Showing results by narrator "Lucy Paterson" in All Categories

The pretty market town of Sterndale is a close-knit community where everyone thinks they know everyone else. But at a lavish summer wedding, a local celebrity is discovered slumped in the gardens, the victim of a violent assault that leads to a murder investigation. As the police search for answers, suspicion and paranoia build and the lives of the locals are turned upside down. Secrets that lurk beneath the pristine façade of Sterndale come to light as detectives close in on the truth.

Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world. But it is hard to keep faith, so very hard. Now an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, and to journey - to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres's childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father.

The Battle of Galen's Vale is over, but the war for the Empire's future has just begun. Concerned by rumours that the Magistratum's authority is waning, Sir Konrad Vonvalt returns to Sova to find the capital city gripped by intrigue and whispers of rebellion. In the Senate, patricians speak openly against the Emperor, while fanatics preach holy vengeance on the streets.

Emma Litton can't get on with her life until she finds out just what place she has in her father's heart. She'd been at school in Europe since she was 14, then found a job in Paris, always wondering what her famous artist father was doing in Japan or America or at their cottage in Cornwall. Even after she meets Robert Morrow, a handsome gallery owner, and rediscovers her stepbrother, Christo, she still feels compelled to probe into the truth about her past.

Enter Rosamunde Pilcher's world of simple joys, of crisp country air and crackling log fires, the pleasures of family reunions and rediscovered friendships. Through thick mist and a cold east wind, Lavinia returns to Scotland. Up at the big house, Mrs Farquhar is dying. Seeing Lachlan again, Lavinia remembers her childhood holidays there: swimming in the loch, the picnics, bottle-feeding the lambs down at the farm and the evenings when they danced reels. Most of all, she remembers Mrs Farquhar's grandson Rory.

Are you brave enough to wake the sleeping tiger? Selina Bruce has impulsively left behind her lawyer fiancé in London and flown alone to a tiny island off the Spanish coast. She is searching for the father she has never known, but what she finds is an unexpected truth about herself and the man she plans to marry. For exotic San Antonio offers Selina more than the penetrating brilliance of the noonday sun. It offers the mysterious George Dyer, who holds the key not only to her past...but to her heart.

Can one woman's marriage survive her best friend's divorce? Fans of Veronica Henry and Erica James, this is the next book to add to your reading list. It's time to get back to where it all began.... Octavia Sheldon thought she'd have a different life. One where she travelled the world with an exotic husband and free-spirited children in tow. But things didn't turn out quite like that.

It was meant to be a quiet family fishing trip, a chance for mother and daughter to talk. But it changes the course of their lives forever. They catch nothing except a broken doll that gets tangled in the net. After years in the ocean, the doll a terrifying sight and the mother's first instinct is to throw it back, but she relents when her daughter pleads to keep it. This simple act of kindness proves fatal. That evening, the mother posts a picture of the doll on social media. By the morning, she is dead and the doll has disappeared.

The new novel by Sunday Times best seller Harriet Evans will transport you to a Dorset beach house, where you can feel the sand between your toes. Enter the home of Tony and Althea Wilde - the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of their generation and with a marriage every bit as stormy. This glorious tale of tangled family secrets and lies will leave you warm and glowing. Tony and Althea Wilde. Glamorous, argumentative...adulterous to the core

In a hotel room in Venice, where she's just completed a routine assassination, Villanelle receives a late-night call. Eve Polastri has discovered that a senior MI5 officer is in the pay of the Twelve and is about to debrief him. As Eve interrogates her subject, desperately trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, Villanelle moves in for the kill. The duel between the two women intensifies, as does their mutual obsession, and when the action moves from the high passes of the Tyrol to the heart of Russia, Eve finally begins to unwrap the enigma of her adversary's true identity.

If you will be a great man's mistress, you must pay the price.... The Savoy, 1372. Widow Lady Katherine Swynford presents herself for a role in the household of merciless royal prince John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, hoping to end her destitution. But the Duke's scandalous proposition leaves her life of pious integrity reeling.... Seduced by the glare of royal adoration, Katherine becomes John's mistress. She will leave behind everything she has stood for to play second fiddle to his young wife and ruthless ambition.

It's New Year's Eve and the stage is set for a lavish party in one of Edinburgh's best postcodes. It's a moment for old friends to set the past to rights—and move on. The night sky is alive with fireworks and the champagne is flowing. But the celebration fails to materialise. Because someone at this party is going to die tonight. Midnight approaches and the countdown begins—but it seems one of the guests doesn't want a resolution.

'My life is free, random and spontaneous. This in itself creates enormous energy and clarity in body and mind.' (Miriam Lancewood). Miriam Lancewood is a young Dutch woman living a primitive, nomadic life in the heart of the mountains with her New Zealand husband. She lives simply in a tent or hut and survives by hunting wild animals, foraging edible plants and using minimal supplies. For the last six years she has lived this way, through all seasons, often cold, hungry and isolated in the bush.

Ashes and Stones is a moving and personal journey, along rugged coasts and through remote villages and modern cities, in search of the traces of those accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Scotland. We visit modern memorials, roadside shrines and standing stones, and roam among forests and hedge mazes, folk lore and political fantasies. From fairy hills to forgotten caves, we explore a spellbound landscape.

A voicemail from her husband tells Sara he's arrived at the holiday cabin. Then a call from his friend confirms he never did. She tries to carry on as normal, teasing out her clients' deepest fears, but as the hours stretch out, her own begin to surface. And when the police finally take an interest, they want to know why Sara deleted that voicemail. To get to the root of Sigurd's disappearance, Sara must question everything she knows about her relationship.

My son has been taken. And I’ve been given a choice.... Kill a patient on the operating table. Or never see him again. The man lies on the table in front of me. As a surgeon, it’s my job to save him. As a mother, I know I must kill him. You might think that I’m a monster. But there really is only one choice. I must get away with murder. Or I will never see my son again.

A chilling note predicting the deaths of six people is found in a school's time capsule, 10 years after it was buried. But surely, if a 13-year-old wrote it, it can't be a real threat.... Detective Huldar suspects he's been given the investigation simply to keep him away from real police work. He turns to psychologist Freyja to help understand the child who hid the message. Soon, however, they find themselves at the heart of another shocking case.

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 clerk and protégé, orphaned by the wars that forged the empire.

A terrifying ghost story from the Queen of Icelandic crime, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, author of the Thora Gudmundsdottir novels. The crunching noise had resumed, now accompanied by a disgusting, indefinable smell. It could best be described as a blend of kelp and rotten meat. The voice spoke again, now slightly louder and clearer: Don't go. Don't go yet. I'm not finished.

The Safe House is a scintillating psychological thriller by the Top Ten bestselling author, Nicci French. You open your home and your heart to a victim. But your house is anything but safe.... Samantha Laschen is a doctor specialising in post-traumatic stress disorder. She's moved to the coast to escape her problems and to be alone with her young daughter. But now the police want her to take in Fiona Mackenzie, a girl whose parents have been savagely murdered.