Showing results by narrator "Helen Johns" in All Categories

A modern-day Sleeping Beauty story of love and hope, for fans of Jojo Moyes. Elsa has been in a coma for five months. With all hope of reviving her gone, her family and doctors are having to face the devastating fact that it might be time to turn off her life support.... They don't realise that in the past few weeks, Elsa has regained partial consciousness; she knows where she is and can hear everyone talking around her bed, but she has no way of telling them she's there.

Margot Lewis is the agony aunt for The Cambridge Examiner. Her advice column, Dear Amy, gets all kinds of letters - but none like the one she's just received: 'Dear Amy, I don't know where I am. I've been kidnapped and am being held prisoner by a strange man. I'm afraid he'll kill me. Please help me soon, Bethan Avery.' Bethan Avery has been missing for nearly two decades. This is surely some cruel hoax. But as more letters arrive, they contain information that was never made public.

Mango and Brash are alligators – who investigate! In their first adventure the crime fighting duo need to go undercover . . . in a bakery? Armed with a moustache and a rolling pin, the Investigators are on a mission to discover who has kidnapped top chef Gustavo, and stop his recipes from getting into the wrong hands! This case isn’t going to be a piece of cake.

Thirty-year-old Ruby is done with love: no more drama, no more complications, no more men. She’s living life for herself, and that’s the way she likes it. But her whole world is turned upside down when her grandmother calls to say her beloved pottery business is failing, and she might lose her beautiful little Cornish house by the sea. She needs Ruby to come back to Cornwall and save the day...

A collection of fairy tales and other classic children's stories by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.

In the hushed aftermath of a total eclipse, Laura witnesses a brutal attack. She and her boyfriend, Kit, call the police, and in that moment it is not only the victim's life that is changed forever. Fifteen years on, Laura and Kit live in fear. And while Laura knows she was right to speak out, the events that follow have taught her that you can never see the whole picture: something - and someone - is always in the dark....

Meet Rachel. She is caught in a spiral of endless crying, dirty nappies, and sleepless nights. She fears for her sanity - and the safety of her children. She's lonely. Meet Adam. Suffering from the pain and trauma of a terrible accident that he blames himself for, he stays at home, unable to bring himself to leave the house. He's lonely. So when Rachel and Adam rekindle their long lost friendship online, what starts as a little harmless flirtation soon becomes an unhealthy obsession, and slowly the threads of their lives unravel before them.

The city is under attack by three dastardly villains! Evil cracker monster Crackerdile is back, a robo–ghost haunts the streets and . . . does that man have a snake arm? Even worse – on top of this crime wave comes. . . an actual wave! A huge flood threatens the city, and the InvestiGators are wrongly blamed for making this big splash. To clear their names Mango and Brash flush themselves down the toilet to find the real culprit! They’ll have to be extra sneaky to solve this mission or they’ll end up in deep water. . .

For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. With no trace of Ali after she is abducted, a cloud of suspicion hangs over him, though he is never charged. Trying to put his past behind him, Ryan changes his name and enters law school. It’s on a summer trip to Italy that he gets the call: his missing car has finally been found, in a lake in his hometown. But inside the car are two dead men. The only trace of Ali is a cryptic note, the envelope in her handwriting: If something happens to me…Reeling from the news, Ryan sees the man who has haunted his nightmares.

Enter Rosamunde Pilcher's world of simple joys, of crisp country air and crackling log fires, the pleasures of family reunions and rediscovered friendships. Through thick mist and a cold east wind, Lavinia returns to Scotland. Up at the big house, Mrs Farquhar is dying. Seeing Lachlan again, Lavinia remembers her childhood holidays there: swimming in the loch, the picnics, bottle-feeding the lambs down at the farm and the evenings when they danced reels. Most of all, she remembers Mrs Farquhar's grandson Rory.

Belgium, 1917. At a military hospital in Poperinge, close to the horrors of the front line, Sister Helen Chalmers strives tirelessly to save the many injured soldiers brought in from battle. The hardships of war and the need for comfort throws Helen into the arms of the eminent surgeon Captain Richard Carson - although she knows a romance with a married man will never last.It's not long before Helen is swept off her feet by Captain James Havers, a man with whom she can see a future. When James is injured in the fighting, he is sent back to Britain to recover.

The Duncker brothers, Max and Wolfgang, own a thriving publishing business in Germany. When Max's gambling gets out of hand, Wolfgang sends him to pay court to a celebrity author - Sibyl, also known as George Eliot. Yet Wolfgang has an ulterior motive: for his brother to consider Sophie von Hahn as a potential wife. Both women have Max in thrall - out of his depth, Max finds himself precariously balanced between Sophie and the Sibyl.

A short historical-tourist itinerary, in the middle of the old town of Bologna, to make known the area in which the historic bakery Piròn el Furnàr of Angela Bai and family is located. With the contribution of the city of Bologna.

Mango and Brash are alligators - who investigate! Join the crime-fighting duo as they flush themselves down toilets to surf the sewers and fight the forces of evil. This collection includes two laugh-out-loud audio adventures InvestiGators and InvestiGators: Take the Plunge. Listen out for the sounds of the Batter Down bakery, S.U.I.T. Headquarters, Crackerdile's Lair, and the Robotics Lab at the Science Factory!

In an age of PR, public protest and other forms of dissent have lost their meaning and impact. The intense media interest in rioting and political violence, as well as an existing obsession with youth culture, have led to an oversaturation and misrepresentation of what these movements are about. Political protest has become a pantomime where activists are always villains, and therefore the politics of these groups are routinely ignored.

On the death of her father, celebrated photographer Max Hollingbourne, Ruthie returns to his villa in remote, wild Greece. After 15 years in exile, she is welcomed by her older sister, Vinny. They build a fragile happiness in their haven above the sea, protecting one another from the dark secrets of their childhood. But the arrival of an English family at a neighbouring cottage, and one young girl in particular, triggers a chain of events that will plunge both women back into the past, with shocking consequences.

Julia Pastrana is the singing and dancing marvel from Mexico, heralded on tours across 19th-century Europe as much for her talent as for her rather unusual appearance. Yet few can see past the thick hair that covers her: she is both the fascinating toast of a Governor's ball and the shunned, revolting, unnatural beast to be hidden from children and pregnant women. But what is her wonderful and terrible link to Rose, collector of lost treasures in an attic room in modern-day South London?

Sweden, 1855. 'Worst thing I ever saw...' The Minister of Justice receives a disturbing message. A massacre on one of Lapland's mountains - a priest, a law enforcement officer and a local settler have been slaughtered by one of the indigenous Sami people. The murderer is in custody; he refuses to talk. The Minister dispatches his son-in-law, a geologist, to investigate, for there is more than one reason to visit Blackåsen: it is a mountain with many secrets, a mountain that has never been mapped.

Ben Lawrence seems to have it all - the hot job, the flashy car, the luxurious apartment. But one tragic day in his past mars his future. Since the events of that day he hasn't truly got close to anyone. He made a promise that love was the price he would pay for his mistakes. When Effy Jones - a bright, ambitious charity founder - walks into the PR firm where Ben works, neither realise that their lives are about to be turned upside down.

The Noah: a city-sized ship, half-way through an 800-year voyage to another planet. In a world where deeds, and even thoughts, cannot be kept secret, a man is murdered; his body so ruined that his identity must be established from DNA evidence. Within hours, all trace of the crime is swept away, hidden as though it never happened. Hana Dempsey, a mid-level bureaucrat genetically modified to use the Noah's telepathic internet, begins to investigate.