Showing results by narrator "Paula Masterton" in All Categories

Orkney 2024: a terrible discovery on an idyllic beach in Fynhallow Bay: a teenage boy has been burned to death, a girl is missing, and another girl, Erin, is in hospital and remembers just one thing – she is Nyx. Her mother, Clem, waits by her bed, desperate to bring her daughter back to reality. Orkney 1594: accused of witchcraft, Alison Balfour awaits trial. The punishment? Death by burning. Separated by four hundred years but united by the ancient clan of magic-wielders, the Triskele, two women stand imperiled.

In the midst of the woods stands a house called Lichen Hall. This place is shrouded in folklore—old stories of ghosts, of witches, of a child who is not quite a child. Now the woods are creeping closer, and something has been unleashed. Pearl Gorham arrives in 1965, one of a string of young women sent to Lichen Hall to give birth. And she soon suspects the proprietors are hiding something. Then she meets the mysterious mother and young boy who live in the grounds—and together they begin to unpick the secrets of this place.

It’s the summer of 1929 and Mhairi MacKinnon is in need of a husband. As the eldest girl among nine children, her father has made it clear he can’t support her past the coming winter. On the small, Scottish island of St Kilda, her options are limited. But the MacKinnons’ neighbour, Donald, has a business acquaintance on distant Harris also in need of a spouse. A plan is hatched for Donald to chaperone Mhairi and make the introduction on his final crossing of the year, before the autumn seas close them off to the outside world.

Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian Nimmo is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess. Only a year before, Christian was leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn't the only woman in Forrester's life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead.

Someone has broken into Zoe’s flat. A man she thought she’d never have to see again. They call him the Hand of God. He knows about her job in the cafe, her life in Dublin, her ex-girlfriend, even the knife she’s hidden under the mattress. She thought she’d left him far behind, along with the cult of the Children and their isolated compound Home – but now he’s found her, and she knows she must go back to rescue the sister who helped her escape all those years before.

Marion Miller needs a fresh start. Her childhood in Northern Ireland wasn’t easy, with a father who passed away when she was young and a mother who got lost in grief. Now grown-up and with family relations as tense as ever, Marion heads to England, to find out the truth about her father’s mysterious past – and hopefully an extended family who will love her as much as he did.

Dot is a lonely pensioner. Max is a young offender. But a chance meeting in their local park changes everything for this unlikely duo. They soon find they share a wicked sense of humor and a penchant for petty crime. When Dot wins the lottery, Max helps her make a bucket list of all the things she's always wanted to do but never had the chance. The pair gradually realize that it's not just expensive gadgets, fast cars and fun fairs that make them happy. And that the secret to living a rich life isn't money.

In The King's Witches, the second novel from Kate Foster, the lives of three very different women in sixteenth-century Britain become intertwined as the first rumours of witchcraft grip the country.

Thirty-year-old Paige Dougall’s life is a mess. Only a year ago she was smashing all of her life goals - handsome husband, high-flying job, cute kid. But in just under 12 months, everything has gone wrong. Nursing a broken heart, single-mother Paige returns to Kindness Cottage, her childhood home nestled in a picture-perfect Scottish village. Despite the backdrop of rolling hills and lavender-scented air, Paige struggles to settle into her summer at Kindness Cottage. She’s too wrapped up in her own worries to embrace her surroundings...until Johnny Becker steps onto the scene.

Ember Spark has been working as an apprentice to Rusty Fizzbang, vet to magical creatures. When a baby frost phoenix guides her north to the Arctic circle, she soon realises that the migrating Neverwhales are at risk. And with arch-villain, Jasper Hornswoggle, tracking her, danger is afoot not just for the Neverwhales, but for ALL of the magical creatures.

Robbie and Jenn are meant to be. They've finally reconciled after eight months spent apart and both know that, this time, it's forever. But forever might not be as long as they think. As a truck hurtles towards their car on their way home, Robbie is thrown back into Jenn's past and he finds himself spectator in the most important moments of her life – golden moments from her childhood and heartbreaking ones from her teenage years; her exhausting time at med school and just where she's been for the last eight months. But he may find more than he bargained for ...

Twelve-year-old Phoebe's world is falling apart. It's the summer of 1985 and she has just buried her parents, a fire at their family home claiming both in a freak accident. Her life is uprooted in an instant, and she takes little solace in the fact that her uncle Louis and aunt Maude have generously offered to take her in at their home in the Welsh woods. Under the summer sun, though, Phoebe falls into the rhythm of life with her eccentric guardians in their curious idyllic home, the hum of her aunt Maude's beehives filling the air.

Rusty Fizzbang, vet to magical beasts, needs an apprentice. Ember Spark, looking for adventure, is his newest recruit - and together with an unlikely friend, Arno, she is sent to help a baby dragon whose parents have gone missing. But keeping magical beasts a secret isn’t an easy task, especially with arch-villain, Jasper Hornswoggle, hot on their heels and keen to derail them.

In 1890s Singapore, the formidable Miss Leda Cassidy arrives as paid companion to Sarah Jane Bendemeer, whose family suffers under the thrall of Southeast Asia's most terrifying hantu. But there's more to Miss Cassidy than meets the eye, and she's faced down worse in her life than a pontianak. However, she may have met her match in the indefatigable businessman, Mr Kay Wing Tong, whose large and constantly-growing family clearly requires female supervision—especially of the particular kind Miss Cassidy can provide.

You lose your virginity to a boy from your gender theory seminar, and the first person you tell is Ella. Ella's with you at the party when you first kiss a girl. And Ella takes you to the hospital the first time you're diagnosed. Over the next few years you have a string of relationships and jobs, but you can always count on Ella to be there for you - until the drinking and the parties, the hospital visits and late-night calls, blur the lines of your friendship into something unbalanced and fragile, at risk of breaking altogether.

Being head of a family is what she knows best. A decade ago, Cara Fraser, wife to one of Glasgow’s most notorious gangsters, was left a widow after Kyle Fraser was slain on the city streets. The intervening years haven’t been easy – not least as Kyle’s murder left her to bring up little Ryan and Sean alone. Now, Ryan and Sean are adults, and honouring their father’s memory by rising up to become the top gangsters on the dark streets of Glasgow.

Nineteen-year-old Sarah wakes up one morning feeling that something big, something irrevocable has happened on Black Crag, a small seaside village of around a few hundred people. To this remote community it seems as though the rest of the world had gone to sleep - aeroplanes no longer criss-cross the sky, the radios have gone silent and the ferry no longer brings their supplies. It's almost as if there is no world at all, when life begins and ends with the slate-coloured waves outside their front door.

After rowing out to an island near their seaside home, Tulsi and Satchen discover a whale that has been trapped in a fishing net. Determined to try to free the poor creature, they repeatedly dive down into the freezing sea to cut the netting, but eventually, exhausted and with a storm rolling in, they have to admit defeat. As they head for home to seek help, their boat capsizes in the storm and they’re left clinging to it, dangerously adrift. Just as they think all is lost, help arrives from an unexpected source.

Ava’s daughter, Carly, is everything a 10-year-old should be: energetic, creative, and the light of her parent’s lives. But when she starts stumbling down stairs and walking into doors, Ava wants to rush to the doctor. Her husband, Rick, is sure she’s fretting over nothing - kids can be a little clumsy sometimes. But Ava’s instinct is telling her something is seriously wrong. Ava takes Carly to see a specialist and is given a devastating diagnosis: a rare genetic condition that will change her future forever.

The perfect weekend away. A remote lodge, old friends... and murder. Set in a remote Scottish lodge in the depths of winter, this explosive and disturbing thriller asks what happens when dark secrets finally come to light. When a group of female friends gather at a beautiful but isolated Scottish island lodge for a weekend away, they're looking forward to relaxing, sharing updates on their lives, reminiscing... The furthest thing from their minds is death. But even though they've known each other since high school, some of these women have secrets.