Showing results by narrator "Fran Burgoyne" in All Categories

After a life in care, with both good and bad experiences of the system, Hope knows all too well what the risks are for children in care as they approach adolescence. Lacking any sense of self-worth or belonging, children in care are often dismissed by the authorities as impossible to manage and, worse, perceived as children who have invited sexual abuse by placing themselves in 'dangerous' situations. Hope lifts the lid on this untold chapter of her story and the devastating effects she experienced when she reconnected with her past.

Rosie had the perfect evening lined up: she'd come home early, slip into a sexy dress and surprise her boyfriend with date night. What she was not expecting was to find his bags packed and herself unceremoniously dumped. But she can't even dwell on her heartbreak when she faces the more pressing matter of making rent this month. And in desperate times, she somehow agrees to let out her spare room to the upstairs neighbour. Aled needs a place to stay while his place is being renovated, and she gets to keep her home. It's a win-win situation for both - if only it was that easy.

When Sadie Bingham’s life takes an unexpected turn, her children treat her to a break at Juniper Meadows, the Cotswolds estate owned by the Travers family. The festive season is in full swing, and Sadie throws herself into the packed Twelve Days of Christmas programme, relishing the opportunity to make new friends and new memories. Single father Dylan Travers hasn’t been to his childhood home of Juniper Meadows for decades. Estranged from his cantankerous father Monty, he has made a happy life for himself in the States. Now with teenage children, Dylan has brought them back to the Cotswolds.

Juniper Meadows is home to much of his extended family, not to mention the many local businesses that operate on the estate, so there’s no time to sit back and enjoy the view. Juniper Meadows is a full-time job, and that doesn’t leave much time for romance. Tasha Blake’s career leaves no time for romance either – much to her mother’s chagrin. Tasha’s sister Danni has kindly provided two grandchildren, but Victoria Blake is keen for more!

Living in a bustling farmhouse with her mum, aunt and uncles, cousin and too many dogs to count, surrounded by the breath-taking Cotswolds countryside, she knows she is privileged and protected. But all families have secrets, and the Travers family are no exception. Their farmhouse sits in the grounds of the Juniper Meadows estate, passed down through the generations and now being made to pay its own way with a myriad of businesses and projects.

Everyone in Halfmoon Quay, the picture-perfect village clinging to the edge of the Cornish coast, knows Rick Penrose is the person to turn to for help. Friendly and reliable, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous, he’ll do anything for anyone. When his teenage crush Anya moves back to the quay for a fresh start, he has the perfect solution. She needs a job and his great uncle needs help to run his hotel. It’s a win-win.

A provocative, immersive medieval novel starring one of literature’s most unforgettable characters in her own words—Chaucer’s bold and libidinous Wife of Bath. “So damned readable and fun…This is the story of a woman fighting for her rights; it breaches the walls of history.”--The...

Ania hears the explosion of gunshots before she sees the Nazi soldiers approach her beloved home. Her family don’t have time to run, but she does. Hiding nearby, she listens to her sister’s screams and – stroking the red ribbon she keeps tied around her wrist – she begins to plot her revenge… Taunted her whole life for being smarter than anyone else in the village, now living in war-torn Poland, being governed by Nazis who think Poles are subhuman and women only good for one thing… Ania now only has her wits to rely on, if she's going to survive.

They knew the end was coming. They saw it 10 years back, when it was far enough away in space and time and meaning. The changes were gradual, and then sudden. For Mae and her friends, it means navigating a life where action and consequence are no longer related. Where the popular are both trophies and targets. And where petty grudges turn deadlier with each passing day. So, did Abi Manton jump off the cliff or was she pushed? Her death is just the beginning of the end.

Heather, Rachel and Antonia are going to Almanby. Heather needs to find her boyfriend who, like so many, went and never came back. Rachel has a mysterious package to deliver, and her life depends on it. And Antonia — poor, lovestruck Antonia just wants the chance to spend the day with Heather. So off they set through the idyllic yet perilous English countryside, in which nature thrives in abundance and summer lasts forever, and as they travel through ever-shifting geography and encounter strange voices in the fizz of shortwave radio, the harder it becomes to tell friend from foe.

Fall in love between the pages . . . Still grieving the death of her best friend, Erin knows she needs to start living - but has no idea how. Then she loses her favourite book, heavily annotated and containing her friend's final words to her. When James finds Erin's note-filled book in his local...

Bella can’t wait to be married to her fiancée Sidney, and dreams of the day she will walk up the aisle to be given away by her widowed father, with her bookish sister Alice as her bridesmaid. Their lives are disturbed when they receive a letter from their fourteen-year-old cousin Millie. Taken in by her austere aunt and uncle when her parents were killed in an accident, Millie says she is being badly treated and pleads to be rescued. When the two sisters take a trip to find out the truth, things take a troubling turn.

On the day of his father’s funeral, Ben’s life changes forever when a woman he’s never met shows up claiming to be his sister. As he investigates the past, Ben is shaken to discover that much of his life has been built on a carefully constructed foundation of his father’s lies. Needing answers, he agrees to visit Juniper Meadows, the ancestral estate owned and run by his long-lost relatives, the Travers family. Arriving in the pretty Cotswolds countryside, the first person Ben meets is Amelia Riley.

An unforgettable YA regency-inspired romantic fantasy about a seamstress who is sent to dress the prince for his royal wedding - and the scandal she weaves in her wake. All Niamh has longed for is to be remembered: to create something that will last far longer than she will. For her, that means...

It's 1972 and ten-year-old Deborah is living a ten-year-old life: butterscotch angel delight and Raleigh chopper bikes, and Clunk Click, and Crackajack and Jackanory, Layla and the Bee Gees, flares and ponchos. But new girl Sarah-Jayne breezes into school, pretty as a picture and full of gossip and speculation, as well as unlikely but thrilling stories about levitation. The other girls are dazzled but Deborah is wary and keeps her distance.

When sisters Lily and Della Pedley are persecuted for the shocking murder of their parents, they flee from their home in Cornwall to a remote and unnamed island in Scotland - an island known for its strange happenings, but far away from the whispers and prying eyes of strangers. Lily is terrified of what her sister might do next, and she soon realises that they have arrived at a place where nothing is as it seems.

It isn't unusual for crop circles to appear overnight on Hackpen Hill. In this part of Wiltshire, where golden wheat fields stretch for miles, the locals have gotten used to discovering strange mathematical patterns stamped into the earth. But this time, it's different. Not only because this particular design of dramatic spiralling hexagons has never been seen before. But because of the dead body positioned precisely in the centre of the circle. DI Silas Hart, of Swindon Police, is at a loss.

Callum Roberts and Alice McClaren have spent two wonderful years building a life and a home and making plans for a future together. But when Alice is involved in a car crash, Callum fears that he has lost her forever. As he sits by her bedside he promises he’ll do anything if only she’ll open her eyes… But when Alice does finally wake up, she has absolutely no memory of being in love with Callum or the life they once shared. In fact, all she remembers about him is how incredibly annoying he once was! How can she have forgotten him if she really did love him so deeply?

When Nadia and Tom are both unceremoniously stood up by their dates under the clock at Waterloo Station, fate throws them together in the most unusual of circumstances. What starts as a brilliant story for future dinner parties soon turns into a wonderful friendship, and both Tom and Nadia realise they’ve found the perfect partner in crime. Tired of dating but always needing a plus one for weddings, parties, and the like, they agree to fake date each other.

A young man is found brutally murdered in the middle of the snowed-in village of Wivenhoe. Over his body stands another man, axe in hand. The gathered villagers must deal with the consequences of an act that no one tried to stop. Wivenhoe is set in an alternate present, in a world that is slowly waking up to the fact that it is living through an environmental disaster. Taking place over twenty-four hours and told through the voices of a mother and her adult son, we see how one small community reacts to social breakdown and isolation.