Karen Cass
Author
Summary
"When young, pretty Catherine Bailey meets Lee Brightman, she can't believe her luck. Gorgeous, charismatic, and a bit mysterious, Lee seems almost too perfect to be true. But what begins as flattering attention and spontaneous, passionate sex transforms into raging jealousy, and Catherine soon discovers that Lee's dazzling blue eyes and blond good looks hide a dark, violent nature. ... Increasingly isolated and driven into the darkest corner of her...
Author
Summary
Follows the owner and three very different residents of the Blue Lion Hotel as London prepares to celebrate the upcoming coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.
"It is Coronation Year, 1953, and a new queen is about to be crowned. The people of London are in a mood to celebrate, none more so than the residents of the Blue Lion hotel. Edie Howard, owner and operator of the floundering Blue Lion, has found the miracle she needs: on Coronation Day,...
Author
Summary
1917... It was inexplicable, impossible, but it had to be true--didn't it? When two young cousins, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright from Cottingley, England, claim to have photographed fairies at the bottom of the garden, their parents are astonished. But when one of the great novelists of the time, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, becomes convinced of the photographs' authenticity, the girls become a national sensation, their discovery offering hope to...
Author
Summary
"Roberta, a lonely thirty-four-year-old bibliophile, works at The Old and New Bookshop in England. When she finds a letter inside her centenarian grandmother's battered old suitcase that hints at a dark secret, her understanding of her family's history is completely upturned. Running alongside Roberta's narrative is that of her grandmother, Dorothy, as a forty-year-old childless woman desperate for motherhood during the early years of World War II....
Author
Series
Whitstable Pearl mystery volume 7
Pub. Date
2020.
Summary
A controversial new property development is planned in Whitstable which will encroach upon the green open space of the downs, to the dismay of Whitstable residents who view this as the thin end of the wedge with regard to local wildlife conservation. A campaign springs into life, spearheaded by a friend of Pearl's family, Martha Laker. A committed environmentalist, Martha is no stranger to controversy herself. Tensions escalate between the developers...
6) Murder Fest
Author
Series
Whitstable Pearl mystery volume 6
Pub. Date
2019.
Summary
Pearl prepares to offer a warm welcome to a group of special visitors. A local Arts Festival is being held to honour a cultural exchange visit from representatives of Whitstable's Twin Town in Germany. Yet very soon, personality clashes surface among the participants; local politicians try to use the festival for their own ends while others jostle for improved billing on the festival programme. Then on the eve of the first event, a cryptic message...
Author
Summary
"When Noel Bostock--aged ten, no family--is evacuated from London to escape the Nazi bombardment, he lands in a suburb northwest of the city with Vera Sedge--a thirty-six-year-old widow drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she's unscrupulous about how she gets it. Noel's mourning his godmother, Mattie, a former suffragette. Wise beyond his years and raised with a disdain for authority and an eclectic attitude toward education,...
Author
Summary
Sophie Chesterton is a girl about town - she knows all the right people, goes to all the right parties, and wears all the right clothes. But deep down she suspects that her best friends are actually rather nasty, and that her lifestyle doesn't really amount to much. Her father wants her to make her own way in the world, to make him proud. But after one shocking evening her life is changed for ever. Scraping a living as an assistant to a 'glamour'...
Author
Pub. Date
2015.
Formats
Summary
A painstakingly researched, revelatory portrait of the Soviet dictator's daughter traces her formative years in the Kremlin, the losses of numerous loved ones and her controversial defection to the United States.
"The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators--her father, Josef Stalin....
Author
Lexile Measure
820L
Summary
"Voted greatest mystery novel of all time by the Crime Writers? Association in 1990, Josephine Tey recreates one of history?s most famous?and vicious?crimes in her classic bestselling novel, a must read for connoisseurs of fiction, now with a new introduction by Robert Barnard. Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked...
Author
Series
Summary
"The letter was short. A name, a time, a place. Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder plunges readers into the heart of London, to the secret tunnels that exist far beneath the city streets. There, a mysterious group of detectives recruited for Miss Brickett's Investigations & Inquiries use their cunning and gadgets to solve crimes that have stumped Scotland Yard. Late one night in April 1958, a filing assistant at Miss Brickett's receives a letter...
Author
Summary
A heartwarming literary-themed novel about a woman who turns an ordinary red phone box into the littlest library in England and brings together a struggling town. A little red telephone box full of stories, a chance to change her life... Jess Metcalf is perfectly content with her quiet, predictable life. But when her beloved grandmother passes away and she loses her job at the local library, Jess' life is turned upside down. Determined to pick up...
Author
Series
Marion Lane volume 2
Pub. Date
2022
Summary
"It's 1959 and a new killer haunts the streets of London, having baffled Scotland Yard. The newspapers call him The Florist because of the rose he brands on his victims. The police have turned yet again to the Inquirers at Miss Brickett's for assistance, and second-year Marion Lane is assigned the case. But she's already dealing with a mystery of her own, having received an unsigned letter warning her that one of the three new recruits should not...
14) Rattle
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2018
Formats
Summary
The author of The Family Next Door delivers a thriller that's "up there with the best of them . . . an exceptionally creepy psychopathic killer" (The Times, London).
On still nights, when the curve of a winter moon is smudged in the flow of the River Quaggy, the dead clamor for him. And sometimes he coaxes the living to join them. To other people, his victims might be mere medical oddities. To him, they are fascinating...
On still nights, when the curve of a winter moon is smudged in the flow of the River Quaggy, the dead clamor for him. And sometimes he coaxes the living to join them. To other people, his victims might be mere medical oddities. To him, they are fascinating...
15) Small pleasures
Author
Pub. Date
[2021]
Summary
When Gretchen Tilbury claims that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, Jean Swinney, a feature writer on a local paper, sets out to prove whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud-an investigation that sends dark ripples across all their lives with unimaginable consequences.
Author
Pub. Date
[2016]
Summary
"We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don't have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In [this book], Bloom [posits that] empathy [is] one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society....
Author
Series
Amelia Peabody volume 12
Summary
August 1910. Banned from the Valley of the Kings, Amelia Peabody and husband Emerson are persuaded to follow would-be archaeologist Major George Morley on an expedition to Palestine. Somewhere in this province of the corrupt, crumbling Ottoman Empire?the Holy Land of three religions?Morley is determined to unearth the legendary Ark of the Covenant. At the request of British Intelligence, Emerson will be keeping an eye on the seemingly inept Morley,...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Summary
Agreeing to let Milena bring her boyfriend Jacob on their annual hiking trip, Anna and Henrik find their hike going terrifyingly wrong when all three of them realize that taking Jacob was a decision that could change their lives forever.
Anna, Henrik and Milena's annual hiking trip is just around the corner. This year, however, Anna and Henrik have a hard time saying no when Milena asks if her boyfriend, Jacob, can tag along. The hike soon spirals...
19) The Tudor Crown
Author
Pub. Date
2018
Formats
Summary
'An intriguing tale, told with confidence' The Times 'A great tale... the golden thread that led to the crown of England' Conn Iggulden She'll betray her king to crown her sonWhen Edward of York takes back the English crown, the Wars of the Roses scatter the Lancastrian nobility and young Henry Tudor, with a strong claim to the throne, is forced into exile. Recently widowed and vulnerable, his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, forges an uncomfortable...
Author
Pub. Date
2023
Summary
An irresistible, feel-good romance, perfect for fans of Rosie Blake, Sophie Kinsella and Lindsey Kelk.
First comes love. Then comes family...
After a lifetime of kissing frogs, Roxie Pratt has given up on finding her own fairytale romance. That is, until she meets her very own Prince Charming, Mark Wright, and he sweeps Roxie off her feet!
So when Mark finally gets down on one knee and pops the question, there's only one thing left to do: meet the...