Showing results by narrator "Charlie Sanderson" in All Categories

Helping animals, having fun! The best-selling Animal Ark series has been reimagined for a new generation of children and collated in this beautiful collection featuring titles one through four!

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

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.

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?

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....  

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.

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.

Nessie Carson will do anything to keep her family together after her mother is killed, her father abandons them and they are evicted from their cosy little Nuneaton home. She and her brothers and sisters take on jobs as live-in assistants to a local undertaker. She is soon entwined in fortunes of her employer, Andre, who is forced to live a lie, and the local doctor - someone she's attracted to but can never have.  

Adopted at birth, for years Lu has secretly dreamt of finding her birth mother, but childhood bullying has left her with a lack of confidence. When a tragic accident changes her life forever, it sets her on a mission to get in contact with her birth mother and find out the reasons behind her adoption. When she tracks down her mother in Cornwall, there is an emotional reunion, and the pair begin to form a relationship. But is everything as wonderful as it appears, or has Lu walked into a nightmare?

I have a gardener's inherent belief in the natural order of things. Soft-petalled flowers that go to seed. The resolute passage of the seasons. Swallows that fly thousands of miles to follow the eternal summer. Children who don't die before their parents. A community in shock. When eighteen-year-old Rosie Anderson disappears, the idyllic village where she lived will never be the same again.

Penny seizes the chance of a new life for her family when her husband is offered a job in Europe. At the airport, they meet charming Sophie, fluent in French and looking for work as an au pair. Soon, she becomes an important part of the family’s life. But Sophie is definitely hiding something. Then Penny’s toddler son is abducted. The police beg Penny and her husband to take part in a television appeal, but, unknown to the police, Penny and Seth are determined to protect their identities. Are their true identities linked to the abduction? And who has been watching them?

In the early '90s, newlywed Ruth Flint arrives at Echo Hall to find an unhappy house full of mysteries that its occupants won't discuss. When her husband, Adam, is called up to the Gulf War, her shaky marriage is tested to the core. During World War II Elsie Flint is living at Echo Hall with her unsympathetic in-laws. While her husband, Jack, is away with the RAF, his cousin Daniel is her only support. But Daniel is hiding a secret that will threaten their friendship forever.