Showing results by narrator "Gemma Whelan" in All Categories

Robin and Kessie have been best friends since childhood when their families fractured. Now, in their mid-thirties, they are keen to have children themselves, but each faces daunting obstacles. In stepping up to support each other, they begin to negotiate unconventional routes towards motherhood, challenging assumptions about ‘normal’ family relationships along the way.

Flora's been in love with her husband for 20 years. The trouble is, he's been married to someone else for the past 15. Now she's been invited to spend the summer in the shady lanes and sandy coves of Cornwall. It should be blissful. There's just one small snag: she'll be staying with her former mother-in-law, Belinda. And Flora discovers she's not the only one invited when her ex-husband shows up out of the blue, complete with his new wife. So now there are two small snags.

In all the years that Elinora Gassbeek has been matron of the Little Tulip Orphanage, not once have the Rules for Baby Abandonment been broken. Until the autumn of 1886, when five babies are left in outrageous circumstances: one in a tin toolbox, one in a coal bucket, one in a picnic hamper, one in a wheat sack and finally, one in a coffin-shaped basket.

The year is 2012. The nations of the world are bound together in an alliance of collective security, overseen by the International Patent Office and its ruthless stranglehold on technology. When airships start disappearing in the middle of the Atlantic, the Patent Office is desperate to discover what has happened. Forbidden to operate beyond the territorial waters of member nations, they send spies to investigate in secret. One of those spies is Elizabeth Barnabus.

A laugh-out-loud romance from the best-selling author of the Shopaholic series. Meet Audrey: an ordinary teenage girl with not-so-ordinary problems. Aside from her completely crazy and chaotic family, she suffers from an anxiety disorder which makes talking to her brother's hot new best friend a bit of a challenge. But Audrey has a plan to help her face her fears and take on the world again. First stop: Starbucks.

Arabella, the daughter of an impoverished country parson, dreams of a new life in London. But her beauty and charm will only get her so far - and when Arabella embarks on her first London season armed with nothing but a benevolent godmother and her own notoriously short temper, she quickly runs afoul of Robert Beaumaris.

The House on Sunset Lake from Sunday Times best seller Tasmina Perry is a heart-wrenching love story bejewelled with mysteries and dark secrets, set in the Deep South. If you loved Santa Montefiore's Songs of Love and War or The Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley, you will adore losing yourself in this audiobook. A family secret. A house in ruin. A mystery to unravel....

Otherland is a dangerous magical underworld - a place where appearances can be deceiving and anything can happen. A world of gods, vampires and fairies. It’s also...horrible. When life-long friends Myra and Rohan discover that Rohan’s baby sister, Shilpa, has been stolen and taken to Otherland, the only way to rescue her is by taking part in a deadly game - three impossible challenges set by the Fairy Queen of Otherland. Win the game, and Rohan and Myra can go home with Shilpa - but lose, and they’ll be trapped in Otherland forever.

Beatrix Rose is looking for her daughter, Isabella. The Triad overlord Michael Yeung knows where she is but he needs her to do a small job first. Beatrix is sent to the jungles of Venezuela and an illegal goldmine run by the loathsome Aurelio Rincon. The task seems easy enough – find a local bandit who has been wreaking havoc at the mine and kill him. But there is a sinister secret hidden deep within the jungle and Beatrix quickly finds herself at war with a private army as she is caught between corrupt government officials and local rebels who believe she has been sent to save them.

Once upon a time, damaged women came here to be cured. We took them in, fed them glasses of our clean, good water, let them scream at the waves till their lips split like ripe fruit. Now no one is left but my sisters and me. King died a year ago, quite suddenly. Mother has vanished, no one knows where. And the safe compound they built around us, far away from the toxic world, has finally been breached. Three men arrived last week, washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent. We remember now what our father taught us.

The police say it was suicide. Anna says it was murder. They're both wrong. One year ago, Caroline Johnson chose to end her life - a shocking suicide carefully played out to match that of her husband just months before. Their daughter, Anna, has struggled to come to terms with her parents' deaths ever since. Now with a young baby herself, Anna feels her mother's presence keenly and is determined to find out what really happened. But as she looks for answers, someone is trying to stop her.

Three enhanced audiobooks performed by the stars of the classic BBC television series. Spy, by Simon Guerrier. Starring Jan Chappell as Cally, Michael Keating as Vila and Gemma Whelan as Arta. Cally and Vila are undercover on the Federation-controlled world Cortol Four. It's a mission with an irresistible prize. And it's a mission that goes horribly wrong....

Previously uncollected and unpublished: new short stories from a master of psychological suspense. New and uncollected tales of murder, mischief, magic and madness. Ruth Rendell was an acknowledged master of psychological suspense: these are 10 (and a quarter) of her most chillingly compelling short stories, collected here together for the first time.

Nine months ago, Beatrix Rose had her family brutally taken from her. Now all that matters is getting her daughter back. And Beatrix is no ordinary mother - she’s a skilled assassin who will do whatever it takes to find her child. Danny Nakamura deserted his post in Vietnam and disappeared into Hong Kong’s Walled City, vowing never to go home again. Decades later, his health failing, he’s suddenly found a reason to return to LA: the discovery of a daughter he never knew he had. But getting home won’t be easy....

Kara Wright is a former Royal Air Force Intelligence Analyst. Her best mate, Tien Tran, is a veteran of the British Army's Intelligence Corps. Both served in Afghanistan and both were lucky to make it home. Now, based in a run-down office in Kentish Town, they try to keep their heads above water as private investigators. When two grown-up children claim their elderly parents have been kidnapped, Kara and Tien are sceptical, but they need the money, and anyway, Kara could really do with keeping her mind off the man she murdered.

Wren leaves home and heartbreak to spend the summer with her father and step-family on their farm in Indiana, Midwestern USA. More than anything she hopes this trip will provide a chance to heal and build bridges.

Winter, with its unsettling blend of the cosy and the sinister, has long been a popular time for gathering by the bright flame of a candle, or the warm crackling of a fire, and swapping stories of ghosts and strange happenings. Now eight best-selling, award-winning authors, master storytellers of the sinister and the macabre bring this time-honoured tradition to vivid life in a spellbinding collection of new and original haunted tales.

2059. The world has stopped turning. One half suffers an endless frozen night; the other, nothing but burning sun.Only in a slim twilit region can life survive. In an isolationist Britain, Ellen Hopper receives a letter from a dying man. It contains a powerful and dangerous secret. One that those in power will kill to conceal.

If you’d told me four months ago that I’d be lying on damp grass, clutching a bullet wound to the stomach, while next to me the love of my life lies dead from a bullet wound to the head, I’m not sure I would have believed you. If you’d told me I’d be surrounded by three other dead bodies, I definitely wouldn’t have believed you. And if you’d said it was all because of an argument over a metre of land, I would have thought you’d lost your mind. I might have even laughed.

Eighteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel finds herself a new job in a dentist's surgery after answering a classified advert in the Leicester Mercury for a 'mature lady with a strong interest in dental issues'. Working for an eccentric dental surgeon who's obsessed with becoming a Freemason, Lizzie's life is uneventful until Andy Nicolello turns up one day to deliver a crown. Lizzie seizes her chance to find love and soon begins calling him her boyfriend even though they have never so much as kissed or even sat next to each other on the sofa.