Showing results by narrator "Charlie Sanderson" in All Categories

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2018. Words are important to Gretel, always have been. As a child, she lived on a canal boat with her mother, and together they invented a language that was just their own. She hasn’t seen her mother since the age of 16, though - almost a lifetime ago - and those memories have faded. Now Gretel works as a lexicographer, updating dictionary entries, which suits her solitary nature. A phone call from the hospital interrupts Gretel’s isolation and throws up questions from long ago....

In their second swashbuckling adventure, the pirate crew enter the Great Pirate Race, the most famous sailing competition in the high-seas. But when the crew decide to take a shortcut through the Sea of Really Really Bad Things, it's up to Patch to get them out of trouble.

Sarah Forsyth has spent most of her life in fear. After overcoming the hurt and heartbreak of a horrific childhood, Sarah managed to build a new life for herself as a nursery nurse. Then, one day, she spotted a newspaper advert for a job in a crèche in Amsterdam. Excited by the prospect of a fresh start abroad, she eagerly signed up. But within minutes of stepping off the plane in Amsterdam her life began to fall apart.... There was no crèche and no job. That night, at just 19 years of age, her life - her real life, her life as Sarah Forsyth - ended. 

The First Breath is the first popular science book about the pioneering fetal and neonatal medicine bringing a new generation into the world - a generation of babies without precedent, who would not have lived if they had been born only a few decades ago. Olivia Gordon explores the female experience of medicine through her own personal story and sensitive, intimate case histories of other mothers’ high-risk births. She details the relationship mothers develop with doctors who hold not only life and death in their hands but also the very possibility of birth.

Sera is usually a good girl. (Except for one wild night in the back seat of a stranger's car!) But what happens when that bad boy turns out to be her new boss? And what happens when he wants more than one night...and he can be very persuasive...?

Laura Lake, editor of glossy magazine Society, is always on the hunt for scandalous scoops to fill her pages. Now she's discovered a top-secret village in the English countryside where the rich and famous own weekend retreats. Where film stars, Turner-prize winners and billionaires park their helicopters outside the gastropub and buy £100 sourdough loaves from the deli. Outsiders are strictly forbidden. But luckily Laura's best friend Lulu, a logo-obsessed socialite with a heart as huge as her sunglasses, suddenly fancies a quiet life in the country....

Every year on the same day, on the anniversary, I receive a single black rose. Thirteen years of dark petals, jagged thorns, dredging up memories I’ve tried to forget. I’ve packed up my life. All my belongings are carefully sealed, my suitcases ready for my big move. I’m just days away from a new life abroad with my boyfriend, Ben. No one knows the real reason I’m desperate to leave. My best friend, Lena, is throwing me a leaving party. A celebration, to say goodbye. Champagne to toast my farewell. Speeches, full of fond memories. No one knows what I’m running from.

Welcome to Twinkleland Kingdom, where everything is 100 percent perfect. Except Princess Pea - she loves getting muddy and having fun, and she's not keen on choosing her own perfect unicorn at the Royal Unicorn Parade. Until the final unicorn turns out to be a podgy, pongy, proud, magic-horned...pig? And so the adventures of Princess Pea and Unipiggle begin!

Emmeline Widget has never left Widget Manor, and that's the way she likes it. But when her scientist parents mysteriously disappear, she finds herself being packed off on a ship to France, heading for a safe house in Paris. Onboard, she is befriended by an urchin stowaway called Thing. But before she can reach her destination, she is kidnapped by the sinister Dr Siegfried Bauer. Dr Bauer is bound for the ice fields of Greenland to summon a legendary monster from the deep. And he isn't the only one determined to unleash the creature. The Northwitch has laid claim to the beast, too.

On 7 August 1985, Nevill and June Bamber, their daughter, Sheila, and her two young sons, Nicholas and Daniel, were discovered shot to death at White House Farm in Essex. The murder weapon was found on Sheila's body; a Bible lay at her side. All the windows and doors of the farmhouse were secure, and the Bambers' son, 24-year-old Jeremy, had alerted police after apparently receiving a phone call from his father, who told him Sheila had 'gone berserk' with the gun. It seemed a straightforward case of murder-suicide, but a dramatic turn of events was to disprove the police's theory. 

Ellen is growing up in the Oxfordshire countryside. The granddaughter of a Methodist Preacher and intending to marry Charlie, a boy from the local village, Ellen's life is mapped out for her. When Charlie is killed on the battlefields of the First World War, Ellen is left heartbroken and lost. But then she meets Sam Loveridge. Mysterious and unruly, Sam, is from a local Gypsy community. Before she knows what's hit her, Ellen is swept off her feet and shown a world of passion, excitement and love. Is their love strong enough to overcome their cultural distances?

Bronte Mettlestone is 10 years old when her parents are killed by pirates. This does not bother her particularly: her parents ran away to have adventures when she was a baby. She has been raised by her aunt Isabelle, with assistance from the Butler, and has spent a pleasant childhood of afternoon teas and riding lessons. Now, however, her parents have left detailed instructions for Bronte in their will. Instructions that, annoyingly, have been reinforced with faery cross-stitch, which means that if she doesn't complete them, terrible things could happen!

Bonnie is scavenging on a beach when she finds a bare-footed boy - cold, hungry, and in need of help. The authorities have already been troubling Bonnie, but how can she leave this boy when he has no-one? Bonnie keeps the boy hidden from the border guards, but as their suspicions grow, she wonders if it's time to escape the life she's always known. Under cover of darkness they set sail to the 'house of light' in search of a new beginning, and a sense of hope.

London's most glamorous glossy magazine is in trouble. Advertising revenues are nonexistent, and if editor Laura Lake can't pick them up, she's out of a job. According to those in the know, Scotland is having a fashion moment. Haggis tempura is on Michelin-starred menus, smart spas are offering porridge facials and a chain of eco-hotels is offering celebrity bagpipe lessons. 

From the Waterstones Book Prize shortlisted author of A Boy Called Hope and The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair. Mabel has a suitcase full of worries - it turned up just after her dad disappeared and before her mum started dating Gavin. She worries about big things and little things and shoves them into her suitcase until it’s so full it might explode....  

Beloved author Lindsey Hutchinson is back with another novel of triumph over adversity set in the heart of a Black Country community. Perfect for fans of Josephine Cox and Lyn Andrews. Taken into service, orphan Lily Rae has heard all the stories about what entitled masters think their pretty maid's duties include. But when the very worst happens to her, she knows scrubbing the scullery floors of Ryder House no longer provides refuge from the sadistic Sebastian Ryder. Cold and alone, Lily makes for the town of Wednesbury, knowing she has only herself to rely on.....

When Tyler is sent to summer camp, she can't resist packing one of her latest science projects - the Hologramaphone 3000. Problem is, some of the phone's functions have extreme side-effects, the kind that can turn your best-friend into a ferocious werewolf! But when Tyler, Dylan and Ashley band together, there's no problem that they can't solve - no matter how big, hairy, and terrifying.

A shaky upbringing has left Rosie Stevens craving safety and security. She thinks she knows exactly what she needs to make her life complete - the stable job and perfect house-sit she’s just found in Magnolia Creek. The only thing she wants now is for her long-term boyfriend, Adam, to leave his overseas job and come home for good. Owen Harrison is notoriously nomadic, and he roars into town on his Ducati for one reason and one reason only - to search his parents’ house while they’re away to find out what they’ve been hiding from him his entire life. 

Fierce Fragile Hearts is the stunning companion novel to Sara Barnard's YA bestseller Beautiful Broken Things. It is about leaving the past behind, the friends who form your future and learning to find love in all its forms. Two years after a downward spiral took her as low as you can possibly go, Suzanne is starting again. Again. She's back in Brighton, the only place she felt she belonged, back with her best friends Caddy and Rosie. But they're about to leave for university.

It is 1978. Jess and her mother, Eleanor, struggle to sell socialism to Tamworth - a sleepy Midlands town that just doesn't want to know. So when Eleanor is invited to spend a summer teaching in East Germany, she and Jess jump at the chance. But friends can become enemies, and Jess discovers how easy it is to switch sides and how sides can be switched for you, sometimes without you even knowing.