Showing results by narrator "Caitlin Thorburn" in All Categories

Penina has grown up believing the Orthodox Jewish teaching that there is one soulmate out there for everyone. But now she's twenty-nine and single, she's staring to wonder if she's the exception. She has tried everything to find 'the one' and after yet another disastrous date, she can feel even her faith starting to dwindle. Add to that spending her days surrounded by diamond engagement rings in the jewellery store where she works and her new boss, Sam Kleinfeld, making her life a living hell, and Penina feels more hopeless than ever.

An epic, emotional story of two girls and their bond with beloved horses, the action sweeping between Italy during the Second World War and present day. When Lola's grandmother, Loretta, takes her to Siena, Italy, for the summer, Lola learns of her family's history of heartbreak and adventure, stretching back to the Second World War. In 1945 Loretta's nickname was ‘The Daredevil' due to her fearless competing in the town's famous Palio horse races - until war broke out and led to sadness and loss for Loretta.

As well as being a prize-winning, best-selling novelist, Siri Hustvedt is widely regarded as a leading thinker in the fields of neurology, feminism, art criticism and philosophy. She believes passionately that art and science are too often kept separate and that conversations across disciplines are vital to increasing our knowledge of the human mind and body, how they connect and how we think, feel and see.

Helena Nicholls - ex world-famous pop star and prime-time DJ - wakes up in hospital to find her looks, her career and her personal life in tatters. She has been let down by her boyfriend, and the one person she loved most in the world - her best friend since the age of five - is dead. She feels that she belongs nowhere, and her sense of identity, fragile at the best of times, is in pieces. So Helena turns to the one thing that has always got her through, the one thing that has real resonance: music.

Who is Eva Thorvald? To her single father, a chef, she's a pint-sized recipe tester and the love of his life. To the chili chowdown contestants of Cook County, Illinois, she's a fire-eating demon. To the fashionable foodie goddess of supper clubs, she's a wanton threat. She's an enigma, a secret ingredient that no one can put their finger on. Eva will surprise everyone. On the day before her 11th birthday, she's cultivating chili peppers in her wardrobe like a pro.

In a world where everyone has their perfect match, 17-year-old Lila Black is sick of Cupid's Matchmaking Service spamming her. But her world is turned inside-out when she learns not only that cupids exist, but that she's been matched with the infamous god of love, Cupid. The only catch? She can't actually fall for Cupid; if she does, all of mythical hell will break loose, and it won't be pretty. As arrows fly and feelings become stronger, can Cupid and Lila resist each other's magnetic pull?

Hildy Good has reached that dangerous time in a woman’s life – middle-aged and divorced, she is an oddity in her small but privileged town. But Hildy isn’t one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grown-up children stage ‘an intervention’ and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn’t she enjoy a drink now and then? But we start to see another side to Hildy Good.

Even a lone wolf wants to belong.... Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in an ex-commune beside a lake in the beautiful, austere backwoods of Northern Minnesota. The other girls at school call Linda 'Freak' or 'Commie'. Her parents mostly leave her to her own devices whilst the other inhabitants have grown up and moved on. So when the perfect family - mother, father and their little boy, Paul - move into the cabin across the lake, Linda insinuates her way into the family's orbit.

Eighteen-year-old Hattie Hoffman is a talented actress, loved by everyone in her Minnesotan hometown. When she's found stabbed to death on the opening night of her school play, the tragedy rips through the fabric of the community. Sheriff Del Goodman, a close friend of Hattie's dad, vows to find her killer, but the investigation yields more secrets than answers: it turns out Hattie played as many parts offstage as on.

Siri Hustvedt's relentlessly curious mind and expansive intellect are on full display in this stunning new collection of essays, whose subjects range from the nature of memory and time to what we inherit from our parents, the power of art during tragedy, misogyny, motherhood, neuroscience and the books we turn to during a pandemic.

Change is sometimes hard to face up to. Rachel is a rising tennis star. But does she want success more than she wants a 'real' life, and a steady boyfriend like everyone else? Susie is Rachel's mother. All she wants is her partner Billy - but he's left her, and it's a huge shock. Is she brave enough to start again? Gordana is Rachel's grandmother. She has everything she ever wanted: health, wealth and a loving family - or at least she thinks she does. Ivan is the link between them all.

When Josie O'Casey returns to London after 12 years in America, she is overjoyed to discover that her childhood sweetheart Patrick Nolan, who she believed to be dead, is alive and well. But Josie's happiness is short-lived - Patrick now belongs to another. Heartbroken, Josie vows to forget about Patrick and settle back into life in the East End. But the East End that Josie knew as a child is much changed. While Josie can remember only too clearly her poverty-stricken upbringing, her family's social standing has vastly improved since they've been away.

A pacy, chilling psychological thriller, set to reinvent the genre. It begins, they say, with a woman screaming.... On a remote Scottish island, the McBride house stands guard over its secrets. A century ago, a young widow and her son died mysteriously there; just last year a local boy, visiting for a dare, disappeared without a trace. For Zoe Adams, newly arrived from America, the house offers a refuge from her failing marriage. But her peaceful retreat is disrupted by strange and disturbing events....

New York, present day. Karen Brown, angry and frightened after surviving a kidnap attempt, has a harsh choice - elimination by government enforcer Jeffery Renschman or fleeing to the mysterious Roma Nova, her dead mother's homeland in Europe. Founded 16 centuries ago by Roman exiles and ruled by women, Roma Nova gives Karen safety and a ready-made family - at a price.

Glamour and suspense in the all-new Sidney Sheldon from the international best seller Tilly Bagshawe.Grace Brookstein is the beautiful, young, and naive wife of financial superstar, Leonard Brookstein - a billionaire many times over with estates all over the world.

Get ready for the next must-have on your reading list. Gone Girl meets The Girl on the Train in this stunning, unsettling psychological thriller. A baby goes missing. But does her mother want her back? When Estelle's baby daughter is taken from her cot, she doesn't report her missing. Days later, Estelle is found in a wrecked car, with a wound to her head and no memory. Estelle knows she holds the key to what happened that night - but what she doesn't know is whether she was responsible.

While on holiday in Montana, Hope meets local boy Cal Crow, a ranch hand. Caught in a freak accident, the two of them take shelter in a mountain cabin where Hope makes a strange discovery. More than a 100 years earlier, another English girl met a similar fate. Her rescuer: a horse trader called Nate. In this wild place, both girls learn what it means to survive and to fall in love, neither knowing that their fates are intimately entwined.

From best-selling author and teacher Mary Maccracken comes the engaging and inspiring story of five troubled children she fought to bring back from the brink. Joey is the class clown but alone proves to be an intensely dark seven-year old who still can't read. Eric is a kindergartener left withdrawn and speechless by the horrors he's witnessed at home. Alice appears to be the model fifth-year child but secretly scores zero on every maths test.

Saskia and Jenny are twins, alike in appearance only: Saskia has a single-minded focus on her studies, while Jenny is glamorous, thrill-seeking and capricious. Still, when Jenny is severely injured in an accident, Saskia puts her life on hold for her sister. Sara and Mattie are sisters with another difficult dynamic: Mattie needs almost full-time care, while Sara loves nothing more than fine wines, perfumes and expensive clothing, and leaves home at the first opportunity.

Esther and Laura have been best friends since they were seven, when Esther was chubby and Laura was already perfect. So much has changed since then, but they are still inextricably linked to one another. So when Esther is told that Laura has gone missing, she leaves everything behind to trace her friend's last movements. All she has is an email from Laura: 'I'm channelling Drew Barrymore, as ever. The Gospel, right?'