Showing results by narrator "Eilidh Beaton" in All Categories

How do we give a voice to those who so often remain unheard? Will You Read This, Please is a frank and impactful collection of twelve stories as told to our best British writers, based on the lived experience of people who have faced mental illness in the UK. Edited by Joanna Cannon, the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, Three Things About Elsie and A Tidy Ending, the stories told here are powerful, resonant and heart-breaking. This is a ground-breaking and unforgettable collection, shining a light on the stigma and isolation of living with mental illness.

Since having to drop out of her design degree, Bella Douglas has been unlucky in just about everything life has thrown at her. She’s lost more jobs than she cares to remember and despite her Granny Isla’s best attempts to set her up with every eligible bachelor in the Scottish Highlands and she’s still single. Currently PA to her best friend, aka, Lady Olivia MacBain, at the 17th century Drumblair Castle, Bella is yet to find a role that sets her soul on fire.

Forty-one-year old Cassandra Mackerel is loved up and happily remarried to new husband Jamie. Together they have a ready-made family and a six-month-old baby boy. Juggling her own children with stepchildren and an infant is both hectic and stressful, especially with a mother-in-law who seems to have taken up permanent residence. The last thing Cass needs is the reappearance of husband Jamie’s ex-girlfriend Selina. Gorgeous and glamorous but utterly unstable, Selina once stalked Cass and contrived to split her and Jamie up. And now Selina is engaged to Jamie’s business partner.

Brimming with romance, adventure and vivid historical detail, Christina Courtenay does for the Vikings what Diana Gabaldon's Outlander and Clanlans does for Scottish history. The long-awaited story of Ivar Thoresson, foster brother of Linnea and Madison Berger, is told in Promises of the Runes!

Meet Jen. Flight attendant. Mum to a grown-up daughter. Permanently single. A heart-warming and hilarious novel that proves age is just a number and it’s never too late for a second chance. Fans of Kristen Bailey, Sophie Kinsella and Jill Mansell will be totally hooked from the start.

They live 500 miles apart. Yet their lives are about to collide. Lissa loves her job as a nurse, but recently she's been doing a better job of looking after other people than looking after herself. After a traumatic incident at work leaves her feeling overwhelmed, she agrees to swap lives with someone in a quiet village in Scotland. Cormac is restless. Just out of the army, he's desperately in need of distraction and there's precious little of it in Kirrinfief. Maybe three months in London is just what he needs.

Everyone in Saxford St Peter flocks to Lovelace Sunday, the festival celebrating the romantic history of beautiful Lovelace Manor. This year will be even more exciting, as famous TV historian Cammie Harington is planning a spectacular stunt with a hot-air balloon for her new show. Eve Mallow jumps at the chance to volunteer–it’s a great people-watching opportunity. But she soon realizes there is no love lost between Cammie and the family that owns the manor...so why did Cammie agree to come? When Cammie’s hot-air balloon tumbles from the sky, Eve feels sure this is no accident.

When two young boys discover human bones buried beneath a tree in a trailer park, Detective Josie Quinn races to join her team at the scene. She used to play in those woods as a child, happier outside and away from her abusive mother, Belinda Rose. Josie’s past crashes into her present when a rare dental condition confirms the bones belong to a teenage foster-child who was murdered 30 years ago. A girl named Belinda Rose.

Employed at a trendy city centre coffee shop, quirky, pink-haired Star spends her days fantasising about a handsome businessman she serves daily. He's totally out of her league, but a girl can dream. Fin Hunter is exhausted from striving for his father's love and approval and of following a life path of his family’s making. When things go wrong, Fin decides it’s time to stand on his own two feet and follow his own dream. Star is bereft when he stops coming to her coffee shop, but a chance encounter in an unlikely place leaves her wondering if her fantasy could now become a reality?

Thea’s having a bad month. Not only has she been made redundant, she’s also discovered her husband of nearly 20 years is sleeping with one of her friends. And he’s not sorry - he’s leaving. Bewildered and lost, Thea doesn’t know what to do. But, when she learns the great-uncle she barely knew has died and left her his huge collection of secondhand books and a house in the Scottish Lowlands, she seems to have been offered a second chance. Running away to a little town where no one knows her seems like exactly what Thea needs.

1976: Peggy Hillcoat is eight. She spends her summer camping with her father, playing her beloved record of The Railway Children, and listening to her mother's grand piano, but her pretty life is about to change. Her survivalist father, who has been stockpiling provisions for the end, which is surely coming soon, takes her from London to a cabin in a remote European forest. There he tells Peggy the rest of the world has disappeared.

They say there’s no place like home and for Roo Clarke this couldn’t be more true. Fourteen years ago she left the sparkling shores of Apple Hill Bay for America, leaving behind her childhood best friend Theo Lucas, and with him a piece of her heart. Nothing has felt right since then, and though she’s certain Theo has long since moved on from their hometown, Roo has high hopes that the exciting new job that’s brought her back here and the quirky beach hut she’ll make her own will fill her heart again.

Valerie Rousseau is burning with determination to help free her beloved France from the Nazi regime. Working at the mysterious Bletchley Park, she strikes up an unexpected bond with smart, fiercely loyal Fran Morgan as they spend long days together with their heads bent over maps of France in preparation for the Allied invasion.

Escape to the Scottish Highlands where a tiny bookshop perches on the edge of a loch. Zoe is a single mother, sinking beneath the waves trying to cope by herself in London. Hari, her gorgeous little boy, is perfect in every way - except for the fact that he just doesn't speak at all. When her landlord raises the rent on her flat, Zoe doesn't know where to turn. Then Hari's aunt suggests Zoe could move to Scotland to help run a bookshop. Going from the lonely city to a small village in the Highlands could be the change Zoe and Hari desperately need.

Detective Josie Quinn is horrified when she’s called to the house of a mother who had her newborn baby snatched from her arms. A woman caught fleeing the scene is Josie’s only lead, but when questioned it seems this mysterious girl doesn’t know who she is, where she’s from, or why she is so terrified.... Is she a witness, a suspect, or the next victim? As Josie digs deeper, a letter about a mix-up at a fertility clinic links the nameless girl and the missing child to a spate of killings across the county.

Born into a family of successful pilots, Morag is used to flying high. But when a tragic accident above the clouds grounds her, could the future she'd always imagined be suddenly out of reach? When she receives a call telling her that her beloved grandfather has been taken ill, Morag leaves her fast-paced life in London to return home to the tranquil Scottish Highlands. With her grandfather out of action, Morag has no choice but to take over flying the local route in his rickety old plane, ferrying locals across the beautiful islands of the archipelago.

With a shattered heart and her career completely in tatters, Lucy needs to get away from her life in the UK. But, when she takes a job as hotel manager of the Northern Lights Lodge, she doesn’t quite expect to find herself in a land of bubbling hot springs and snowflake-dusted glaciers - and in the company of gorgeous Scottish barman Alex. Determined to turn her life around, Lucy sets about making the lodge the number one romantic destination in Iceland - even though romance is the last thing she wants.

Lexie Dunbar is a book lover. And her favourite place in the world is her local bookstore, Book Ends. So when she hears that it’s going to be sold, Lexie decides she needs to do something to help. Lexie’s plan to save the ailing shop is fully underway until gorgeous-but-grouchy artist Tobias Black arrives on the scene determined to turn the bookstore into an art gallery. Lexie is horrified, the last thing the quaint town of Bracken Way needs is a pretentious artist, even if he does seem to charm everyone but her.

Almost a year has passed since Stella and Tom discovered a time tunnel and travelled to early 1900s London, where they befriended Emma, Lucy ,and Jack. The magical moles that made the tunnel and secret lake appear have since vanished, but the children are longing to meet again. Then an illness, which puts Emma’s life in danger, changes everything. The moles reappear, just when needed, and Lucy realizes the only hope of finding a cure lies in the future.

Kitt Hartley wakes to the news that a murder has been committed in Irendale, a village high on the wild Yorkshire moors where her boyfriend, DI Malcolm Halloran lived with his ex-wife until she, too, was murdered. The MO of the two crimes is identical, right down to the runic symbols carved into the victims' hands. Unable to leave it to the local police to solve, Kitt and Halloran travel to Irendale, where a literary mystery awaits. A line of Anglo-Saxon poetry found on the victim leads to a hiding place, and another cryptic clue.