Showing results by narrator "Helen Duff" in All Categories

A decade after they said goodbye after graduation, old friends Harri and Annie reunite in the beautiful village of Clove Lore in Devon – what more could these bookworms want than a holiday running the tumbledown bookshop? Unbeknownst to Annie, Harri is arriving with a bruised heart after the...

On the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote, Helen Pankhurst - great-granddaughter of suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and a leading women's rights campaigner - charts how women's lives have changed over the last century, and offers a powerful and positive argument for a new way...

On entering Sarah Hall's world, we become travellers, suddenly. Our surroundings of farms and offices, seasides and cities, Turkish forests and English moors, shade into otherness: hazed by delirium, tinged with dream, fertile with the animal codes of the wild. Our lovers, friends, and parents go about their days warped by ruptures of brain and body, alternatively predator and prey, reborn in unexpected evolutions, and haunted by drownings and dictators, agitated hearts and sprouting wings, coffins and floods.

Can she write her perfect love story? Austen Archer is on her dream solo bookselling holiday, the new ‘borrower’ at the Borrow-A-Bookshop in Devon’s Clove Lore. While she has always loved poetry, her words have dried up since being fired by her last boss, bestselling author, Callista Flyte...

*THE NUMBER 1 BESTSELLER* What are the things we live for? What matters most in life when your time is short? This brave, frank and heartbreaking book shows what it means to die before your time; how to take charge of your life and fill it with wonder, hope and joy even in the face of tragedy...

Your life isn’t perfect, but you’re still happy. Your husband has stuck by you, and he’s a good dad. Your daughter, Becca, makes your heart explode with love. And then, in the time it takes to say ‘bad mother’, there’s no longer a place for you in your own family. Your right to see your child has disappeared. Life goes on in your house - family dinners, missing socks and evening baths - but you aren’t there anymore. Becca may be tucked up in bed in Rose Cottage, but she is as lost to you as if she had been snatched from under your nose.

In a freezing, isolated farmhouse with ice on its windows, Flora is looking after her sick mother. Since she was a little girl, Flora has been frightened of her mother. And when she discovers a photo of a smiling baby girl she doesn’t recognize, hidden at the bottom of a drawer, her mother grows even more remote, and refuses to talk about it. So, when a visitor arrives from a paradise island of sapphire coves and white sand beaches, and confirms that the baby in the picture is her sister, she should feel joy. But, he also brings the news that Flora’s sister is dying.

It's 1832. Convict girls Friday Woolfe, Sarah Morgan and Harriet Clarke have been serving their sentences in Sydney Town. Each of them has begun to make a life for herself, but when Harrie's adopted child, Charlotte, is abducted, the girls must risk their very freedom to save her. But will Friday's desperate battle with her own vices drive her to fail not only herself but those she loves and all who love her?

Journalist Zoe Kincade arrives in the rundown seaside town of Sunshine Sands to report on this year's talent show. The motionless Ferris wheel blurs into the dark sea beyond and polystyrene chip trays bounce along the pavement. She checks into the Forget-Me-Not hotel, a faded Edwardian terrace that has seen better days, the place her beautiful older sister Jane stayed the night she disappeared. Zoe has spent forty years trying to block out the pain. The aftermath of that night destroyed her chance of a happy marriage and living in any kind of peace.

When Melanie Scott is promoted to junior partner, she thinks she has put her past behind her, and while out celebrating her promotion, she meets the handsome and charming Hugo Field. Melanie has her doubts and is haunted by her mother’s critical voice, which reminds her that she’s messed up before. But when Oliver invites her for dinner, she buries the feeling and accepts his invitation. She deserves a chance at happiness, doesn’t she? However, the past she thought she had left behind resurfaces when she receives an email containing a name she thought she’d left behind.

Stepsister takes up where Cinderella's tale ends. We meet Isabelle, the younger of Cinderella's two stepsisters. Ella is considered beautiful; stepsister Isabelle is not. Isabelle is fearless, brave, and strong-willed. She fences better than any boy, and takes her stallion over jumps that grown men fear to attempt. It doesn't matter, though; these qualities are not valued in a girl. Others have determined what is beautiful, and Isabelle does not fit their definition.

Christmas magic can thaw the coldest of hearts... From the author of One Winter’s Night, an uplifting, feel-good Christmas romance that will captivate readers of Holly Martin, Cathy Bramley and Milly Johnson. Sylvie Magnusson is going to be lonely this Christmas. Instead of jetting off for her honeymoon, she’s freezing at home in Cheshire. Guess that’s what happens when your fiancé dumps you a week before your wedding... Sylvie’s best friend, Nari, plans a trip to see the Northern Lights and get Sylvie’s mojo back.

'Tis the season for finding love... and the perfect book! With just two weeks until Christmas, everything in Clove Lore should be perfect. But the latest holidaymaker to the Borrow a Bookshop is feeling far from festive... Icelandic ex-bookseller Magnús Sturluson might be surrounded by love stories in the Bookshop, but he’s nursing a sadness that not even fiction can fix. When Alexandra Robinson winds up stranded in Clove Lore, she finds a safe place to hide from heartbreak. After all, all that’s waiting for her at home is a cheater boyfriend and the memories of her parents.

Seventeen-year-old Chloe Smedley walks out of the school gates and waves to the person waiting for her across the road. She smiles and hurries towards them… and is never seen alive again. Detective Jackie Cooke is first on the scene when Chloe’s body is found, posed upright at a garden table. In her gut, Jackie knows she’s searching for a monster and it’s only a matter of time before they strike again, but no one will listen.

Sir Roslind of Aksson, fierce and unyielding, is not the only female knight—but she is few among men who cling to older ways. And while whispers of disdain are so easily heard in a land pushing beyond tradition, whispers of rebellion are more subtle, more insidious, and much more costly to ignore.

Lizzie Green once loved Tom Murphy with a passion that bordered on obsession. All she wanted was his love to be returned. Then one night, something terrible happened and Tom left Lizzie broken hearted. She swore she would never let him hurt her again. Now, ten years later, Tom turns up on Lizzie’s doorstep still as charming as ever. Lizzie knows he still has the power to break her heart and destroy her life again. But Lizzie can’t say no to him.

Discover how to talk instantly to your subconscious and manifest the life you want. We all have goals and dreams – whether it’s personally or professionally – that we want to achieve, but for reasons we can’t always fathom, our behaviour and actions can hold us back. In her eye-opening...

Gethsemane fought off an attack by a sleazy hotel developer who wanted to turn her Irish cottage into a tourist trap. But now she must face a vengeful ghost determined to exact revenge for a murder that took place centuries ago. This ghost's wrath spares no one - not Gethsemane's students, Inspector Niall O'Reilly, fellow teacher Frankie Grennan, or the group of ghost hunters that has descended on Dunmullach to capture proof that ghosts exist...proof that Gethsemane has to quash to keep Eamon, her resident ghost and friend, from becoming an internet sensation.

It's 1830. Convict girls Friday Woolfe, Harriet Clarke and Sarah Morgan have been transported to Sydney from London. Each of them is struggling to forget the brutal crime she committed, but their fates are no longer theirs to control. Vicious underworld queen Bella Jackson holds the girls' futures in the palm of her hand, biding her time. Once again the girls must join forces to save one of their own.

Margot and Will cross paths at the local dog rescue centre where - after a series of misunderstandings and a lot of consternation - they agree to foster Blossom (a gentle Staffy with a giant head, soft, floppy ears and kohl-rimmed brown eyes) together: one week on, one week off. Margot and Will don't get off to the best of starts: he thinks Margot is demanding and needy and Just So Much. And she thinks Will is emotionally unavailable, slightly brittle and very mistrustful. But the more they bicker, the worse Blossom behaves....