Showing results by author "Lesley Pearse" in All Categories

When Mary meets a glamorous stranger named Elizabeth she realises their lives couldn’t be more different. Elizbeth is beautiful and charming, about to set off on a dazzling adventure to Ireland where she’s inherited a grand house. Mary, shy and meek, has nothing to look forward to but the dreary life of a maid in Hampstead.

Sixteen-year-old Matilda is a poor Covent Garden flower girl until the day she saves the life of Tabitha, a minister's daughter. Welcomed into Tabitha's family, Matilda is offered the chance of a lifetime. She leaves behind London's slums and enters the darkest corners of New York.

After the funeral of her mother, Sally, Alice Kent is approached by a man named Angus Tweedy. He claims to be her father and tells her that he served time in prison for marrying Sally bigamously. What does he hope to gain telling her this now, 30 years on? How can her adored dad Ralph not be her true father? And why did her mother betray her so badly? She had accepted Sally's many faults and her reluctance to never speak of the past. But faced with this staggering deception, Alice knows she must uncover the whole truth about her mother. Whatever the cost.

Twenty-three-year-old Katy Speed is fascinated by the house across the street. The woman who lives there, Gloria, is the most glamorous neighbour on the avenue, owning a fashionable dress shop in Bexhill-on-Sea. But who is the woman who arrives in the black car most Saturdays while Gloria is at work? Sometimes she brings women to the house, other times they have children. Hilda, Katy's mother, disapproves of Gloria. She wonders if these mysterious visitors have just been released from prison. Is Gloria secretly bringing criminals, or worse, into the heart of the community?

Scotland, 1995. On the hills of Cornton Vale Prison. She was convicted of killing her best friend.... Laura Brannigan has been put away for murder. She insists that she didn't kill Jackie. But her search for true justice seems futile. Then she receives a letter that takes her back to her youth and the memory of an old love, Stuart....

Eve should never have married Don Hathaway. Yes, he gave her two beautiful children - Olly and Tabitha - but he is a bully. Worse than that, he hurts her. But, after one drunken rage too many, she has the courage to leave him. Eve is warned that it's a difficult path, yet she needs to give her children hope for the future. Don, however, is bitter. And getting away entirely from him proves impossible. Until the day, Eve tries to teach him a lesson - and it all goes horribly wrong.

Baby Hope, the unfortunate proof of Lady Harvey's adultery, is smuggled out of a privileged aristocratic household to a nearby village. There, her true identity a secret, she grows up in the arms of the poor but loving Renton family. But the day comes when Hope must pay her way. What could be more natural than being taken into service by the Harveys? However, when she sees something she should not, she is threatened and blackmailed into leaving her beloved Rentons forever.

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.

When a beautiful blonde girl is found half-drowned on a beach, she has no memory of who she is or what horrors have left her there. But an article about her in a Brighton newspaper rings alarm bells for beautician Dale, who shows the police photographs of Lotte Wainright. The girls met working on a cruise ship, and their friendship blossomed as they sailed the seas of South America, until Lotte fell under the sinister influence of an older American couple.

When nine-year-old orphan Georgia James is unexpectedly fostered by the kindly Celia and her bank manager husband, she can hardly believe her luck. But then - on her 15th birthday - she suffers the cruellest betrayal of all at the hands of her foster father and is forced to run away, leaving everything she loves behind.

When her husband returns shell-shocked and broken from the Great War and his mother makes her life a misery, Betty Wellow discovers how bitter and hard life can truly be. But it is not until a devastating storm sweeps through their small fishing village and endangers her life that she sees her chance to escape - and takes it. Fleeing to Bristol, she changes her name to Mabel Brook and takes a position as a maid. But tragedy strikes once more after the sudden death of her mistress, and she is cast back onto the streets.

Fifteen-year-old Maisy Mitcham and her twin brother, Duncan, lose their mother to an insane asylum one night in 1960. The twins are sent to their grandmother's country house, Nightingales. Cold and distant, she leaves them to their own devices, to explore and to grow. That is until the day Duncan doesn't come home from the woods. With their grandmother seeming to have little interest in her grandson's disappearance and the police soon giving up hope, it is left to Maisy to discover the truth.

When their father tragically kills their mother, Dulcie and her sister are sent to an orphanage. Told that a 'better life' awaits them in another country, they are shipped off to Australia. But the promises made to the sisters turn out to be lies. And it seems to Dulcie that everyone who ever said 'trust me' somehow betrayed that trust. So when she meets Ross, another orphanage survivor, and finds he is a kindred spirit, hope swells in her heart. But can she ever get over the past betrayals and learn to trust again? And can she fight not only for herself but also for her sister?

Fifteen-year-old Beth's dreams are shattered when she, her brother, Sam, and her baby sister, Molly, are orphaned. Sam believes that only in America can they make their fortunes, so, reluctantly leaving Molly with adoptive parents, brother and sister embark on the greatest adventure of their lives.

London, 1939: Eighteen-year-old Mari is defiant, strong-willed and selfish. She has craved independence her entire life and now, with the World on the brink of war, Mari has finally escaped the sleepy fishing village of her childhood in New Zealand. After passionately falling for Morgan, the cockney steward aboard ship on her voyage to England, she hastily dismisses him in favour of being taken out by handsome young pilots in the glamorous West end. But, without warning, the Blitz blows her new life apart. Now Mari has the chance to make a difference but can she learn from her mistakes in time?

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Promise from the bestselling author Lesley Pearse. War threatens to take all she has loved and lived for. When Belle Reilly's husband Jimmy enlists and heads for the trenches of Northern France, she knows she cannot stand idly by awaiting his return. Volunteering to help the wounded, Belle is posted to France as a Red Cross ambulance driver.

In 1786 a fisherman's daughter from Cornwall called Mary Broad was sentenced to be hanged for theft. But her sentence was commuted, and she was transported to Australia, one of the first convicts to arrive there. How Mary escaped the harsh existence of the colony and found true love, and how she was captured and taken back to London in chains, only to be released after a trial where she was defended by no less than James Boswell, is one of the most gripping and moving stories of human endeavour (based on an amazing true story) you will ever listen to.

Lesley Pearse didn't publish her first novel until she was 48. Now she has sold over ten million books around the world and is a constant presence on the bestseller chart. A writer of heart-stopping stories, Lesley's books are filled with heroines struggling to make it in a difficult world. Yet this description could apply to Lesley herself. In this, her first ever autobiography, she tells of growing up in an orphanage after her mother's death, her racy twenties in London during the swinging sixties and working as a bunny girl and dressmaker.

Susan walks into a busy doctor's surgery and guns down two members of staff. Then she calmly waits for the police. Beth is the lawyer assigned to defend Susan. But her client is uncooperative until both women realise that 29 years earlier, they were childhood friends. As the evidence against Susan mounts up, both she and Beth begin to talk about the secrets and the traumas that sent them down such different paths in life. Their friendship grows stronger. But for one of them, there can be no happy ending....

When Ruby and Verity met as girls, they came from different worlds. Verity was privately educated, living in a beautiful Hampstead home, while Ruby was being raised in extreme poverty. Nevertheless, they became firm friends. However, fortunes are not set in stone, and soon the girls find their situations reversed. As Ruby goes up in the world, Verity encounters more and more tragedy, but still the girls remain a large part of each other's lives.