Showing results by narrator "Ell Potter" in All Categories

Issy is the perfect combination of gay and depressed. Living in Margate with her mum and pet chinchilla, she has always drawn inside the lines. Crafting is her biggest comfort - the way she quiets her thoughts. So when an artist comes calling with Issy's dream internship, she knows it is time to start living her life at last. Moving to Hackney, Issy has a lot of firsts to catch up on - falling for housemates, navigating sex and dating, and avoiding the neighbour who seems to hate you for no good reason.

Wren Greenrock has always known that one day she would steal her sister’s place in the palace. Trained from birth to avenge her parents’ murder and usurp the princess, she will do anything to rise to power and protect the community of witches she loves. Princess Rose Valhart knows that with power comes responsibility, including marriage into a brutal kingdom. Life outside the palace walls is a place to be feared, and she is soon to discover that it’s wilder than she ever imagined.

Lady Mary Montagu Douglas Scott has a secret. Overlooked and underestimated by all who meet her, the wallflower daughter of Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch has a sharp intelligence and keen powers of observation. Traits that make her perfect to uncover society crimes – those whose wealthy victims have their pride and reputation at stake. Unnoticed amongst the ballrooms of grand houses, Mary uncovers stolen jewellery, missing money, and saves reputations. When Mary meets Colonel Walter Trefusis, an unlikely alliance is formed as the two work together.

Wren and Rose rule the kingdom of Eana. But an ancient, powerful enemy moves in the shadows. Oonagh, the twins’ evil undead ancestor, is creating a terrifying army, and she is determined to fight for the throne. Rose must gather support from the four corners of the kingdom whilst she wrestles with what the future holds for her and her beloved Shen. Meanwhile, Wren and Alarik set out to destroy the curse that both unites and weakens them. Caught between the King of Gevra and his Captain of the Guard, Tor, Wren must decide where her heart truly lies.

In 1838 Frédéric Chopin, George Sand and her children travel to a monastery in Mallorca. They are there to create and to convalesce, to live a simple life after the wildness of their Paris days. Witness to this tumultuous arrival is Blanca, the ghost of a teenage girl who has been at the monastery for over three hundred years. Blanca’s was a life cut short and she is outraged. Having lived in a world full, according to her mother, of ‘beautiful men’, she has found that in death it is the women she falls for.

It’s been over a decade since renowned author Beckett Ryan set foot in her bleak childhood hometown on the southern coast of England. When her estranged parents die within a week of each other, she reluctantly returns to bury them, only to find herself as reviled in the community as they were revered. Of course, the locals didn’t really know her parents. Nobody did. Then a warm welcome emerges from the sea of cold faces: Leanne. Beckett’s best friend when they were younger, and now a super-fan. Only… Beckett is pretty sure she’s never met her before in her life.

Fifteen years ago, a serial killer was on a rampage murdering young women in Middlehampton. Then, suddenly, the killings stopped, and the murderer was never found… So when the body of another young woman is found bearing the twisted killer’s unique hallmark—the overpowering stench of lavender and an origami heart—DS Kat Ballantyne knows this can only mean one thing: the killer is back.

Elias is mere days away from getting everything his father ever dreamed for him – a ship of his own, a crew and a license that names him as one of the first Narrows-born traders. But when a young dredger from the Unnamed Sea with more than one secret crosses his path, Elias’s faith will be tested like never before. The greater the pull he feels toward her, the farther he drifts from the things he’s spent the last three years working for.

Sparkle McCavity, young drag queen and employee of Miss Merkin, is missing, presumed kidnapped or even worse. Naturally, Merkin turns to reluctant sleuth and friend to the community Fi for help, but clues and suspects are worryingly thin on the ground—and the drag king Stan the Man is proving somewhat distracting. When Merkin’s niece is then found murdered, spiked on a light pole in nightclub TRASH, it becomes clear that Fi’s friends are in danger. Again.

Emily Laurence is a liar. She is not polite, she's not polished, and she has never taught a child in her life. This position was meant to be her sister's - brilliant, kind Amy, who isn't perpetually angry, dangerously reckless, and who does like children. But Amy is unwell and needs a doctor, their father is gone and their mother is useless, so here Emily is, pretending to be something she's not. If she can get away with her deception for long enough to earn a few month's wages and slip some expensive trinkets into her pockets along the way, perhaps they'll be all right.

With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.

A lesbian in a lavender marriage, Jo Smith cuts a dashing figure in pin-striped trousers, working in her bookshop and keeping impolite company. But her hard-earned stability is about to be upended thanks to her husband’s pregnant paramour, who needs medical attention that no reputable doctor will provide.

Serial monogamist Fran has waited years for her chance to be single, and now’s her time to shine. She wants to date as much as she can. She’s got Big Date Energy. But her Mum has other ideas. She’s desperate for Fran to find real love and nominates her for a new TV dating show, The Meet-Cute, which promises to pair people with their perfect match. And when Fran walks onto the set, hoping for a bit of a laugh and a story to tell, she’s confronted with Ivy. Her first love, her high school romance. And the one that got away.

During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. When the time is right, each girl is smuggled into the palace of Versailles, with its legendary Hall of Mirrors.

Penniless and stranded in France after a bid to escape her cruel uncle goes awry, Cornelia Shaw is far from the Parisian life of leisure she imagined. Desperate and out of options, she allows herself to be recruited to Napoleon’s Grande Armée. As a naturalist, her mysterious ability to heal any wound with herbal mixtures invites awe amongst the soldiers…and suspicion.

Daughter of New York financier Leonard Jerome, Jennie was born into wealth—and scandal. Upon her parents’ separation, her mother took Jennie and her sisters to Paris, where Mrs. Jerome was determined to marry her daughters into the most elite families. The glamorous city became their tumultuous finishing school until it fell to revolt.

On the glistening surface of Virginia Woolf’s groundbreaking novel is the Ramsay family, a seemingly stable group of characters, but a group that is ultimately subject to the same alterations and losses that come with the passing of time. Set at the Ramsays’ summerhouse over two September days, ten years apart, Woolf’s influential landmark of twentieth-century literature explores the hopes, frustrations, and small moments of grace and change that permeate everyday life.

Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it. Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her.

Serena Mills should be at her wedding. Instead, she’s eating an ice cream sundae and drinking an obscenely large glass of wine in a Harvester off the M25. She’s left the man everyone told her she was ‘so lucky’ to find–because she’s realised that she wants to find love. Real love. So she sets herself a challenge: 52 weeks. 52 dates. 52 chances to find real love. But sometimes even the best laid plans don’t work out. And it’s the people that take you most by surprise who can really sweep you off your feet . . .

Fourteen years ago, Delphine abandoned her prestigious soloist spot at the Paris Opera Ballet for a new life in St. Petersburg - taking with her a secret that could upend the lives of her best friends, fellow dancers Lindsay and Margaux. Now 36 years old, Delphine has returned to her former home and to the legendary Palais Garnier Opera House to choreograph the ballet that will kick-start the next phase of her career - and, she hopes, finally make things right with her former friends. But Delphine quickly discovers that things have changed while she's been away.