Showing results by narrator "Gabrielle Glaister" in All Categories

For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words for a certain kind of woman. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood. Words that tell a story. In this blazing cauldron of a book, the boldest writers of our day take up these words and take up their pen, celebrating fifty years of Virago.

Mummy dreams of a quirky rural cottage with roses around the door and chatty chickens in the garden. Life, as ever, is not going quite as she planned. Paxo, Oxo and Bisto turn out to be highly rambunctious rather than merely chatty, and the roses have jaggy thorns.

Did you ever have a secret you knew would change everything? Tess' happy childhood memories are mostly of the grandmother who helped raise her. And now she has a secret to tell Iris - one which will turn so many lives upside down. But how can you confide your future in someone who barely remembers her past? Tess knows everything is about to change. What she doesn't know is that chance will lead her into the lives of two strangers - and uncover her grandmother's secret from the past. A secret which will illuminate her own future....

The house has soft, purple wisteria twining around the door. You step inside. The hall is cool after the hot summer’s day. The welcome is kind, and always warm. Yet something makes you suspect life here can’t be as perfect as it seems. After all, the brightest smile can hide the darkest secret. But wouldn’t you pay any price to have a glorious place like this?

Peggy Brown is an aspiring actress with Big Dreams, but for now she must tread the boards in the yearly panto at the Weatherfield Majestic Theatre. She finds lodgings with fiery Coronation Street resident Elsie Tanner, but what Peggy doesn’t know is that Elsie’s latest fella is caught up in illegal activity, something which could put them both in danger. As Peggy struggles on the chorus line, and Elsie gets in over her head, the scene is set for a Christmas of shocks and surprises.

Kate Lawler has never been maternal. And yet here she is: mother to Noa, after years of going back and forth about having children at all. This is the story of her journey from parentally undecided to early motherhood, via raging hormones, sleepless nights, emergency hospital trips, mum guilt, unspoken regrets and post-natal depression. This book is not a parenting manual. It won't tell you what to pack in your hospital bag, or how to get your baby to sleep. It may not help you with feeding or dealing with tantrums. But it will show you that you're not alone.

It starts with just one body - tortured, mummified and then discarded. Its discovery reveals a nightmare world of hidden lives. Of lost identities, secret rituals and brutal exploitation, where nobody can be trusted. This is the darkest, most complex case the police have ever seen. This is the world of the Crow Girl.

Heidi is tired. Tired, grumpy and hot as hell. Juggling the demands of her stressful job whilst parenting two children with a significant age gap is proving chaotic, and Heidi has well and truly run out of f--ks to give. When her menopause symptoms skyrocket, Heidi dives headfirst into a sea of comically contradictory advice, absurd doctors' appointments, and the wild world of online support forums that range from cult-like to totally bloody batshit. The last straw comes when Heidi receives a patronising company-wide email from HR supporting ‘women of a certain age’.

Meet the daughters of Iris Parker. Dee, sensitive and big-hearted; Rose, uptight and controlled; and Fleur, the reckless free spirit. At the reading of their mother's will, the three estranged women are aghast to discover that their inheritance comes with very tricky strings attached. If they are to inherit her wealth, they must spend a series of weekends together over the course of a year and carry out their mother's bucket list.

In Fermentation, Rachel de Thample shines a light on one of the oldest methods of preserving food, which is just as relevant today, and shows you how to produce delicious and health-boosting ferments in your own kitchen.

I am Grimalkin, and I have already chosen those I will kill...Grimalkin has made it her lifetime ambition to destroy the Fiend, avenging the brutal murder of her son. Having grudgingly joined forces with the Spook and his apprentice, Tom, and assisted them in the binding of the Fiend, she is now on the run. And her mission is deadly. She has to help them bind the Fiend's spirit for ever no matter who - or what - comes after it.

In this cornucopia of an anthology, you will find essays by some of the world's most beloved novelists, nonfiction writers, essayists and poets. You will see books taking flight in flocks, migrating around the world, landing in people's hearts and changing them for a day or a year or a lifetime. You will see books sparking wonder or anger; throwing open windows into other languages, other cultures, other minds; causing people to fall in love or to fight for what is right.

Celebrity photographer Grace Buchanan has always known that one day she'd swap her manic day job for the peace and quiet of her beloved childhood cottage, St Christopher's - she just didn't expect it to be so soon. At the reading of her mother's will, she's shocked to learn that inheriting St Christopher's hangs on one condition: Grace must drop everything for two weeks and travel the country with a mysterious stranger - war-weary Royal Marine Alasdair Finn.

Exploring topics such as life spirals, world views, depression, insomnia, grief, trauma, burnout, relationships, happiness, achievement, goal-setting, and so much more, this guide includes spells and rituals to help the listener take a more proactive approach to self-care.

When bigotry and power mania take control, disaster always follows for subjugated persons - even when the power is wielded by the Church. Witchcraft was viewed as devil-worship. Between 1450 and 1750, 100,000 people were accused, subject to the most bestial tortures and usually executed. Witches examines the wildfire-spread of witch-hunting across Europe and America, revealing the disturbing and brutal realities of these witch hunts and their roots in misogyny and religious persecution.

When Lizzie moves with her mother and her brothers to No.13 Coronation Street at the end of the Second World War, it’s a new start for all of them after the loses and heartache they’ve endured. Their new neighbour, Elsie Tanner, tells them that the house is said to have bad luck, but things look up for Lizzie when she lands a job as a barmaid in a local pub, the Pride of Weatherfield. There she makes friends with the young and giddy Hilda Ogden, still waiting for her wayward husband, Stan, to come home from the war.

The class of ’72, Sara, Ally, Jo and Mitch were as close as sisters, then life intervened and the four friends lost touch. Now in her 60s, Sara has realised - late in the day - that those women were the best friends she’d ever had and is determined to get the gang back together. Ally is facing a huge turning point in her life and Jo, after years of being chief cook and bottle washer, needs to put herself first after a wake-up call. None of them know what happened to Mitch.

The Tudor dynasty presided over one of the most dynamic periods in English history, an era that witnessed courtly conspiracies and public executions, religious reformation and exploration. Its fearsome monarchs transformed England from a minor medieval kingdom into a major player on the world stage. The Tudors reveals the complex personalities behind this powerful family, and the passions and jealousies that spurred them on.

Vera Sharples, the over-protected daughter of Ena Sharples, longs for independence, and while her mother wants to marry her off, she isn’t keen on Bob Lomax, Vera’s own choice for matrimony. Her friend, Lily Longhurst, has found herself on the wrong side of a doomed romance and decides it’s high time that she and Vera take their lives into their own hands. With Ena unable to deny her daughter the chance to do her bit for King and Country, the girls sign up for the Land Army, where life is very different from the familiar cobbles of Coronation Street.

At the end of a deadly bear hunt across the wilderness of Northern Sweden, the successful hunters are shaken by a grisly discovery. Across in Kurravaara, a woman is murdered with frenzied brutality: crude abuse scrawled above her bloodied bed, her young grandson nowhere to be found. Only Rebecka Martinsson sees a connection.