hollywood has arrived to film the next big blockbuster and Mrs Hubbard has accidentally poisoned Police Scotland. What a stramash! When Colin the curator is found bludgeoned to death in the museum, it's down to the island weight-loss group, Losers Club, to investigate.

DI Shona Oliver’s past and present collide when James McGowan, her ex-classmate–now a famous actor–comes to the area to make a Robert Burns biopic. Shona is tasked with keeping him safe during filming on an isolated island in the Solway Firth, and her job is made much harder when a dead man wearing James’s coat is found on the beach in suspicious circumstances. It seems someone wanted James out of the picture.

Highland Scotland was no place for a woman in the early 1500s. Life was turbulent and short, battles were waged, and sisters and daughters were traded as pawns in marriage. Catherine Campbell was one such young bride, betrothed to Lachlan Maclean and sent from her fine home to join him on the Isle of Mull, to bear his sons and heirs. But Lachlan proved to be nothing like the man of Catherine’s dreams, and she was forced to resign herself to enduring life with him for the sake of duty. Until the day when he threatened to take away the one thing she couldn’t sacrifice: her daughter.

For almost two decades before her or execution at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was a prisoner. From her chambers, she wrote countless letters, many encrypted using complex ciphers to prevent her communications from being intercepted. In this way, she used language to exert her will and her influence, even while incarcerated. More than 400 years after Mary's death, the discovery of further encoded letters has led to renewed interest in the breadth of her encrypted correspondence in captivity.

Detective Helen Carter is called to a crime scene: a barmaid, Tina French, has been strangled. Murdered on her way home from work to look after her sick son. Meanwhile, Moira McKenzie leaves her lover's townhouse and gets home to find her abusive husband, Reggie, washing blood from his hands. Later, in their garden shed, she finds incriminating photos, keepsakes and newspaper cuttings about old murder cases. When the police are called to their home, they find a pool of blood and a shattered glass table, but no sign of Moira.

Nobody likes the North Edinburgh Health Enforcement Team, least of all the people who work for it. An uneasy mix of police and health service staff, Mona, Bernard and their colleagues stem the spread of the Virus, a mutant strain of influenza, by tracking down people who have missed their monthly health check. Now two young female students are missing. Why were they drinking in a bikers' bar? Who are the mysterious Children of Camus cult? And why is the German government interfering in the investigation?

Detective Helen Carter needs a break. Instead, she's going head-to-head with notorious cop killer Jimmy Osbourne. Eight years ago he pulled off the perfect heist and fled to Spain, leaving behind a trail of carnage. But not a shred of evidence to implicate him. Now he's back in Edinburgh. But why? Helen has her suspicions. Within days, a mysterious jewel thief surfaces on CCTV. A gunman shoots up a seedy back-alley. The suspects are piling up, but Helen knows Jimmy is behind them. All her instincts tell her he's guilty. She's watching him. But he has eyes on her too.

When Scotland's leading virologist goes missing, Mona and Paterson from the Health Enforcement Team are dispatched to London to find him. In a hot and unwelcoming city, Mona has to deal with a boss who isn't speaking to her, placate the professor's overbearing assistant and outwit the people who will stop at nothing to make sure the academic stays lost. Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, Bernard is searching for a missing prostitute while Maitland is trying to keep the chair of the Parliamentary Virus Committee from finding out quite how untidy the HET office is....

When a stranger comes ashore to rent an abandoned cottage, Agnes and the other islanders are abuzz with curiosity. Who is this wealthy foreigner and why on earth would he come to Eynhallow? Her curiosity is soon replaced with vexation when her husband hires her out as cook and washerwoman, leaving Agnes with no say in the matter. Agnes begrudgingly befriends this aristocrat-in-exile; a mercurial scientist who toils night and day on some secret pursuit. Despite herself, she’s drawn to his dark, brooding charm.