Showing results by narrator "Penelope Rawlins"

Perhaps the most brilliantly successful ghost story ever written, The Turn of the Screw creates a terrifyingly believable impression of innocent children so corrupted by evil that they remain deceptive pictures of innocent beauty. Their governess must struggle alone to confront and exorcise the demons that she believes possess their souls....

Arriving on the windswept Ile de Ré, Tabby Dewhurst is unable to even afford a room for the night. Overhearing a villager repeating the access code to her front door, she lets herself into the house, and so she enters the strange, hidden world of Emmie, whose sudden offer of friendship is at odds with her obsession with privacy. Tabby begins to form suspicions about Emmie, suspicions that lead her to a scandal with shattering consequences.

Like every child in Is-Land, all Astra Ordott wants is to have her Security Shot, do her National Service and defend her Gaian homeland from Non-Lander 'infiltrators'. But when one of her Shelter mothers, the formidable Dr Hokma Blesser, tells her the shot will limit her chances of becoming a scientist and offers her an alternative, Astra agrees to her plan. When the orphaned Lil arrives to share Astra's home, Astra is torn between jealousy and fascination.

Nine-year-old Tooly is spirited away from Bangkok by a seductive group of outsiders who take her from city to city across the globe. At 20, she is wandering the streets of Manhattan with a scribbled-on map, scamming strangers for her shadowy protector, Venn. Now, aged 31, she runs a secondhand bookshop on the Welsh borders and has found peace with her strange upbringing - until she's called to return to New York to see her dying father. Warm, hilarious and fizzing with intelligence, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers is a masterpiece about the search for identity.

It is 1910 and Maia, tragically orphaned at 13, has been sent from England to start a new life with distant relatives in Manaus, hundreds of miles up the Amazon. She is accompanied by an eccentric and mysterious governess who has secret reasons of her own for making the journey. Both soon discover an exotic world bursting with new experiences in this highly colourful, joyous, and award-winning adventure.

When local schools are asked to make a film showcasing the surrounding area, Dani and the rest of St Grizzle's set to work. But Spencer and his mates at the village school are determined to sabotage the work of the smelly Grizzlers. Help arrives in the form of Granny Viv, who has secretly taken up residence in the school's tree house. Together they come up with the perfect ghostly video. But will Granny Viv be able to stay once the competition's over? 

Gotrek Gurnisson was once the greatest Slayer of the Old World, meeting his doom in the great cataclysms of the End Times. The heroic duardin stepped forth into the Realm of Chaos to fight the daemons gnawing at the world's ending and satisfy his death oath, leaving behind his companion Felix Jaeger. Now, he finds himself in a strange new realm where gods walk the earth and dark forces are ascendant.

Fell is the Hand of Darkness, a relic of great evil. Seeking to rob the powers of Chaos of this relic and bend fate to the favour of order, Yvraine of the Ynnari and the mysterious yet deadly Visarch lead a host of Aeldari on a quest to steal it. To reach it, however, they must first beseech the aid of the Black Library. Only then will Yvraine and her warriors have even the slightest chance to slip through the Garden of Nurgle and from there to the Plague Planet and the Whispering Tower of Mortarion, where the Hand of Darkness surely resides. 

When a travelling skycircus arrives in Brackenbridge, Lily and Robert can't wait to step aboard.... But there's something sinister about the hybrid children who appear as part of the act. And before Lily and Robert can do anything, they're captured by shadowy figures and whisked off in the mysterious flying circus to somewhere far, far away.... Treachery, tightropes and trickery combine in this incredible third Cogheart adventure....

Emma did not go to war looking for love, but Adam is unlike any other. Under the secret shadow of trauma, Emma decides to leave Iraq and joins Adam to settle in Colorado. But isolation and fear find her, once again, when Adam is redeployed. Torn between a deep fear for Adam’s safety and a desire to be back there herself, Emma copes by throwing herself into a new role mentoring an Iraqi refugee family. But when Adam comes home, he brings the conflict back with him. Emma had considered the possibility that her husband might not come home from war. She had not considered that he might return a stranger.

Kate, a young woman newly arrived from London, is determined to become the kind of person who is up for it and down for it - and not remotely troubled over how those two semantically opposed phrases could have come to mean the same thing. In the sweltering city, she encounters Bill, a once-lauded now booze-sodden novelist, and Inez, his teenage daughter who makes extra cash catering to the sexual fantasies of men she has met online - and falls into a complex infatuation with them both.

Mire House is dreary, dark, cold, and infested with midges. But when Emma Dean inherits it from a distant relation, she immediately feels a sense of belonging. It isn't long before Charlie Mitchell, grandson of the original owner, appears claiming that he wants to seek out his family. But Emma suspects he's more interested in the house than his long-lost relations. And when she starts seeing ghostly figures, Emma begins to wonder: Is Charlie trying to scare her away? Or are there darker secrets lurking in the corners of Mire House?

Penny has big dreams for her wedding day. When Mark finally pops the question, it’s the best moment of her life. Until Penny checks her wedding fund and is horrified to discover that she’s somehow gambled away £10,000 playing online bingo! Working under the pretense of surprising Mark with her plans on their big day, operation ‘Don’t Tell the Groom’ rolls into action, with surprising, hilarious and moving results.

A photograph taken in 1971 sets two people on the path to uncovering the truth about their parents and themselves.

Gotrek Gurnisson was the greatest monster slayer of the age, who met his doom at the End Times. The heroic duardin stepped forth into the Realm of Chaos to fight the daemons gnawing at the world's ending and satisfy his death oath, leaving behind his companion Felix Jaeger. Now Gotrek has returned, having outlived the old gods and the Old World. Spat from the ruinous depths with his redemption unfulfilled, he emerges into the Mortal Realms, a strange new world where gods walk the earth and dark forces are ascendant. Nothing is as he remembers.

It is the age of the Great Dread. The Dream Witch wants the heart of Princess Olivia. Until she has it none of the kingdom’s children are safe. Olivia’s parents seek help from the Prince Leo of Pretonia and his uncle, the Duke of Fettwurst, but the treacherous duo seize their castle instead. It is up to Olivia to take on the Dream Witch in her underground lair. Two friends are by her side: the peasant boy Milo and a curious talking mouse with a surprising past.

Some interesting facts about Penelope Crumb... She has: A brother so awful he must be an alien. A mum who draws body parts (ewww!). Her grandpa's nose...but no grandpa.

Her family haven't seen him since her dad died. So Penelope and her friend Lizzie Maple set off across town to find Grandpa Felix, skipping school, taking trains and calling every F. Crumb in the phone book. But what if Grandpa Felix doesn't want to be found? One last fact about Penelope: She doesn't take no for an answer.

Georgie has a glamorous career in fashion. Her boss doesn't know her name, but working for a genius will pay off one day. She hopes. She also has great friends.Granted, they're sometimes a bit superficial, but who wants to discuss a global crisis on a Friday night? And she's enjoying her single life. Eighteen months of celibacy, and not a hot prospect in sight. Perhaps life's not quite what she was hoping for.... But how can she change it, and what does she really want?

Since she was found as a baby, floating in the Thames one foggy night, the web-toed Pearl has been brought up in a brothel known as the House of Mermaids. Cosseted and pampered there, it is only when her 14th birthday approaches that Pearl realises she is to be sold to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, the orphaned twins, Lily and Elijah, have shared an idyllic childhood, raised in a secluded country house with their grandfather. But when Lily and Elijah go on a visit to London, a chance meeting with Pearl will have repercussions for all of them, binding their fates together in a dark and dangerous way....

Penny and Victoria are about as different as two siblings can be, one with a smart London lifestyle, the other struggling to make ends meet. But they are joined by more than blood, and their shared tragic past is affecting the present more than they realise. When events begin to tug at the fabric beneath which dark secrets are hidden, the resulting chaos threatens to tear the two families apart. Could there be aspects of the past that youngest child Penny doesn't remember? Could the truth of Marge be more complex than the beloved mother the girls choose to perceive?