Showing results by author "Anna ." in All Categories

In Western Australia, Sarah chuckles as she describes her final will and testament—which will throw the metaphorical cat among the family pigeons—whilst sharing a bottle of wine with her neighbour Thomas as they sit on the terrace of her luxurious waterside home. Six months later, at the age of 95, she peacefully passes on. Married and widowed three times, Sarah has had a great life as a successful businesswoman. Now she's left her Australian house to her two great-nieces—on the condition that they live in it together for a year.

From atomic structures to theories about magnetic forces, scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials. However, science cannot tell us how to measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or how to sculpt stone into all kinds of shapes, or what it feels like to blow up a balloon of glass. Handmade is the story of materials through making and doing. Author and material scientist Anna Ploszajski journeys into the domain of makers and craftspeople to comprehend how the most popular materials really work.

In the closing months of WW1, with the world exhausted and depleted by a long a brutal war, fifteen nations cobbled together an army of nearly 200,000 men and embarked on one of the most extraordinary and ambitious military ventures of the twentieth century. The Intervention in Russia's civil war was spearheaded by Britain, her colonial forces and allies. It was designed to stop the Bolsheviks in their tracks, reinstate conservative regimes in the Russian Empire and ensure that Germany did not fill the power vacuum which the Russian Revolution had created.

Emma Cole has left behind her family and an ex-fiance to move to Chicago and start over. When a mix-up lands her a job at a high-profile law firm, Emma is determined to meet this new challenge head-on. What she didn't count on was working for a woman like Lillian White, and it doesn't take long for Emma to realize that she might be in over her head in more ways than one.

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.

Yes, I know it's not the 1800s. I'm just a bit obsessed with historical romance, that's all. And books in general, which is why I'm on my way to interview for my dream job at the library when Adrian Westfield's sheep-like hound knocks me over and into the mud. So I'm late, dirty, and completely flub my interview—only to get the offer of my life.

Lo is the ultimate middle-class mother, all perfectly polished Instagram posts and armchair activism. Dylan is just about surviving on a zero-hours telemarketing job from her flat, trying to keep food on the table. But when they meet at the school gates, they are catapulted into each other's homes and lives - with devastating consequences.

Warned not to write—and certainly not to bite—these women put pen to paper anyway and wrote themselves into history. From the fourteenth century through to the present day, women who write have been understood as mad, undisciplined, or dangerous. Female writers have always had to find ways to overcome or challenge these beliefs. Some were cautious and discreet, some didn’t give a damn, but all lived complex, eventful, and often controversial lives.

Evgeny Prigozhin emerged as one of the most dangerous warlords in the world and as one of Vladimir Putin's chief rivals in Russia's tumultuous political climate, exiled after leading Wagner's attempted coup and killed in a mysterious plane crash. But what is the truth about this enigmatic figure, his role in the war with Ukraine, and the chaos unleashed across Russia by his turn against Putin? And, the aftermath of his death, what is next for Russia in the new stage of late Putinism that Prigozhin's life forged?

When novelist Sophie Carr rescues a man from a group of paparazzi, she finds that her new neighbour is ageing pop star Jez Winter. She has loved his music for years and knows he has had a tough time lately, with a violent intruder and then a car accident putting his ability to play music at risk. Life’s not been easy for Sophie either, losing her husband just as she was taking off as a novelist and having her hands full with her children. While Jez and Sophie’s families continue to complicate their lives, Sophie also has a secret to hide.

As the Black Plague lays waste to Italy, Ginevra di Gasparo is summoned back to Florence after nearly a decade of lonely exile. Ginevra has a gift: using the ancient practices of alchemy she learned as a young girl, she can heal the sick. But when word traveled of her unusual craft, she was condemned as a witch and banished. Now, the same men who expelled Ginevra are begging for her return.

Museum curator Haven McKinney has sworn off men. All of them. Totally. She’s recently escaped a bad ex and started a new life for herself in San Francisco. She loves her job at the Hutton Museum, likes her new boss, and has made best friends with his feisty sister. Haven’s also desperately trying not to notice their brother: hotshot investigator Rhys Norcross. And she’s really trying not to notice his muscular body, sexy tattoos, and charming smile.

Hampshire, 1900: With the sudden death of her father, the life of 15-year-old Harriet Benson changes forever. Forced from her home, Harriet is sent into service to provide for the family. Arriving at the grand Dalton House, she meets the owners' crippled son Joseph, with whom friendship soon blossoms. When circumstances force Joseph to leave the family home, Harriet is happy to accompany him. But Harriet is unprepared for her inheritance of Greyladies, a supposedly haunted house in the country.

PI Billie Carlson is in Cleveland following a lead on the whereabouts of her son, Lucas. But when the trail goes cold, she is forced to return to Glasgow and a life of waiting and praying that one day she might see him again. Back in the office and ready to throw herself into work, she picks up a call from Lars, an old friend from her teenage years in Sweden. He tells her some devastating news. His younger sister, Astrid, was found dead in the Highlands, frozen to death with traces of drugs and alcohol in her system.

From the New York Times best seller Dima Zales comes an addictive urban fantasy saga with impossible creatures, biting humor, and edge-of-your-seat action. Join psychic Sasha Urban and her superpowered friends as they fight to save not only New York City, but the alternate dimensions they discover along the way. For a limited time, get all seven full-length novels in one convenient, discounted bundle.

Scholar. Sorceress. Killer. Priest. Four people divided by their secrets and lies, bound together by horror, must unite their strengths to unpick a diabolical mystery to which they have but one incomprehensible clue - a single word: Mhurghast. Glimpse what life looks like in Shyish, the Realm of Death, as an ancient family struggles with their place in the Mortal Realms. As it turns out, sometimes you must save yourselves.

Crime reporter Rosie Gilmour has learned to be tough. The places she’s been and the stories she’s covered, she’s had to be. Her experience stands her in good stead for a grisly new investigation: the body of a refugee in a Glasgow canal, missing limbs and vital organs. He’s not the first person to go missing – are there vigilantes at work or is there something far more sinister going on? It’s up to Rosie to find out – but will what she discovers leave her with murder on her hands?

Eleanor and Beatrice dream of lovematches but the Dowager insists romantic love is for housemaids, not for the Graceover women. Beatrice, despatched to London to look over the current crop of bachelors, is unimpressed by the frivolities of the Season. Disturbed by the languid charm of Lord Serle and appalled by the mercenary attitudes to marriage displayed by Society, Beatrice’s country innocence and unconventional behaviour lead her into some alarming situations.

This is a collection meant to be cherished for a lifetime. Whether encountering these cherished tales for the first or the 50th time, listeners will find enchantment in this collection.