Showing results by narrator "Patience Tomlinson" in All Categories

The world of running is completely alien to Libby Sarjeant and her friend Fran Wolfe, but when Libby’s son Adam and Fran’s stepdaughter Sophie join the Nethergate Harriers, they have to take an interest. And when one of the runners goes missing in the middle of the Nethergate 5K, they take more than an interest! It’s not long before a body is found - and Libby and Fran are caught up in another investigation.... 

Max Tobin brings his all-male dance company to Steeple Martin, with his new ballet, Pendle, based on the infamous Pendle Witch Trials, due to be performed at the Oast Theatre. There have been unpleasant incidents during rehearsals in London, and Max asks Libby Sarjeant and her friend Fran Wolfe to look into them. To everyone’s surprise, the incidents continue at the Oast, and their seriousness escalates until, inevitably, someone is murdered. While the police look into the murder, Libby and Fran wonder why someone seemed so set against the ballet. 

Libby Sarjeant and friends are taking a well-earned holiday at a village on the Turkish coast – but despite their best intentions it seems that murder has even followed them there. When out on a boat trip they discover a body, but at first it has nothing to do with them, for once...until they find out that the deceased was English – and so are the suspects.  

In 2017 Susie Kennaway asked her son Guy to kill her. 88 years old, with an older and infirm husband, Susie wanted to avoid sliding into infantilised catatonia. Her son immediately started taking notes and Time to Go is the result. In turns a manual for those considering the benefits of assisted dying, a portrait of a mother - son relationship, and a sympathetic description of old age, this audiobook is a route map through the moral, legal, emotional, intellectual and practical maze that is the biggest issue facing the senior generations today: leaving life on their own terms. 

Velma is charm itself, especially when she's being inexact with the truth. Now she wants Bea, widowed owner of the Abbot Agency, to check up on her stepson Philip - he's somehow acquired a valuable picture last seen in the flat of an elderly lady who's been murdered. Maggie, Bea's assistant, moves into a flat in Philip's building, to investigate. However, Rafael a professional art thief who aims never to leave his victims alive, is also after the picture.

Melissa's life is in disarray. There are cracks in her marriage, and her mother, Elizabeth, is losing her memory. Elizabeth presents her daughter with a gift that suggests a very secret history - one that leads Melissa to Kalami, where Julian Adie, poet, traveller and novelist, once lived. But what is the connection between the hedonistic Adie and Melissa's mother? As Melissa chases Adie's shadow across the places he loved, she finds her mother may not have been the person she thought.

A member of a local ukulele group is found dead in Steeple Martin's churchyard. Libby's first reaction is relief that the victim isn't anyone she knows. She and the usual suspects have other things to occupy them, as they are gearing up for a Christmas concert and pantomime in the Oast Theatre, but when Libby's cousin gets romantically involved with a man in whom the police are taking an interest, she can't help asking a few questions - and getting into trouble....

The 13th book in Lesley Cookman's best-selling Libby Sarjeant murder mystery series follows Libby and the gang as they visit the Isle of Wight for the funeral of an old friend. For once there is nothing suspicious about the death, but their invitation to the funeral comes from elderly cousins who do have an unexplained death in the family. As her best friend, Harry, seems to be involved somehow, Libby is determined to ignore the growing reluctance of the cousins to help as she investigates.

February 1665. With winter passing, Mercia Blakewood is at last headed back to England from America, hoping to leave behind the shadow that death and heartache have cast. She expects a welcome from the King, considering her earlier, mostly successful mission on his behalf, but the reception is not exactly warm. Mercia faces more manipulation and must accept a clandestine and uncomfortable role at the heart of the royal court, posing as a mistress to find a spy and traitor.

An unidentified woman’s body is found in a remote garden in Kent. With the owners not in residence, the only people with legitimate access are the caretaker, Johnny, and landscape gardeners Adam Sarjeant and his employer, Mog. Afraid of her son falling under suspicion, Libby Sarjeant, with her friend Fran, are determined to find the murderer, with or without the assistance of the police in the person of Chief Detective Inspector Ian Connell.

This riveting conclusion of Grace Winslow's fight for freedom carries her from England to America's Deep South. After learning that her husband, Cabeto, is on a South Carolina plantation, Grace dons a sailor's disguise and boards the only ship headed for America - a detestable slave ship. When her secret is discovered, Grace is locked up in the hold. In South Carolina, Grace is bought immediately, but soon sold to a man who is not a slave keeper.

Armistice Day, London, 1918. Fiercely independent Georgie is tired of being told what's best for her by men. When she defies her father's wishes by going out into the peace festivities, she tries to help a woman being attacked and encounters Patrick, a gallant wounded ex-soldier looking for a new calling now that the fighting is done. But the war isn't over for everybody. Enemy forces have infiltrated the bureau and sent her father into hiding. And they are coming for her, too. Georgie knows there's only one place where she'll be safe: Honeyfield. 

Isabella of Spain was a great woman, a great Queen. Crown of Aloes is presented as a personal chronicle. Within the framework of known fact and detail drawn from hitherto unexploited contemporary Spanish sources, a novelist’s imagination and understanding have provided motives, thoughts, and private conversations, helping to build up the fascinating character Isabella must have been. Her fortunes were varied indeed: she knew acute poverty, faced anxiety and danger with high courage, gave much, suffered much, lived to the full.

Everyone knows three things about the Women’s Institute: that they spent the war making jam; the sensational Calendar Girls were WI; and, more recently, that slow-handclapping of Tony Blair. About 215,000 women in the UK belong to the WI. Their membership crosses class and has recently begun to recruit huge numbers of young women.

March 1915. Caroline Lilley's fiancé, Reggie, is away at the front, and Caroline gives up her job and returns home at his request. Frustrated in her desire to help the war effort, she throws herself into saving the harvest by organising the village women - and runs up against Reggie's mother, the formidable Lady Hunney. Caroline's sister, Felicia, departs to become an ambulance driver on the Western Front, and Phoebe and George eagerly await their chance to leave the village.

Miss Melinda Pink, intrepid rock climber, gothic writer and people observer, is awestruck by her first glimpse of the majestic Utah canyon country. But she’s soon aware of undercurrents of tension among the close-knit inhabitants of Salvation Canyon. When Birdie, a young half-Indian girl, disappears, her body found in a nearby river soon afterward, the tension explodes to the surface.

1904, London. Lydia Daye adores her husband John, but his secret government job means he is often away. She consoles herself with her small son, Adam, and the knowledge that John's salary allows them to live comfortably. Dolly Ellerway lives just two miles away, but in a different world. Pregnant, she is delighted when the father of her child says he'll marry her, even though he can barely afford it.

Barbara Bosgrove is looking forward to the annual Harvest Ball. Her widowed father will be her escort, but it is not long before George Kennett seeks her out for a dance. George vows to win Barbara’s hand in marriage and begins a slow and steady courtship. Little by little, Barbara is won over. Worn down by several years of marriage to the unfaithful George, Barbara feels she has lost all the vitality of her youth. But her old friend Simon is not prepared to let Barbara lose sight of the woman she really is.

Sarah and Larch join together to discover the killer of harmless old Miss Bates. Then a gypsy girl is strangled in the woods: are the two murders connected? There are several suspects, and further attacks reveal some unsavoury goings-on and unveil further potential murderers. Ex-Scotland Yard detective Ben Marshall investigates, but Sarah continues her own research into an old scandal which finally leads to the truth. Or does it?

Following a skiing accident, journalist Sally Proctor is recuperating at her parents' rural Somerset home when she hears about a local man, Brian Jennings, who's been jailed for arson. His sister, convinced of his innocence, is campaigning for his release - and Sally decides to help her by conducting her own enquiries. As she starts to uncover serious discrepancies in the original investigation, Sally and her family are threatened by a series of increasingly menacing incidents. It soon becomes clear that someone will go to any lengths to stop her finding out the truth.