Showing results by narrator "Katy Sobey" in All Categories

Lady Charlotte Lovett should have never run away upon discovering her betrothal. But when one has been promised to a man who, rumor has it, killed his previous two wives, one does what one must. The only thing that can get her out of this engagement is proving that Viscount Hawley is as sinister as she thinks he is. And the person who would know best is his very own brother.

When Caitlin moved from London to New York, she thought she had left her problems behind. But now, down to her last dollar in a foreign city, she is desperately lonely. And then she meets Jake. Handsome, smart, slightly damaged Jake. He lives off-grid, in a lakeside commune whose members practise regular exercise. Before long, Caitlin has settled into her idyllic new home. But as the commune tightens its grip on her freedom and her sanity, Caitlin realises too late that she might become lost forever....

When Molly Holden’s husband, Thomas, is convicted of being a Luddite on the word of a secret informer, he is sentenced to be transported to Australia. Left with their baby daughter, Molly must find work to survive. But the man who informed on Thomas is a former suitor of Molly’s, and Isaac believes that with Thomas out of the way she will return to him....

Dr Isla Fenwick has a life that most modern women of 1933 might envy - her career gives her status, her pedigree adds freedom and her oldest crush, Jovian Mandeville, has reappeared in her life with a marriage proposal. Her life is beginning to feel complete. However, she insists on keeping a private promise she made to her late mother to work at the coalface of medicine in India before committing to life as a dutiful wife.

As the storm clouds gather over Europe, life at Easterleigh Hall is about to change again. 1937. Evie and her family have struggled to keep Easterleigh Hall, now a hotel, running during the depression, and with war looming, she worries for the children, who have to find their way in a changing world. Bridie is learning her trade at her mother Evie’s side, and is becoming a talented chef. Her cousin James has run away to fight in Spain, leaving the family devastated.

When Annie Trebarwith unexpectedly inherits Tregavara House, her much-loved family home atop the cliffs of Salt Bay, she begins to wonder: with all the good friends and warm memories she’s made in the village, could it be her forever home? Luckily her gorgeous Poldark-lookalike boyfriend, Josh Pasco, has exactly the same idea. High on the Cornish cliffs he gets down on one knee, and Annie has everything she’s ever dreamed of.

Magical machines, wizards, witches, mysterious underworlds, a race against time - and two most magical girls. Annabel Grey has been brought up to be a very proper Victorian young lady. But being 'proper' isn't always easy - especially when you can sometimes see marvellous (as well as terrifying) things in puddles. But parlour tricks such as these are nothing compared to the world that Annabel is about to enter....

Yasmin would give anything to have a friend...and do anything to keep one. The first time I saw you, you were standing at the far end of the playing field. You were looking down at your brown, straggly dog, but then you looked up, your mouth going slack as your eyes clocked her. Alice Taylor. I was no different. I used to catch myself gazing at the back of her head in class, at her silky, fair hair swaying between her shoulder blades.

Some friendships are meant to be.... A story about family, friendship, and belonging from best-selling author Sarah Lean. Hope lives with her artist mum in the Pyrenees. It's always been just the two of them...until Frank - a free-spirited traveller - arrives with his donkey, Harry. Hope and Frank form a close bond, so it's hard for both of them when Frank decides it's time to move on. Hope questions what she is to Frank. He's not her dad, but he was more than just her mum's boyfriend. Except there's no name for that kind of pair....

It is 1943, and a month into their service as Land Girls, Bee, Anne and Pauline are dispatched to a remote farm in rural Scotland. Here they are introduced to the realities of 'lending a hand on the land', as back-breaking work and inhospitable weather mean they struggle to keep their spirits high. Soon one of the girls falters, and Bee and Pauline receive a new posting to a Northumberland dairy farm. Barbara Whitton's autobiographical novel paints a sometimes funny, sometimes bleak picture of time spent in the Women's Land Army during the Second World War.

Martha is lost. She’s been lost since she was a baby, abandoned in a suitcase on the train from Paris. Ever since, she’s waited in the station's lost property for someone to claim her. It’s been 16 years, but she’s still hopeful. In the meantime, there are mysteries to solve: secret tunnels under the station, a suitcase that may have belonged to the Beatles, the Roman soldier who appears at the same time every day with his packed lunch. Not to mention the stuffed monkey that someone keeps misplacing.

Kitty Marchland has always known that her family isn't like others. But when her father uproots them to a remote cottage in the woods, she realises that her parents are keeping secrets from her - secrets that could unravel everything. Years later, Kitty starts to question what really happened out in the forest. When the police revisit a suspicious death, she must examine her most painful memories - and this time, there’s nowhere to hide.

Cleo loves winter in Wavebreak Bay. As the tourists leave, the temperatures drop, the fairy lights go up and it really starts to feel like home again. It also happens to be the time of year that her best friend Eliot comes back from San Francisco. Though the seasons change, not much else in Cleo's life does. She's in a people-pleasing rut taking the worst shifts at the family restaurant, pet-sitting for her parents and making little time for herself. Cleo has spent so long thinking about everyone around her that she's lost sight of what she wants.

Two refugee brothers from Mongolia are determined to fit in with their Liverpool schoolmates, but bring so much of Mongolia to Bootle that their new friend and guide, Julie, is hard-pressed to know truth from fantasy as she recollects a wonderful friendship that was abruptly ended when Chingis and his family were forced to return to Mongolia. Told with the humour, warmth, and brilliance of detail which characterises Frank Cottrell Boyce's writing, The Unforgotten Coat is a magical and compelling story.

When Cassie Jensen arrives on the intensive care ward in St Catherine's hospital, Alice Marlowe, the chief nurse, is fascinated by this young, beautiful woman who strikes her as familiar, yet she doesn't know why. But then Alice is astonished to discover something about Cassie that she has been keeping secret from everyone, including her devoted husband and family - a secret that changes everything.

Life is going well for Maria. Welcomed into the Saward family, she has secured herself a job as a maid for Queen Alexandra and is living with her family in a beautiful cottage on the Royal Sandringham estate. The luxuries and privilege associated with the royal family are a far cry from the poverty and suffering she endured before, though the royals, like the nation, are tightening their belts. But when a mysterious relative turns up, seemingly on the run from the law, Maria's new-found happiness could be under threat.

Clover Quinn was a surprise. She used to imagine she was the good kind, now she's not sure. She'd like to ask Dad about it, but growing up in the saddest chapter of someone else's story is difficult. She tries not to skate on the thin ice of his memories. Darren has done his best. He's studied his daughter like a seismologist on the lookout for waves and surrounded her with everything she might want - everything he can think of, at least - to be happy. What Clover wants is answers.

It's 1915, and Ada, Jessie and Beatrice Saward live in a small Norfolk village with their parents. Their father, Harry, is the station master at Wolferton, the local stop for the Sandringham Estate. With members of the royal family and their guests passing through the train station on their way to Sandringham, the Saward family have a unique position within their small community.

When Jennet and Titus Eastwood are forced to move from their idyllic cottage into the centre of Blackburn to find work in the cotton mills, their lives are changed in ways they could never have imagined, and their new home on Paradise Lane is anything but. Then Titus is arrested and sent to prison for attending a Reform meeting. Jennet is left to fend for herself, and things go from bad to worse as she finds herself pregnant and alone - with another man's child.

Freya has a new virtual assistant. It knows what she likes, knows what she wants and knows whose voice she most needs to hear: her missing sister's. It adopts her sister's personality, re-creating her through a life lived online. This data ghost knows everything about Freya's sister: every date she ever went on, every photo she took, every secret she ever shared. In fact it knows things it shouldn't be possible to know. It's almost as if her sister is still out there somewhere, feeding fresh updates into the cloud.