Showing results by narrator "Imogen Church" in All Categories

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."

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.

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.

When her mother is condemned as a witch and sent to the gallows, Alice Wiggins flees her English homeland to escape the same fate. In the colony of Maine, an inheritance awaits her— as does Christopher Gunn, an arrogant stranger who ignites a restless sensuality deep inside the young beauty. In the splendor of the Northeast woods, headstrong Alice is brought to blissful surrender by a desire too powerful to resist.

Sylvia lives in a flat on a council estate with her not-quite-husband Obe and their two young children. She dreams of buying a house on a leafy street like the one she grew up in. If she closes her eyes, she can see it all so clearly: the stripped floorboards, the wisteria growing around the door.... It's not ideal that she's about to be made redundant, or that Obe, a playworker, is never going to earn more than the minimum wage. As sleep deprivation sets in, and the RnB downstairs gets ever louder, Sylvia's life starts to unravel.

In this entertaining collection, dogs of all kinds are brought to life. Working dogs, dogs who are mistreated by humans, dogs who save lives and the ones that make us laugh; they all leap and bound in stories by our most accomplished writers, including Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Jack London and Jerome K. Jerome.

University is supposed to be the best time of your life. But Imo’s first week is quickly going from bad to worse. A stalker is watching her flat, following her every move, and Imo suspects that her new roommates are hiding dark secrets. When one of them suddenly disappears, the trauma of Imo’s recent past comes hurtling back to haunt her. And she begins to realise just how little she knows about the people she lives with.

For Lizzie Riley, switching her six-year-old son, Tom, to the local academy school marks a fresh start, post divorce. With its excellent reputation and delightful red-brick building, Lizzie knows it'll be a safe space away from home. But there's something strange happening at school. Parents are forbidden from entering the grounds, and inside there are bars across the classroom windows....

With an abandoned degree behind her and a 30th birthday approaching, amateur writer Bonnie Falls moves out of her parents' home into a nearby flat. Her landlady, Sylvia Slythe, takes an interest in Bonnie, encouraging her to finish one of her stories, in which a young woman moves to the seaside, where she comes under strange influences. As summer approaches, Sylvia suggests to Bonnie that, as neither of them has anyone else to go on holiday with, they should go away together - to the seaside, perhaps.

Sophie is bored with her perfectly nice but deathly dull boyfriend, Matthew. Sensing he’s about to lose her, Matthew takes her on a last-ditch attempt trip to the seaside, hoping to rekindle their dying flames. But things take a dark turn when Sophie visits Mr Sandman, a Haitian priest, who claims that he can change Matthew into the boyfriend that she wants. But does Sophie really know what she wants? Never has the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ been more apt. Because Matthew does change...just not in the way that anyone could’ve predicted.

Kate is not in a meaningful relationship but dreams of being a parent and pouring all her love into the tiny bundle of happiness that will her love unconditionally in return. Except without any partner on the horizon before her ovaries retire, Kate decides to take matters into her own hands and have one anyway. No one thinks this is a good idea, not her best friend, or her boss at the bookshop where she works—not even June, one of her elderly customers. Because what they can see, and what Kate can’t, is that it isn’t a baby that she needs at all—it’s something else entirely.

On the peak of the Mountain Pass, the Four-Front War takes its final breaths. The walls are closing in. The allies are dwindling. The last front is on its knees.

When sisters Celine and Pip get a call telling them their reclusive mother has died, the women are reunited at her riverside home in Arundel to pick up the pieces. But someone is missing - their middle sister, Vanessa, brutally murdered years ago and the victim of an unsolved case. As the sisters confront ghosts from the past, the discovery of another body in similar circumstances throws new light on Vanessa's death.