Showing results by narrator "Jilly Bond" in All Categories

Jack Andrews was having a tough time. He'd come back from the First World War to find his wife had 'got religion'. She'd got it so badly that she finally went off, left Jim and the three children and joined Father Peter's League of Repenters. She never really came home again. Jack and the children managed as best they could, but things were pretty tough when Aunt Edie turned up. The first thing she did was give her cousin, Maud Andrews, a piece of her mind for running off and leaving her family. But when that didn't do any good, Edie moved in and took over the Andrews family.

From the UK best-selling author of Abbot's Keep comes a new dimension in terror. Spanning four decades, the dark history of Church Farm House is explored within four interlinking horror stories. Welcome to the nightmare... Benedict Ashforth is the author of the UK best-selling Kindle ghost story, Abbot's Keep.

A combination of overwork and jet-lag propel Julia Fairfax into becoming engaged to a golf-playing wine buff called Oscar. When she realises that she has fonder feelings for his adorable Labrador than for Oscar himself, she is forced to confront the fact that there is something drastically wrong. So, she ditches her fiance, jacks in her job and decides to revolutionise her life.

Marguerite, eldest daughter of the Count of Provence, married a king of France - and now her sister Eleanor is determined to make just as grand a match. Good fortune and wily cunning bring her Henry of England. He is a good and generous husband, but a weak king. He rules a nation that still remembers his cruel and foolish father, King John. As Henry showers gifts on his new bride, his extravagance forces him to levy ever-greater taxation on the land, and the spectre of a revolt soon looms against him.

Emily is happy with her life just as it is. She has a career as a midwife that she loves . She enjoys living on her own as a single woman. But she also feels it's time for a change and a spot of some sea air. So when her best friend, Rebecca, asks whether she'd like to spend the summer cooking on a 'puffer' boat just off the Scottish coast, she jumps at the chance. But she barely has time to get to grips with the galley before she finds herself with a lot on her plate.

Eversleigh Manor provides the perfect location for a hit new television show called Lady Jane Investigates. But before the film crew descended en masse, no-one could have predicted that romance would be brewing before the clapperboard has snapped its last.

Sophie Apperly has spent her whole life pleasing others - but when she realises her family see her less as indispensable treasure and more as general dogsbody, she decides she's had enough. So when an old friend offers her the chance of a lifetime, she decides to swap Little England for the Big Apple, and heads off to the land of opportunity.

From the moment Sophie hits the bright lights of Manhattan she's determined to enjoy every minute of her big adventure.

Olivia, the eldest daughter, has returned from treating an epidemic abroad and must go into quarantine for seven days. Her mother has decided it's the perfect opportunity to spend some 'special time' together. Her youngest sister wholeheartedly disagrees. Her father isn't allowed an opinion. When no one can leave the house and no one can enter, quaratine for the Birches feels like an eternity. Especially when they're all harbouring secrets. One of which is about to come knocking at their door.

Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin's friendship, and abandoning her career as a poet, for the safety of marriage and domesticity.

In 1947, Elisabeth Mander’s German nephew comes to stay: Stefan Landau, her dead sister’s teenage son, whom she hates and loves before she’s even set eyes on him. Orphaned by the war and traumatised by the last vicious battles of the Hitler Youth, Stefan brings with him to England only a few meagre possessions. Among them a portrait of a girl with long copper hair by a young painter called Michael Ross - and with it the memory, both painful and precious, of her life and that time between the wars.

Best-selling children's book writer Angelica is amused and flattered at the attention of Jack, the owner of a vineyard in South Africa, whom she meets at a dinner party. With his easy charm and reputation as a ladies' man, Jack makes her feel good about herself - surely it can't do any harm to indulge in a mild email flirtation?

No longer the well-beloved, Louis XV is becoming ever more unpopular - the huge expense of his court and decades of costly warfare having taken their toll. As the discontent grows, Louis seeks refuge in his extravagances and his mistress, the powerful Marquise de Pompadour. Suspicions, plots and rivalry are rife as Louis’ daughters and lovers jostle for his attention and their own standing in Court.

France eagerly awaits the day the young king, Louis XV, comes of age and breaks free from the rule of his ministers. The country hopes Louis will bring back glory and prosperity to France. However, he is too preoccupied with the thrills of hunting and gambling to notice the power struggle going on in his own court. Soon the king is introduced to the pleasures of mistresses, and a succession of lovers follows.

In a beautiful Southern Spanish town, where the sea sparkles and orange blossoms scent the air, the gates of a brand-new apartment complex, La Joya deAndalucía, glide open to welcome the new owners. Anna and Austen MacDonald, an Irish couple, are preparing to enjoy their retirement to the full. But the demands of family cause problems they have never foreseen and shake their marriage to the core. Sally-Ann Connolly Cooper, a feisty Texan mother of two young teenagers, is reeling from her husband's infidelity. La Joya becomes a place of solace for Sally.

The first half of the 13th century is dominated by two women, as proud and ambitious as they are beautiful, yet different in all other ways. Isabella is a medieval Helen of Troy, flamboyant and passionate - wife to King John and mother to Henry III. Blanche of Castile, serene and virtuous, is Queen of France, wife of Louis VIII and mother of Louis IX. The two women hated each other on sight. Isabella will stop at nothing, not even murder, in her passion to destroy the French queen.

Lizzy Baxter is thrilled when her family moves to Cornwall-she's always loved the beach. Lizzy doesn't realise, but she has a special connection with the sea-and the mystical mermaids and silver dolphins who swim there. But there's much more to the beautiful blue-green world than magic. The veil sea queen is plotting to steal something precious-something that belongs to Lizzy. The Mermaid Curse is a perfect blend of fantasy and reality.

Stranded in France, Meg finds passage to England with injured soldier Major Ross Brandon. Ross's dark, searching eyes are those of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders... It would be wrong to fall for Ross. But when he offers her a job as his temporary housekeeper she can't refuse - and soon sensible Meg is scandalously tempted to move from servants’ quarters to the master's bedroom!

Christian Lamb is one of the last surviving Wren officers to have served throughout the Second World War, from Blitz ravaged London, to the important radar and operations rooms and undertaking a vital role in D Day. Escaping both the Spanish Flu pandemic when she was born and the pandemic we are emerging from today, she has reached the impressive age of 101. Now she leads us through the story of her extraordinary life and the wartime experiences of her fellow Wrens.

It's August in the Barsetshire village of Worsted, and Richard Tebben, just down from Oxford, is contemplating the gloomy prospect of a long summer in the parental home. But the numerous and impossibly glamorous Dean family - exquisite Rachel, her capable husband and six of their nine brilliant children - have come for the holidays, and their hostess, Mrs. Palmer, plans to rope everyone into performing in her disastrous annual play.

Alice Samuel might be old and sharp-tongued, but she's no fool. Visiting her new neighbours in her Fenland village, she suspects Squire Throckmorton's household is not as God-fearing as it seems and finds the children troubled. What she cannot foresee is that all five daughters will succumb in turn to a terrifying affliction and accuse her of witchcraft—who else to blame than an ugly, black-capped woman with mysterious healing skills?