Showing results by narrator "Juanita McMahon" in All Categories

'Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.' A saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King - oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End 'tom'.

When Cathy Broomfield’s youngest daughter, Kirsty, disappeared, Cathy hoped she had gone to stay with friends, to escape her brutal and bullying husband. But as the days passed with no word from Kirsty, a loving daughter who spoke to her mum every day, Cathy became increasingly anxious...until the day the police arrived at her door to tell her they had found a body. Her worst fears had been realised.

79-year-old Gloria Frensham is a hoarder. She lives amongst piles of magazines, cardboard boxes and endless knickknacks that are stacked into every room of her home and teeter in piles along the landing and up the stairs. She hasn’t left the house in years, but when a sudden smell of burning signifies real danger, she is forced to make a sudden departure and leave behind her beloved possessions. Determined she’s not ready for a care home, Gloria sets out to discover what life still has to offer her.

One night is enough to swallow a lifetime of lives. When Ruth Ardingly and her family first drive up from London and view The Well, they are enchanted by a jewel of a place. But the locals suspect foul play in its verdant fields and drooping fruit trees, and Ruth becomes increasingly isolated as she struggles to explain why her land flourishes whilst her neighbours' produce withers and dies. Fearful of envious locals and suspicious of those who seem to be offering help, Ruth grows less and less sure whom she can trust.

Willow and Holly are identical twins. They’re alike in every way, except one - Willow is afraid on the inside. And it is all because of a secret - one that binds the sisters closely together. For a very long time Willow has felt separated from Holly by one terrible moment in time - a moment that meant Willow’s life was never the same again. And when the past catches up with her, Willow realises it’s finally time for her to face her fears, and learn to laugh again.

November, 1957: Six teenage girls walk in the churning Derbyshire mists. Their voices carrying across the fields, they follow the old train tracks into the dark tunnel of the Cutting. Only five appear on the other side. October, 2014: a dying mother, feverishly fixated on a friend from her childhood, makes a plea: 'Find Valerie.' Mina's elderly mother had never discussed her childhood with her daughter before. So who was Valerie? Where does her obsession spring from? DC Connie Childs is partnered up with new arrival to Bampton, Peter Dahl.

Sisters Sophie and Jess have grown up knowing that a few little lies are necessary. After all, everybody does it, don't they? But when Sophie discovers her father's secret, and Jess falls in love with the charismatic Jake, Sophie faces a difficult choice. Should she keep quiet, or tear her family apart with the truth? And if she tells, who will pay the ultimate price?

The class of ’72, Sara, Ally, Jo and Mitch were as close as sisters, then life intervened and the four friends lost touch. Now in her 60s, Sara has realised - late in the day - that those women were the best friends she’d ever had and is determined to get the gang back together. Ally is facing a huge turning point in her life and Jo, after years of being chief cook and bottle washer, needs to put herself first after a wake-up call. None of them know what happened to Mitch.

Paul lives in the Welsh countryside with his wife Elise, and their two young children. Over in London, Cora plans to move back to Cardiff, to the house she has inherited from her parents. She is escaping her marriage, and the constrictions and disappointments of her life. Connecting them is the London train, and a chance meeting that will have immediate and far-reaching consequences for both Paul and for Cora.

Beryl Jenkinson is a young dreamer determined to break free. Though bound to her family’s garage, her heart dreams of taking flight with Attagirls, the brave women piloting planes across the nation to play a vital role in the war effort. Odette de Lavigne embodies the allure of a World War Two pin-up girl: glamorous, seductive, and a masterful pilot. But beneath her carefree demeanor lies a poignant secret.

Young Dot Allbones is the runt of a large Midlands family. Blessed with none of her sisters' beauty, she'll be lucky even to find a man to marry her. Whatever shall be done with Dot? When Kate Eddowes comes up from London and moves in next door, no one expects the pretty and popular orphan to take any notice of the plain-faced and provincial Dot, five years her junior. But against the odds, the girls strike up an unlikely friendship.

Fancy getting snowed in with your family over Christmas? No. Neither did the Thorne family. But that's what happens when, on Christmas Eve, the remote village where they've gathered together gets cut off by the worst winter storms of two hundred and fifty years. Temperatures plummet. Winds howl at ninety miles an hour. Snowdrifts pile high and freeze. Roads become impassable.

When Rocco de Marco, legendary financier and billionaire, finds Gracie O’Brien breaking into his office he doesn’t believe in her innocence - so he decides to keep her close until he finds the truth. Yet it’s impossible for Rocco to stay angry with the sparky redhead - she’s making him feel emotions Rocco thought he’d buried for ever… And the sexual tension between them is explosive!

Here are six magical stories to thrill and enchant you. Listen as Blackberry Blue rises from the bramble patch; follow Emeka the pathfinder on his mission to save a lost king; and join Princess Desire as she gallops across the Milky Way on her jet-black horse. These beautifully written and original stories will delight listeners of all ages.

If you asked the folks of Gyrford, they'd tell you Jedediah Smith looked up to his father. After all, Corbie Mackem was the Sarsen Shepherd: the man who saved the Smith clan from Ab, the terrifyingly well-meaning fey who blighted a whole generation with unwanted gifts. Corbie was a good fairy-smith. And if he wasn't a good father, well, that isn't something Jedediah likes to talk about. Especially since no one knows where Corbie's body lies: the day of his son's wedding, forty-odd years ago, he set off to travel and was never seen again.

Beautiful, proud Roxana is terrified of being poor. When her husband leaves her penniless with five children, she must choose between being a virtuous beggar or a rich whore. Embarking on a career as a courtesan and kept woman, Roxana passes from man to man in order to maintain her lavish, glamorous lifestyle. But this life comes at a cost; she is torn between sinful prosperity and the respectability she craves.

One winter's afternoon, Sonia, 43, married and respectable, answers the door to 15-year-old Jez. He’s come to borrow some music. Sonia invites him in and soon decides that she isn't going to let him leave. As Sonia's desire to keep Jez hidden and protected from the outside world becomes all the more overpowering, she is haunted by memories of an intense teenage relationship, which gradually reveal a terrifying truth.

London, 1665. Hidden within the growing pile of corpses in his churchyard, Rector Symon Patrick discovers a victim of the pestilence unlike any he has seen before: a young woman with a shorn head, covered in burns, and with pieces of twine delicately tied around each wrist and ankle. Desperate to discover the culprit, Symon joins a society of eccentric medical men who have gathered to find a cure for the plague. Someone is performing terrible experiments upon the dying, hiding their bodies amongst the hundreds that fill the death carts.

Life hasn’t always been kind to Emma, but now finally her life appears to be looking up. She and her childhood sweetheart, Seth Jago, are to marry. However, when Emma is haunted by mysterious circumstances surrounding her family, and Seth is hounded by a jealous ex-lover set on revenge, Seth plans for their escape to Canada. But Emma finds herself uncertain of whether a move to Canada is really what she wants…

Two Jewish sisters, one in London, the other in Warsaw, see their worlds fall apart as Hitler invades Poland. Hanna escapes The Blitz, while her sister and parents are forced into the Ghetto. Hanna joins the Special Operations Executive in an attempt to free her family from the ever-tightening Nazi stranglehold, and is aided by a Polish woman who befriends them. Casting light into one of the darkest periods of World War II, acclaimed author V.S. Alexander's powerful novel tells of two Jewish sisters of Polish descent who unite in a fight to save their family from the Warsaw Ghetto.