Showing results by narrator "Helen Lloyd" in All Categories

On a wet Monday in January, Jess Mount receives the devastating news that she hasn't got long left to live. She doesn't hear it from a doctor, though. She discovers it when her Facebook timeline skips forward 18 months and family and friends start posting tributes to her - following her death.

For years, Abigail Linton devoted herself to caring for her parents and her siblings’ children. Now, eager to create a life of her own, Abby seizes upon a position as a governess on a neighboring estate. Unfortunately, her absentee employer is Maxwell Bryce, the Duke of Rothwell, the notorious rake who once broke her youthful heart. But since he hasn’t set foot on his estate for 15 years, Abby assumes she’ll never have to lay eyes on him ever again.

It’s 1997 and Missy is a cellist in an indie rock band on tour across America. At twenty-two years old, she gets on stage every night and plays the song about her absent mother that made the band famous. As the only girl in the band, she’s determined to party just as hard as everyone else, loving and leaving a guy in every town. But then she meets a tomboy drummer who is hard to forget, and a forgotten flap of cocaine strands her at the border.

Hadrian Ames, the duke of Clayton, needs a bride. He even has the perfect one picked out...that is, until he meets the lovely, free-spirited Natalie Fanshawe. She’s the opposite of what a man of his high rank should desire in a wife - an outspoken American who has never even set foot in a London ballroom. But Natalie doesn’t have time to be swept off her feet by a handsome duke who’s probably a spoiled scoundrel like every other British lord. And she couldn’t care less about Hadrian’s title. After all, it’s not as if he actually worked to attain his wealth and status.

Autumn 1941, and as female conscription looms, three women arrive at the Bell Works Factory in Hucknall to work on the Spitfire production line. Lily soon realises her real dream is to pilot the planes; Edna longs to be reunited with her evacuee daughter, but soon discovers she has a much bigger problem; and Jeannie fears the worst after weeks of no news from her fiancé. Despite all the heartache, with a bit of festive cheer and 'can do' attitude, The Engine Girls will pull together and do all they can to ensure Britain's safe for the New Year.

Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This audiobook is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It's also a wise, engaging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland.

February 2022 marked 80 years since the Fall of Singapore and Olga is now ready to tell the story of her years as a child prisoner of war. It's a story of great fear and deprivation; of a childhood utterly lost to conflict. It's also a story of class prejudice and unkindness that didn't end when Olga was freed from the camp and returned to England as a refugee.

The war is drawing to a close, but the munitions girls are still hard at work in the factory. Gladys, who's been promoted to overseer, has been feeling lonely lately. Her daughter has moved away, and a lot of her friends have left Gosport, too. Then an act of kindness towards Goldie, a homeless teenager, provides Gladys with a new friend and lodger.

In Nature of Work: The New Story of Work for a Living Age, Paul Miller, CEO and founder of Digital Workplace Group (DWG), and Shimrit Janes, DWG's director of knowledge, draw on patterns from forests and the natural world to illustrate a dynamic, vital, and more beautiful world of work that our hearts and minds know is possible.

A.N. Wilson, one of England's most beloved writers, imagines the Queen reflecting on her early life. We watch as she discovers, at the tender age of ten, that she is heir to the throne. We witness her meet the dashing Prince Phillip of Greece, who she loved steadfastly from the age of fifteen, and see their friendship blossom into passionate love. Above all, we learn of her astonishing sense of vocation and public duty, which grew during the dark years of WWII and her father's subsequent years of ill health.

The war appears to be over. Helananthe, granddaughter of the mad king, Garnelys, has gathered her forces and reclaimed the Amber Citadel of Parione, defeating its evil Bhahdradomen advisers... but matters are never simple. The destinies of Tanthe and Ysomir, sisters whose journeys from their village home of Riverwynde had a massive impact on the war, have driven them apart. Ysomir is held in the Citadel, accused of killing King Garnelys.

Professor Olivia Sweetman has worked hard to achieve the life she loves, with a high-flying career as a TV presenter and historian, three children and a talented husband. But as she stands before a crowd at the launch of her new best seller, she can barely pretend to smile. Her life has spiralled into deceit, and if the truth comes out, she will lose everything. Only one person knows what Olivia has done.

Tessa James has worked and planned tirelessly to open her own millinery shop. All she needs now is a loan from the lord who sired and abandoned her. The only problem is she doesn’t know his name. What’s a woman to do to find him but enter the aristocratic world by becoming a governess? Guy Whitby, the new duke of Carlin, has returned to London after years abroad to discover that his young daughter Sophy has become a wild child known for scaring away every governess who's crossed his doorstep.

After their fateful stay at the Hearst Hotel, the Ghost Gang is back with more spooks and more subscribers. They’ve been invited to record onboard the RMS Queen Anne, a transatlantic luxury ocean liner with a colorful past of violent deaths of hundreds of passengers—souls that bought a one-way ticket to the afterlife (and never disembarked). When Chrissy, Chase, Kiki, and Emma board the ship, they have a funny feeling they’ve been sucked into a ghostly time warp—a theory that takes a frightening turn when Chrissy goes missing on the first night.

Dan Ranscombe is clever and good-looking, but he resents the wealth and easy savoir faire of fellow guest Paul Latimer. Surely a shrewd girl like Meg Slater would see through that, wouldn't she? And what about Diana, Paul's beautiful sister; Charles Asher, the Jewish outsider; Madeleine, the children's nanny; and artist Henry Haddon? As these guests gather at a country house party, none has any inkling that the choices they make will have fateful consequences lasting through the war and beyond.

After nearly losing his life at the battle of Waterloo, Captain Alexander Tyrrell, earl of Braeburn, comes home to the shocking news that he is still married. Braving enemy fire is nothing compared to having to see the duplicitous Priscilla Vickers again.

We’re living longer, and this is something to celebrate and enjoy. And research shows we can help ourselves to age better. This book will show you how. Maggy Pigott’s uplifting and practical guide explains what to do, why, and how to live a healthier, happier life in eight steps - whatever your age. They include having a purpose, connecting with others, and being physically active. Each step has easy to follow tips, over 150 in all, and inspiring, often amusing, quotations from the ancient world to the present day. v

It is 2017, and in England, Violet Bellamy is surprised to find herself a ghost, because as a rational person, she doesn’t believe in them. After a life of timid conformity, she now wants influence.

Jacob’s Room was written in 1922 and is Virginia Woolf’s third novel; the first in which she made a radical shift from the established style of prose narrative writing and began experimenting with the modernist "stream of consciousness style" now so firmly associated with her work and that so shook the literary establishment. Jacob’s Room is overwhelmingly centered around feelings of absence and emptiness and is a collection of memories and sensations that chart the life of Jacob Flanders, largely observed through the eyes of others.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, humans defeated the shape-changing Bhahdradomen in the War of the Silver Plains. Although they are exiled - or even thought to be extinct - the shape-changers' hatred and jealousy of the humans live on. Now, in the failings of a human king, they find a way to assuage that hatred. Meanwhile the third race, the mysterious Aelyr, although they also consider the Bhahdradomen enemies, keep apart from human realms.