Showing results by narrator "Anne Dover" in All Categories

Liverpool, 1958: nursery nurse Irene Miller falls for her friend Peggy's handsome older brother, Marty. But he is trapped in an unhappy marriage. Meanwhile, Irene's friend Peggy is desperate to marry her long-term boyfriend, Pete, but Peggy's staunchly Catholic parents would never accept a Protestant son-in-law. When her mother decides to remarry, her brother heads off to sea, and she loses her job, Irene feels utterly alone in the world. An unexpected job offer from America offers her a lifeline.

Maddy Kiernan knows her situation is desperate. With her parents dead, her brother Thomas is left as guardian to her and her sister, Carmel, and Thomas, Maddy is all too aware, only cares about himself. When his plans to marry the daughter of the Protestant canal agent backfire Thomas takes off to Liverpool, leaving the girls to fend for themselves against the lecherous agent. Taking the momentous decision to follow their brother, Maddy leaves for Liverpool. Within days the girls are destitute, reduced to living in a cellar, their money gone. Eventually, Maddy finds work as a maid to an old lady....

Gussie, Ned, and Jannie are not quite siblings, but they share a fiercely close and affectionate family bond. In their bohemian Cornish home, with a famous and distinguished artist as their father figure, they glory in their unusual upbringing and their unconventional, loving family life....Until one day a terrible tragedy destroys the foundations of that family, and they have to learn to cope on their own.

It is 1907. Liverpool is a bustling and busy city. Sisters Livvie and Amy Goodwin are just 16 and 13 years old when their adored mother dies in childbirth. They are still missing their mum every day when their father, Thomas, announces that he is going to marry again. His new bride is Mary Fitzgerald, a girl just a few years older than Livvie, and only time will tell whether Mary will be the kind of stepmother a motherless girl could love. There's more trouble ahead, for Thomas believes that he should make all the important decisions in his daughters' lives.

Laura Cannock is on the run. Suspected of killing her bullying husband, his family are on a merciless prowl for revenge. Fleeing from her beloved home of Bolton to Manchester, Laura seeks refuge with her coal merchant uncle. But it soon becomes clear that a roof over her head comes with a price - of the type so unbearable she must escape once more. Destitute and penniless, a stench-ridden housing court in the back streets of the factories is Laura’s only hope of a dwelling - a place where both the filth and the kindness of neighbours overwhelm.

Whitby 1901. Sarah Brook has kept diaries for most of her life. Now eighty-five and at the end of her own journey, she allows her favourite great-niece Esther to read them. But while full of Sarah's thoughts and dreams, and family stories, the diaries also hold dark family secrets about the past, which are about to be exposed... Whitby 1832. When their mother tragically dies, life changes dramatically for Sarah and her siblings.

Back in 1950 Pamela Rhodes became one of the first policewomen in the country. But the force's new female recruits faced a sceptical public in rural Yorkshire and even before they stepped out on the beat there were the prejudices of older male officers to overcome. Yet from the first Pam was thrust into the front line. From runaway bulls to investigating ladies of the night and cases of vice, her innocent eyes were quickly opened.

Hull, 1930. A terrified woman runs through the dark, rain-lashed streets pursued by a man, desperate to reach the sanctuary of the local police station. Alice Goddard runs with one thing in mind: her daughter. In her panic she is hit by a car and rushed to hospital. When she wakes, she has no memory of who she is, but at night she dreams of being hunted by a man, and of a little girl. The weeks pass, but even her own mother is evasive about the girl’s whereabouts. Penniless and homeless, Alice must rebuild her life, hoping that one day she will be reunited with her lost daughter.

In 1998, Helga Schneider, in her sixties, was summoned from Italy to the nursing home in Vienna in which her 90-year-old mother lived. The last time she had seen her mother was 27 years earlier, when her mother asked her daughter to try on the SS uniform which she treasures, and tried to give her several items of jewellery, the loot of holocaust victims, which Schneider rejected.

The extraordinary true story of surviving the unimaginable … In 1945, seven-year-old Barbie and her sister Eva were trapped, terrified, in wartorn Germany. With their father missing, and hundreds of miles from their mother, news of the approaching army left them confronted with an impossible choice: to face invasion, or to flee on foot.Eva, aged nineteen, was determined to find her mother.

Nell Goodman is a good daughter. Her job in the local brewery is the only thing keeping her and her mother afloat. But with her mother becoming increasingly eccentric, Nell is starting to feel the burden of her responsibilities. When Nell goes to George Wilmot, the brewery's owner, for help he offers her a job as a live-in servant. She begins to grow closer to Devlin, George's son, and it looks like Nell's luck is finally changing. An unwelcome discovery and tragedy mean that things suddenly change.

1959. Her modelling career in tatters and her long-term relationship with her sailor boyfriend at an end, 19-year-old Maggie Gregory returns to her family in Liverpool to lick her wounds and decide what to do with the rest of her life. A chance encounter with a handsome stranger offers the possibility of new romance. But is the man who gives his name as Tim Murphy really all he seems? What secrets has he been keeping from Maggie? And will this new relationship only lead to more heartbreak?

1273. Arriving in Byzantium, physician Anna Zarides resolves to prove the innocence of her brother, now in exile for conspiring to kill a nobleman. Unable to move freely in society as a woman, Anna must pose as a Eunuch and use her medical skills to manoeuvre close to the players involved in her brother’s fate. But time to find the truth is running out. A crusade to capture the Holy Land is brewing, and leaders have set their sights on Constantinople.

Industry in Yorkshire is booming and the cities are expanding. But this growth comes at a price: a valley in Nidderdale is doomed to be dammed and flooded to quench the cities' thirst. Rachel Garnett is determined to fight for her lovely valley and their way of life. Working against her is a young engineer, Roger Beckwith, who is planning a reservoir that will swamp the parish of Firby. Rachel works at Firby Hall, an Elizabethan mansion that will be demolished when the reservoir is built.

Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage, not knowing that the papers she has signed will entitle them to do what they like with the children. And it is not long before the powers that be decide to send a consignment of orphans to their sister institution in Australia. Among them - without their family's consent or knowledge - are Rita and Rosie.

When a couple renovate a beautiful 17th-century house in the Cotswolds, they discover the ghosts of the Civil War are still in residence. As Guy and Ruth delve into the property's history, uncovering both joy and sorrow, the house finally relinquishes its secrets, revealing how closely the family from the past is intertwined with the present-day owners. Why do they seem so familiar? Have they perhaps met before?

High above the Mediterranean, on the French Riviera, stands a beautiful pink stucco villa. Once a playground for the rich and glamorous, now—in the aftermath of World War I—it is a convalescent home for sick and wounded nurses. Scottish Flora Garvie is here recovering from four traumatic years on the ambulance trains. And here she will meet again charismatic but troubled Kit Carlyle, a regimental chaplain who no longer believes in his calling and certainly doesn't believe himself worthy of Flora's love.

Best friends Bernie and Molly are just seventeen when they set off from Ireland in 1928, heading for Liverpool. They quickly find jobs and rooms; soon both women are in love with local men. Tragically, though, Bernie is widowed when she's still barely an adult, while Molly has chosen a bad 'un and faces the deepest shame when he deserts her. But this difficult start only reinforces the bond between the women, and gives them the strength to build a brighter future...

When Anna Harvik goes to Norway in 1946 this beautiful country is still recovering from five cruel years of Nazi Occupation. Her late husband was a pilot in the Royal Norwegian Air Force and she has come to visit his homeland and meet his family, in spite of being in doubt about how she will be received. She stays with Molly, who with other English war-brides makes her welcome.

When John Mitchell inherits property from a distant relative, he and his family move from a comfortable living in Whitby to a large country estate in Cornwall. It seems an ideal place for John and his wife to raise their young daughter, Abigail. However, life in the South is not without its problems and he finds himself clashing with the Gaisfords, a powerful old Cornish family. Any problems the family encounter over the years, however, seem to be averted when Abigail marries handsome Luke Gaisford, in spite of her father's warning that still waters run deep.