Showing results by narrator "Annie" in All Categories

‘A second’s silence and then an almighty scream. It was the most moving thing I had ever seen … A baby, a real live baby, another human life had entered the world. It didn’t seem possible and yet I had witnessed it with my very own eyes.’ Born into a happy working-class North London family in the mid-twentieth century, Katie is determined to ‘do something’ with her life. Working in the impoverished East End in the 1950s, she meets the Sisters of St John the Divine – a community of nuns dedicated to nursing and midwifery.

London, 1912. Identical twins Lester and Lillia Holdsworth are destined for the stage. Lester is a brilliant pianist, Lillia a magnificent opera singer. But their father has other ideas. Lester is sent to a military academy while Lillia must marry Lord Dalton - a self-righteous, pompous friend of her father's looking for a young wife to give him an heir. Yet their plans to defy their father's wishes are put on hold when war breaks out in 1914.

Time is running out for Sienna Nealon. The mysterious organization Century is only weeks from wiping out her entire race. But just as Sienna has made the decision to fight them, her past catches up to her and she finds herself in the hands of the US government. Secrets long buried begin to rise, putting Sienna and everyone she cares about directly in the path of Century...and in a desperate search for the identity of their leader, Sovereign, a man who has plans of his own for Sienna.

London, 1940. After her fiancé breaks off their engagement, Evelyn decides to do her part for the war effort by signing up for construction work on Waterloo Bridge. Grieving after her little boy dies in an air raid, Gwen is completely lost when her husband sends their younger children to the countryside for safety. Enlisting as a construction worker, she is partnered with cheerful Evelyn. The two women strike up a heartwarming friendship.

Life on the river has never been easy for Tilly and Sam, but they've built a home filled with love. Joey, Tilly's eldest son, has straddled two worlds - cherished as her child but granted privileges, denied to her other children, through his wealthy birth father's family. It's a fine balance that has always held . . . until an incident at a glittering Celebration Ball shatters the fragile harmony. Tilly fears the consequences, especially when her headstrong daughter Martha is involved. How will Martha cope when she meets Joey's entitled friends and their easy lives?

Accused of killing her brother, Rachel Cade is sent to the workhouse to await trial. There, handsome landowner Jared Lytton comes to her rescue. Despite being vindicated, Rachel is forced to leave the village. She meets the widow Beulah Thomas and her son, William. Working on their farm, she is treated with kindness, and when William asks for her hand in marriage, she agrees. But Rachel cannot forget Jared Lytton, whose path seems destined to cross hers.

With That Sounds Fun, Annie offers an irresistible invitation to understand the meaning of fun, to embrace it and chase it, and to figure out what, exactly, sounds fun to you - then do it! Exploring some research and sharing some thoughts behind why fun matters, she shows you how to find, experience, and multiply your fun. With her signature storytelling style and whimsical vulnerability, Annie is the friend we all need to guide us back to staying true to ourselves and finding the fun we need. 

Queenie Bonner is only two when she is taken from her large family in the slums to a big house in the country. Frightened and confused, she yearns for her nine brothers and sisters, especially her favourite brother, Harry. Albert and Mary Warrender rename her Eleanor, bringing her up as their own, and as time passes, Ellie forgets about her other family.

The new novel from Sunday Times best seller Dilly Court. She turned the picture of the Christmas card over with her frozen hands. The scene showed a family at Yuletide as they gathered around the magnificent tree. Standing stiff with cold on the icy cobbles, Alice could only dream.... With the snow falling steadily, Alice and her ailing mother have found themselves on the cold streets of London with only debts to their name - forced to rely on the begrudging charity of cruel Aunt Jane.

The riotously funny novel from the Sunday Times and multi-million-copy bestseller 'She's had men popping in and out of there all day. They're more regular than our cuckoo clock.' When Rose escapes from London and her handsome and charming ex-lover, she has no idea her occupation as an...

Linked through marriage to three brothers, the Underwood women prove time and again that they are a force to be reckoned with. Jodie has travelled a hard road to reach her own prosperity, despite her husband's constant unreliability. Yet she can't bring herself to fully sever ties with John. But now with a potential new love waiting nearby, Jodie must make a decision she has been avoiding for too long. Widowed at a young age, Lariane believes her marriage to Rick was perfect.

Gosport, 1941. Fourteen-year-old Vera has led a sheltered life with her overbearing mother. But her world is turned upside down with the arrival of the Lovell family. Vera quickly befriends the daughter, Angela, who opens Vera's eyes to what she has been missing. But Vera invites the unwanted attention of Angela's father, with devastating consequences. Outraged at the news that her teenage daughter is pregnant, Vera's mother sends her to a home for wayward girls.

In two run-down houses, at the side of a barren Black Country heath, live six children with no family but each other. Abandoned or orphaned, every day is a fight to find food and keep warm. But they are determined to stay free of the clutches of the workhouse and the horrors that would face them if they were ever torn apart. Dora Parsons lives with her mother, Mary, and her evil grandmother, Edith. Edith’s house may be comfortable and warm, and food is plentiful, but every day, Dora suffers at the hands of her spiteful gran.

Daisy Lane is battling to keep her family together. About to be released from prison, her oldest son Eddie is desperate to escape his past. But Eddie soon discovers that giving up the life of a gangster isn’t going to be easy. Daisy’s youngest son Jamie is determined to step out from under the shadow of his older brother and make a name for himself. And when Jamie gets wind of his brother’s plan to pull off a heist, his involvement threatens to be Eddie’s undoing.

Maggie Bailey has not had an easy childhood. Her father, Michael, always too easy with his fists after spending the family’s rent money down the pub. Just sixteen, in love and blinded by promises, Maggie sees marriage to handsome Jack as her great escape. However, she soon finds herself abandoned with a beautiful baby when Jack disappears. Maggie is forced to seek a new life away from the East End of London and finds herself a job at a hotel in Yarmouth.

It's 1940, and for newlywed Daisy Turner, Kew Gardens is a haven away from the bombs that are falling nightly on her East End home. She grew up around plants - her parents met when they were gardeners at Kew in the last war. And her work on the Dig for Victory campaign at Kew keeps her occupied while her husband, Rex, is away in the RAF. Beth Sanderson works with Daisy at the gardens, but she dreams of being a doctor while juggling her gardening job with nursing shifts. And there's the added complication of her forbidden romance with her colleague, Gus Campbell.

London, 1942. Charlotte Fenimore is back home on a week's leave from the Women's Auxiliary Airforce. She had planned for a week of rest and recuperation. She hadn't planned to fall deeply in love with an irascible detective called Dan Chalmers, a wounded hero of Dunkirk who believed no woman would ever look at him again.

Raven, assassin-for-hire, finds her reputation tarnished when a rival steals her contracts out from under her. She goes on the hunt, attempting to track him down before he destroys her name completely. The vultures of the criminal underworld are circling, waiting until she is at her weakest before finishing her off. On top of that, she's being pursued not only by a gang of neo-Nazi meth dealers but a psychotic torturer, who is intent on claiming her magnificent raven feather tattoos as his prize. 

All her short life, 11-year-old Rose Webster has encountered closed doors. Growing up in the slums of London with her siblings, trying to avoid their violent, drunken father, she develops an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and becomes convinced that she and her loved ones deserve better. All Rose has is a quick mind and the will to survive. Can she open that door and seize the chance to make something of herself?

Thirteen-year-old Alice Truelove can’t take another day of her father’s cruelty. Better a life on the streets than being constantly blamed for her mother’s sad death, or that’s what Alice thinks as she packs up her meagre possessions. But fending for herself in the Black Country town of Wednesbury is not as easy as she expected, and it soon hits her that without help she will quickly be hungry and cold.