Showing results by narrator "Sophie Roberts" in All Categories

Nancy North is ready to put her life back together. After suffering a psychotic break that ruined friendships, stalled her fledgling restaurant, and forced her to move out of her comfortable flat, she’ll do anything to get back to normal. She and her partner Felix—who has been a saint through her recent troubles—move into a new flat for a fresh start. Nancy is taking her pills, seeing her therapist, and avoiding unnecessary stress. She’s doing absolutely everything right, but something is still very, very wrong. On the first day in the new flat, she hears them again.

A heart-wrenching and unforgettable story of two women - centuries apart - linked by the hidden secrets of a beautiful woman in a Venetian painting. Venice 1704: Anastasia is desperate to escape her controlling father and plans to marry her childhood sweetheart. But instead of the life she has always dreamed of, she finds herself trapped in Venice, the unwilling wife of a silk weaver. Anastasia seeks comfort in painting and draws strength from her talents. Despite her circumstances, two women reach out to her and give Anastasia a reason to hope....

She is a stay-at-home mother-of-three with boundless reserves of patience, energy, and love. After being friends for a decade, this is how Liz sees Jess. Then one moment changes everything. Dark thoughts and carefully guarded secrets surface—and Liz is left questioning everything she thought she knew about her friend, and about herself. The truth can’t come soon enough.

From the opening story about a married woman who takes a trip to the city with a single purpose in mind - to sleep with another man - Antarctica draws you into a world of obsession, betrayal and fragile relationships.

1897. Rowena Blythe is wealthy, entitled and beautiful. As her twenty-fourth birthday approaches, she’s expected to marry—and to marry well. Her parents commission a portrait of Rowena to help cement her reputation as a great society beauty. However, Bartek, the artist’s young assistant, is unlike any man Rowena has met before—wild, romantic and Bohemian. While society at large awaits the announcement of Rowena’s engagement, it is Bartek who captures Rowena’s heart along with her likeness.

Claire Hendricks can see ghosts, but she can't see herself having a fun vacation. Yet when her new friends/found family, Basher and Alex, insist, Claire and her dead BFF, Sophie, pack themselves off to a remote Irish island. This tempest-tossed isle is indeed full of noises: not only is the hotel where the gang is staying double booked with a posh private party, the island's crumbling old fort is being fought over by rival ghost pirates. In death, as in life, they're vying over a legendary stash of loot, supposedly hidden somewhere on the island or in the surrounding rough seas.

England's unique republican experiment ­- imposed on Scotland and Ireland, too - may have been shortlived, but it has had a lasting impact on British monarchy, politics, religion and culture, and on the story the British continue to tell about themselves. It is a period that, for a long time, history chose to forget, or recalled as a failure. Here, in thrilling detail, Alice Hunt brings the republic and its extraordinary cast of characters, from politicians to poets and prophets, back to life.

Unfairly dismissed from her role as a governess after her lecherous employer forces himself upon her, Druscilla Morley is determined to keep her head down. Dressing drably to hide her beauty, she is surprised to find an old acquaintance staying with her new family. Valdo, Lord Marquis of Lynche, is handsome, charming and an absolute rogue. It soon becomes clear that he is having an affair with the lady of the house and proposes a marriage of convenience to Druscilla to cover his tracks.

Royal insider Lady Colin Campbell sets the record straight on many of the most controversial aspects of Diana's turbulent life. In The Real Diana, she reveals that the reason she knew so much about what went on behind the palace gates was because Diana herself was the source. Drawing upon these confidences - as well as on conversations with countless people who knew Diana and with Diana herself in the final years of her life - Lady Colin Campbell combines true insight with true compassion to bring us the most intimate and revealing portrait of the Princess of Wales.

Izzy Brown has always dreamed of being an Instagram influencer. So when her colleague and fellow Instagrammer Luke suggests they ‘fake date’ to boost their profiles, Izzy says yes – against her better judgment. Now Izzy’s profile tells the story of a confident, glamorous 30-something with the perfect boyfriend, and her follower numbers are shooting upwards.

Claire arrives at her new job as researcher at a grand English country house, nursing a broken heart. But tucked into the back of a long-forgotten drawer she finds a letter written in an elegant hand. It tells of a wartime secret about the beautiful Lady Violet – whose passionate affair with an Italian prisoner of war scandalised the village and ended in tragedy. Captivated, Claire promises to find Violet’s daughter, Tabitha, and reunite her with a priceless piece of her mother’s jewellery. With only the name of an Italian bakery, Pasticceria Mancini, to guide her, and the help of her handsome neighbour Jim, Claire travels to Tabitha’s last known location – Florence.

Meet Endurance Proudfoot, the bonesetter’s daughter: clumsy as a carthorse, with a tactless tongue and a face she’s sure only a mother could love. Durie only wants one thing in life—to follow her father and grandfather into the family business of bonesetting. It’s a physically demanding job, requiring strength, nerves of steel and discretion—and not the job for a woman. But Durie isn’t like other women.

Alexander Larman completes his acclaimed Windsor family trilogy, using rare and previously unseen documents to illuminate their unique family dynamic. Through his chronicling of events like the Royal Wedding, George VI’s death and the discovery of the Duke of Windsor’s treacherous activities in WWII, Larman paints a vivid portrait of the end of one sovereign’s reign and the beginning of another’s that heralded a new Elizabethan Age which would bring power and glory back to a monarchy desperately in need of it.

Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan presents a stunning retrospective of the first 10 years of the author’s work. It is a compilation of more than 200,000 words of short fiction, including many of her most acclaimed stories as well as some of the author’s personal favorites; several previously uncollected, hard-to-find pieces; her sci-fi novella, The Dry Salvages; and a rare collaboration with Poppy Z. Brite.

Almost-authentic medium Claire and her best friend, Sophie, agree to take on a seemingly simple job at a crumbling old manor in the English countryside: performing a seance for the family matriarch's 80th birthday. The pair have been friends since before Sophie went missing when they were seventeen. Everyone else is convinced Sophie simply ran away, but Claire knows the truth. Claire knows Sophie was murdered because Sophie has been haunting her ever since.

At the beginning of 1937, the British monarchy was in a state of turmoil. The previous king, Edward VIII, had abdicated the throne, leaving his unprepared and terrified brother Bertie to become George VI, surrounded by a gaggle of courtiers and politicians who barely thought him up to the job. Meanwhile, as the now-Duke of Windsor awaited the decree that would allow him to marry his mistress Wallis Simpson, he took an increased interest in the expansionist plans of Adolf Hitler. He may even have gone so far as to betray his country in the process.

El Cid was perhaps the most famous warrior involved in the indiscriminate fighting—irrespective of religion—on the Iberian Peninsula during the eleventh century. In the centuries after his death, he was transformed into a perfect Christian knight. In modernity, he was seen as the incarnation of Spain’s special national character—Franco chose El Cid as the emblem of Nationalist Spain. Yet not only those on the political right, but many others, including academics and those on the political left, were in his thrall.

It’s been fifteen years since Gem’s eight-year-old daughter Sara-Jane went missing, snatched with her best friend Abby right outside their school. A frantic search united the community at first, but after Abby was found and brought home, single mother Gem’s dogged persistence only led to accusations that she was stirring up class tensions. Even that she was somehow involved.

In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.

A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building. None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced an unsettling occurrence within the building's walls. By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.