Showing results by narrator "Jenny Funnell" in All Categories

In the small town of Dewstow, 'tis the season for gold, frankincense, and murder... It’s Margery’s first year as kitchen manager for Summerview school and supported by her wife, Clementine, she is trying to stay focused. When a tragic accident claims the life of the music teacher during rehearsals for the Christmas concert planning, they are caught in the crossfire. Mrs Smith, the Head of Drama, becomes the prime suspect, and is desperate for the Dinner Lady Detectives to clear her name.

Summer 1939: After touring an unsettled Europe to promote her latest book, Romily Temple returns home to Island House and the love of her life, Jack Devereux. But when Jack falls ill, his estranged family are called to his bedside. With war now declared, each member of the family is reluctantly forced to accept their new stepmother and confront their own shortcomings. But can Romily cope with the life that has been so unexpectedly thrust upon her?

Murder is a dish best served ice cold... In the idyllic, small town of Dewstow, Margery and Clementine are eagerly awaiting retirement from their work on the front-line serving meals to the students at Summerview secondary school. Their peaceful life is shattered when their kitchen manager is found dead in the school’s walk-in freezer. The police are adamant that it’s an open-and-shut case of accidental death. But Margery and Clementine are convinced that something more sinister is afoot and take it upon themselves to investigate.

Cloaked strangers and danger abound... When dinner ladies and amateur sleuths Margery and Clementine Butcher-Baker embark on an evening walk after another busy half-term at Summerview Secondary School, they discover the body of missing maths teacher Mr Weaver. Marked with a mysterious symbol, something suspicious is clearly afoot. As the nights grow darker and the mysterious symbols continue to appear around Dewstow, The Dinner Lady Detectives are pulled deeper into the case. Can they solve the mystery as deceit and chaos reign, or will their killer pull off another deadly trick?

Hettie Bagshot has bitten off more than any cat could chew. As soon as she launches her No. 2 Feline Detective Agency, she's bucketed into a case: Furcross, a home for slightly older cats, has a nasty spate of bodysnatching, and three of the residents have been stolen from their graves. Hettie and her sidekick, Tilly, set out to reveal the terrible truth. In a haze of catnip and pastry, Hettie steers the Furcross Case to its conclusion, but will she get there before the body count rises - and the pies sell out?

The truth isn't the only thing that's dead and buried... Following recent changes to Dewstow's local police force, The Dinner Lady Detectives, Margery and Clementine Butcher-Baker have been warned off interfering in investigations. When a body is found under the school playground during building renovations, they have no intention of getting involved. In need of money for their new website, the pair agrees to help Mrs Redburn, who suspects her husband of infidelity. But when their investigation sends them stumbling into the middle of the playground mystery, it becomes impossible for them to stay out of the police's way.

Kayla Sinclair knows she's in trouble when she almost bankrupts herself to buy a portrait of a mysterious eighteenth century man. Jago Kerswell, inn-keeper and smuggler, will take any risk to be with Lady Eliza Marcombe. Over two centuries separate Kayla and Jago, but thanks to a gypsy's spell, their lives become inextricably linked. Kayla finds herself on a quest that could heal the past, but will she find heartache or happiness?

In this original and meticulously researched narrative history, Gareth Russell utilises the sinking of the Titanic as a prism through which to look at the end of the Edwardian era and the seismic shift of modernity the 1910s have come to mark in the West. The Darksome Bounds of a Failing World focuses on the symbolism of the Titanic as the floating symbol of Anglo-American success, its clientele an apt illustration of the limitless - technological, financial - possibilities of its time.

A groundbreaking account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body from one of our best historians, author of The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton and George Eliot: The Last Victorian. Why did the great philosophical novelist George Eliot feel so self-conscious that her right hand was larger than her left? Exactly what made Darwin grow that iconic beard in 1862, a good five years after his contemporaries had all retired their razors?

Olivia has been in love with Daniel forever, but they've never been able to make it work. Their relationship has always been a series of mixed messages and misunderstandings and the final straw comes when Daniel starts dating her flat-mate, Emily. Hurt, Olivia resolves to forget her heartache with a spot of speed-dating. Can she rely on Daniel to step in when events take a terrifying turn or will it ultimately result in tragedy?

July 1948: As Britain recovers from WWII, Annie Royal is looking to the future. Recently married to Henry, and with a baby on the way, she and her new husband are happily settled in the seaside town of Worthing. But a knock at the door brings Annie's world crashing down. On her doorstep stands Sarah and her two young children. As they talk, Sarah reveals that she is Henry's wife - and she has been searching for him since he walked out on their family a year ago.

The town is gripped by a big freeze, and blizzard after blizzard has engulfed the feline community, leaving shops and businesses snowbound. Hettie Bagshot and her sidekick, Tilly Jenkins, have found sanctuary by their fireside but soon they are bucketed into a terrifying nightmare, called to investigate the disappearance of the town's kittens as - one by one - they are taken in the snow. Who are the strange cats living in Wither-Fork Woods?

Meet Hettie Bagshot, a long-haired tabby cat whose whiskers twitch at the first sign of a mystery, and her best friend, Tilly Jenkins. Together, they run the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency, and nothing will stop them from untangling each brain-teasing case that comes their way. In scorching temperatures, Hettie Bagshot and her sidekick, Tilly, set out on a road trip to catch a killer cat amid a sea of entertainers. As Psycho Derek's bus lurches from one venue to the next, the killer strikes again.

Take one aspiring cook, one judge, and a spoonful of romance...When Zoe Harper wins a coveted place in a televised cookery competition she's thrilled. It's a chance to cook her way to fame and fortune and the little delicatessen she's set her heart on. The first task has hardly begun when she finds herself with rather too much on her plate. Not only has she got to contend with the fiercely competitive and downright devious Cher, but she's fast developing an inconvenient crush on one of the judges - the truly delicious Gideon Irving.

Alice and Belinda are identical twins, and have grown up sharing everything: toys, rooms, and friends. But as they begin their careers as detectives - a job they have each wanted for as long as they can remember - a computer error sees them accidentally starting at the same North London police station. Work gives them enough mysteries to be investigating as they attempt to make themselves known and respected in their new roles, but when Belinda is sexually harassed by a colleague, her twin Alice realizes she can use her identical appearance to fight back when her sister no longer can...

Hettie and Tilly are summoned to a mysterious tea party hosted by Tilly's long-lost great-aunts. The ancient windmill they live in is not what it seems, and very soon the mill begins to reveal its terrifying secrets of murder and betrayal. Tilly must face her family's demons as Hettie fights to unravel the tragedies of the past. Who are the hippy cats camped in the field? Why do the walls of the windmill whisper at night? And who haunts the derelict priory? Will Hettie and Tilly have the wind blown out of their sails before this baffling case is brought to a grinding conclusion?

When Janine and Dougie fell in love they thought it would be forever. Fifteen years later their daughter, Stevie, is their one remaining connection. At 16, Stevie’s not quite a child, not quite grown up: a dangerous age. But it's only during a birthday celebration in Spain, when she gets too close to one of Dougie's best friends, that her parents realise just how dangerous.

I have a gardener's inherent belief in the natural order of things. Soft-petalled flowers that go to seed. The resolute passage of the seasons. Swallows that fly thousands of miles to follow the eternal summer. Children who don't die before their parents. A community in shock. When eighteen-year-old Rosie Anderson disappears, the idyllic village where she lived will never be the same again.

It's a week before Christmas, and Hettie and Tilly set out on a very dangerous case for The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency. Lady Eloise Crabstock-Singe has summoned them to Crabstock Manor, hoping they can solve the mystery of Christmas Paws: a servant cat that haunts the manor, intent on killing off all the Crabstocks. Through blizzard and storm, stranded on the notorious Bodkin Moor, will Hettie and Tilly save the day and get home in time for Christmas dinner?

When pillar-of-the-community Harry Stewart dies of a sudden heart attack, the whole village is devastated - except for his maligned wife, Karen, the only one who really knew the abusive alcoholic Harry had become. Suddenly freed from this oppressive marriage, Karen is nonetheless wracked with guilt about her final argument with her husband and sees the presence of her spoiled stepdaughter, Sophia, as a suitable purgatory. Her only comfort in her grief and isolation is William, the sympathetic local vicar.