Showing results by narrator "Colleen Prendergast" in All Categories

Bella Whittington’s caviar-and-Cristal life comes crashing down when she walks in on her fiancé and best friend tangled up in page 34 of the Kama Sutra, limbs everywhere. But her plan to dull the pain with Daddy’s credit card is totaled by the news that they’ve lost the family business. Suddenly, Bella’s both single and completely broke. Shivering in her dingy, new studio apartment, after a traumatic incident with a homemade turmeric face mask (Hello Tangerina Jolie!), Bella realizes she must pull up her Gucci socks and get a job, fast.

Working on the notorious Mitchell Estate, housing officer Josie Mellor faces challenges every day, but not nearly as many as those of her tenants. Kelly Winterton is scared and alone after her partner has been jailed. A victim of domestic abuse, Charlotte Hatfield has fled from her violent partner four times already. He'll probably kill her if he finds her this time. Disowned by her family, someone is taking advantage of Amy Cartwright's vulnerability. Who can she turn to for support?

When a young boy falls from a balcony in a block of flats, DS Grace Allendale witnesses the shocking aftermath of the tragic event. But strangely, no one will admit to seeing anything - and the parents will only tell the police that it was an accident. Determined to sort the truth from the lies, Grace is thrown into a case that takes her to the darkest corners of the criminal world - and strikes closer to home than she could have ever imagined.

A lost little girl with her notebook and toy monkey appears on the CCTV screens of the Green Oaks shopping centre, evoking memories of junior detective Kate Meaney, missing for 20 years.

Gut Well Soon navigates the turbulent waters of health and wellness in the 21st century. It explores the science underpinning the health claims and misconceptions we have all heard but never fully understood. In particular it explains why our gut bacteria is crucial to our mental and physical health, and explains what you can do to support it in a simple and accessible way. Not satisfied with just words, Catherine has created an informative and individualised online programme called Reset Your Gut to help put the fully referenced information in this book into your everyday life.

'Peace and quiet,' shouts Rabbit. 'That's all I want.' Owch. He's hurt his own ears again. What with Bear's snoring, and a BANG!BANG!BANG! noise from up in the tree, Rabbit knows that something simply has to be done. But high in the branches, perhaps Bear can show Rabbit how to see the world from a different place....

Thirty-two-year-old Catherine Hope has a great memory. But she can't remember everything. She can't remember her ninth year, or when her insomnia started. And she can't remember why everyone stopped calling her Catherine-Maria. With a promiscuous past, and licking her wounds after a breakup, Catherine wonders why she resists anything approaching real love. But when she loses her home to the devastating deluge of 2007 and volunteers at Flood Crisis, a devastating memory emerges.

1867: Nicola Douglas attends a lecture given by Miss Maria Rye, the founder of the Female Middle Class Emigration Society, which inspires her to change her life. With no family, but a good education, she boards a ship to Australia with high hopes of a fresh start in a new country as a governess. Sydney is full of young women with similar ambitions and poor prospects - but when a wealthy benefactor appears, she finds a foothold. What she never anticipated was the attention of two suitors: Nathaniel, a privileged and attractive English gentleman; and Hilton, a beguiling American.

When single mum Ruth has a brief fling with Rob, she's mortified to discover that he lied to her. He lied to her, because he's married. Worse still, he's the husband of Janine, head of the PTA at the primary school where Ruth works as secretary, and when the truth of their fling is discovered, Ruth suddenly has a lot of enemies at the school gates. Threatening texts begin to arrive, rumours abound and the staff room becomes hostile.

Limpet and his mum run an ice-cream shop, full of her favourite flavours: spaghetti ice cream, anyone? Terrific tomato and parsnip ice cream? But his mum's off for the weekend, leaving Limpet and his dad in charge. What could possibly go wrong? When Limpet finds himself in a giant cucumber costume, defending a fairy fort against a mysterious robber, he knows that things can't possibly get any worse. Can he catch the thief, save the ice cream shop and avoid the dastardly stink eye of Mr A Pigeon?

1945. They have survived the Blitz, but when Simon, Patricia, Evelyn and Larry step through a mysterious library door, it is the beginning of their most dangerous adventure yet. They discover the magical world of Folio, where an enchanted kingdom of fairy knights, bears and tree gods is under threat from a sinister robot army. The many stories of the Library are locked in eternal war, and the children's only hope is to find their creator - a magician who has been lost for centuries. What they find will change not just their own lives, but the fate of the world, for ever....

An addictive debut psychological thriller for fans of "The Girl on the Train", Liane Moriarty and Lucy Foley. This is the story of Lucy and Paul. They met. They fell deeply in love. They got married. Lucy thought that she had everything she wanted. Until she found the photograph, the text messages. Until she uncovered Paul's secrets. Now Lucy realises she doesn't really know her husband. She doesn't know if she can trust her own mind. She doesn't know the lengths Paul would go to keep his perfect life. And worst of all, she doesn't know that she’s in danger.

As a palliative care nurse, it is Kelly Critcher's job to look death in the eye - to save a patient while the fight can still be won and confront death with grace and kindness when it can't. In early 2020, everything changed for nurses on the NHS frontline. Working on Covid wards and the High Dependency Unit, Kelly spent the height of the coronavirus crisis at Northwick Park Hospital - perhaps the UK hospital most deeply ravaged by the illness.

Lady Ariana Boxstall's brother, Norris, is a strapping young man, but he's happily unmarried and childless. Pestered by his sister, Norris agrees to take a wife on one condition: that Ariana take a husband first. Although she realizes she risks spending a lifetime in a loveless marriage, for the sake of her own family's legacy, Ariana accepts his challenge. When the Earl of Kynaston met Ariana eight years ago, he broke her heart. Since then, his own heart has been broken, and he's sworn off love.

‘I miss him with every breath and heartbeat. He should have been my happy ending. Instead, he is the sad beginning to my story.' Olivia and Luca Felicone had known each other nearly all their lives, but when they fell in love as teenagers and eloped to London, they broke the hearts of those closest to them.

Young Sara Crewe grew up in a well-to-do household, but she suddenly finds herself impoverished when her father, Captain Crewe, dies penniless in India. Sara is forced to abandon her life of privilege for a life of bare existence at Miss Minchin's boarding school. To survive those hard times, she imagines herself to be a princess as she awaits her rescue from a mysterious benefactor.

For fans of Jojo Moyes, David Nicholls and Sophie Kinsella, here is a Pride and Prejudice for the modern era. Londoners Kim and Harry can't see eye to eye...until the life of the person they both love most hangs in the balance. Kim has never grasped what her free-spirited big sister, Eva, sees in a stuck-up banker like Harry and has spent her childhood trying to keep him out while Harry's favourite occupation is winding Kim up.

Meg just wants to keep her family together. Her mother is desperately ill, and her sister is still in school so it is up to her to support them. All Meg knows to do is bake, and desperation leads her to Ted Lund, the miserly owner of a local bakery. In a moment of uncharacteristic kindness, he takes pity on Meg and offers her a job. But Ted’s charity ends there. He’ll save money at any costs, cutting corners by using sawdust in his bread, ignoring vermin in his flour and paying Meg a pittance.

When Laura McAllister, a young lady's maid, learns her three siblings have been taken from their mother and emigrated to Canada without her mother's knowledge, she becomes determined to search for them and reunite the family. But a lack of funds and resistance from authorities push her to use a false name and take a position with a child emigration society to gain passage to Canada.

Amy lies in a coma. Her older sister, Moira, comes to her in the evenings and sits beside her hospital bed. Here, Moira confesses. She admits to her childhood selfishness which deeply hurt her family; to her savagery at boarding school; to the wild, bitter and destructive heart that she carried into her adult life.