Showing results by narrator "Anna Burnett" in All Categories

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze.

18-year-old Janie has the world and her bright future ahead of her. She's about to leave behind the small seaside town she's known all her life to embark on a career in London in book publishing and couldn't be more excited. She'll miss home—especially her dad. They've only had each other since her mother died years earlier. But she's about to start her life and she can't wait. She's on her way home after her last early dawn swim in the bay when the peaceful stillness of the quiet Tuesday morning is suddenly shattered.

Harriet Hunt is completely alone. Her father disappeared months ago, leaving her to wander the halls of Sunnyside house, dwelling on a past she’d rather keep buried. She doesn’t often venture beyond her front gate, instead relishing the feel of dirt under her fingernails and soft moss beneath her feet. Consequently, she’s been deemed a little too peculiar for popular Victorian society. This solitary life suits her fine though—because outside, magic awaits.

Sophia, Tirzah, and Polly are best friends from boarding school who are living very different lives since leaving. The year is 1896, and Polly is teaching in an orphanage in northern England, Sophia is looking for a rich husband at the dances and parties of the London Season, and Tirzah is stuck acting as an unpaid companion to her forbidding grandmother in a remote part of Scotland. In a series of letters buzzing with the drama of being out in the world, the young women air their hopes, frustrations, and romances.

On the tiny island of Rokesby, Addie helps her mother run a women's retreat. On the neighbouring island, joined to Rokesby by a bridge at low tide, Sol has sought refuge at a wind-swept prayer house, grieving both his mother’s death and his father’s devastating betrayal. Alone and anxious, he takes comfort in birdwatching, books and the sounds of the sea. Introverts with turbulent pasts and wary hearts, Sol and Addie are both drawn to nature far more than to people – until they catch sight of one another in the wild.

England, 1939. Geraldine Fitz-Herbert, stifled by her aristocratic upbringing, has always found solace in the sky, the one place she can be truly free and push all limits. As war breaks out, Fitz seizes an opportunity to put her flying skills to good use when she sees an advert for volunteers at the Air Transport Auxiliary. But a chance meeting with American Flight Officer Sam Carter suddenly turns her world upside down. Embarking on a passionate and high-octane affair, Fitz has never known a love like this before and starts to dream of a future together, only for the reality of war to hit.

Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan.

In a world where violence—of the market, of climate change, of capitalism—is part of our everyday lives, Which as You Know Means Violence focuses on those who enact violence on themselves, or for art and entertainment, and analyzes the role that violence plays in 21st century culture.

In the land of Tsaretsvo, civil war has divided the human Tsardom from the Republic of Birds. Magic is outlawed, and young witches are sent to a mysterious boarding school from which no one returns. Olga and her family live a life of dull privilege in the capital until her father displeases the tyrannical tsarina. The family is sent off into exile at the Imperial Center for Avian Observation, an isolated shack near the Republic of Birds.

When Alice gets a desperate message from her estranged identical twin sister Cecily, she can’t help herself. She has to say yes. Pushing down the memories of the terrible childhood that ultimately tore them apart, she arrives at her sister’s house. Cecily has left instructions: how to work the oven, what to cook for supper, what to say to her husband. She says she’ll only be gone a week. She just needs to contact a lawyer, sort her head out, and work out how to get away from her marriage safely. Alice barely knows why she’s agreed...

A wild misfit in the human world, Nettle is enthralled by the glamour of the faery realm, with its two moons and scarlet stars. She grows close to Conor, a human stolen centuries before, and she also falls under the spell of mysterious Ellion, a Shadow Faery. To try to help her beloved grandmother who is fading in her world, Nettle makes a pact with the faery king. He’ll heal her grandmother in exchange for Nettle completing three tasks. She agrees, not realising that cruelty lurks beneath the beauty of this place, and that she has been tricked…

Bristol, 1896. Used to scraping a living as the young assistant to an ageing con artist, Cecily Marsden's life is turned upside down when her master suddenly dies. Believing herself to blame, could young Cec somehow have powers she little understands? Meanwhile Eadie Carleton, a pioneering early film-maker, struggles for her talent to be taken seriously in a male-dominated world, and a brilliant young magician, George Perris, begins to see the potential in moving pictures.

Falling in love wasn't on Emma's agenda for her year abroad at Dunbridge Academy, the boarding school where her parents once met. Here she wants to find out where her father disappeared to when he left their family all those years ago. She has no time for distractions. But when she meets fellow student Henry, Emma knows she's in trouble. During secret midnight parties and moonlit walks through the old school buildings, feelings grow between them, and Emma feels powerless to resist. But Henry has a girlfriend and Emma doesn't want her heart broken....

With trembling hands, Meg knocks on the door of the large manor house. Behind her, the view down to the river is spectacular. She’s here to be the nanny to two young children. It’s not the job Meg is anxious about, though. It’s the house itself that scares her, and the secrets lurking inside. Not only that, but will her new employer recognise her? The door opens. A beautiful, smiling woman greets her and ushers her inside.

In 1997 Anne's eighteen-year-old son Torran walked out of his hotel in the notorious Himalayan town of Manali - and disappeared. Seven years later Anne is still searching, haunted by the idea that someone must know something, following every tenuous lead, obsessed with potential sightings. She's ridden with guilt at the way she failed Torran as a mother. Though, unlike her husband, she's never stopped believing her son is alive. When her estranged niece Esther arrives with new information, Anne is convinced that her tenacity will finally be rewarded.

Marine biologist Hana Ishikawa is racing against time to save the coral of the Great Barrier Reef, but struggles to fight for a future in a world where so much has already been lost. Seventeen-year-old Judith Holliman escapes the monotony of Sydney Town during the nineteenth century, when her naval captain father lets her accompany him on a voyage. Telma Velasco is hunting for a miracle in a world ravaged by global heating: a leafy seadragon, long believed extinct, has been sighted. But as Telma investigates, she finds hope in unexpected places.

Spring 1937: Teresa, a young Basque girl, is evacuated to London in the wake of the Guernica bombing. She thinks she has reached safety in the lofty halls of Rochester Place and the soothing arms of Mary Davidson, but trouble seeks her out wherever she goes. Autumn 2020: Corrine, an emergency services operator, receives a call from a distressed woman called Mary. But when the ambulance arrives at Rochester Place—the address the woman gave them—she is nowhere to be found.

A young woman wakes after a house party with scratches and bruises - and a gap in her memory. As the violent truth comes back to her - a series of events she struggles to name - her anger grows. Solace comes in the form of enigmatic, captivating Helene, who knows what the man at the party did, has suffered at his hands too. An act of violence demands one in return and Helene is planning revenge. But who can afford to ask for justice, when the cost is murderously high?

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu longs for adventure, freedom and love, believing that only by truly living can she ever escape the stalking crow of Death. An aristocratic woman in 18th century England is expected to act in certain ways. But Mary has never let society's expectations stifle her: she writes celebrated poetry and articles advocating for equality, as well as endless, often scandalous, letters to her many powerful friends. However, Mary wants more from the world. Using her charm and connections, she engineers a job offer for her husband as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

The gloomy fortress of Gallondean lies on the Scottish coast. Local legend has it that if the heirs to the house hear the howling of a spectral hound nearby, their death will quickly follow. The current owner of the house is Jacob Beresford who, up until the unexpected death of his father, had never set foot within its crumbling walls. Jacob, already haunted by his own demons, has no need of more ghosts, but as the First World War staggers through its last terrible months and he uncovers unsettling details of his new home’s past, the shadows seem to be growing around him.