Showing results by narrator "Bronwen Price" in All Categories

Ever since Beth Bailey was a girl, she’s been in love with her best friend’s older brother, Mark. She’s continued to hold out hope that maybe, someday, he’ll love her back. But now Beth is thirty-five years old, and on the day of Mark’s wedding to another woman, she finally accepts the wake-up call she needs to move on.

Ghostly images appear and float across the stage, objects levitate into the air, and a beautiful assistant disappears inside a glass box, then reappears inside a second glass box. All while the audience at the Crystal Palace, including amateur investigator Mikaela Forsythe, watch the performance. Is it real? Then, an evening with her friend, Theodora Templeton, attending the one-night performance by master illusionist Jean Luc Betard, takes a ghastly turn and plunges Mikaela headlong into murder when the illusionist's young assistant is found dead at the end of his newest stunt.

Eight-year-old Leila Smith has seen and heard things that no child should ever have to. On the Hawthorn Estate, where she lives, she often stays out in the playground long after the other children have left, just so she can avoid her own home for longer. But what Leila doesn't know is that someone has been watching her. One day, she disappears without a trace. The police search start a nationwide search, but it's as if Leila has vanished into thin air. Who kidnapped her? What do they want? Will she return home safe and sound, or is she lost forever?

Anwen Sedge, a young Meadow Witch apprentice, lives in a rural village that hasn't seen giants since the Great Beanstalk War. So it's quite a surprise when one drops from the sky and squishes the village flat. It's an even bigger surprise when Anwen discovers that he was dead BEFORE he hit the ground. This is a murder! The only solution is for Anwen and her arch nemesis, Cerys (who's the best at High Magic and won't let anyone forget it) to send a plea for help to the giants' kingdom, using a magic beanstalk.

In New York, a young Cuban called Tito is passing iPods to a mysterious old man. Such activities do not go unnoticed, however, in these early days of the War on Terror, and across the city, an ex-military man named Brown is tracking Tito's movements. Meanwhile in LA, journalist Hollis Henry is on the trail of Bobby Chombo, who appears to know too much about military systems for his own good. With Bobby missing and the trail cold, Hollis digs deeper and is drawn into the final moves of a chilling game played out by men with old scores to settle.

When Alice starts a conversation with an attractive stranger, the last thing she expects is to be kidnapped. The handsome stranger pulls a knife on her and drives Alice away in his car. Then she hears a sound coming from the boot. Her abductor has a connection to her past—and soon Alice finds herself face-to-face with her former fiancé, imprisoned in an isolated warehouse. The truth about their breakup is about to be revealed—and it’s not going to be what anyone expected.

With bright red hair and an infectious smile, Dodie is a hopeless romantic and absolutely one of a kind, just like the pieces in her shop. When Dodie finds a love letter in the pocket of an old woollen coat, she makes it her mission to deliver it to its rightful owner. Following the address, she manages to persuade the handsome but reluctant new tenant, Edward, to help her with her search.

Born into luxury, Charlotte Fitznorton has always known a life filled with lavish parties and a line of suitors, all part of a future neatly laid out for her by her father, Sir Lucien. She is to marry well and continue the line at Plas Norton, the family seat. When Eustace Chadwycke—son of a viscount—proposes just before leaving to fight in France, it seems Charlotte’s destiny is perfectly falling into place. Then, tragedy strikes. Her father dies unexpectedly, and her future hangs in the balance—threatened by her hated stepmother Rosamund's surprise pregnancy.

Heartbreak has forced Millie to make a new start, and when she arrives at the old bakery in the village of Honeybourne, her imagination has been captured by the tumbledown bakery. But with no running water and dust everywhere, her cosy dream quickly crumbles. Luckily the locals are a friendly bunch and step in to help. One in particular, Dylan, a laid-back lothario, soon captures her attention. But just as Millie is beginning to settle in, an unexpected visitor from her past suddenly turns up determined to ruin everything for her.

Cayce Pollard owes her living to her pathological sensitivity to logos. In London to consult for the world's coolest ad agency, she finds herself catapulted, via her addiction to a mysterious body of fragmentary film footage, uploaded to the web by a shadowy auteur, into a global quest for this unknown 'garage Kubrick'. Cayce becomes involved with an eccentric hacker, a vengeful ad executive, a defrocked mathematician, a Tokyo Otaku-coven known as Eye of the Dragon and, eventually, the elusive 'Kubrick' himself.

Monty is a dog, not a financial genius, but economics still shapes his everyday life. Over the course of seventeen walks, Dr Rebecca Campbell chews over economic concepts and investigates how they apply to our lives–people and mutts alike. There are no graphs, no charts (Monty can’t read them) and definitely no calculus! How to Teach Economics to Your Dog tackles the knotty question of what economics actually is. Is it a mathematical science like physics? Or a moral and philosophical investigation of how societies should manage scarce resources?

Arriving on the doorstep of her new cliffside cottage with its craggy, white-washed walls and chipped blue door, Jude Fitzgerald closes her eyes and listens to the cries of oystercatchers and the crash of waves in the cove below. As she steps over the threshold into the rundown old cottage, Jude feels like she’s come home. Ever since the death of her husband, Alex, she’s longed to return to the island of Anglesey, which they visited for their honeymoon only a few years before.

Anna Francis lives in a tall old house with her father and her doll Penelope. She is a refugee, a piece of flotsam washed up in England by the tides of the Great War. Once upon a time, she had a mother and a brother, and they all lived together in the most beautiful city in the world. But that is all gone now, and only to her doll does she ever speak of it. And then one winter day, she finds an interloper in the attic. A boy named Luca with yellow eyes, who is as alone as she is. That day, she’ll lose everything in her life, and find the only real friend she may ever know.

By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands, and for the torture and suffering of countless more. Susan J. Eischeid explores how Mandl, regarded locally as “a nice girl from a good family,” came to embody the very worst of humanity. Her life mirrors the period in which she lived: turbulent, violent, and suffused with paradoxes.

After her imprisonment at the brutal hands of her ex, Jay, Felicity is slowly putting her life back together. She’s got a new name, a new hairstyle, and even a new partner: strong, supportive Scott, whose down-to-earth nature makes him the perfect stepfather to little Leo. Even though nightmares still haunt her, she’s starting to feel that her struggles are over - that she may, finally, be safe. But Jay is still out there somewhere. And Felicity can't shake the feeling she's being watched.

Wales, 1109. Three years ago, a warband raided Elen’s home. Her baby sister could not escape the flames. Her older sister fought back and almost killed the warband’s leader, Owain ap Cadwgan, before being killed herself. Despite Elen’s own sexual assault at the hands of the raiders, she saw a chance to live and took it. She healed Owain’s wound and spun a lie: Owain ap Cadwgan, son of the king of Powys, cannot be killed, not by blade nor blow nor poison. Owain ap Cadwgan has the protection of Saint Elen, as long as he keeps her namesake safe from harm and near him always.

Born in Alsace in 1761, the unsightly, diminutive Marie Grosholtz is quickly nicknamed ‘Little’. Orphaned at the age of six, she finds employment in Bern, Switzerland, under the charge of reclusive anatomist Dr Curtius. In time the unlikely pair form an unlikely bond, and together they pursue an unusual passion: the fine art of wax modelling. Forced to flee their city, the doctor and his protégée head for the seamy streets of Paris, where they open an exhibition hall for their uncanny creations.

Hubertus Bigend, the Machiavellian head of global ad-agency Blue Ant, wants ex-musician Hollis Henry to uncover the maker of a secret, obscurely fashionable denim called 'The Gabriel Hounds'. Hollis knows nothing about fashion - which, curiously, is why Bigend hired her. Soon, though, it's clear that Bigend's interest in underground labels might have sinister applications. Powerful parties, who'll do anything to get into this territory, are showing their hand.

Few ghost stories are as chilling as the ones written by Victorian writers. Featuring work by Jerome K. Jerome, Rhoda Broughton, R.L. Stevenson and Violet Hunt, this second collection of eight enduring horror stories, some well-known, others less familiar, transports you to a candlelit fireside to hear tales of cursed paintings, mysterious locked chests and the consequences of promises broken....

Two-year-old Abigail is fast asleep in the back of the car, clutching her little red lion. Tony, her father, steps out onto the pavement. The man he’s meeting punches him in the face, knocking him to the ground. Before it all goes black, Tony sees his car speed away—with his little girl inside. When he finally gets home after the worst day of his life, the house is empty. His wife is gone too. The place is ransacked and the kitchen is streaked with blood.