Showing results by narrator "Annie Aldington" in All Categories

Where is the line between hope and madness? Stella and her boyfriend were teenagers when their one-year-old daughter, Alice, vanished during a beach vacation. Though her body was never found, Alice was assumed to have drowned. Twenty-one years later, Stella is a happily married mother to a 13-year-old son and a successful therapist. But everything falls apart when a new patient walks into her office. The young woman introduces herself as Isabelle - but Stella is sure it’s Alice....

Even a small town girl can have big dreams... Marcie Brooks has returned to her home town with a baby and a ring on her finger. But for all her grandmother's insistence that she's a young widow, the truth is the only boy Marcie has ever loved tragically died before he could make good his promise to wed her. Sometimes she still feels his presence near her, which is both a comfort and an unnerving sign that she's inherited her grandmother's gifts...

Flame-haired beauty Chloe Collard watched her mother struggle through life, scraping together pennies in order to provide for her and her brothers, so Chloe promised herself something a long time ago: she would get a proper education and make something of herself. This vow would carry Chloe through her entire life. When Chloe is offered a job as a personal assistant in a prestigious firm, she finally feels that her hard work is paying off.

Daisy Lane's fortunes take a spectacular fall when Roy decides to run his criminal empire from London. Without him, the punters disappear and so, too, does the cash. Still, Daisy can take comfort in the fact that her son Eddie is growing up to be as courageous as his late father was. But Eddie’s younger brother, Jamie, is a deeply disturbed young man. Meanwhile, there’s a killer at work in Gosport. It’s Daisy who spots this nasty Casanova at work. She takes it upon herself to have him apprehended - with devastating consequences.

Sent to the workhouse as a child, all Ella Hathaway can remember is a voice whispering, 'Dearie, promise you will never forget what you saw. Your Ma was killed deliberate...and someone oughter pay for it.' When wealthy spinster Letitia Fairchild witnesses Ella being ill treated, she takes her in as a scullery maid. But as Ella grows up, she is determined to find the truth about her mother's death and appeals to Letitia for help, revealing her only personal possession, a black silk purse. Intrigued, Letitia agrees to begin a quest to solve the mystery of Ella's past.

It is 1752. As winter approaches, two guilty secrets drive 17-year-old Agnes Trussel to run away from her home in rural Sussex. Pregnant with an unwanted child and carrying stolen coins, she is shocked by the squalor of London. She finds work as an assistant to a firework-maker, John Blacklock. Soon she meets Cornelius Soul, seller of gunpowder, and hatches a plan which could save her. But why does Blacklock disapprove of Mr Soul? And what is Blacklock hiding from her?

Can their friendship survive the struggles of war? The East End of London, 1940. Life is tough for the Ten Bells Street girls. Best friends from childhood, the three of them now find themselves scattered across London, bearing the weight of war apart. Exiled from the East End, Rose has created a new life for herself and now works as a dancer in a club in Soho, but she soon finds that life in the West End isn't any easier than what she left behind.

She should have been safe. But she never came home. Kath has lived on the same London estate for decades. Lately she’s become friendly with the little girl next door, who is often left alone for hours while her mum is at work. They have a system. When Mina gets home from school to the empty flat, she knocks on the wall three times. Knock, knock, knock. I’m home safe and sound. But one day Mina’s knock doesn’t come. Kath raises the alarm and the police begin the search. Kath was the only person looking out for Mina—now she might be the only one who can bring her home.

On the surface, Ruby Gallagher has the perfect life: an adoring husband, Manny, a beautiful home and a luxury lifestyle that involves shopping, holidays and not much else. It's safe, predictable - exactly what she needs after her turbulent past. Until one day it all collapses as Manny is arrested for fraud. And it seems it's not only his business deals that have been shady - Ruby discovers he's been hiding a mistress and son too.

When Daisy Holt was dismissed from her post as a nursemaid she set off cheerfully into the jungle of mid-Victorian London. When Kitty Hammond, proprietress of the “select establishment” off Leicester Square discovered her she was quick to realise that Daisy has a rare talent and would make a successful entertainer. And there it was that she met the impoverished artist John Skelton. To him Daisy represented the perfect model – the one to inspire his work.

Robbed of marriage to the man she loved, Leah Bryce rears his daughter Miriam as her own. But her desire for vengeance lead her to treat the girl with extreme cruelty. Leah's son Ralph has always loved the girl he believes to be his sister, and fights to subdue feelings that are more than brotherly. Only when Leah's malign influence is removed for ever can Miriam overcome the horrors of her girlhood to find love and joy at last.

Beautiful, dark-haired Lily has been abandoned in a Birmingham slum as a tiny child. With few clues as to her identity she endures a childhood of loneliness and loss. At eighteen she applies for a post as nanny with the family of a Captain Fairford, a soldier in Ambala, north India and his highly strung wife Susan. Lily is drawn into the emotional life of the Fairford family and adores her charge, two year old Cosmo.

Sue Wilsher, author of When My Ship Comes In, makes an emotional return to 1950s Essex. Tilbury, 1950s. The Empire is a boarding house run by Vi, Doris's mother - the Empire Girls of the title. When Doris becomes pregnant out of marriage, she is kicked out of the house and forced to fend for herself. Desperate to look after her daughter, she takes any job going. She falls in with the Windrush immigrants and finds herself helping one to a new life in Britain.

The female private detective has been a staple of popular culture for over 150 years. But what about the real-life women behind these fictional tales? Dismissed as 'Mrs Sherlock Holmes' or amateurish Miss Marples, mocked as private dicks or honey trappers, they have been investigating crime since the mid-nineteenth century - everything from theft and fraud to romance scams and murder. In Private Inquiries, Caitlin Davies traces the history of the UK's female investigators.

The war is almost over - and it's up to the East End Angels to keep the home fires burning! Frankie's fiance, a doctor, is away looking after the troops in Europe - will he return safely home? Winnie has a happy secret - but can she carry on at Station 75 when she's going to have a baby? Bella is intrigued by her new friend, a Polish airman. As the war ends and victory is in sight, what's next for the girls of Station 75?

Despite air raids and rationing in wartime London, sisters Liz and Dora Beck find time for fun and laughter at the local ice rink. Then a handsome American serviceman catches their attention, and so begins heartache between the sisters. Dora is increasingly jealous of her sister's blossoming romance with Victor. But when Victor is killed in a bomb attack, Liz makes a shocking discovery that upsets her whole family. Forced out of her home, Liz finds support where she least expects it.

Sapphire Jones doesn’t believe in relationships anymore - not since she caught her husband in bed with another woman. Now Sapphire only sees men on her terms which is why her current lover is younger than her, good looking, doesn’t place any emotional demands on her [so far, fingers crossed] and is great in bed. What more does a girl need? Sapphire puts all her passion into running her own business - a high end lingerie and hen weekend company.

Violet Daniels isn't perfect. She's made mistakes in her life, but the deep love she has for her five-year-old twins is beyond dispute. When their feckless and often violent father turns up out of the blue, demanding to see them, she's terrified he might snatch them from her. She flees with them to a place of safety where she meets the handsome and charming Gabriel Stone. He shows her a better way of life, but is he everything he appears to be? Violet decides to stop running and finds the courage to return to London to confront the children's father.

Keep the family together - that's what her old mum always said. Put up and shut up. And that's what everyone else did around there. Essex, 1959. Flo earns her money as a scrubber, cleaning the cruise ships and dreaming of a day when she might sail away from her life in the Dwellings, the squalid tenements of Tilbury docks. Then the Blundell family are evicted from their home.

Growing up in a small seaside town, Marcie Brooks dreams of owning a Mary Quant mini-skirt, the Beatles, and escape. Instead she's stuck in a dead-end job selling candy floss to tourists, and with a crazy family. Her grandmother sees ghosts, her step-mother is unable to control her growing family, and Marcie's father is usually in and out of prison or away "working" for East End gangsters. Despite it all, Marcie adores her father. But Tony's light fingers and hard man reputation mean most people give the Brooks family a wide birth. Sometimes Marcie even wishes she had a respectable dad like her friend Rita....