Showing results by narrator "Katy Sobey" in All Categories

As chief bridesmaid, Libby knows she should be having the time of her life at her best friend’s snowy Christmas Eve wedding. But she’s at the mercy of three bossy little flower girls and she’s not looking her best in an enormous fuchsia dress. Which is a shame, as it is the first time she’s going to see her ex Rufus. The man she was supposed to marry. The man who left her alone at the altar....

Across the room, through the fog of tobacco smoke, Betty notices him. His teacup is empty, his eyes are low and he doesn't speak. She wants him to notice her. She wants to impress. Fifteen-year-old Betty Broadbent helps her erratic and beautiful mother run the Hotel Eden, a boardinghouse now besieged by reporters, keen for juicy gossip and eye-catching headlines. They are there because the Cornish seaside town has recently witnessed a string of murders, young girls stabbed to death.

Some friendships are meant to be.... A story about family, friendship, and belonging from best-selling author Sarah Lean. Hope lives with her artist mum in the Pyrenees. It's always been just the two of them...until Frank - a free-spirited traveller - arrives with his donkey, Harry. Hope and Frank form a close bond, so it's hard for both of them when Frank decides it's time to move on. Hope questions what she is to Frank. He's not her dad, but he was more than just her mum's boyfriend. Except there's no name for that kind of pair....

When Eden turns the key in the red door of Four Winds Cottage, the clifftop house where she used to holiday as a child, she is overwhelmed with bittersweet memories. She lost her mother recently, and she’s hoping Seaglass Bay will heal her broken heart. The villagers welcome Eden with open arms, but she can’t help but notice that life is tough for them when the holidaymakers go home. Her mother always gave so much to those around her, and Eden is determined to follow in her footsteps.

The only way to survive her dynasty is to rule it. Abandoned by her beloved older sister, Cleopatra, and an indifferent father, Arsinoe, a young Egyptian princess must fight for survival in the bloodthirsty royal court after her half-sister Berenice seizes power. But despite using her quick wits to win Berenice's favour, Arsinoe struggles to establish herself in an uncertain new world, one that carries her from the conspiratorial dangers of the palace to the streets of war-torn Alexandria.

A shared story can last forever. Hannah's grandad loves telling stories from his past, but there's one that he can't remember…one that Hannah knows is important. When a whale appears off the coast, clues to Grandad's secret begin to surface. Hannah is determined to solve the mystery but, as she gets closer to the truth, Grandad's story is more extraordinary than she imagined.

Violet's in her element - cosplay at the ready, she can't wait to feel part of her favourite fandom: The Gallow's Dance, a mega-story and movie franchise. But at Comic Con, a freak accident transports Violet and her friends into the The Gallows Dance for real - and in the first five minutes, they've caused the death of the heroine. It's up to Violet to take her place and play out the plot the way it was written. But stories have a life of their own....

My heart is a kaleidoscope, and when we kiss it makes my world unravel.... Last summer, Gottie's life fell apart. Her beloved grandfather, Grey, died, and Jason left her - the boy to whom she lost her virginity (and her heart) - and he wouldn't even hold her hand at the funeral! This summer, still reeling from twin heartbreaks, Gottie is lost and alone and burying herself in equations. Until, after five years' absence, Thomas comes home: former boy next door. Former best friend. Former everything.

Cleo loves winter in Wavebreak Bay. As the tourists leave, the temperatures drop, the fairy lights go up and it really starts to feel like home again. It also happens to be the time of year that her best friend Eliot comes back from San Francisco. Though the seasons change, not much else in Cleo's life does. She's in a people-pleasing rut taking the worst shifts at the family restaurant, pet-sitting for her parents and making little time for herself. Cleo has spent so long thinking about everyone around her that she's lost sight of what she wants.

A miraculous new Christmas story from award-winning author Sally Nicholls about hope and heartbreak, wartime romance and the power of love. 17-year-old Margot Allan was a respectable vicar’s daughter and madly in love with her fiancé Harry. But when Harry was reported missing in action from the Western Front, and Margot realised she was expecting his child, there was only one solution she and her family could think of in order to keep that respectability. She gave up James, her baby son, to be adopted by her parents and brought up as her younger brother.

Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic – and her best friend. Storytelling is her only gift that remains. Odette always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she's missing, and everyone believes she's dead. Everyone except Maude.

1882. When Violet Latimer steps off the train in Paris, she instantly feels at home. Here she can escape her scandalous origins in the rookery of Seven Dials and finally make a name for herself as a painter. But it’s not long before her past catches up with her. The notorious gangster Archie Neville is fresh out of prison and determined to make her his wife–and catch whoever put him away in the first place.

When Fern and Paul move into the large old house on Crenellation Lane, with beautiful high ceilings and a luscious garden, they think they’ve found their dream home. After the devastating loss of Fern’s twin sister, it will be a fresh start and somewhere to raise their first baby. But as soon as they arrive, Fern starts having terrifying nightmares about the woman who lived there before. When the woman showed Fern around, they bonded over their pregnancies. Now, Fern can’t let her go. Paul fears his wife has relapsed, obsessing in the same way she did after her twin’s death.

When Sophia first meets Hollywood actor and Ivy College teacher, Marc Blackwell, she never dreams they'll share a forbidden, obsessive relationship. Now, dawn is breaking and they've decided to tell the world of their affair. But as paparazzi hound Sophia's every move, Marc steps up his control - dominating Sophia in every way possible, and drawing her into his dark world of intensity and passion.

One hot summer's day, two-year-old Jessica Preston disappears from the beach. The police are convinced she drowned, but Sandra Preston won't give up hope that her daughter is still alive. How can she? Twenty years later, another child goes missing, and Sandra is approached by a young journalist who raises questions about what really happened to Jessica Preston all those years ago.

London, 1321: In a small shop in Paternoster Row, three people are drawn together around the creation of a magnificent book, an illuminated manuscript of prayers, a book of hours. Even though the commission seems to answer the aspirations of each one of them, their own desires and ambitions threaten its completion. As each struggles to see the book come into being, it will change everything they have understood about their place in the world. In many ways, this is a story about power—it is also a novel about the place of women in the roiling and turbulent world of the early fourteenth century.

Lady Charlotte Lovett should have never run away upon discovering her betrothal. But when one has been promised to a man who, rumor has it, killed his previous two wives, one does what one must. The only thing that can get her out of this engagement is proving that Viscount Hawley is as sinister as she thinks he is. And the person who would know best is his very own brother.

Mia thinks she has escaped her controlling ex-husband, Rob. She's found herself a new home, a new boyfriend and a new life. But when the police arrive to tell her that Rob has been found dead on his boat, things quickly fall apart. Mia is terrified she'll be suspected, however the police are keeping all options open. They know Mia had reason to hate her ex-husband, but she's not the only one. Plenty of people wanted Rob Creavy dead, not least his new wife, Rachel.

Kit has been projecting into other species for seven years. Longer than anyone else at ShenCorp. Longer than any of the scientists thought possible. But lately she has the feeling that when she jumps, she isn't alone.... Since she was 12, Kit has been a phenomenaut, her consciousness projected into the bodies of lab-grown animals for the purpose of research.

The eldest of three children, Kate helps her mother run the Devlin plait-school. They supply the material for the famous Luton Straw Boater. Kate longs to leave this life behind and become a hat-maker. Then a family tragedy changes everything. And Joseph Devlin, Kate's estranged uncle, turns up on their doorstep. He warns Kate that the worst is yet to come. Kate loses her home and her work. Things are looking very bleak, until Daniel Groves, the new owner of Heaven Scent lavender farm takes a liking to Kate.