Showing results by narrator "Clare Corbett" in All Categories

Elise loves the farm that is her home; she loves playing with beetles and chameleons in the garden, buying sweets from the village shop and listening to the stories of spirits and charms told by her nanny, Beauty. As a young white girl in 1990s Zimbabwe, her life is idyllic. Her clothes are always clean and ironed, there is always tea in the silver teapot, gin and tonics are served on the veranda, and, in theory at least, black and white live in harmony.

Take part in the heroic rescue of a fishing boat in trouble, meet a boy who makes an extraordinary discovery in the vegetable patch, and find out how a farm cat forms a very special connection with a young Ukrainian girl. These three uplifting stories capture the wonder, muck and magic of a city child’s week on the farm.

After twelve years of marriage to English explorer James Cook, Elizabeth has yet to spend an entire year with her husband. In their house by the Thames, she moves to the rhythms of her life as a society wife, but there is so much more to her than meets the eye. She has the fortitude to manage the house and garden, raise their children, and face unbearable sorrow by herself - in fact, she is sometimes in thrall to her own independence.

Rose Macaulay was a fascinating and influential British writer, known for her wit and intellect. First published in 1920, Potterism is a powerful satire about the Potter newspaper empire, and the ways in which journalists struggled during the First World War and the 1920s to balance the truth and what would sell. While Jane and Johnny Potter are at Oxford they learn to despise their father’s popular newspapers, though they still end up working for the family business. But Jane is greedy and wants more than society will let her have.

The satirical novel What Not was published in 1918. Foreshadowing Orwell’s 1984, it is set in a futuristic England where a government agency, known as the Ministry of Brains, is responsible for regulating and controlling relationships and marriages based on intelligence and eugenics.

Blue Kangaroo has gone everywhere with Lily for as long as they can both remember. So when Lily and her friends are planning their very first sleepover, Lily is so excited for a new adventure with her beloved Blue Kangaroo!

Veronica Britton is a Victorian private detective, a specialist in untangling tricky situations that occur in time as well as space. Working alongside her young apprentice Gabrielle Pendleton, she's very much in demand: if a necklace goes missing and you suspect that someone is selling it off in the future as a valuable antique, or you find yourself being blackmailed by someone who knows a little too much about your past, she's your woman.

In Copenhagen, five different people are moving through life, minding their own business. But events from the past start a domino effect, and the fates of each of the five are destined to cross, turning their understanding of love and family upside down.

Spitalfields, 1840. Catherine lives with her Uncle in a rambling house in London's East End, with little to occupy the days beyond her own colourful imagination. Then news reaches her of a disturbing murderer known as The Man of Crows. Catherine becomes more and more involved as she hungrily devours the news, and is soon snared in a deadly trap, where nothing is as it first appears...

It's 1960 in Birmingham and Lella Florence is looking for women to help with trials of the contraceptive pill. Married women in a certain age and weight bracket are required.Three very different women decide to take part. Ditsy June's fed up with being under the influence of her overbearing in-laws and would rather save up for a new bathroom than for another baby. Glamorous Jeanette wants to avoid another agonising labour and to keep her wealthy husband happy. And Isobel has her own secret reasons for signing up. All three women couldn't guess the ways their lives will be changed....

Anna is a married teacher in her 40s. Her one regret in life is that she doesn't have any children. When 15-year-old Kali arrives in her form, Anna feels a connection with her at once. But it soon becomes clear that Kali doesn't feel the same way.

A woman's body is discovered on a Cornish farm, battered and left for dead in a maize field. Airlifted to hospital, her life hanging in the balance, no one's sure who she is. Three days later she comes round, but her memory is damaged. She knows her name - Evie - but no more, until she remembers another name: Angel - her three-year-old daughter. As the police circulate Evie's photo, someone recognizes her. Charlotte knew her years ago at school, when another child went missing: Leah Danning, who vanished whilst in Evie's care.

Helen Fairfax is a ferry pilot and the mother of Peter, aged six. From Monday to Friday, she flies from factories to airfields, then returns to the family farmhouse where her parents look after the boy. She feels torn being away from her son so much, but after her husband died in the Battle of Britain she vowed to live up to his example of courage and strike back at the enemy. Now the Germans are about to launch the V-2 against London, and MI6 is desperate to get its hands on an undamaged prototype of the rocket to discover how it might be defeated.

Emily loves to skate and when she is whisked away to a magical ice-skating school she can’t believe her luck. But some of the girls aren’t very friendly. Can Emily be brave and skate her way to happiness – and win the prized pair of wonderful white skates?.... All the girls at ice-skating school want to be the best skater and win the pair of dazzling violet skates. But when they have to perform in pairs, problems begin.

Carol married young - to philandering Phil - and became a mother young to highly-strung Jaz. Carol put up with Phil’s infidelities: suffer in silence and keep the family together was her mantra.Not so Jaz. The moment she discovers her own husband’s errant ways - with a woman he barely knew - she throws him out of the house, changes the locks and bans him from seeing their toddler son Matty...

Five years ago, Olivia Sutherland was wrongfully convicted of plotting to murder. Now she's finally free, Olivia has three goals. Repair her relationship with her daughter. Clear her name. And bring down her husband—the man who framed her. Just how far is she willing to go to get what she wants? And how far will her husband go to stop her? Because his lies run deeper than Olivia could ever have imagined—and this time it’s not her freedom that’s in jeopardy, but her life.

Eighteen-year-old Emma has loving parents and a promising future ahead of her. So why, one morning, does she leave home without a trace? Her parents, Cath and Jim, are devastated. They have no idea why Emma left or even whether she is still alive. A year later, Cath and Jim are still tormented by the unanswered questions Emma left behind and clinging desperately to the hope of finding her. Meanwhile, tantalisingly close to home, Emma is also struggling with her new existence—and with the trauma that shattered her life. For all of them, reconciliation seems an impossible dream.

When newly divorced Jude arrives in the small town of Lowbridge, she is soon drawn to widower Will, the father of her young daughter's best friend. But Will's past is shrouded in tragedy, with questions that no one knows the answer to – and after two tragedies tore his life apart in just a few short years, gossip and rumours abound about what really happened to the women he loved. As whispers of murder surround Will, Jude becomes determined to uncover the truth – and with her own father's tragic fate haunting her, she refuses to let another innocent man suffer.

When pretty, talented and very ambitious Amina Mir manages to land a newspaper work experience placement she thinks it might just be making coffee and following-up tame stories. But then she's sent to interview Ivor MacMorris, a veteran of the war in Sinnostan who's just won millions on the lottery but bizarrely hasn't spent a penny. Things start to get interesting... and dangerous.

In a vast African landscape, four teenagers and a journalist vanish without trace. As Ella, the sister of one of the missing girls, helps the police piece together what happened, she realises there are terrifying possibilities for her sister and the others.