Showing results by narrator "Kim Hicks" in All Categories

The Magic Factory is where Midden and her team of helpers come up with magical answers to all sorts of problems. In these four fun stories, they must stop the terrible twins from terrorising the town; round up some runaway scissors; save school from a spell disaster and catch an invisible imp, all before the Halloween party!

Emmaline has always understood from her mother that, as the eldest of four daughters, she must marry. But it seems that no proposals are going to come her way - until, at a crowded ball, Julius makes his way to her side and waltzes her off. The next morning he makes it plain that he wants to marry her, and will marry her no matter what. So Emmaline finds herself travelling to England from America to join her husband-to-be, her hopes as high as they have ever been.

Florence Fontaine has still not recovered from a family tragedy when she discovers a strangely dressed young man asleep in her guest cottage at the Old Rectory. Against her better judgement, she offers him breakfast, only to rue the day as she finds herself caught up in the resulting drama of his life. Against everyone's advice, Florence enlists friends and neighbours to help restore Edward's missing memories. But can they discover who he might be?

'I'll fly,' Jenna whispered to herself. 'I'll fly, whatever Ned says. Whatever anybody says....' Jenna is 13 - and has suddenly realised what she wants to do with her life. She wants to fly. Like Granddad's heroine, Amy Johnson.... But Jenna's wish for wings has to be put on hold when something awful happens: Granddad's souvenir of his wartime service - a loaded gun - goes missing. And Jenna is almost certain that her brother, Ned, has taken it....

When Kitty is invited to stay with her friend Partita at Bauders Castle, her mother sees it as an undreamed-of opportunity for her daughter to escape from the dark presence of her notorious father.

Now you see them, now you don't.... What would you do if you could become invisible? Creep around unseen? Listen in on other people's conversations? Twins Carrie and Conrad, and their friends Peter and Charlotte, do all these things and much more when a new girl at school - Rosie - shows them her secret: how to make themselves invisible. It's exciting, and it's fun. It can also be frightening...and dangerous.

Twelve years ago, Grace Kitto was a successful TV producer, wife and mother. She was also clinically obese and on the path to Type 2 diabetes. Until one day when she left work determined to stick to one of her serial diets, but soon found herself eating an ice cream, as if on autopilot. It sparked an epiphany - she realised the solution to her many failed diets lay in her unconscious. In the powerful, instinctual part of her brain.

Mark is scared of the dark, but when he thinks his Great Gran is in trouble, nothing is going to stop him from coming to her rescue. Young Angela is obsessed with Jimmy Jelly, her favourite TV personality, though the rest of the family can't stand him - that is, until he comes to open a shop in the local shopping mall!

Once again Anthony Quinn shows himself a master at writing fiction that works on every level. London, May 1945. Freya Wyley, 20, meets Nancy Holdaway, 18, amid the wild celebrations of VE Day, the prelude to a devoted and competitive friendship that will endure on and off for the next two decades.

1941. England is at its lowest ebb. At Eden Park, where Poppy, Kate, Lily, Marjorie, and her adopted brother Billy are part of the espionage unit, the authorities have discovered there is a double agent operating in their midst. Lily volunteers to be dropped into France, only to discover that her partner is Scott, Poppy's fiance.

When famous artist Napier Todd stumbles across Edith Hanson scrubbing floors, he is immediately struck by her beauty. Within weeks Napier and Edith are married, and she moves into his large country house. However, the marriage is troubled from the start, and Edith falls ill. Napier takes her to the idyllic Cornish fishing village of Newbourne to convalesce, and there Edith meets Celandine, a struggling artist, and her husband, Sheridan, another painter.

Daughters of Eden focuses on the lives and fortunes of four very different young women at the outbreak of the Second World War. Marjorie, left at a boarding school by her emigrating mother; plain Poppy, pushed into marriage with a mean-spirited aristocrat; Kate, despised by her father, but determined to prove herself; and man-mad Lily, who turns out to be the bravest of them all. That all of them are chosen to work undercover for the espionage unit at Eden Park is a surprise, not least to them.

Twistleton is a village untouched by time. Daisy, Jean, Freddie and their friends Aurelia and Laura are devoted to the place, so that when war breaks out Twistleton becomes the embodiment of everything for which they are fighting. For the previous generation the new conflict causes private despair, increased when Twistleton is requisitioned by the Army. Turfed out of their houses, the villagers take refuge at the Hall.

In August 2014 Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given 'two or three years' to live. She didn't know how to react. All responses felt scripted, laden with cliché. Being a writer, she decided to write about it (grappling with the unoriginality even of this) and to tell a story she had not yet told: that of being taken in, aged 15, by the author Doris Lessing and the subsequent 50 years of their complex relationship.

Four short murder mysteries, three featuring Detective Sergeant Christina Kenton, set in the Cambridgeshire countryside... In "Kill Me Tomorrow", a serial murderer is killing according to the position of the numbers on a clock face. The police think they can mark on the map the place where the fifth murder will occur: In Christina Kenton's own village of Foxfield.

Rose loves watching videos and is sat in front of the telly all the time. So when the video player breaks, it's a total nightmare! But then a very mysterious repair man comes to fix it. He gives Rose the power to forward and rewind her life and then Rose sees what really happens to someone who spends all their time in front of the TV ...

An enthralling novel of love and secrets from World War Two, perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Fiona Valpy. READERS ARE LOVING I'LL BE SEEING YOU! "I consider Margaret Mayhew to be an exceptional author and this is one of her best offerings!" - 5 STARS "Exceptional story kept me enthralled...

Lady Audley is universally adored: Beautiful, kind and charming, she enamors all whom she meets. It is not until the strange disappearance of widower George Talboys that her behavior takes an odd turn. George's friend, Robert Audley, Lady Audley's nephew-in-law, is on the case; an upper-class layabout turned detective, he is determined to get to the bottom of things.

When Alexandra Stamford goes to stay with her Millington cousins at Knighton Hall, she knows nothing about the handsome stable lad Tom O'Brien. But are Alexandra and Tom really destined to be together?

Before the Second World War breaks out, Chevrons, the idyllic country house where the Garlands have lived for centuries, has already been touched by events in Europe. To the horror of her family, Katherine, the eldest daughter, has run off to join the Nazis. On the outbreak of war, Caro, her younger sister, her friend Robyn, and the maids, Trixie and Betty, leave Chevrons to help the war effort, and the old house is left to be managed by men too old to fight.