Showing results by narrator "Karen Cass" in All Categories

After trials, tears and a torturous break-up, Kitty Appleby has finally found where she's meant to be. Tumbledown Sandcastle Cottage, in the delightful seaside village of Firefly Common, is home, and Kitty's eccentric band of friends and neighbours are enjoying a glorious summer. There's just one tiny little problem. Sandcastle Cottage doesn't belong to them. And Mavis Mullholland, Kitty's landlord, is on her way home from her round-the-world cruise.

Aimed at HR practitioners and managers, Employee Engagement offers a complete, practical resource for understanding, measuring and building engagement. Grounded in engagement theory and an understanding of psychology combined with practical tools, techniques and diagnostics, this book will help you assess and drive engagement in your organization. Case studies include British Gas, Capital One, Asda, Ministry of Justice, Mace and RSA.

When Laura’s bride-to-be sister, Polly, organises a surprise reunion for her fiancé and his long lost American friend, Laura grudgingly agrees to help keep the secret. And when the plain-spoken, larger-than-life Hunter McQueen steps off the bus in her rainy Devon town and only just squeezes into her tiny car, it confirms that Laura has made a big mistake in going along with her sister's crazy plan.

From relishing a quiet moment of comfort to enjoying the beauty of nature or even just reveling in the deliciousness of a favorite snack, you too can do like the Swedes and open your eyes to all of life’s pleasures, no matter how simple. Niki Brantmark, founder of the popular blog My Scandinavian Home, offers easy-to-follow how-to’s, practical lists of tips and tricks, and unique insights into the most fascinating aspects of Swedish culture, from morning dips to Christmas crafting. Njuta is the ultimate guide to rejoicing in the moment, anytime and anywhere.

Viviane de Faitaud has grown up alone at her family’s château, for her father, the Marquis de Valaine, lives at the court of Louis XVI in Versailles. After a hailstorm destroys the château’s orchards, gardens and fields, an ambitious young Welshman, David Stronach, accepts the commission to plan new gardens in the hope of making his name as a landscape designer. However, the love that blossoms between them is doomed: Viviane is betrothed to a duke, and David is forced to leave the property.

There are things no-one can prepare you for when your daughter goes missing - you are haunted by her memory. Even close friends can't understand what you are going through, and only in a group with mothers of other lost children can you find real comfort. But as the parents gather to support each other in the wake of another disappearance, a crack appears in the group that threatens to rock their lives all over again. Welcome to the club no one wants to join.

Seven years after his sister vanished without a trace, Jude is on the road, determined not to return home until he has found her. He wants to reunite his broken family, but more than this he wants to know why Zoe left. They’d been enjoying the funfair - grasping a rare moment of happiness following their parents’ divorce - when after a ride together, Zoe had stopped speaking to her mother’s new partner. Though Mandy believed he was the man she’d waited all her life for, her love for her daughter trumped even that.

When Miriam arrives at a British checkpoint, she is exhausted and hungry. But deep down she knows she is still one of the fortunate ones. One of the few to survive the camps. Having lost her husband and son, Miriam clings to the hope of finding her daughter, Rosa.

After the sudden death of her estranged husband, Clare is shocked to discover she has inherited a dog and a small fortune. Convinced by her adult children to finally do something for herself, Clare embarks on a coast-to-coast adventure - until she stumbles upon an unmarked location on the fringes of South Devon. When Clare finds herself driving down a narrow road to the tiny village of Little Sorrell, she is met with distant, cold and rude locals. But as she falls in love with a cottage she wishes to call home, can Little Sorrell truly be the place of second chances?

Emily Klein doesn’t know she has killed her husband until the day of his funeral. At first, signs point to a tragic accident. Yet, as Emily pieces together the events before his death - events which led to her own memory loss - she begins to suspect that her husband’s death may have been the result of more than a terrible twist of fate.... But the accident is only the beginning. Because while Emily’s physical scars will heal, the trauma of the accident has awakened old ghosts. She hears strange sounds, catches things that can’t possibly be there in the corner of her eye.

Sadie McQueen has leased a double-fronted space in a small cul de sac in a culturally diverse corner of central London. The cobbles muffle the noise of double-deckers roaring past the arched gates. Turn right and you are in a futuristic maze of corporate glass monoliths. Turn left and you see a wide street with many different houses. Towering above the mews are the degenerating tower blocks of an infamous estate.

For NHS Nurse Lucie Burrows, it's time to put the past behind her and embrace Greek life. Finally free from the UK restrictions, Lucie is excited for the summer of 2021. When her best friend, Gavin, finds the perfect Greek island getaway, Lucie is sure that this holiday to Corfu is going to be one to remember. But when a landslide puts the village into a local lockdown, Lucie is thrown together with Michalis Andino, the super sexy village doctor. It's not quite the escape she had planned, but things could certainly be worse.

Rose has it all - the gorgeous children, the husband, the beautiful home. But then her best friend, Polly, comes to stay. Very soon Rose's cosy world starts to fall apart at the seams - her baby falls dangerously ill, her husband is distracted.... Is Polly behind it all? It appears that once you invite Polly into your home, it's very difficult to get her out again.

In 2018, 66.3 million pairs of shoes were manufactured across the world every single day. They have never been cheaper to buy, and we have never been more convinced that we need to buy them. Yet their cost to the planet has never been greater. In this urgent, passionately argued book, Tansy E. Hoskins opens our eyes to the dark origins of the shoes on our feet.

In a forgotten corner of Paris stands a building. Within its walls people talk and kiss, laugh and cry; some are glad to sit alone while others wish they did not. A woman with silver-blonde hair opens her bookshop downstairs, an old man feeds the sparrows on his windowsill, and a young mother wills the morning to hold itself at bay. Though each of their walls touches someone else's, the neighbours they pass in the courtyard remain strangers. Into this courtyard arrives Edward.

When Zoe and Win move into their new home it's meant to be a fresh start. But pushed to the back of a cupboard is a suitcase - inside is a wedding dress, letters and a diary all belonging to a woman called Libby. Zoe follows Libby's trail across Europe, but when Libby's story takes a darker turn, Zoe becomes increasingly obsessed with discovering what really happened all those years ago.

It's 1943. Evie Yeo's best friend Sukie and sister Pattie are leaving Devon behind and heading to London to work in a hotel. Sukie's fiancé, Wesley, is in a swing band that's booked to play the bar and with Sukie 'upstairs' on reception and Pattie a chambermaid 'downstairs', they see and share all aspects of the hotel and meet all of its residents. From the military officials in town for meetings at the war office, to people from the theatre helping to bring joy to the capital in wartime, an eclectic mix of people come together at this small hotel in Covent Garden.

It is 1940, and, as the Battle of Britain takes to the air, Hope Stapleford is recruited to join the Special Operations Executive. On her way to Scotland, she is pulled from a train and driven to spymaster Fitzroy's stately home. She is his intelligence operative, and he wants to send her to a Scottish airfield where Harvey is already stationed undercover as a mechanic. At the airbase, Hope and Harvey find a community in turmoil. Pilots talk of strange sightings in the air, and local mechanics report mysterious scratches appearing on the wings and fuselage of the aircraft.

How well do you know your neighbours? Would you notice if they lived or died? Police analyst Annabel wouldn’t describe herself as lonely. Her work keeps her busy and the needs of her ageing mother and her cat are more than enough to fill her time when she’s on her own. But Annabel is shocked when she discovers her neighbour’s decomposing body in the house next door, and appalled to think that no one, including herself, noticed her absence. Back at work she sets out to investigate, espite her police officer

Professor Maxie Reddick has her reasons for being sceptical of traditional policing methods, but, in between her criminology lecturing job and her Criminal Thoughts podcast, she stays firmly on the side lines of the crime solving world. Then a young woman is brutally attacked, and suddenly it’s essential that Maxie turns her words into actions; this is no longer an academic exercise - this is somebody’s life. But as she delves deeper, the case takes a sickening turn, which leads Maxie to the horrifying realisation that the attack might not have been a one-off.