Showing results by narrator "Emma Powell" in All Categories

Since the death of her beloved father, Isla Marlowe has felt the need to do something to honour his memory; something meaningful that will bring joy to others and repay the kindness of a stranger who changed their lives. She’s got the perfect solution, but she’s worried not everyone will understand. Aidan Kennedy and his husband, Jase, are desperate to start a family of their own, but finding the right woman to help them is difficult and some people don’t think they should even try. So when Isla offers them the chance to fulfil their dream, they can’t believe their wish is about to come true.

1968, Sicily. Just months after an earthquake has destroyed the mountain town of Gibellina, Enzo and his wife Irene Borgata are making their way back to the family home, Villa Alba. When their car breaks down, Enzo leaves his young wife to go and get help, but when he returns there is no trace of Irene. 2003. TV showman and true crime aficionado Milo Conti is Italy’s darling, uncovering and solving historic crimes. When he turns his attention to the story of the missing Irene Borgata, accusing her husband of her murder, Enzo’s daughter asks her friend for help to prove her father’s innocence.

Diocesan exorcist - a job viewed by the Church of England with such extreme suspicion that they changed the name. It's deliverance consultant now. Still, it seems no job for a woman. But when the bishop offers it to Merrily Watkins - parish priest and single mum - she's in no position to refuse. It starts badly for Merrily and gets no easier. As an early winter slices through the old city of Hereford, a body is found in the River Wye, an ancient church is desecrated, and signs of evil appear in the cathedral itself, where the tomb of a medieval saint lies in pieces.

A man's body is found below a waterfall. It looks like suicide or an accidental drowning – until DI Frannie Bliss enters the dead man's home. What he finds there has him consulting Merrily Watkins, the Diocese of Hereford's official advisor on the paranormal.

Christmas is fast approaching at the new Hope Farm and Bev has convinced a reluctant Molly to organise an open day to raise some much needed funds ahead of the New Year. Their nativity tableau has everything they need: anti-social sheep, alpacas munching the Baby Jesus doll and a hairdresser dressed up as Santa Claus. But on Hope Farm it's going to take more than mulled wine and Christmas lights to get everyone in the festive spirit.

Based on many years’ experience counselling bullies and targets, Stella O’Malley offers concrete strategies to empower children and teenagers to deal confidently with bullying and dominant characters. We can’t always be there to protect our kids as they make their way in the world. What we can do is equip them with the tools they need to ensure they have a positive social experience. Based on many years’ experience counselling bullies and targets, O’Malley offers concrete strategies to empower children and teenagers to deal confidently with bullying and dominant characters.

Midwife Jess is so used to helping other mums achieve their dreams that she’s put her own hopes of motherhood firmly on hold. After having her heart broken once before, Jess is determined to focus all she has on her small family and stepson Riley and make sure he feels safe, happy and loved. But when Jess is asked to care for a tiny baby and new mum in need of support, she’s torn. Jess wants to help, but she isn’t sure her battered heart could cope with saying goodbye to another baby she’s fallen in love with.

Helen Rogers has been lying to herself over her feelings for Tom since the moment they met. And for good reason; not only are they colleagues, but her sabbatical is almost over and she'll soon have to return to Bath. Tom Harris knows he's falling in love with Helen. How could he not? She's smart, kind and great with his son Dylan. But with his ex suddenly offering him a chance to spend more time with Dylan, and the staff of Mill Grange about to host a wedding, everything else has to be put to one side. Even his feelings for a certain archaeologist.

The Parish Priest must solve the mystery of a young boy's deathly fall from the Ludlow Castle ruins, and discovers a hidden obsession with the afterlife amongst the ancient streets. In the affluent, historic town of Ludlow, a teenage boy dies in a fall from the castle ruins. Accident or suicide? No great mystery - so why does the boy's uncle, retired detective Andy Mumford, turn to Diocesan Exorcist Merrily Watkins? More people will die before Merrily uncovers a dangerous obsession with suicide, death and the afterlife hidden within these shadowed medieval streets.

Summer has arrived and it's over a year since strangers Abigail and Edward bought Winfield Hall at auction and restored it together. Now, two new tenants are about to join them at their beautiful Georgian home. Workaholic Harry Freeman has forgotten what it is to relax so when he meets healer, Aura Arden, and learns to meditate with her, he can't believe how good he feels and he soon finds himself falling for her. But, with her bare feet and crystal beads, Aura's not a big hit with Harry's old-fashioned parents, and he finds himself torn between the people he loves most in the world.

Polly was a bewitching young girl, that pretty Polly Marsh, and she knew it. She also knew that beauty could be her passport into the castles where she had always known she belonged. So she set her sights for a duke and joined the firm of Westerman's as a stenographer. Surely one of that noble family would notice her and then all of her dreams would come true!

Elizabeth Thornton has every reason to want to escape from home - a farm in the wilds of Dartmoor. Since her father’s death, she’s been trapped in the clutches of her uncle. When a position opens up at Rosebank Hall, she jumps at the chance. She will be a domestic drudge with a cantankerous master. Elizabeth wants to be a doctor, but she’ll do anything to be free of her uncle. One night, the master’s son turns up, wounded in a conflict in a foreign country - damaged in every way. But as Elizabeth nurses him back to life, the pair grow closer and everything changes.

The venue is booked, the dress is picked and senior midwife Anna Jones only has to say ‘I do!’ to the man she loves! Theirs might have been a whirlwind romance but Brae Penrose is everything Anna dreamed her husband would be, and she can’t wait to start a family with him. But as the big day approaches, Anna still isn’t pregnant and when disaster strikes, their perfect day looks destined not to happen at all! Is it a sign to slow things down?

Heather Keynes’ teenage son died in a tragic car accident. Or so she thinks. However, deep in the countryside, an ancient evil has awoken...intent on hunting local residents. No-one is safe. When Heather takes a closer look at a series of coincidental deaths, she is drawn reluctantly into the company of an odd group of elderly Guardians.

After half a century of decay, the village of Underhowle looked to be on the brink of a new prosperity. Now, instead, it seems destined for notoriety as the home of a psychotic serial killer. DI Frannie Bliss, of Hereford CID, is convinced he knows where the bodies are buried, but Merrily Watkins wonders if Bliss isn't blinkered by personal ambition. Are the Underhowle deaths really linked to the legacy of Fred West and the most sickening cycle of killings in British criminal history?

On a normal day, in a normal house, on a normal street, wife and mother Fran has had enough. She packs a case, leaves a note for her bullying husband, Pete, and one for her beloved 21-year-old son, Harry, and heads to the airport - and freedom. In another house, on another street, Helena is desperately baiting her husband, Jack, into a fight. These days it feels like the only way to get Jack to take notice of her. Passionate, volatile, increasingly fragile, Helena is fast running out of hope.

Phoebe Spencer left home a long time ago, desperate to get away from her mother's emotional manipulation. She knows her life is better away from her family, but she can’t help feeling she’s simply running away from her problems… Then Phoebe hears that her younger sister Lucy has disappeared, leaving behind her four-year old daughter, Darcy. Phoebe's certain Lucy will be back soon - she'd never leave Darcy alone - and then Phoebe can get on with her life again.

December, and the river is rising. The village of Ledwardine has never been flooded in living memory. Within days it will be an island. There's no electricity. The church is serving as a temporary mortuary for two people who drowned. Only one man feels safer. An aggressively-atheist author has been moved, for his own safety, Rushdie-style, into a secluded house just outside the village. Fundamentalist Christians have hated him for years. Now he's offended the Muslims. Bad move.

Four people's lives are dramatically torn apart by a single terrifying event. Two days before Christmas the express train to Strasbourg crashes into a local train in the winter darkness outside Paris. On board is Gilles Malroux, a man with a shady past and a strong reason to avoid the police. In the mayhem of the crash he is badly injured but to avoid capture by the police he swaps identity papers with one of the other victims of the impact. Gilles tries to flee in the dark but finds himself taken to the house of a woman he doesn't know but who calls him Davide.

Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum and deliverance consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, heads for the Malvern Hills to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension to a spate of road accidents in the sleepy village of Wychehill. Merrily is called in when two people are killed in a head-on crash that is also linked to the revamped local pub which, it seems, has injected the valley with a shattering, strobing surge of inner-city nightlife...and drugs.