Showing results by narrator "Sherry Baines" in All Categories

Into the cutthroat world of Corinium television comes mega-star Declan O'Hara. Declan soon realises that the Managing Director, Lord Baddingham, has recruited him merely to help retain the franchise for Corinium. Baddingham has also enticed Cameron Cook, a gorgeous, domineering woman executive, to produce Declan's programme. As a rival group emerges to pitch for the franchise, reputations ripen and decline, true love blossoms and burns, marriages are made and shattered and sex raises its head at almost every throw....

Ricky France-Lynch had a large crumbling estate, a nine-goal polo handicap, and a beautiful wife who was fair game for anyone with a cheque book. He also had the adoration of fourteen-year-old Perdita MacLeod, who couldn’t wait to become a polo player. The polo set were ritzy and gloriously promiscuous. Perdita was a brat who loved only her horses and Ricky France-Lynch.... With Ricky's obsession to win back his wife and Perdita's to win both Ricky and a place as a top-class polo player, listeners, get ready to be taken on a wild journey!

Lysander Hawkley combined breathtaking good looks with the kindest of hearts. He couldn't pass a neglected wife without rushing to the rescue, which invariably led to ecstatic bonking, which didn't please their erring husbands one bit. Let loose among the neglected wives of the ritzy county of Rutshire, Lysander causes absolute havoc. But it is only when he meets Rannaldini, Rutshire's King Rat and a temperamental, fiendishly promiscuous international conductor, that the trouble really starts....

At Bagley Hall, a notoriously wild, but increasingly academic, independent, crammed with the children of the famous, trouble is afoot. The ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the facilities of his school with Larkminster Comprehensive - known locally, as 'Larks'. His reasons for doing so are purely financial, but he is encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the dynamic new head of Larks, who has been drafted in to save what is a fast-sinking school from closure.

Abigail Rosen, nicknamed Appassionata, was the sexiest, most flamboyant violinist in classical music, but she was also the loneliest and the most exploited girl in the world. When a dramatic suicide attempt destroyed her violin career, she set her sights on the male-dominated heights of the conductor's rostrum. Given the chance to take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, Abby is ecstatic, not realising the RSO is composed of the wildest bunch of musicians ever to blow a horn or caress a fiddle.

No picture ever came more beautiful than Raphael's Pandora. Discovered by a dashing young lieutenant, Raymond Kelvedon, in a Normandy chateau in 1944, she had cast her spell over his family - all artists and dealers - for 50 years. Hanging in a turret of their lovely Cotswold house, Pandora witnessed Raymond's tempestuous wife, Galena, both entertaining a string of lovers and giving birth to her four children: Jupiter, Alizarin, Jonathan and superbrat Sienna. Then an exquisite stranger rolls up, claiming to be a long-lost daughter of the family, setting the three Belvedon brothers at each other's throats.

Sir Robert Rannaldini, the most successful but detested conductor in the world, had two ambitions: to seduce his ravishing 19-year-old stepdaughter, Tabitha Campbell-Black, and to put his mark on musical history by making the definitive film of Verdi's darkest opera, Don Carlos. As Rannaldini, Tristan, his charismatic French director, a volatile cast and bolshy French crew gather at Rannaldini's haunted abbey for filming, it is inevitable that violent feuds, abandoned bonking, temperamental screaming, and devious plotting will ensue.

Bridget Mulligan loves her husband. He is caring, loyal and dependable – everything a woman could ask for. But she can't quite forget Harry – the one that got away – and when a snowstorm drives her into his arms, the inevitable happens. Nine months later a child is born. Overcome with remorse, Bridget is determined that her husband should know the truth, but her confession can lead only to heartbreak. Although he allows his wife and her child to continue living in his home, Tom Mulligan makes it clear that their marriage is over.

Blackburn, 1947. In the tiny front parlour 14-year-old Laura Blake watches her beloved father die. But not before he tells her she will make something of her life. Laura never forgets his words. Yet her path to success proves to be a rocky one. Forced to trundle a cart around the back streets, selling other folk's cast-offs to support her family, Laura learns enough to start work in her uncle's furniture shop. But then fate deals another cruel blow when Laura is brutally raped. Bearing the child of her attacker in secret, she vows to make the world pay for its injustice towards her.

She witnessed a murder - and now her life is in danger. Fifteen year-old Belle, though raised in a London brothel, is an innocent. But when she witnesses one of the girls brutally strangled by a client, she is cast into a cruel, heartless world. Snatched from the streets and sold into prostitution, she is made a courtesan in New Orleans.

Lizzie Miller worries for her family – money is short in their little house, but her beautiful daughter Ruby vows to give them all a better life. Working as a maid for Mr Banks, Ruby befriends his shy and gentle daughter, Cicely. The two girls hatch a mischievous plan to introduce Ruby to society at a party for the ‘gentry’ of Blackburn, where Ruby meets Luke Arnold, the dissolute heir to his father’s fortunes.

Despite a deathbed warning from her beloved mother, Phoebe Mulligan has no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of her uncle, Edward. Wrenched from all she holds dear, the tragic young girl is delivered to Blackburn town, where she must live in a household terrorised by the cold, forbidding presence of her mother's brother. Phoebe cannot understand why she is treated so harshly by Edward Dickens. She is not to know the guilty secret that lies in his past, a secret that casts a sinister shadow over his feelings for his lovely niece.

Nell Reece has never known her mother, and her father's burden of guilt about his wife has kept him cowed for years, working as a common labourer on his sister's farm. For all her aunt's spiteful attempts to break Nell's independent spirit, she has never succeeded. But now Nell, pregnant and alone, is forced to leave behind the men in her life, believing she might never be able to return. With little but the clothes she wears, she travels across the Bedfordshire countryside of 1890. When she encounters a scruffy urchin called Kit, she takes him under her wing.

Beth Ward and Tyler Blacklock share a love they know will last forever. But Beth’s mother, Esther, is jealous of the girl’s happiness and seizes an opportunity to be rid of her daughter. Banished in disgrace from the family home, Beth takes the northbound train and alights at Blackburn, friendless and alone. On this day, Fortune smiles, for Beth is taken in by warm-hearted Maisie Armstrong, a widow with two children. Money is scarce, but love abounds in the cosy house on Larkhill, and Beth is content there to await the birth of her child.

Powerful, hard-hearted Leonard Mears ruthlessly presides over his wife and children, exiling them from the outside world and brutally punishing any disobedience. But he is also a man with a dark secret – an illegitimate daughter that he forced his sister to bring up. The girl is now a young woman who, unbeknownst to him, is determined to find the father that abandoned her.

This follow-up volume to the bestselling Ghosts from the Library resurrects forgotten tales of the supernatural by some of the most accomplished mystery authors of all time. Close the windows. Draw the curtains. Just don’t let the lights go out…

Ada Williams once believed money and power would bring her happiness. But now she is all alone except for her greedy son Peter, who waits only for the day he will inherit her fortune. Ada, however, has a different plan altogether. A few miles away in Blackburn, the Bolton family may be poor – but the love they share means they can overcome almost any adversity. But no one could foresee the shocking events of Christmas night 1932, which split the family asunder, leaving Larry crippled and the twins, Ellie and Betsy, in a foster home.

Beth is a woman in supreme control of all aspects of her life and family, with a stellar career and her house an oasis of calm. Her closest friend, Megan, is very different; somehow she swims through the chaos of her family with ease, the clutter on the stairs, the cat footprints on the kitchen work space. And while they could not be more different, Beth and Megan have a genuine friendship built on years of laugher, tears and true understanding of each other's strengths and weaknesses.

The marriage of Marcia and Curt Ratheter seems idyllically happy. As much in love now as on their wedding day, nothing can mar their joy. But one fateful day in 1931, Curt disappears, leaving Marcia her two daughters bereft. Then Barty Bendall admits his love to Marcia. Desperately trying to forget the past, Marcia moves to Blackburn with him, but soon Barty sinks into bad ways, tyrannising the family. He particularly focuses his aggression on Polly, Curt and Marcia’s first-born, blonde as an angel but afflicted since birth with an ominous shadow over her health.

One winter's night, in the coal-hole in her yard, Rosie finds that a woman sheltering there has been severely beaten by thugs. At a glance, Kathleen looks like an unkempt, aged vagabond who tramps the roads carrying all her worldly possessions in a grubby tapestry bag. Her only friend is the mangy old dog who accompanies her; the sum of her life is in the diaries she so zealously guards. Yet close up, Rosie can see that Kathleen has a gracious beauty – the 'look' of a respectable lady of means.