Showing results by narrator "Jilly Bond" in All Categories

Voices from the Blue tells the story of the hundred years of service of female police officers within the Metropolitan Police through the voices of the women who fought their way towards equality and won the respect of both their colleagues and the public. The authors have interviewed hundreds of former and serving policewomen and with the co-operation of the Metropolitan Police and the Women's Police Association now have access to the files and stories of thousands of former officers who served over the past hundred years.

Agreeing to a fake betrothal should suit both society dressmaker Belle Marchmain and landowner Adam Davenant fittingly - clearing Belle's debts and keeping Adam's husband-hunters at bay. Even if blue-blooded Belle, with her extravagant clothes and razor-sharp tongue, despises the very air that nouveau riche Adam breathes! If Adam wants an agreeable wife he has his work cut out.

Resurrecting buried scandals, audacious hoaxes and private tragedies, Emma Donoghue has written a sequence of short stories about peculiar moments in the history of the British Isles. Here artists mix with poisoners and countesses rub shoulders with cross-dressers, vicars and revolutionaries; the Second Coming is proclaimed in Scotland; and a miniature girl becomes a tiny skeleton in a London museum.

At the age of 32, Richard the Lionheart has finally succeeded Henry II to the English throne. And, against his father’s wishes, he intends to make Berengaria, daughter of the King of Navarre, his Queen. But first he must fulfil his vow to his country to win back Jerusalem for the Christian world. Leaving England to begin his crusade, Richard entrusts his kingdom to his brother, John, who casts covetous eyes on the crown, and his sister, Joanna, who is willing to defy even a king.

News of Thomas à Becket’s martyrdom has spread throughout Christendom, and the blame is laid at the feet of Henry Plantagenet, King of England. Two years later, with Becket canonised, Henry’s position is precarious: punished at the Pope’s insistence for his part in Becket’s death, he now also has an enemy in his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, after her discovery of his longstanding infidelity with Rosamund Clifford.

When a bomb goes off in the West End, Home Secretary Victoria Osborne has a desperate sense of having failed to protect the public. A young Muslim reporter, Ahmed Khan, also has a deep-seated sense of anger and responsibility. He persuades his editor to let him go back amongst childhood friends in Leeds to try to find information.

Ever been talked into buying a camel? Or become a burglar by mistake? Or accidentally drugged a friend on a blind date? Keggie Carew has an unerring instinct for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of putting her foot in it, and making a hash of things. From the repercussions of a missing purse, to boiling a frog, or the holiday when the last thing you could possibly imagine happens, Keggie has been there. She also has an enviable talent for recycling awfulness and turning embarrassment into gold. In prose that will make you laugh, wince and curl your toes, Keggie Carew shares her most embarrassing, awkward, uncomfortable, funny, true, terrible and all-too-relatable moments. You will be glad none of it happened to you.

Rosie lived peacefully in Moscow, and her mother told her fairy tales. One summer night, all that came abruptly to an end when her father and sister were gunned down. Now, Rosie’s only inheritance from her reclusive mother is a notebook full of eerie, handwritten tales, but there is another story lurking between the lines.

Food writer Claudia has sampled dishes by the world's greatest chefs. But when she hears about a remarkable pastry shop operated out of a convent in a sleepy Italian hillside town, she wants to write a book featuring their desserts and their creator - Sorella Agata. Sorella tells of the young woman who inspired her: Rosalia, who was kidnapped and separated from her family. Claudia discovers a deep, fascinating story - one that affirms food can do more than nourish the body....

When William X dies, the duchy of Aquitaine is left to his 15-year-old daughter, Eleanor. But such a position for an unmarried woman puts the whole kingdom at risk. So on his deathbed William made a will that would ensure his daughter’s protection: he promised her hand in marriage to the future King of France. Eleanor grows into a romantic and beautiful queen, but she has inherited the will of a king, determined to rule Aquitaine using her husband’s power as King of France. Her

With Tullor safely behind glass at the Sealife Centre,and no news of evil Queen Taran,Lizzy almost believes that her troubles are over.Only she can't help thinking that it's not like Taran to give up.When her sister,Rose,starts behaving strangley,Lizzy wonders whether Taran might be up to her old tricks.Before long it's a race against time as Taran's final,terrifying plot to gain total power unfolds.

Taran, the evil mermaid Queen, is determined to get her hands on the silver pearl that will make her more powerful than ever. Only Lizzy, Kes, and their friends from the undersea world can stop her. But when Taran takes a very special hostage, Lizzy and Kes are faced with a terrible choice. Must they give up the precious pearl!? Or do they have the courage to challenge Taran and defeat her?

Arlington Park is an ordinary English suburb. Over the course of a single day, the novel moves from one household to another, revealing its characters: Juliet, enraged at the victory of men over women in family life; Amanda, warding off thoughts of death with obsessive housework; Solly, about to give birth to her fourth child; Maisie, struggling to accept provincial life; and Christine, the optimist and host of a dinner party where the neighbours come together.

Early on a grey November morning in 1941, only weeks after the German invasion, a small Ukrainian town is overrun by the SS. Deft, spare and devastating, Rachel Seiffert's new novel tells of the three days that follow and the lives that are overturned in the process. Penned in with his fellow Jews, under threat of transportation, Ephraim anxiously awaits word of his two sons, missing since daybreak. Come in search of her lover, to fetch him home again, away from the invaders, Yasia must confront new and harsh truths.

To refuse him twice would be madness! Viscount Rothersthorpe can't tear his eyes from Lydia Morgan any more than he can calm the raging fury coursing through his veins. Is there no end to the irony? Come to town to find a wife only to be taunted by the past? Furtive glances across the ballroom are not helping to ease Lydia's state of shock - the man who once uttered a marriage proposal as one might remark upon the weather has returned.

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.

A powerful, posthumous novel from bestselling author Mario Reading. Relegated to an isolated provincial town in France after years spent fighting on the Eastern Front, German commander Maximilian von Aschau finds unexpected distraction in the form of beautiful and reserved Lucie Léré. He’s seen every horror of the human experience. She’s never left her village. Opposites in every way, Max and Lucie manage to find common ground. But love is the most dangerous element of war. It makes you vulnerable... and careless.

A World of Beauty: Tales from Pavlysh contains 19 charming little tales about the beauty of the natural world, and how nature supports all living creatures. A chicken hatches some duck eggs. A rowan tree welcomes some beautiful crested birds to feed on its berries. A blade of grass slumbers through the winter and awakens to joyfully greet the spring. In some of the stories, people engage with this beauty. A child admires the magic beauty of a snowflake, “a six-pointed star, so beautiful and shiny, that a fairy-tale master might have cut it from a plate of silver”.

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.

Sisters-in-law Kate, Heather, and Olivia are all hiding something. It's not easy being part of the high-achieving Fox family: the expectations and demands of their husbands and children; the jealousies and rivalries; and the endless Sunday lunches. So when mysterious Sasha enters their lives, bloodied from a painful divorce, buried frustrations rush to the surface. Three sisters-in-law. One devastating divorcee. Whose husband is about to play with fire?