Showing results by narrator "Imogen Church" in All Categories

Connie Granger has escaped the devastation of her bombed out city home. She has found work in the Women's Timber Corps, and for her, this remote community must now serve a secret purpose. Seppe, an Italian prisoner of war, is haunted by his memories. But in the forest camp, he finds a strange kind of freedom. In each other they find the means to imagine their own lives anew, and to face that which each fears the most. But outside their haven, the world is ravaged by war and old certainties are crumbling.

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.

Growing up the middle child of transatlantic parents, Bella Pollen never quite learnt how to belong. Restlessly crisscrossing the boundaries of family and freedom, safety and danger, home and away, she has sought but generally failed to contain an adventurous spirit within the narrow lines of convention - until, finding herself stymied in the in-between, she reluctantly concludes that to move forwards, she must take a good look at her past.

When Lexi's boyfriend, Will, skips her friend's wedding to watch football, it might just be the final whistle for their relationship. But rather than getting mad, Lexi decides to even the score. When 'lost' tickets and an 'accidentally' broken television lead to them spending time together, she realises that revenge might be a good thing. If her clever acts of sabotage prove to be a popular subject for her blog, what harm can that do?

Kate is on the run with her daughter Heather, her identity hidden and their destination unknown to the family they've left behind. She's found a place where they can live in solitude, a grand old house full of empty rooms and dark secrets. But they're not alone: in the cottage next door live two strange older ladies, sisters Matty and Sissy. They know what happened here long ago, and are curious about Kate. How long can she hide Heather's presence from them?

The Cambridge University witches have been meeting for as long as the university has been around. They meet mainly to discuss books, though they do so on the roofs of the colleges. Only those invited can join; this includes Kat (a great spell caster and professor) and Cosima, Kat's sister, café owner and witch. However, when Cosima begins casting spells to attract a mate, everything starts to go wrong - she sets off a chain of events that turns each witch's world upside down....

The fragile young girl who causes the fatal car crash disappears from the scene. A runaway who doesn't want to be found, she only wants to return to the man who understands her and offers her warmth, comfort, a home. He gives her shelter. Just as he gives shelter to the other lost girls who live in his house. D.I. Marnie Rome thinks that she knows families, their secrets and their fault lines. But as she begins investigating the girl's disappearance nothing can prepare her for what she's about to face.

A collection of long-lost love letters from 1928 to 1930, recently discovered in a dusty cellar in Paris. Mademoiselle S., identified here only as Simone, was a well-educated and cultured lady living in Paris at the height of the glamorous Roaring '20s.

He was everything that Alice wanted in a man, or everything that she had thought she wanted. Until the moment arrived when they were destined to be joined at last, and she knew that she didn't want him at all. The sound that escaped her full lips was barely audible, no more than a whisper. And yet the single word that she spoke silenced the entire congregation instantly. 'No.'

"Dawn broke that morning in the same way that it did every other day, but I knew nothing would ever be the same again. The shore resembled a scene after battle. Bodies were scattered haphazardly across the sand, nude, lithe, breathing in unison as if the scene which we had all witnessed had unified the crowd in some unearthly way. I turned to look at Iris. She was laughing, as if the events of the previous night had filled her with giddy amazement."

A mysterious stranger. An intriguing invitation. Admission to an unknown world... When Rachel Alexander and her naughty labradoodle puppy, Candy, run into a dog walker called Gabriel one frosty morning, she has no idea that her life is about to change forever. Despite a high-flying PR job and her engagement to the devoted but unexciting James, she can’t stop thinking about the enigmatic stranger with the piercing blue eyes and commanding manner.

In my session with Imogen, the words were still not coming. I had to move past my own frustration and relax. But it is very hard to relax when you are looking into the eyes of a mute little girl who wants to be dead. You don't want to relax; you want to pull her into your arms, hold her, and then shake her until she tells you why. You long to say, "Why do you want to die? You're twelve years old."

It took years for Giselle to complete the journey from Orleans to New Orleans. Her mother had given birth to her a week or so earlier than her parents had expected, while the family were staying at their country villa in Orleans, in the French provinces by the curve of the Loire river. Throughout her childhood she would hear people, relatives and friends, speaking of New Orleans in America and she always imagined it as a newer, cleaner version of the sleepy regional city where she was born.

I always knew I was different from other women... An eminent psychiatrist has established there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When Dominik died, I experienced none of these. I initially found myself reeling in shock, and then all I could do was miss him, miss him, and miss him over and again.

London, 1862. A city of over three million souls, of stinking fog and dark, winding streets. Through these streets walks the poet Christina Rossetti, haunted and tormented by the ghost of her uncle, John Polidori. Without him, she cannot write, but her relationship with him threatens to shake London itself to the ground. A fascinating and vivid recreation of the stews and slums of Victorian London - a city of dreadful delight. But it is the history of a hidden city, where nursery rhymes lead the adventurer through haunted tunnels and inverted spires.

A seventeen-year-old London girl flies to Los Angeles for the funeral of her mother Lily, from whom she has been estranged since her childhood. Stealing a suitcase of letters, clothes and photographs from her mum's bedroom at the top of a hotel on Venice Beach, the girl spends her summer travelling around Los Angeles, returning love letters and photographs to the men who had known her mother.

Her path to the throne is paved with treason.... 1330. Philippa of Hainault may be married to King Edward III, but she’s penniless and powerless. England quivers in the clutches of the Dowager Queen Isabella and her darkly ambitious lover Lord Mortimer while her husband rots in jail, a prisoner at Mortimer’s hand. It will take a courageous young man to emerge from the shadows and rise up against this formidable pair. Philippa won’t sit back and see Edward puppeteered. She is determined to see justice done.

Holly Lawrence always wanted to be a spy, but the experience proved more dangerous than anything she imagined. Now, Holly lives in hiding under an assumed name. She avoids relationships and trusts no one. But Holly’s new life begins to unravel when she encounters a young mother and her two-year-old child...a child who reminds her of a past she has tried hard to forget. This time, someone is spying on her, and Holly will need to decide how far she is willing to go to survive....

How well can you really know another person? And how far would you go to find out the truth about him or her? When Julia learns her sister has been violently killed, she knows she must get to the bottom of things. Even if it means jeopardising her relationship with her husband and risking the safety of her son. Getting involved with a stranger online. Losing control. Perhaps losing everything. Set in Paris and London, Second Life is about the double lives people lead--and the dark places in which they can end up.

Sea, sky and smugglers coves... paradise for some but despair for beautiful Rebecca. Her father plans to marry her off to a tyrant. Intrigued by a soothsayer's words, she tumbles at the feet of bad boy Jac, an apprentice smuggler, good with women and horses. Desire mounts as powerfully as Rebecca s determination to rewrite her destiny. Is the local witch the answer to her prayers? Mystic Morwenna is Jac s ex-lover. Can she be trusted? The lovers must face greater danger before innocence is traded for passion.