Showing results by narrator "Bea Holland" in All Categories

All Meredith Verran has ever wanted is to escape the holiday season without having to wear a Christmas jumper. Her new job at the cosy gift shop in a picturesque Cornish tourist spot is making it impossible for her to maintain her Scrooge-like manner. With their seasonal hampers on everyone’s wish list, Meredith must paste on a smile and fake some holiday cheer. Then she meets handsome new arrival, Finn, who wishes it could be Christmas every day and wants her to feel the same way, too. Can she embrace the holly and the ivy before the decorations are packed away for another year?

Ollie Spencer has started a new life in the idyllic Cornish seaside town of Port Karadow. Throwing herself into her job at the town’s bookshop, A New Chapter, is one way to make friends. The shop is glitzing up for first Christmas and Ollie hopes her inspired ideas will give the shop the edge it needs to dazzle the town. But far from being the Sugar Plum fairy the place needs, Ollie is fast becoming its Christmas pudding. With the bookshop’s success at stake, Ollie turns to twinkly-eyed café owner Max for help.

Hannah Swan is looking forward to Christmas for the first time in years. Her new job as an eco-consultant is taking her - and her geeky colleague, Noah - to the beautiful Cornish village of Porthgolow for the first time. They’re are helping the Crystal Waters Hotel to ramp up its green credentials, though after a bumpy journey, Hannah can’t shake off the feeling that Porthgolow is strangely familiar. Never able to resist a mystery, her interest is piqued when the hotel’s staff and customers report odd noises and sightings, believing the hotel to be haunted.

Sally never meant to cave her husband's head in with a skillet. Or at least she didn't until suddenly, she did. But Sally isn't the only woman in town being pushed to breaking point. When coincidence brings four strangers together, a surprising solidarity is formed. So can they find the best way to bury their husbands - and get away with it?

Louise has had to watch her husband, Andrew, start a new family in the four years since he left her. The ‘other woman’ is now his wife - but Louise isn’t ready to let Caz enjoy the life that was once hers or to let go of the man she still loves. As Louise starts to dig into Caz’s past, the two women’s pretence of civility starts to slip. But in trying to undermine each other, they discover more about the man they both married. And when Andrew is murdered at a family party, both women are found standing over the body. It’s always the wife. But which one?

The great-granddaughters of Emma Harte, the heroine of A Woman of Substance and Emma's Secret, follow in her legendary footsteps.... Evan Hughes, Emma's American great-granddaughter, is trying to integrate into the powerful Harte family. She is caught between her estranged parents, her new family, and new love. Meanwhile a dangerous enemy hovers in the background.

Includes exclusive access and interviews with Prince Harry. Once a reckless rebel, now a respected role model, Prince Harry is one of the world's most popular royals and the force behind giving the British royal family a 21st-century makeover. How has he done it? Harry: Conversations with the Prince is a three-dimensional look at what Harry is really like, both on and off royal duty. It is written by distinguished journalist and author Angela Levin, who accompanied Prince Harry on many of his engagements and had exclusive access to him at Kensington Palace.

Exploring the dichotomy between one's inner and outer self is central to Behind Her Eyes. When a vulnerable woman is drawn into the lives of an enigmatic couple, she finds it hard to differentiate between reality and what truly lies beneath a seemingly perfect exterior.

It is two years before the outbreak of World War 1, and the Oakley family are typical of their time. Andrew has been clerk at a City solicitors for twenty years. Alice, his wife, keeps the home fires burning. Their sons plan on becoming skilled apprentices. And Mabel, their daughter, says she would rather die than go into domestic service like her cousin. She is going to go to train as a secretary. Andrew Oakley little imagines, as he sets off for work one February morning, that their lives are about to change in the most dramatic and tragic fashion.

Anna’s aunt has always warned her of the dangers of magic. Its twists. Its knots. Its deadly consequences. Now Anna counts down the days to the ceremony that will bind her magic forever. Until she meets Effie and Attis. They open her eyes to a London she never knew existed. A shop that sells memories. A secret library where the librarian feeds off words. A club where revellers lose themselves in a haze of spells. But as she is swept deeper into this world, Anna begins to wonder if her aunt was right all along.

A horrific car crash in Belize has devastated Helen Pengilly’s family, leaving her daughter in a coma and her husband Michael missing. Alone and terrified, Helen’s memory is dragged back to that day 22 years ago. To protect their family, Helen and Michael both said they would forget what happened. But now it seems that there is someone who will stop at nothing to make them remember.... 

Anna survived the attempt to bind her magic, but Anna and her coven aren’t free from danger yet. Haunted by her aunt’s death, living in fear of her curse, and fated to love the one man she can never have, the last thing Anna needs is a witch hunt. Now she must conceal her magic once more or risk losing everything. But when deadly hysteria strikes across the capital, and in her own school, the coven are left dangerously exposed. Delving deeper into the magical underworld of London, Anna and her twin sister Effie must find a way to work together to protect the coven.

Two suburban women. Two dark secrets. The almost perfect murder. Everybody needs good neighbours.... Melissa and Hester have lived next door to each other for years. When Melissa's daughter was younger, Hester was almost like a grandmother to her. But recently they haven't been so close. Hester has plans to change all that. It's obvious to her that despite Melissa's outwardly glamorous and successful life, she needs Hester's help.

Parents, friends, teachers, relatives, and even work colleagues - from the people close to us to those we never even meet - other people are constantly shaping who we are. The mirror neuron is a part of the brain that has shaped each and every one of us throughout our lifetimes. It is the very essence of what makes us human, but most of us have never even heard of it. Mirror Thinking explores how the mirror neuron has defined us through the role models we observe and interact with.

The characters in Samanta Schweblin's wildly imaginative new novel, Little Eyes, reveal the beauty of connection between far-flung souls but they also expose the ugly truth of our increasingly linked world. Trusting strangers can lead to unexpected love, playful encounters and marvellous adventures, but what if it can also pave the way for unimaginable terror? Schweblin has created a dark and complex world that is both familiar but also strangely unsettling, because it's our present and we're living it - we just don't know it yet.   

Cynthia and Alex have always been like sisters. Living and working for years on Cynthia's mother's sprawling farm, they've raised their families together. It was the perfect life until the fateful night that Alex finds Hannah, one of Cynthia's eighteen-year-old twins, inexplicably murdered in her own home. Soon Alex's life is spiralling out of control as she questions everything she knows and everyone she trusted. And when local detective, Stefani Warner starts investigating Hannah's murder, one prime suspect quickly rises to the fore: Daniel, Alex's nineteen-year-old son.

Your wife has lied since the day you met. So has your brother. You love them both, but can you trust them? Twelve years ago, Nick’s brother Rob was caught in a storm out at sea and drowned. His body was never found. When Nick met Susie at his brother’s funeral, he thought it was destiny at play. Then Rob suddenly appears on television. He is a hero. He has brought down a terrorist who opened fire on dozens of restaurant diners. Everyone wants to know who Rob is, but he’s vanished a second time, without a word. 

The Iremongers are a mean and cruel family, robust and hardworking, living in the Heaps, a vast sea of lost and discarded items. A storm is brewing over Heap House. The Iremongers are growing restless and the whispers are getting louder. When Clod meets Lucy, a girl newly arrived from the city, everything changes. The secrets that bind Heap House together begin to unravel to reveal a dark truth that threatens to destroy Clod's world.

Lilli Sternberg longs to be a ballet dancer. But outside the sanctuary of the theatre, her beloved city is in chaos. The Nazi party are gaining power, and the threats to those who deviate from the party line are increasing. Jewish families are being targeted and their businesses raided; even her father’s shop was torched because of their faith. When Lilli meets Captain Marco Zeiller during a chance encounter, her heart soars. But Marco has been spotted by the Reich as an officer with potential.

Getting pregnant as a teenager was never part of Kate's plan, but when it happens she's determined to do right by her daughter, showing her the love she never had as a child. Life as a single mother is hard, sometimes impossible, but it only brings Kate and Becky closer together. By the time Becky is making her own way in the world as a tenacious trainee journalist, Kate couldn't be prouder.