Showing results by narrator "Lucy Paterson" in All Categories

Maria Birch is 70 years old, and for her every week is the same. On Monday, she does her weekly shop. On Tuesday, she goes for a blow-dry. On Wednesday, she visits the laundrette. But Thursday is her favorite day of all - everything hurts less on a Thursday. Every Thursday Maria walks to her local café. Waiting for her at one of the red gingham-topped tables is Albie Young, a charming man with a twinkle in his eye and an impressive collection of tweed flat caps. Every week, the pair share a slice of marble cake and a pot of tea. Except one week, Albie doesn’t turn up.

Three tells the stories of three women: Orna, a divorced single mother looking for a new relationship, Emilia, a Latvian immigrant on a spiritual search and Ella, married and mother of three, returning to university to write her thesis. All of them will meet the same man. His name is Gil. He won't tell them the whole truth about himself - but they don't tell him everything, either. Tense, twisted and surprising, Three is a daring new form of psychological thriller.

Words can be a way to unlock our feelings. Poetry allows us to be in touch with our emotions and helps us unlock and explore our vulnerability. You'll Never Walk Alone is a collection of the kind of inspirational texts—mainly poems—that can accompany us, whatever we are feeling, from sorrow to delight. The texts are not just about words which can console us or comfort us—though they often do this too. Rather these are poems that allow us to enjoy a full range of emotions.

There are worse things than being spectacularly jilted. Losing a leg, for instance, or getting shot - well, perhaps not: The bullet Alistair took fighting in the peninsula never landed him in London's scandal sheets. Captain Alistair Beaumaris never dreamed he'd be tossed over by Lord Fairchild's bastard daughter, losing both her and her fortune - a singular humiliation that should have taught him a lesson. But when your luck is out, you do foolish things, like quarrel with your oldest friend. Or mistake a perfectly respectable widow for a lady of easy virtue.

Evie has just started her second year at University. She is young, beautiful and popular. She should be having the time of her life, except she has something to hide - a one-night-stand with her English professor, Simon. Not wanting any of his other students to be used in the same way, Evie reports their relationship to University HR. But hours later, Village Vixen, the student gossip blogger, is baying for blood. She's found out about the accusation and is firmly on Simon's side.

It seemed, at times, an act of profound selfishness, to have a child so that I might become a parent; but selfish, too, to have a child and stay the same, or not to have one - unless the only honest choice would have been to try to become this kinder version of myself without the need to bring another into it.

Belinda Penshurst loves her home village Little Challham, and its charming, peaceful ways. So when wine critic Sadie Oppenshaw dies at a tasting Belinda organised, she immediately turns detective to uncover the poisoner.... Accompanied by retired detective Harry Powell and her boisterous Labrador Horatio, Belinda sets out to investigate the world of wine. There are scandals brewing everywhere...but do the local DIY enthusiasts have a deadly vendetta, or did Sadie’s reviews cause a resentful restaurant owner to crack?

The Empire of the Wolf simmers with unrest. Rebels, heretics, and powerful patricians all challenge the power of the Imperial throne. Only the Order of Justices stands in the way of chaos. Sir Konrad Vonvalt is the most feared Justice of all, upholding the law by way of his sharp mind, arcane powers, and skill as a swordsman. At his side stands Helena Sedanka, his talented protégé, orphaned by the wars that forged the Empire.

"I don’t exactly know how to tell you this, but you're not the only one who is single again." Single together for the first time, 34-year-old Meg and her warm-hearted mother Sally decide to cancel Christmas, and run away to a tiny cottage on the Cornish coast. For Meg, it is the perfect place to heal, while for her mother it has a special, and secret, place in her heart. Meg and Sally find that they’re not only getting to know themselves, but also each other. However, unable to resist getting involved in the village Christmas celebrations.

True-crime writer Heather Kilbride arrives in the seacoast town of Inversgail, Scotland, to research a recent murder for her new book. But if that’s true, why does she seem more interested in William Clark, a shadowy lawyer with no connection to the murder? Her nosy questions arouse the suspicions of Constable Hobbs, the members of a local writers’ group, and Janet Marsh and her crew of amateur sleuths at Yon Bonnie Books. Then Heather is found dead - twice....

It's been years since Nadja Kulka was convicted of a cruel crime. After being released from prison, she's wanted nothing more than to live a normal life: nice flat, steady job, even a few friends. But when one of those friends, Laura von Hoven - free-spirited beauty and wife of Nadja's boss - kills her lover and begs Nadja for her help, Nadja can't seem to be able to refuse.

Perhaps one of the best known of the English monarchs, Queen Victoria forever shaped a chapter of English history, bequeathing her name to the Victorian age. In Queen Victoria, Lucy Worsley introduces this iconic woman in a new light. Going beyond an exploration of the queen merely as a monarch, Worsley considers Victoria as a woman leading a truly extraordinary life in a unique time period.

After an acclaimed career in ceramics making things and breaking things, it is now Jay herself who has cracked. Recovering from a breakdown, she and her husband, Simon, move to the desolate edges of the Yorkshire moors, where they find and fall in love with the Two Houses: a crumbling Victorian property whose central rooms were supposedly so haunted that a previous owner had them cut out from the building entirely.

After ninety-three well-lived years, Violet MacAskill is ready to simplify her life. Her eccentric solution? She’ll throw a decanting and decluttering party at her family home—a Scottish Baronial manor near the seaside town of Inversgail. She sets aside everything she wants or needs, then she invites her many friends in to sip sherry and help themselves to whatever they want from all that’s left. Janet Marsh and Christine Robertson, two of the women who own Yon Bonnie Books in Inversgail, enjoy themselves at the party. Not everyone who attends has a good time, though.

On a cold evening, Zeb, a single mum in her thirties, is found wandering aimlessly on a remote road. She is dazed, confused, and bloodied. She doesn't know where she is or how she got there. She has travelled far from home and someone has attacked her. Memory loss means she can trust no one, and, with her assailant unidentified, Zeb is desperate to be reunited with her son and to ensure his safety. But what will her search for the truth uncover? Will it bring answers or more questions? And what if the person she can rely on the least is herself?

In today's connection economy, the most successful leaders inspire their people with purpose and meaning. Powerful corporate storytelling can mobilise people around an organisational objective in a way that a focus on market share never will. Be it a digital transformation or a diversity and inclusion initiative, corporate change needs the support of the people in that organisation in order to stick. Yet, while all stories can move people to take action, storytelling isn't a one size fits all.

Early one Monday morning, much like today, journalist Alex Kubelick walks up to a total stranger and slaps him across the face. Hard. He thanks her. They've both just earned Emoticoins in a new, all-consuming game that trades real-life emotions for digital currency. Emoticoins are changing the face of the global economy - but someone or something seems to be controlling the game for their own nefarious purposes. As Alex begins to pick apart the tangled threads that are holding the virtual game together, she finds herself on the run from very real enemies.

Laura Edwards, a French émigré fallen on hard times, took to the stage to support her brother's medical career. Now that he's established, he wants her to turn respectable, landing her in the country hiding in plain sight from one of her biggest admirers, Jasper Rushford, the care-for-nothing son of the local viscount. He just might have recognized her...

In Leading on the Edge, successful business speaker and consultant Rachael Robertson shares the lessons she learned as leader of a year-long expedition to the wilds of Antarctica.

Out for a bicycle ride in the hills beyond Inversgail, Janet Marsh discovers the body of Dr. Malcolm Murray. The elderly Murray and his own bicycle went off the road and down a steep slope - he’s sprawled in the burn at the bottom, his damaged bike in a patch of thistles on the bank. Tire tracks at the side of the narrow road suggest a vehicle might have been involved. But who would want the well-loved retired doctor dead?