Showing results by narrator "Lauren Irwin" in All Categories

Sixteen-year-old Amanda Gray's life shatters when what should have been a simple walk home with her best friend, Sarah, turns into a nightmare. One moment they're picking bluebells in the woods; the next, they're at the mercy of a predator who seems chillingly familiar with his routine. Six weeks later, Amanda wakes in a hospital bed with a slash across her throat, her voice stolen, and no memory of how she escaped. And no one will talk to her about Sarah. And the worst part? Her most crucial memory might be the one she can't speak.

Detective Sara Hirst has moved from London to Norfolk Police's Serious Crimes Unit. Carnival week in Cromer. It's been an easy-going summer for the Norfolk Police's Serious Crimes Unit—until this morning. The body of Daisy Shaw, the Carnival Queen, is discovered in a back alley, stretched out on the cobbles. Her long blonde hair lies matted and disheveled around her head, her fingers clutch a sparkly plastic tiara. Suspicion falls on the carnival crew, especially when it turns out that one of them is Daisy's boyfriend.

The first body is found forced inside a huge terracotta urn on the lawn of a country manor in a remote corner of North Norfolk. A few days later, a young woman is found, tied to a golden chair with her throat slashed. At both crime scenes, the killer leaves a bizarre calling card. The victims were part of a group of friends at university back in the day. Two of them are dead. Two are still alive—but for how much longer? 

It's the hottest summer on record. Norfolk is parched. One steaming night an old thatched barn at Wild Thyme Farm is torched. The battle to put out the blaze rages. Detective Sara is on the scene when there's a horrifying discovery: there's a body in the embers. Sara and her team have been investigating a series of fires breaking out all over the county—but this is the first body. Accident or murder?

1873. At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D'Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identity of the people who killed them, her skills are highly sought after by widows and investigators alike. Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister's death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult.

It's a stormy December morning when seal-watchers find the body on the beach at Winterton-on-Sea. His clothes have been torn to shreds on the rocks. The bright-orange life jacket didn't save him in the end. Detective Sara Hirst races to the scene. The washed-up body turns out to be a deckhand who got swept overboard in a storm.

At fifty-seven, photographer Kay didn't expect to fall head over heels in love, or get married, but the thing she thought she could always count on was Rose's friendship. She and Rose have known each other for over forty years, and Rose was supposed to be Kay's maid of honor today at her wedding. So when she pulls her phone from the pocket of her bright yellow dress and sees the message, she's stunned: Kay, I hope today is wonderful. Please don't contact me again, Rose.

Imogen Quinn is a chaotic bisexual with dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian, crushing stereotypes about autistic people. When she decides to put on a pride festival that's accessible for everyone, she enlists the help of the openly gay captain of the football team, Ollie Armstrong. Dealing with the fallout from his parents' divorce, Ollie is initially hesitant. But it doesn't take long for him to be swept up by Imogen's passion, and he's not the only one.

After generations of plotting, the Lennixes - and their bloodthirsty dragon allies, the Raptors - are terrifyingly close to establishing a brutal dragon regime on Earth, just like they did centuries ago. Now, it's up to Allie, Joss, and Sirin to protect Lysander while searching for a secret source of lost dragon magic, the only force powerful enough to stop the Raptor. But when their search takes them to one of the largest cities on Earth, the new friends must decide what's more important: finding the missing treasure or guarding the most important secret in the world.

Once our world was full of dragons who lived in harmony with humans. Dragons counseled kings and queens. They fought in human battles. And they gave humans the most precious gift of all: magic. But after a group of rogue dragons, the Raptors, tried to take over Earth, all dragons were banished to another realm. Most humans forgot about the dragons, claiming they never existed. Eleven-year-old Sirin knows the truth - she grew up with stories passed down through the generations. However, when her mother falls ill, even Sirin has trouble believing in magic...until she sees a dragon.

Selene is the youngest daughter in a gifted line of healers, born to serve as the king's royal physician. Yet when Selene's mother Persaphe embroils her in a plot to kill the king, Selene finds herself poisoning the very man she is sworn to protect. Things seem bleak, but there is another problem—the poison doesn't work, and the king doesn't die. Rather, he awakes from his coma paralyzed, aware of the attempt on his life, and furious.

It's the 1920s - cars and planes are new. Lily Gabriel is scruffy and confident and takes no nonsense from anyone. Antony is rich, spoiled, and arrogant, and Lily is completely and utterly - no nonsense! - in love with him. So join Lily as she falls: falls in love, falls out of the sky, falls through time. And effortlessly, inescapably, falls into her future.

Through the moving and often heart-wrenching personal accounts of Kindertransport survivors, critically acclaimed and award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson paints the timely and devastating story of how the rise of Hitler and the Nazis tore apart the lives of so many families and what they were forced to give up in order to save these children.

When lady’s maid Marian Osley and footman Valentine Hobbs assume their positions at the cliff-top estate of Valor Rise, they already share a history. Raised together as paupers in a London workhouse, they indulged in S&M games of imaginary crimes and sublime punishment. Now they’ve been unexpectedly reunited - in subservience to the brooding Wythe Bornholdt and his frail wife, Diana. A master and mistress with their own dark secrets.

What began with a reimagining of Peter Pan and Wendy now twists into a stunning version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass! Gwen, Pete, and the others have escaped from Everland. But the safe haven they hoped to find at Alnwick Castle doesn't exist. With the Queen of England on her deathbed, Duchess Alyssa has stepped in to lead, but things have gotten worse as the cure Doc created for the Horologia virus has mutated, accelerating the disease.

It's not easy being a teenage witch. Just ask Merry. She's drowning in textbooks and rules set by the coven, drowning in heartbreak after the loss of Jack. But Merry is not the only one whose fairy tale is over. Big brother Leo is falling apart and everything Merry does seems to push him further to the brink. And everything that happens to Leo makes her ache for revenge. So, when strangers offering friendship show them a different path, they'd be mad not to take it . . .

Sixteen-year-old Merry is fed up with her feuding family and nonexistent social life. High school is a terrible time to have magic shooting from her fingertips without warning. Then Merry meets sweet, sensitive Jack, and can't resist falling under his spell. There's just one problem: he's part of an evil, centuries-old curse that Merry is supposed to break. Is Merry about to lose her heart and her life? Or will true love's kiss save the day?

From sorcerous bridges that link worlds to the simple traditions of country folk; from the mysterious natures of twins to the dangerous powers of obligation and contract. Laden with perils for both the adventurous and the unsuspecting, magic is ultimately a contradiction: endlessly powerful but never without consequence, and rigidly defined by rules of its own making. Award-winning Jonathan Strahan brings together some of the most exciting and popular writers working in fantasy today to dig into that contradiction.

Mabs Millett is the reluctant heiress to Cheadle Abbey, one of Vanbrugh's monstrous piles. At a deb dance in the early fifties, she meets a financier who offers her a job as an assistant to the editor of the social diary on a magazine he has just bought.

Life as a teenage witch just got harder for Merry when her brother, Leo is captured and taken into an alternative reality by evil witch Ronan. Determined to get him back, Merry needs to use blood magic to outwit her arch-rival and get Leo back. Merry is more powerful than ever now, but she is also more dangerous and within the coven, loyalties are split on her use of the magic.