Showing results by narrator "Jilly Bond" in All Categories

The dark wood was green and gold - green where the oak trees stood crowded together with misshapen, twisted trunks, red-gold where the great smooth beeches lifted their branching arms to the sky. In between jostled silver birches - olive-tinted fountains which never reached the light-black spruces with little pale candles on each tip - and nut trees smothered to the neck in dense bracken.

Another thrilling adventure for Anna Fehrbach. 1953: Anna Fehrbach, now happily married, is enjoying her Bahamian hideaway. Its been three years since the Russians last attempted to arrest her for her attempt on the life of Joseph Stalin, and she's beginning to believe that her archenemy, Lavrenty Beria, has abandoned the chase. But when Anna is lured into one last job for the CIA, she is plunged back into the Russian orbit....

Germany, 1945: The Third Reich has collapsed and MI6 are retiring beautiful but deadly Anna Fehrbach, aka the Countess von Widerstand. But Anna is still wanted by the Russians for an attempt on the life of Stalin, and when they trace her to her Scottish refuge where she's under the care of her MI6 handler and lover Clive Bartley, Anna escapes the only way she knows how: She shoots her way out....

Fifteenth-century Spain is rent with intrigue and threatened by civil war. Here, the young Isabella becomes the pawn of her half-crazed mother and a virtual prisoner at the licentious court of her half-brother, Henry IV. At just sixteen years old, is she already fated to be the victim of the Queen's revenge, the Archbishop's ambition and the lust of lecherous Don Pedro Girón?

July 1944: In the aftermath of an attempt on Hitler’s life, Germany is in chaos, but once again beautiful, deadly Anna Fehrbach is on hand to help maintain the regime. But Anna is not all she seems, and in her capacity as a double agent was herself integral to the conspiracy. As the Third Reich collapses, how will Anna secure the release of her family, held by the Nazis to guarantee her loyalty?

The thrilling sequel to Angel of Vengeance - In 1943 Nazi Germanys defences are crumbling, and Heinrich Himmler is taking steps to ensure his survival. He employs beautiful but deadly Anna Fehrbach to courier large sums of money across the border into Switzerland. What Himmler does not know is that Anna has for four years been a double agent, working for the British SIS and the American OSS in her determination to bring the Nazis down...

In The Duck in the Park, Lulu finds a duck egg that has rolled out of its nest and takes it to class to keep it safe. Pets aren’t allowed at school, but surely this doesn’t count? After all, it’s just an egg.... In The Dog from the Sea, she goes on holiday and finds a dog living on the beach. Everyone in town thinks the dog is trouble. But Lulu is sure he just needs a friend... In The Cat in the Bag, a mysterious bag is left on Lulu’s doorstep. The last thing her nan expects to be in it is a huge, marigold-coloured cat. But Lulu knows that this cat needs a lovely new home.

The thrilling sequel to Angel in Red - Anna Fehrbach is an MI6 operative in the heart of the Nazi establishment who has just found out about the Final Solution, but convincing her British employers proves next to impossible... Meanwhile, she must organize the assassination of Hitler's probable successor who also happens to be Annas lover. But will Annas nerve of steel hold out as those around her fall to pieces?

Amelia Ravenscroft is desperate to escape her aunt’s home where she endures life of drudgery, whilst fighting off her lecherous cousin. When she overhears Viscount Demarr confiding in a friend that he needs to marry “at once”, she boldly proposes a marriage of convenience. Amelia soon...

When in March 1938 Germany invades Austria, all anti-Nazis are immediately rounded up and imprisoned. Prominent amongst these is liberal editor Johann Fehrbach, his Anglo-Irish wife, and his two daughters. But the elder of the girls, seventeen-year-old Annaliese, is separated from her parents and taken into Gestapo custody.

Lulu loves animals. When Lulu's next door neighbour doesn't seem to be looking after his rabbit properly, Lulu and her cousin Mellie devise a scheme to make him pay more attention to his pet.

With King James on the throne of both England and Scotland, a period of stability seems to have arrived. But the exposed gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament serves only to heighten the anxiety and panic of the people. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in London - a city that is also struggling to deal with its exploding population.

In 1904, when she was six, Polly Flint went to live with her two holy aunts at the yellow house by the marsh - so close to the sea that it seemed to toss like a ship, so isolated that she might have been marooned on an island. And there she stayed for 81 years, while the century raged around her, while lamplight and Victorian order became chaos and nuclear dread. Crusoe's Daughter, ambitious, moving and wholly original, is her story.

The first half of the 13th century is dominated by two women, as proud and ambitious as they are beautiful, yet different in all other ways. Isabella is a medieval Helen of Troy, flamboyant and passionate - wife to King John and mother to Henry III. Blanche of Castile, serene and virtuous, is Queen of France, wife of Louis VIII and mother of Louis IX. The two women hated each other on sight. Isabella will stop at nothing, not even murder, in her passion to destroy the French queen.

Marguerite, eldest daughter of the Count of Provence, married a king of France - and now her sister Eleanor is determined to make just as grand a match. Good fortune and wily cunning bring her Henry of England. He is a good and generous husband, but a weak king. He rules a nation that still remembers his cruel and foolish father, King John. As Henry showers gifts on his new bride, his extravagance forces him to levy ever-greater taxation on the land, and the spectre of a revolt soon looms against him.

In 1947, Elisabeth Mander’s German nephew comes to stay: Stefan Landau, her dead sister’s teenage son, whom she hates and loves before she’s even set eyes on him. Orphaned by the war and traumatised by the last vicious battles of the Hitler Youth, Stefan brings with him to England only a few meagre possessions. Among them a portrait of a girl with long copper hair by a young painter called Michael Ross - and with it the memory, both painful and precious, of her life and that time between the wars.

The death of The Conqueror left three sons to inherit his power and his wealth. Normandy for Robert, England for Rufus, and for Henry, the youngest, 5,000 pounds of silver. The three were natural rivals. The feckless Robert lost his Norman dukedom in an orgy of impulsive extravagance. Red-haired Rufus scandalized the court with his perverse sexuality and contempt for the Church. And Henry - cleverest of all - awaited his chance to fulfill his father’s prophecy and assume the mantle of The Lion of Justice.

Like a princess in a fairytale, Grace Hamilton has been showered with blessings: professional success, a happy marriage, and she even lives in a beautiful castle. But the only thing she really wants – her heart’s desire – is the one thing she can never have. Her sister, the beautiful Susannah, has made a mess of her life. Like a reverse Midas, everything she touches turns sour. But fate puts Grace’s future in Susannah’s hands, changing the balance of power between the sisters forever.

When Henry VI becomes king, it is soon clear that he would be more suited to a quiet life. Richard, Duke of York, is convinced that he would make a better king and has more right to the crown. But Margaret of Anjou, Henry’s new French wife, is a formidable woman who is just as determined to keep Henry on the throne. Most powerful of all is the Earl of Warwick, and with his support of Richard of York the War of the Roses begins.

Meredith’s daughter, Anna, comes across a prayer book that is inscribed by three generations of mothers to their daughters. These are the women of Meredith’s family, who have all had lives full of love and also hardship. But the youngest in the line, Meredith, has never found true love. She has a beautiful teenage daughter to come home to, a fabulous career in television, but no one special to share it all with. Behind the tirelessly successful façade lies the story of a woman who could not keep love in her life.