Showing results by narrator "Katy Sobey" in All Categories

Ellie Truman’s widowed mum is struggling to keep Gwel Teg, the family hotel in Cornwall, afloat. Ellie is determined to do everything in her power to help her, even if that means moving back to the sleepy Cornish village she fled from broken-hearted a few years ago. Things go wrong from the start, and she’s grateful for the help from hunky guest Reece Mitchell. But does Reece have ulterior motives? Will Ellie’s efforts be for nothing?

Matriarch Kitty Conlon is missing her son Patrick, proud but fearful of the fate of his Spitfire, while spinster Mavis welcomes a new lodger, WAAF Anna Carswell who is delighted by the Weaver Street welcome after a loveless childhood. At number nine, Maggie Stubbs worries nightly as her daughter Lily patrols the streets to protect the neighbours during air raids in her role as ARP Warden, and when an unexploded bomb is discovered at the allotment, danger comes terrifyingly close to Weaver Street.

Alex Mullins knows she is one of the lucky ones. When a fatal coach crash at her school reunion killed several of her classmates, she was saved from a grisly fate. She is haunted by what she thinks she saw that night - a vision of a skeletal woman, known by the locals as the Bonehead - a woman who brings bad luck to all that see her. Now a police officer in Gloucestershire, Alex fights to overcome the past by helping other people. But when her path crosses with someone who was there that fateful night, her new life begins to unravel at the seams.

With the country on the brink of war, single mother Jean embraces her ten-year-old daughter, Valerie, before she puts her on a train to Somerset alongside hundreds of other evacuees. Jean’s heart breaks as she vows they’ll be together again soon, knowing it’s a promise she might not be able to keep. Wrenched away from her mother and everything familiar, Valerie arrives in Somerset and nervously waits in the village hall to find a host family.

Harriet Manners knows that a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a “jiffy” lasts a hundredth of a second, and the average person laughs 15 times per day. She knows that bats always turn left when exiting a cave and that peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. But she doesn’t know why nobody at school seems to like her. So when Harriet is spotted by a top model agent, she grabs the chance to reinvent herself.

Isadora Moon Makes Winter Magic: Isadora loves playing in the snow, especially when her creations come to life! But snow magic can't last forever. Will she be able to save her new friends before they melt away? Isadora Moon Goes to the Fair: Isadora is excited for her first ever trip to the fun fair, but when she arrives it's not quite as magical as she expected. Luckily, her cousin Mirabelle has a plan to make the fairground rides extra special. What could possibly go wrong?

After a stint inside, notorious gangster Nathan Conlon is back. He says he’s a changed man, but old habits die hard on Liverpool’s gritty streets. He’ll stop at nothing to reclaim his formidable criminal empire—and his long-suffering ex-wife, Grace. Grace once kissed the ground that Nathan walked on, but not anymore. She’s head of the firm now, commanding respect from the best of them, and she’ll do anything to protect her family—even if it means beating Nathan at the dirtiest of games.

When World War II breaks out, Carrie Anderson sets up a bookstall at her local train station in the hope of providing a sense of escapism for travellers, troops and evacuees. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and armed with a colourful array of Penguin paperbacks, Carrie’s business soon booms. And when she gifts a book to a dashing officer, an act of kindness becomes the beginning of Carrie’s very own love story. But as war rages on, and Mike is posted abroad, Carrie’s world is turned upside-down.

She steps into the room and it’s like going back in time. Catapulting her right into the heart of the 1940s. The spindle of the record player frozen and ready to play. The flowery wallpaper faded but intact. A soldier’s uniform pressed and hung on a door, coal still in the fireplace.

Eleven-year-old Shelley only leaves her bedroom for two minutes, but when she gets back, there's a real, true-life, lavender-eyed baby on her bed. It's far too noisy, smelly and heavy to be a ghost baby - so whose is it? It can't be her mum's - Shelley would have noticed - but it's not like she's around for Shelley to ask, anyway. She's too busy trying to get her horrible ex-boyfriend Scott ('the Toadstool') back, who Shelley definitely does NOT like as much as her mum does. But someone's got to look after the baby, and give her a name.  

Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband, Richard, is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn't supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy. Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby and to prove the physician wrong.

Harriet Manners knows many things. She knows that toilet roll was invented by the Chinese in 600 AD. She knows that a comet’s tail always points away from the sun. And she knows that the average healthy heart beats 70 times per minute. Even when it’s broken. But she knows nothing about making new friends at Sixth Form. Or why even her old friends seem to be avoiding her. And she knows even less about being a glittering supermodel success. Which she now is - apparently.

In December 2012, something happened that would turn Hannah Russell's world upside down. A promising young rider with two horses of her own, Hannah recently had been given the devastating news that she would never ride again. That morning in December, local Shetland pony breeder pulled up and asked Hannah if she wanted another horse. The woman said she had a six-month-old Shetland pony she couldn't keep. Without a moment's thought, Hannah said yes.

Renowned novelist and poet Thomas Hardy is best known for his fatalistic, often tragic novels set in the 'realistic dream-country' of Wessex, in south and south-west England. Drawing on his own life, he created some of the most memorable characters and stories in Victorian literature—many of which are included here. In five dramas taken from Radio 4's 'Hardy's Women' season, we meet a few of Thomas Hardy's most compelling female protagonists.

When a beautiful, red haired nurse’s body is found mutilated in her house in Lawley the morning after a date with Detective Constable Ryan Downey, all eyes turn to him. With a very specific modus operandi, Detective Sergeant Jenna Morgan and her team know exactly who the offender is; the trouble is he’s currently serving a life stretch in HMP Long Lartin. It soon becomes evident to DS Morgan and her team that there may be a copycat killer on the loose.

The key to living a happier, healthier life is inside us. Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain or our heart, yet we know very little about how it works. In Gut, Giulia Enders shows that rather than the utilitarian and - let's be honest - somewhat embarrassing body part we imagine it to be, it is one of the most complex, important, and even miraculous parts of our anatomy.

Lydia is killed in a car accident, but she returns to her bereft sister as a benign ghost who nonetheless comes to haunt the lives of those around her in unexpected ways: Jonathan Goldman, whose flat Lydia is running from when she is knocked down; his daughter, Stella, who has discovered her father has been having an affair with the gladiatorial Sonia; Stella's genius painter-boy lover, Izzy, whom she leaves behind as she flees to the arms of kindly Peregrine. Along with good stepmothers, bad mothers, strange professors and wicked monks, their lives collide in a breathtaking finale.

To Philomena McCarthy, being a police officer means never turning your back on someone in trouble. So when a decorated detective beats his girlfriend and the case is covered up, Phil secretly helps her. But as Phil lets her new friend deeper into her life, sinister things start happening. And by the time she's truly afraid, it's already too late . . .

Emily Smith was held in a prison of fear for 10 years. When she was four, her father left and a new man was brought into her life. He loved her, he kept telling her so, but the emotional and physical abuse she suffered at his hands were a daily nightmare. Until one day, after he crept into her bedroom, her life became unbearable. Emily found she was different in another way as her autism became more noticeable and punishments for her 'abnormal' behaviour more severe. Astonishingly, she managed to escape her home of hell, where she was abused right in front of her mother.

Discipline is a vital part of child-rearing, but many parents misunderstand how to use it and attempt to control their child's behaviour via a combination of punishment and motivation. Yet while this traditional approach may appear to produce quick results, it can potentially damage the child and, in the long term, leave parents with a far worse problem than they had initially. The Gentle Discipline Book analyses common discipline techniques and explains why so many are ineffective.