Showing results by narrator "Imogen Church" in All Categories

Is your workplace riven by tribal conflict? Are your meetings governed by dozens of unspoken rituals? Is there something faintly religious about the way your colleagues worship the CEO? If so, then you might need a lesson in business anthropology. For a century, anthropologists have had an unusual method: immersing themselves deep inside 'alien' tribes and uncovering, from the inside, how they tick. Today, a new generation of anthropologists are using this approach to explain modern businesses - revealing the hidden rituals that define what we buy, who we sell to and how we work.

April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily—during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison.

Harriet Westaway - better known as Hal - makes ends meet as a tarot reader, but she doesn’t believe in the power of her trade. On a day that begins like any other, she receives a mysterious and unexpected letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person - but she also knows that she can use her cold-reading skills to potentially claim the money. Hal attends the funeral of the deceased and meets the family...but it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation.

At eight years old, Lucia is torn from the life she knew. Her village burned to the ground and parents murdered by Romans, she is kidnapped, sold and shipped abroad to the Villa Tempestatis in Britannia to serve the young Roman army officer Castus. Faced with a bleak future of decades of servitude to her master, as well as sadistic brutality at the hands of his slave and manageress, Paltucca, she finds herself fixated by one thought alone. Fuelled by hatred and a belief that the gods saved her for a reason, she vows to never taste freedom until she gets her revenge.

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.

In the heart of Southwest London, just a short stroll from the Thames, lies a single row of cottages. Residents may come and go, but they all have one thing in common: Tinderbox Lane - small, enclosed, unknown to any iPhone or supermarket delivery van - is the place they call home. Foremost among the residents is Dolly Greene: divorced and permanently broke, she shares her tiny house with her 21-year-old daughter, Pippa, who can't afford to leave. Aside from Pippa the other constant in Dolly's life is her tarot business.

Magic caused the war. Magic is forbidden. Magic will save us. It was said the Labyrinth had once been the great meeting place, a sprawling city at the heart of an endless maze where a million humans hosted the Houses of the Aelfir. The Aelfir who had brought trade and riches, and a future full of promise.

International number one best-selling author Jeffrey Archer is a master of the short-story form, creating classic tales beloved by his fans and hitting the top of the best seller lists with his previous collections. The Short, the Long and the Tall collects together 20 of Archer's most treasured previously published short stories.

Yes I Can! is for anyone who ever said, “I wish I could be like that person.” Deep down we know that we all have the potential to be “that person”, but achieving it seems impossible in practice. Well it’s not impossible; you have the power to dramatically change your life. You can become more confident and motivated and find greater focus and direction in your life. You can become a better leader or manager and fill yourself with positive energy.

When neatly packed male body parts wash up by the River Elbe, Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley and her colleagues begin a perplexing investigation. As the murdered men are identified, it becomes clear that they all had a history of abuse towards women, leading Riley to wonder if it would actually be in society's best interests to catch the killers. But when her best friend Carla is attacked, and the police show little interest in tracking down the offender, Chastity takes matters into her own hands.

In 1922, Lady Evelyn Herbert’s dreams are realised when she is the first to set foot inside the lost tomb of Tutankhamun for more than 3,000 years. But the months after the discovery are marred by tragedy, when Eve’s father dies suddenly and her family is torn in two. Desperate to put the past behind her, Eve retreats into a private life with her new husband.

Summer 1997. When Will jokes about becoming a serial killer, his friends just laugh it off. But Adeline can't help but feel there's something darker lurking behind his words. Winter 2015: Years later, Adeline returns to Blythe for a reunion of the old gang - except Will doesn't show up. Reminiscing about old times, they look up the details of his supposed murder spree. But the mood soon changes when they discover two recent deaths that match.

They are London's most scandalous couple. Isabel, Lady Pelham, and Gerard Faulkner, Marquess of Grayson, are well matched in all things - lusty appetites, constant paramours, provocative reputations, and their absolute refusal to ruin a marriage of convenience by falling in love. It is a most agreeable sham - until a shocking event sends Gerard from her side. When, four years later, Gerard returns, the boyish rogue is now a powerful, irresistible man

The Snakes exposes the damage wreaked by parents on children as observed by a new member of the family, Dan, a mixed-race man from Peckham who marries Bea, the daughter who refuses to take any of her father’s filthy money. But when Bea’s brother, Alex (who runs a shabby hotel in Paligny, France), dies suddenly in unexplained circumstances, the confusion and suspicion which arise bring other dark family secrets - and violence - to the surface. And none of the family, even the good members, go untouched.

Ned is in IKEA with his wife when she breaks the news that it’s over. For Gemma, it happens on the way to get fish and chips, when she opens the glove compartment of her husband’s car to find a pair of women’s sunglasses that aren’t hers. For both, it’s a bolt from the blue that rocks their faith in the world, relationships, and themselves. But you can’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself, especially when there are children involved, so both—for very different reasons—join a support group for single parents. It’s fair to say they don’t exactly hit it off.

When Leila discovers the Web site Red Pill, she feels she has finally found people who understand her. A sheltered young woman raised by her mother, Leila has often struggled to connect with the girls at school; but on Red Pill, a chat forum for ethical debate, Leila comes into her own, impressing the website's founder, a brilliant and elusive man named Adrian.

London, 1920. Arlette works in Liberty by day and by night is caught up in a glamorous whirl of parties, clubs, cocktails and jazz. But when tragedy strikes she flees the city, never to return. More than half a century later, in the grungy mid-'90s, her granddaughter Betty arrives in London. She can't wait to begin her new life. But before she can do so, she must find the mysterious woman named in her grandmother's will. What she doesn't know is that her search will uncover the heartbreaking secret that changed her grandmother's life and might also change hers for ever....

It was surreal returning to work after a sabbatical following the suspicious death of my best friend Livvy. On my return to the company apartment, I was surprised to find Livvy’s replacement, Amanda Dowd, firmly entrenched as my new flatmate. She’d seemingly appeared out of nowhere. But something didn’t feel right. I felt on edge. Everyone seemed to love Amanda, even my ex-Jayden was blinded by her outgoing personality and model-like looks. Yet her desperation to become friends felt unnatural.

The night after her father's funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn't know it, but it's not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink, even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces, something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby.

From CWA Gold Dagger winner Mick Herron comes a shocking, twisted novel of psychological suspense. Twenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in the huge city of London, with no family but an estranged sister, no boyfriend or partner, and not much in the way of friends, Maggie is just the kind of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice. Or just the kind of person MI5 needs....