Showing results by narrator "Jane Collingwood" in All Categories

It was supposed to be the perfect summer... On the luxurious private island of Angel Cay, four privileged students toast the end of their exams. Miles, Grace, Alex and Sasha have the world at their feet. But one dark night will change their perfect lives for ever. As the friends move into glamorous careers, in fashion, music and politics, each tries to put the past behind them.

This is the tale of three 14-year-old girls and a volatile combination of lies, jealousy and perversion that ends in tragedy. Except the tragedy is even darker and more tangled than their tight-knit community has been persuaded to believe. Blackly funny and with a surreal edge to its portrait of a northern English town, Jenn Ashworth's gripping novel captures the intensity of girls' friendships and the dangers they face in a predatory adult world they think they can handle.

Endsleigh House stands, crumbling and gracious, on the south-west coast of England, its rooms shut up and dusty. But what secrets do they hold? Cate, an exile from New York, is sent to help value the contents of the once-grand Georgian house. Cataloguing its' contents with Jack - a man with his own dark past, she comes across a hidden shoebox containing an exquisite pair of dancing shoes from the 1930s, along with a mysterious collection of objects: a photograph, a dance card and a Tiffany bracelet.

After years of romantic drought, Nell is enjoying a thrilling fling with a sexy new man and loving London life, somehow managing to juggle single motherhood with a busy career. Plus, in the city it's easy to avoid her sister who is about to marry Nell's ex. (Yes, messy.) Then she gets the news. Please could she return to Tredower, the crumbling old family home in Cornwall for the summer? Disaster!

Scarlett makes mistakes – over and over again. She’s not perfect, she has a tricky relationship with her mother and is desperate for people to like her. She repeatedly goes back to the people that hurt her, no matter how badly. She moves to London with no plan (of course), but manages to land a job at a modelling agency. Finally, she’s getting her life on track, but the fashion industry is a murkier place than she had imagined. She changes herself to please others. Just as she starts to find her place, Scarlett’s life begins to spiral.

When Maddy Wight is suddenly tapped to ghostwrite the memoir of the world-renowned cosmetic surgeon Dr. Angela Reynolds, she thinks it might just be the thing to get her career back on track. She travels to Angela's remote estate in the Scottish highlands to hunker down and learn everything she can about her incredibly enigmatic new boss, and the kaleidoscopic beauty industry she leads. As Maddy learns more about her subject, she begins to notice strange gaps in the details of Angela's life.

Do you believe in fairies? Join Tinker Bell's sisters on a magical Valentine's adventure. Inspired by Tinker Bell, from the book Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie. Before Tinker Bell flew to Never Land and met Peter Pan she lived on Sheepskerry Island with her fairy sisters - Clara, Lily, Rosie, Silver, and Squeak the baby. Every fairy loves the Valentine's Games on Sheepskerry Island. There's races, feasts, and friendly visitors to compete with. Clara wants it all to be perfect so she uses a little more magic than usual.

Just an innocent invitation.... When Sophie Ellis is asked to house-sit at a luxurious Knightsbridge townhouse, it appears to be the offer of a lifetime. Drawn into the glittering circle of the home's owner, she meets wealthy American businessman Nick Cooper and is swept up into a thrilling and passionate affair. But when Nick is found dead in his hotel suite, Sophie is suddenly the prime suspect for his murder, and soon realises Nick was not the man he seemed.

In 1972, Robert Beech, First World War veteran and prominent figure in the arms industry, is killed by a car bomb. The event cuts short the career of his son Harry, a news photographer, and comes close to destroying his granddaughter Sophie. Ten years later, Harry, now working in aerial photography, and Sophie, visiting an analyst in New York, remain scarred and divided by the event. Around their broken relationship and Harry’s memories of his truncated career and his father, the novel builds a story that is acutely private, yet sweepingly public.

Elektra is hoping for big things this year.... She's finished her first feature film (even if her character was unexpectedly killed off halfway through filming), hosted the party of the year (well, before her mum arrived and threw everyone out - how embarrassing!) and managed to become Archie Mortimer's actual real-life girlfriend (for now anyway...), so things are most definitely moving in the right direction. But with social media to navigate (#actinggoals #instanightmare), GCSEs looming and a seemingly never-ending parade of failed casting calls, Elektra's road to acting stardom is proving to be as rocky as ever.

It is Autumn in Linköping and the heavens have opened, but not even these biblical rains can wash away the blood of crimes, past and present. Then the brutally-stabbed body of self-made Internet billionaire Jerry Petersson is discovered floating face down in the moat surrounding his home, the imposing Skogså Castle. Malin Fors, the brilliant but flawed star of the Linköping police force, is already struggling to keep her life together following the recent murder attempt on her teenage daughter, Tove.

This is a story about a woman. And the truck driver who mistook her for a prostitute. The old man she robbed and the hunters who smuggled her across the border. The woman whose name she stole, the wife who turned a blind eye. This is the story of a mother searching for her child. This is a story you cannot stop thinking about.

Through the discovery of a precious friendship album which belonged to 12-year-old Alie, a Jewish schoolgirl in Amsterdam, Claudia Carli has traced and preserved the lives of an entire class of girls, most of whom did not survive the war. Alie and her friends are brought touchingly and vividly to life, along with their writings, in this extraordinary book. Their everyday hopes, pleasures and longings are offset by the constant fear of a knock on the door, a missing friend from class, a family member taken away.

Snowbound with society's most notorious rake, Ruth Hayden has to use every ounce of her defiant spirit to keep from falling into his arms. But behind his charm Sir Clayton Powell hides the pain and humiliation of a past betrayal. Recklessly, she seeks to silence the rumour mill - by announcing their engagement. Then wonders how Clayton will take advantage of the situation...

Do you believe in fairies? Join Tinker Bell's sisters on a magical adventure. Inspired by Tinker Bell from the book Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. Before Tinker Bell flew to Never Land and met Peter Pan, she lived on Sheepskerry Island with her fairy sisters - Clara, Lily, Rosie, Silver, and Squeak, the baby. The young fairies go to fairy school and love tea parties, dressing up, and exciting adventures. Lily's dressing-up dreams have come true - she's going to Queen Titania's annual fancy-dress competition.

Spitalfields, 1840. Catherine lives with her Uncle in a rambling house in London's East End, with little to occupy the days beyond her own colourful imagination. Then news reaches her of a disturbing murderer known as The Man of Crows. Catherine becomes more and more involved as she hungrily devours the news, and is soon snared in a deadly trap, where nothing is as it first appears...

My best friend was now my deadliest enemy, the one person I'd hate beyond all measure for the rest of my life…Franny Barker's best friend, Alice, is the worst girlfriend in the world according to the many boys of Merrycliffe-on-Sea. She toys with them, then dumps them. But she'll never dump fashion-obsessed Franny. Nothing and no one can come between them. Until Alice, jealous of Franny's new college friends, sets her sights on Louis.

Do you believe in fairies? Join Tinker Bell's sisters on a magical adventure, first in a brand-new series. Inspired by Tinker Bell, from the book Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie. Before Tinker Bell flew to Never Land and met Peter Pan she lived on Sheepskerry Island with her fairy sisters - Clara, Lily, Rosie, Silver, and Squeak the baby. The young fairies go to fairy school and love tea parties, dressing up, and exciting adventures. Every fairy on Sheepskerry Island is excited about Queen Mab's fairy ball. Everyone, that is, except Silver. She's too young to go - it's so unfair!

Evelyn Varley has always been ambitious and clever. As a girl, she earned a scholarship to a prestigious academy well above her parents’ means, gaining her a best friend from one of England’s wealthiest families. In 1939, with an Oxford degree in hand and war looming, Evelyn finds herself recruited into an elite MI5 counterintelligence unit. A secret society seeks an alliance with Germany and, posing as a Nazi sympathizer, Evelyn must build a case to expose their treachery. But as she is drawn deeper into duplicity, some of those close to her become embroiled in her investigation.

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter, with the language targeted at learners of English.