Showing results by narrator "Sherry Baines" in All Categories

At Bagley Hall, a notoriously wild, but increasingly academic, independent, crammed with the children of the famous, trouble is afoot. The ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the facilities of his school with Larkminster Comprehensive - known locally, as 'Larks'. His reasons for doing so are purely financial, but he is encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the dynamic new head of Larks, who has been drafted in to save what is a fast-sinking school from closure.

Ricky France-Lynch had a large crumbling estate, a nine-goal polo handicap, and a beautiful wife who was fair game for anyone with a cheque book. He also had the adoration of fourteen-year-old Perdita MacLeod who couldn’t wait to become a polo player. The polo set were ritzy, and gloriously promiscuous. Perdita was a brat who loved only her horses and Ricky France-Lynch…

She witnessed a murder - and now her life is in danger. Fifteen year-old Belle, though raised in a London brothel, is an innocent. But when she witnesses one of the girls brutally strangled by a client, she is cast into a cruel, heartless world. Snatched from the streets and sold into prostitution, she is made a courtesan in New Orleans.

Into the cutthroat world of Corinium television comes mega-star Declan O'Hara. Declan soon realises that the Managing Director, Lord Baddingham, has recruited him merely to help retain the franchise for Corinium. Baddingham has also enticed Cameron Cook, a gorgeous, domineering woman executive, to produce Declan's programme. As a rival group emerges to pitch for the franchise, reputations ripen and decline, true love blossoms and burns, marriages are made and shattered and sex raises its head at almost every throw....

Abigail Rosen, nicknamed Appassionata, was the sexiest, most flamboyant violinist in classical music, but she was also the loneliest and the most exploited girl in the world. When a dramatic suicide attempt destroyed her violin career, she set her sights on the male-dominated heights of the conductor's rostrum. Given the chance to take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, Abby is ecstatic, not realising the RSO is composed of the wildest bunch of musicians ever to blow a horn or caress a fiddle.

No picture ever came more beautiful than Raphael's Pandora. Discovered by a dashing young lieutenant, Raymond Kelvedon, in a Normandy chateau in 1944, she had cast her spell over his family - all artists and dealers - for 50 years. Hanging in a turret of their lovely Cotswold house, Pandora witnessed Raymond's tempestuous wife, Galena, both entertaining a string of lovers and giving birth to her four children: Jupiter, Alizarin, Jonathan and superbrat Sienna. Then an exquisite stranger rolls up, claiming to be a long-lost daughter of the family, setting the three Belvedon brothers at each other's throats.

Is the ‘perfect murder’ possible? Can that crime be committed with such consummate care, with such exacting skill, that it is unsolvable—even to the most astute investigator? In this unique collection, legendary crime writers Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Russell Thorndike each attempt to create the unsolvable murder, which Superintendent Cornish of the CID then attempts to unravel.

On a moonlit night in 1898, Kathleen Wyman lies in labour at Bessington Hall. Her husband, Edward, is sure that she has been unfaithful to him. In his blind, jealous rage he later gives away the baby to gypsy Rona Parrish, summoned to help with the delivery. Kathleen, frenzied with grief, is soon after locked away in an asylum.

Lysander Hawkley combined breathtaking good looks with the kindest of hearts. He couldn't pass a neglected wife without rushing to the rescue, which invariably led to ecstatic bonking, which didn't please their erring husbands one bit. Let loose among the neglected wives of the ritzy county of Rutshire, Lysander causes absolute havoc. But it is only when he meets Rannaldini, Rutshire's King Rat and a temperamental, fiendishly promiscuous international conductor, that the trouble really starts....

Louise and Ben Hunter's loving marriage is marred only by their unfulfilled longing for a child. Living and working with Ben's father, Ronnie, they are quietly contented. But when Ronnie dies, their whole world changes. Ben's lazy brother, Jacob, returns, convinced he stands to inherit Ronnie's small fortune. And he means to have his brother's wife; though just as she did years before, Louise warns him off. Jacob, however, is not so easily dismissed. When he realises Ben will inherit everything, Jacob is beside himself with rage, and commits a terrible deed.

Beth Ward and Tyler Blacklock share a love they know will last forever. But Beth’s mother, Esther, is jealous of the girl’s happiness and seizes an opportunity to be rid of her daughter. Banished in disgrace from the family home, Beth takes the northbound train and alights at Blackburn, friendless and alone. On this day, Fortune smiles, for Beth is taken in by warm-hearted Maisie Armstrong, a widow with two children. Money is scarce, but love abounds in the cosy house on Larkhill, and Beth is content there to await the birth of her child.

Sir Robert Rannaldini, the most successful but detested conductor in the world, had two ambitions: to seduce his ravishing 19-year-old stepdaughter, Tabitha Campbell-Black, and to put his mark on musical history by making the definitive film of Verdi's darkest opera, Don Carlos. As Rannaldini, Tristan, his charismatic French director, a volatile cast and bolshy French crew gather at Rannaldini's haunted abbey for filming, it is inevitable that violent feuds, abandoned bonking, temperamental screaming, and devious plotting will ensue.

Ruth's tireless research into the disease that killed her young daughter had an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a vaccine against old age. Just one jab a year reverses your biological clock, guaranteeing a long, healthy life. But Ruth's cure was hijacked by her colleague, Erik Grundleger, who hungers for immortality, and the SuperJuve—a premium upgrade—was created, driving human lifespan to a new high. The wealthy elite who take it are dubbed Supers, and the population begins to skyrocket. Then, a perilous side-effect of the SuperJuve emerges, with catastrophic consequences.

Despite a deathbed warning from her beloved mother, Phoebe Mulligan has no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of her uncle, Edward. Wrenched from all she holds dear, the tragic young girl is delivered to Blackburn town, where she must live in a household terrorised by the cold, forbidding presence of her mother's brother. Phoebe cannot understand why she is treated so harshly by Edward Dickens. She is not to know the guilty secret that lies in his past, a secret that casts a sinister shadow over his feelings for his lovely niece.

Lizzie Miller worries for her family – money is short in their little house, but her beautiful daughter Ruby vows to give them all a better life. Working as a maid for Mr Banks, Ruby befriends his shy and gentle daughter, Cicely. The two girls hatch a mischievous plan to introduce Ruby to society at a party for the ‘gentry’ of Blackburn, where Ruby meets Luke Arnold, the dissolute heir to his father’s fortunes.

Robert Sullivan has been left to raise three-year-old Nancy and her seven-year-old brother Jack by himself.Unable to cope, Robert is driven to abandon his children to those he believes can provide them with a better life. However, he quickly has a change of heart and decides to go back for them. But on the way there, he is involved in a horrific accident.

Lucy Nolan is the golden girl. The only daughter of local grocers, Sally and Mike Nolan, she's grown up in a home of total love and security. The one thing her heart desires is that Jack Hanson might ask her to marry him, and when he does eventually propose, Lucy is prepared to give up everything to be with him—even though it means leaving her beloved parents to live abroad where Jack has been offered an exciting business opportunity. But then, almost on the eve of the marriage itself, tragedy strikes.

Rumours about a war with Germany have been whispered around the Quality Street factory for months. It’s hard for everyone to get their heads around air raids, rationing and the threat of bombings, so to distract themselves, they girls are betting on who is most likely to announce wedding bells.

Blackburn, 1947. In the tiny front parlour 14-year-old Laura Blake watches her beloved father die. But not before he tells her she will make something of her life. Laura never forgets his words. Yet her path to success proves to be a rocky one. Forced to trundle a cart around the back streets, selling other folk's cast-offs to support her family, Laura learns enough to start work in her uncle's furniture shop. But then fate deals another cruel blow when Laura is brutally raped. Bearing the child of her attacker in secret, she vows to make the world pay for its injustice towards her.

The Quality Street Factory is fizzing with the news that the King and Queen and the two young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, are going to visit the Mackintosh Factory where the country’s favourite wrapped chocolate is made. The factory floor is heady with excitement but plans are dealt a blow when a much loved staff member is the victim of a poisoning incident. Everyone is under suspicion, which only adds to Reenie Calder’s woes, anxious that her new promotion has only made her stick out even more like a sore thumb.