Showing results by narrator "Sarah Barron" in All Categories

The dead talk. To the right listener, they tell us all about themselves: how they lived, how they died--and who killed them. Val McDermid uncovers the secrets of forensic medicine with groundbreaking research and her own experience. Along the way you’ll wonder at how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine time of death and how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a grain of salt can be used to convict a killer.

Rosie Gilmour is chasing an explosive new story that will take her deep into Glasgow's sectarian underworld. But has she got in over her head? Crime reporter Rosie Gilmour is on the trail of missing barmaid Wendy Graham. Wendy's boyfriend is a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force - and before she vanished, she levelled a horrifying accusation against one of his mates.

Jen's hen party is going to be out of control. She's rented a luxury getaway on its own private island. The helicopter won't be back for seventy-two hours. They are alone. They think. As well as Jen, there's the pop diva and the estranged ex-bandmate, the tennis pro and the fashion guru, the embittered ex-sister-in-law and the mouthy future sister-in-law. It's a combustible cocktail, one that takes little time to ignite, and in the midst of the drunken chaos, one of them disappears.

When Amy Osbourne’s parents are lost at sea, she is forced to leave her London home and is sent to live with her aunt and uncle at the opposite end of the country. Alardyce House is depressing and dreary, her aunt haughty and cruel. Amy strikes up a friendship with her cousin Edward but his older brother Henry is just as conceited as his mother, and a mutual loathing develops between him and Amy. Struggling in this strange, unwelcoming environment, Amy begins to suspect that something isn’t right at Alardyce House.

Laura has a husband, children, a home in a city she loves. She thinks she can be happy, despite her past. Until someone walks back into her life who she knows will shatter everything. Alexis was her first love. A love so exhilarating, it is impossible to resist. Then Alexis is found dead, and the police are knocking at Laura's door. They're asking her questions and she's telling them lies. Someone wants Laura to pay for what she's been running from. Someone with an obsession that they can't let go.

Christmas on the remote Scottish island of Mure is bleak, stark - and incredibly beautiful. It's a time for hunkering down, getting cosy in front of whisky barrel wood fires and enjoying a dram with the people you love - unless, of course, you're accidentally pregnant to your ex-boss and don't know how to tell him. In what should be the season of peace and goodwill on earth, will Joel think Flora is a bearer of glad tidings?

When reporter Rebecca Connolly is told of Roddie Drummond's return to the island of Stoirm she senses a story. Fifteen years before he was charged with the murder of his lover, Mhairi. When he was found Not Proven, Roddie left the island. Now he has returned for his mother's funeral - and it will spark an explosion of violence. Rebecca joins forces with local photographer Chaz Wymark to dig into the secrets surrounding Mhairi's death, and her mysterious last words of Thunder Bay, where, according to local lore, the souls of the dead set off into the afterlife.

When Leonie Baxter finds herself out of a job and out of a relationship, she’s at her wits end. Her life has just been turned upside down and she needs a plan, fast. By chance, on a walk with her rescue puppy, Leonie stumbles across a striking house in the woods; fully furnished but unoccupied. As a journalist, she is determined to find out more, after all, reporting is in her nature. But her attempts are thwarted by Lily Cruickshank who lives in the cottage next door.

A three-year-old girl is snatched from a beach. Nobody heard a sound. Nobody saw a thing. Rosie Gilmour's much-needed holiday is cut short when the abduction story breaks and she's sent to cover it. Her instincts tell her something's wrong: such a crime must surely have witnesses, and the girl's mother's story doesn't add up. With a child's life at stake, Rosie must dig deeper into the seedy depths of the area, making dangerous enemies.

The Skelf women are back on an even keel after everything they've been through. But when a funeral they're conducting is attacked by a drone, Jenny fears they're in the middle of an Edinburgh gangland vendetta. At the same time, Yana, a Ukrainian member of the refugee choir that plays with Dorothy's band, has gone missing. Searching for her leads Dorothy into strange and ominous territory. And Brodie, the newest member of the extended Skelf family, comes to Hannah with a case: Something or someone has been disturbing the grave of his stillborn son.

Maddy Harvey was a bit of an ugly duckling as a teenager, what with her NHS specs, unfortunate hair and wonky teeth. Thankfully she's blossomed since then. But when she meets Kerr McKinnon one starry summer's night and discovers, days later, who he actually is...well, that's when the problems really start. Because everyone in Ashcombe knows what happened 11 years ago, and as far as her mother's concerned, Marcella would rather tear that family to pieces with her bare hands than see Maddy associate with a McKinnon.

When Toni’s twelfth birthday is marred by a terrible crime, the wicked path of the girls looks set. A decade later, the McVay family aren't the unstoppable force they once were in the Glaswegian criminal underworld but Frankie McVay, the up-and-coming prince, is determined to restore the family to its former glory and the whole family are expected to help. His sister Toni shares her brother’s blood lust but Valerie dreams of a quieter life, and when she meets and falls in love with Seb, as straight as Frankie is bent, as kind as Frankie is wicked, Val sees her way out.

In 1752, Seamus a'Ghlynne, James of the Glen, was executed for the murder of government man Colin Campbell. He was almost certainly innocent. When banners are placed at his gravesite claiming that his namesake, James Stewart, is innocent of murder, reporter Rebecca Connolly smells a story. The young Stewart has been in prison for 10 years for the brutal murder of his lover, lawyer and politician Murdo Maxwell. Rebecca soon discovers that Maxwell believed he was being followed prior to his murder and his phones were tapped.

DI Helen Birch is recovering from major surgery, housebound and exceptionally bored. Her boss, DCI McLeod, has made it crystal clear: she is not to take on any work until her recuperation is over. In her absence, Amy Kato is promoted to sergeant and is given a maddening case to work on: Edinburgh is being plagued by an anonymous vigilante. He started small, meting out punishment to obnoxious boy racers and other antisocial folk, but his behaviour is escalating. Amy can tell from the anonymous online paper trail he leaves.

Lorna's world is small but safe. She loves her daughter and the two of them are all that matter. But after nearly twenty years, she and Ella are suddenly leaving London for the Isle of Kip, the tiny remote Scottish island where Lorna grew up. Alice's world is tiny but full. She loves the community on Kip and how her yoga classes draw women across the tiny island together. Now Lorna's arrival might help their family finally mend itself—even if forgiveness means returning to the past.... And as the two women find friendship, Lorna also starts to find her place in the world.

Thirteen years ago, DI Helen Birch's little brother Charlie disappeared. Two days ago, Birch was part of a raid on one of Scotland's most feared criminal organisations. Yesterday, Charlie came back.... Now Birch has a choice: save her career, or save Charlie? As she interrogates her brother, we see his story, in a brilliantly tense and clever story about what people will do to survive and the lines they'll cross to protect those they love.

Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor to an extraordinary waterworks being built miles from the city. But Isabel, denied the motherhood role that is expected of her by a succession of miscarriages, finds unexpected consolations in a place where she can feel the presence of her unborn children and begin to work out what her life in Victorian society is for.

Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators.... When patriarch Jim dies, it's left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events. Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn't the husband she thought he was.

This is a fact: Ryan Summers walked into Three Rivers College and killed 13 women, then himself. But no one can say why. The question is one that cries out to be answered - by Ryan's mother, Moira; by Ishbel, the mother of Abigail, the first victim; and by DI Helen Birch, put in charge of the case on her first day at her new job. But as the tabloids and the media swarm, as the families' secrets come out, as the world searches for someone to blame...the truth seems to vanish.

Ruby's singing career is on the verge of hitting the big time when her voice breaks. Fearing her career is over, she signs up for a retreat in Tenerife to recover. But an unexpected call from a stranger on a remote Scottish island takes her on a short trip to sort out some family business. It's time to go and see the grandfather she's never met. City girl Ruby knows she will be happy to leave the windswept beaches behind as quickly as she can, especially as a years-old family rift means she knows she won't be welcome at Teach Mhor.