Showing results by narrator "Phyllida Nash" in All Categories

Amid the sun-soaked hills of southern Italy lies the Romano family olive grove, where Lara lives with her daughter Rose and her granddaughter Bea. Lara has spent a lifetime trying to forget the traumatic events that led to her desperate escape from Dorset seventy years ago. But when she sees Bea—a passionate horticulturalist most at home in nature—being swept off her feet by Matteo, a handsome and charismatic restaurateur, Lara fears her granddaughter is in danger of making the same mistake as Lara did all those years ago.

In The Darcy Connection, Mr. Collins of Pride and Prejudice is now the Bishop of Ripon, living with his wife Charlotte and their two daughters, who have reached marriageable age. The elder, another Charlotte, is extraordinarily beautiful, and her parents hope her looks and connections will ensure a brilliant marriage. Her sister Eliza, while not as handsome, possesses a lively intelligence that, in Mr. Collins's opinion, is too like her godmother Mrs. Darcy.

In this engrossing account, Judith Herrin explains how scholars, lawyers, doctors, craftsmen, cosmologists and religious luminaries were drawn to Ravenna where they created a cultural and political capital that dominated northern Italy and the Adriatic. As she traces the lives of Ravenna's rulers, chroniclers and inhabitants, Herrin shows how the city became the meeting place of Greek, Latin, Christian and barbarian cultures and the pivot between East and West.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband. So say the friends and family of impoverished widow Octavia Darcy when she unexpectedly inherits a fortune, but she has a different view and looks forward to a new life of independence.

Throughout her career prize-winning novelist Jane Gardam has been writing glorious short stories, each one hallmarked with all the originality, poignancy, wry comedy, and narrative brilliance of her longer fiction. Passion and longing, metamorphosis and enchantment are Gardam's themes, and like a magician she plucks them from the quietest of corners: from Wimbledon gardens and cold churches, from London buses and industrial backstreets.

Fluff is the smallest and weakest of the farm kittens, but she surprises everyone with her strength and spirit. Ella falls in love with Fluff straight away, but Ella's mother won't let her have a cat. What happens to kittens that nobody wants?

A werewolf video leaves Micky terrified of dogs. Mum decides the only answer is to get Mickey a pet of his own. To everyone's surprise -including Micky's - she chooses a werepuppy. But Wolfie turns out to be a very special pet - and a real joker!

Deep in the Somerset countryside, the Combe Pomeroy village library hosts a monthly book club. From a book club French exchange trip, to many celebrations at the farm, this is the year that everything changes, that lifelong friendships are tested, and for some of the women, they finally get the love they deserve.

Viv, who’s in the House of Lords, had the idea for the festival on the twentieth anniversary of the day her first husband left her. Six months later, crowds descend on the grounds of a dreamlike chateau in the South of France, avidly awaiting the experience of a lifetime, Viv’s inaugural Festival for the Broken-Hearted. Everyone is in fancy dress. No one knows who anyone is. They wander the beautiful woods with just one night to change everything. And to crown it all, a very special guest is expected.

Among the cobbled streets of the Somerset town of Frome, Lou is embarking on the start of something new. After the death of her beloved mother, she takes a deep breath into the unknown and is opening her own vintage clothes shop. In Upstate New York, Donna has just found out some news about her family that has called into question her whole upbringing. The only clue she has to unlock her past is a picture of a yellow dress and the fact it is currently on display in a shop in England.

Mia still hasn't got over her cat's death - she had Tibby for as long as she can remember and can't ever imagine having another pet. But one day, just before Christmas, she finds out that her friend's cat has had kittens. Over the holidays she goes round to play with them. Mia's parents think she has coped with Tibby's loss, and surprise her by saying she can have the last kitten, Whiskers.Mia's not sure she's ready yet - although she loves Whiskers, she feels guilty about Tibby.

Now in his seventies, Robert Parkin is stunned to find himself the unlikely sex symbol of the village gardening club. Living in happy solitude with his cat Isaac Mewton in the Devon village of Millbrook, entertained by his mischievous chickens and goats, Robert has never figured out the rules of romance. But as the local ladies vie for his company, it soon becomes clear that Robert’s Victoria Sponge cake is the lure, and as his baking prowess grows, so does his confidence. Cheesecakes, meringues, puddings, Robert can do it all, but his real masterpieces are his scones.

Fliss might not be great at life’s chores, but she is great at seizing opportunities, so when the chance for a jaunt to France’s beautiful Brittany comes her way, she decides it’s just what she and Shirl need. And as the sun-soaked town of Plouvannec-Sur-Mer begins to work its magic on the women, they realise there’s another way to live.

Molly’s 70th birthday comes as something of a shock. The woman in the mirror certainly looks every day of those 70 years, but inside Molly feels she still has so much more living left to do. Widowed and living alone with her cat Crumper, Molly fears she is slipping into a cliché of old age. When Molly’s sister Nell appears on her doorstep, distraught that her husband of more than 40 years, Phil, has left her for a younger lover, the women decide to seize the day. By the morning, flights are booked, bags are packed and off they go for an adventure in Spain.

Florence has never forgiven Jane for the circumstances of her birth. She was an accident; the product of Jane's first and only one-night-stand, and Flo does not want to know how hard her teenage mother fought to keep her. When Flo's own, carefully planned, baby arrives, and her glossy, controlled world is turned upside down, for the first time in her life she turns to her mother for help.

When Miss Seeton walks out after a performance of Carmen and witnesses a real-life stabbing, all she can recall is a shadowy figure. But how could she have guessed that her latest artistic endeavor is a picture-perfect portrait of the killer? Her sketch puts her in a perilous position, for back at her recently inherited cottage in Plummergen village, she's fated to be a sitting duck...for murder most foul!

Miss Seeton returns! A new original (the first in almost 20 years) for this classic series of humorous cozy mysteries created by Heron Carvic. It's practically a royal marriage! The highly eligible son of Miss Seeton's old friends Sir George and Lady Colveden has wed the daughter of a French count.

Sir Clement Carnell was the most domineering and strait-laced of fathers, and his death has left his grown children, Louisa and Valentine, with a sense of release. While Valentine throws open the Devonshire estate of Pennacombe to their fashionable cousins from London, Louisa feels free at last to reject the man her father chose as her prospective husband - Pearce Lynley.

Ellie’s family have just adopted a beautiful Jack Russell puppy, whom Ellie names Rascal. But she doesn’t realise how right she is! Rascal is so naughty, and he’s soon getting himself and Ellie into all sorts of trouble. Will she ever be able to keep up with him?

When Phoebe, a young niece of Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy, is shattered by an unhappy romance, she retreats to Pemberley and is joined by kind-hearted Louisa Bingley, unmarried after three London seasons. Once the young ladies are situated in the house, several handsome strangers also arrive - all hopeful of winning the girls' hearts.