Showing results by narrator "Sandra Duncan" in All Categories

1st September, 1939. As the mass evacuation takes place across Britain, thousands of children leave London for the countryside. But when three little girls step off the train to 'safety' only to go missing in less than 48 hours, the reality of separation becomes more urgent and more deadly for the families they left behind in the city. In the chaos and uncertainty of war, Golden Age crime author Josephine Tey struggles with the prospect of change. 

In the summer of 1915, the sudden death of a young girl brings grief and notoriety to Charleston Farmhouse on the Sussex Downs. Years later, Josephine Tey returns to the same house - now much changed - and remembers the two women with whom she once lodged as a young teacher during the Great War. As past and present collide, with murders decades apart, Josephine is forced to face the possibility that the scandal which threatened to destroy those women's lives hid a much darker secret.

'Of picking, washing and cleaning my pretty little toes, which he took great delight in, and in which pleasurable, innocent, and inoffensive pastime he as often spent hours; 'twas the greatest gratification to him on earth, nor did he (said she) indulge in any other in all the time we spent together, he never was even rude enough to give me a kiss.' So emerged the first exposé of foot fetishism in the 18th century.

It was Charles I's love for his queen, Henrietta Maria, that plummeted England into the darkness of the Civil Wars, but it was the love and loyalty of another man that sustained her through days of betrayal, destitution, and death.

Tall and brave, Harry Jermyn is captivated by the witty French princess, just 14 years old when she sails with him to Dover, queen of a land she has never seen, of a people whose language she cannot speak, who despise her for her faith - and wife of a king she has never met.

This is the incredible rise and unbelievable fall of a woman whose energy and ambition is often overshadowed by Napoleon’s military might. In this triumphant biography, Kate Williams tells Josephine’s searing story, of sexual obsession, politics and surviving as a woman in a man’s world. Abandoned in Paris by her aristocratic husband, Josephine's future did not look promising.

Esperanza is no ordinary servant. She has been sent by her guardian, the mysterious Madame de l'Orme, to uncover the dark and dangerous secrets that her new mistress has sought to conceal, and to set right a past injustice in which Esperanza's own closest interests are bound up.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Amanda Hodgkinson's heartbreaking novel about wartime secrets, 22 Britannia Road. Read by the actress Sandra Duncan. War changes us all, and sometimes we no longer recognise ourselves... 'Housekeeper or housewife?' the soldier asks Silvana as she...

Eva Gatsby has often wondered about her grandfather Lawrence's past, and exactly what happened to him in Burma during the Second World War. But it is only when Eva's job as an antiques dealer suddenly requires a trip to Mandalay that Lawrence finally breaks his silence and asks her to return a mysterious artefact of his own - a chinthe - to its rightful owner. As Eva arrives in Burma her mission soon proves dangerously complicated, and the treasure she is guarding becomes the centre of a scandal that will have far-reaching consequences.

Spain, 1939: Following the wishes of her parents to keep her safe during the war, a young girl, Julia, enters a convent in Barcelona. Looking for a way to maintain her links to the outside world, she volunteers to help in a maternity clinic. But worrying adoption practices in the clinic force Sister Julia to decide how far she will go to help those placed in her care. England, 2011: Six months after her parents' shocking death, 34-year-old journalist and jazz enthusiast Ruby Rae has finally found the strength to pack away their possessions and sell the family home. But as she does so, she unearths a devastating secret....

The Tudors are a national obsession; they are our most notorious family in history. But, as Leanda de Lisle shows in this gripping new history, beyond the well-worn headlines is a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth, in 1485, before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family’s obscure Welsh origins, the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a Queen’s lap, and later her bed.

Evelyn and Muriel Axon, mother and daughter, lead a haunted existence. Objects of horror to their neighbours, they evade or terrorise any social worker who crosses their path. Inside their house, they pursue a covert persecution of each other, shrinking from the unseen occupants of their spare room. But change is in the air… Every Day is Mother's Day is a merciless comedy of colliding lives: of sex, death, madness, adultery and the social services.

When Josephine Tey inherited a remote Suffolk cottage from her godmother, it came full of secrets. There were the infamous Red Barn murders, committed in the grounds a century before, and still casting a shadow over the village. And there was Lucy Kyte, the mysterious beneficiary of her godmother’s will, who no-one in the close-knit village would admit to knowing. Trapped in this isolated community and surrounded by shadows of obsession, abuse and deceit, can Josephine untangle history from present danger and prevent a deadly cycle beginning once again?

Frances Shore is a cartographer by trade, a maker of maps, but when her husband's work takes her to Saudi Arabia she finds herself unable to map the Kingdom's areas of internal darkness. The regime is corrupt and harsh, and the streets are not a woman's territory; so she becomes confined in her flat. As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank – waiting to be filled by violence and disaster.

May 1937, and London prepares to crown a new king. At the height of the Coronation celebrations, Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose is called to the BBC to investigate the murder of a famous broadcaster, a death which Josephine Tey suspects is linked to a decade-old scandal. With Archie's hands tied by politics, it is left to Josephine to get to the truth. Soon she is forced to confront at first-hand the deadly consequences of love, deceit and betrayal.

Summer, 1936: Writer Josephine Tey joins her friends in Portmeirion, meeting with Alfred Hitchcock to sign a film deal. Hitchcock has a few tricks planned to keep the party entertained, but things get out of hand when a Hollywood actress is brutally murdered. As fear and suspicion take over, Chief Inspector Archie Penrose becomes unsatisfied with the investigation. Several years later another horrific murder drives Penrose back to Portmeirion to uncover the shocking truth.

It's March 1934, and Josephine Tey is travelling from Scotland to London to celebrate what should be the triumphant final week of her celebrated play, Richard of Bordeaux. However, a seemingly senseless murder puts her reputation, and even her life, under threat.

When Josephine Tey sets out to write a novel about the notorious Finchley baby farmers, her research helps to solve the recent sadistic murder of a young seamstress. The girl's death seems to be the result of a domestic feud, but when a second young woman is involved in an horrific accident, the search begins for a vicious killer who will stop at nothing to keep the past hidden.

Julia is married and eight years Julian's senior; he is a gifted English student, a life of academia ahead. Ignoring warnings, they both give up all they have to be together. When Julian hears that his boyhood home is for sale, he sets out to recreate a paradise for his new family. It is only when their daughter, Mira, becomes terrifyingly ill that it is impossible for Julia to conceal the explosive secret that she has been keeping from him.

A wonderful selection of 27 short stories about holidays by one of the world's best-loved children's authors, Enid Blyton. School's out! So go on a picnic, visit the seaside or throw coconuts at the fair in this enchanting collection of stories perfect for summer holidays...

A chilling debut for fans of Mo Hayder and Sharon Bolton, THE BINDING SONG takes you on a trip to Halvergate Prison. If you're lucky, you'll get to leave... Dr Janet Palmer is the new lead psychologist at HMP Halvergate in a remote, bleak area of Norfolk. At first, she was excited by the...