Risultati letto da "Charlotte Strevens" in Tutte le categorie

If you won a gorgeous purple motorbike and your domineering husband said you were too fat for leathers and should sell it, would you do as you were told - or learn to ride it in secret? Artist and café owner Lucy Daumier intends to do just that - but learning to ride is far from easy, especially under the critical eye of prickly motorcycle instructor Ash Connor. So starts an exciting summer of new friendships and fun - as well as a realisation that there is more to Ash than meets the eye when she is introduced to his seven-year-old daughter, Daisy.

As St Ives moves into early summer, Chief Inspector Louis Peppiatt is handed the coldest of cold cases - the disappearance over thirty years ago of local farmer Philip Trehearne. Merrin McKenzie, who crossed Peppiatt's path in a case the winter before, is related to the troubled family and among his first ports of call. In an investigation that spans decades, unearths family secrets and uncovers emotional betrayals, the inner workings of the seemingly peaceful Cornish town are shockingly exposed.

When tragedy brings Merrin McKenzie back to St Ives, she knows adjusting might take time, even with the comfort of Christmas back in her hometown. Stepping back from her career as a solicitor, she agrees to clean holiday rentals for her friends who own cottages nearby. She anticipates dirty laundry and sandy floors, but she didn't sign up for a dead body, neatly tucked up in one of the guest beds. The police are baffled by the young man's identity and the strangeness of his death. For Merrin, however, coincidences are beginning to stack up.

Mayfair, 1910. At the age of 90, Florence Nightingale is frail and no longer of sound mind. After a celebrated career as a nurse, writer and statistician, she now leads a reclusive existence. One summer evening she is astonished to receive a visitor – a young man named Silas Bradley, who claims to have met her during the Crimean War 55 years ago. But how can this be? And how does the elusive Jean Frawley connect their two lives? Nightingale is a luminous tale of faith and love, bravery and care, and the vitality of women's work.

When Princess Matilda is eighteen years old, tragedy strikes the royal family, and she becomes the only child of the king of England - the de facto heir to the throne. As her dying father persuades the barons to pledge allegiance to her, Matilda returns to England - but the lords and clergy do not like an independent woman. And Matilda is nothing if not headstrong. When the old king dies, the country is plunged into instant chaos. So begins a fierce battle between cousins that will go down in history as a time called 'The Anarchy'.

Present day: When thirty-six-year-old Robyn Willoughby discovers an exquisite yet blood-stained Tudor map in her father’s antique map shop, desperate for a distraction from her problems, she decides to investigate. But as Robyn delves into the mystery, she finds herself caught up in a centuries-old secret—one that will change her life forever.

Driving home from a ceramics evening class, Clarice Beech reflects on the absence of one of her students, Colin Compton-Smythe. Later, Emily, Colin's daughter, telephones to say her father has died during routine surgery. Distraught, Emily opens up to Clarice about his wretched childhood and the day five-year-old Colin returned home to discover Avril, his mother, gone. Colin never believed she would have left without him and had been trying to find out more about Avril's disappearance all those years ago.

When Kate's younger daughter Ella goes off to university, she realises her life has become consumed by the minutiae of family life. In her 'empty nest', Kate starts to wonder: what now? Decades after abandoning her university hobby of rowing, Kate gingerly joins a local ladies' rowing team and rediscovers her passion for the pleasing rhythmic sensation of paddle slicing through water. More than anything, though, Kate finds that the team of strong women bring new adventures and unlikely friendships she hadn't even realised she missed having.

Summer in the Lincolnshire Wolds and Clarice is rung by her friend Louise, asking whether she can look after Susie, her son's lively Boxer, as 41-year-old Guy has gone missing from the family home. His mother thinks he has been suffering from depression but more worryingly, in his professional life, he had been working on a high-profile case, defending a known criminal. His home life was beset with problems too, which is why his mother has asked Clarice to look after the dog; Charlotte, Guy's wife, just can't cope with her as well as their three daughters.

Clarice Beech has two passions in life: animal rescue and Detective Inspector Rick Beech. She is devoted to the first, but she and Rick have been separated for the past six months - life without him is hard. Clarice shares her other love, for contemporary ceramics, with the charming Lady Vita Fayrepoynt. When Vita's adopted three-legged ginger cat, Walter, disappears from Weatherby Hall, Clarice is called in to find him.

London, 1941. Livy makes her way through Blitz-torn London to the Mirrormakers’ Club, the only place that makes her feels safe, where she finds herself drawn into the mystery of a missing diamond and torn between two men with competing claims on her. London, 1841. Charlotte is helped from the scene of an accident by a man who shows her a building he is working on and whose kindness unlocks a hope she has long kept buried. But that man is not her husband.

Recently divorced, Tessa Parker runs a successful B&B in a seaside town. During a surprise visit from Australia, a long-lost aunt lets slip a family secret that unsettles her fragile world.In shock, and feeling betrayed by her whole family, Tessa confides in her ex-husband just as he reveals he has a new woman in his life. Struck unexpectedly by jealousy; balancing her own turmoil against the demands of parenting, Tessa tries to trace her birth father, with devastating results. Yet she fails to see how this is a crucial moment in her children's lives.

Gina Donovan arrives in Florence on a beautiful spring morning to stay with an old friend. She is hoping for nothing more than a break from her demanding young family, but as she soon finds out, this most ancient and beautiful of cities has its dark side. Within hours of her arrival, Gina meets the elegant Frances Richardson, who invites her to her birthday party. As Gina learns, Frances' party is the highlight of the expatriate calendar. This year it is to be held in the gardens beneath the city's medieval wall.

Hyderabad, India. 1798. Beatrice Sinclair, a grieving young widow facing financial destitution, has travelled from Hampshire to Hyderabad to visit her brother, an employee of the British East India Company. There, she is astonished to discover that he has married a beautiful Indian girl and lives with his wife's extended family in a dilapidated palace, the Jahanara Mahal - famed for the theft of a fabled diamond many years ago. As an outsider in an unfamiliar world, Bee faces many challenges - not least of all building a new and meaningful life after the heartbreak she has endured.

1939. Seventeen-year-old Nora Jennings has spent her life secure in the certainty of a bright, happy future - until one night of passion has more catastrophic consequences than she ever could have anticipated. Labelled a moral defective and sectioned under the Mental Deficiency Act, she is forced to endure years of unspeakable cruelty at the hands of those who are supposed to care for her.

After one uncharacteristically wicked night, the once reckless Eleanor Bracewell-Lowen now leads a safe and prudent life. On his return to London's high society, Lord Cristo Wellingham looks different from the man she knew so briefly in Paris, but he is still as magnetic... In his cold amber eyes Eleanor detects something she has seen mirrored in her own - longing. His touch invites passion, but this is a man who could destroy her good name with just one glance....

Vita's gift shop would do better if she ran it as a business, not as somewhere to daydream. But she's not one to tell herself off: she leaves that to Tim, her ex. Active, outdoorsy Oliver runs his trees-surgery business as calmly as his home - but his love life is intensely private. When Vita and Oliver's paths cross at a pear tree, there's a chance of something blossoming. As spring turns to summer, both Vita and Oliver are given second chances. Bu will they take them - or walk away?

Plain Emma Stephenson might not look like a tycoon's glamorous assistant, but for Luca D'Amato - a playboy who likes to play - breaking through her no-nonsense attitude is his favourite new game. Sensible Emma thought all they'd be sharing was an office - not a bed! But she's learning fast what being Luca's personal assistant really means! Now he's standing there offering her a promotion - and she's trying to find the words to tell him she's pregnant!

Having married once for love and been abandoned by her husband, Ellen is determined that her second marriage will be for money. And conveniently Duncan, her divorce lawyer, is not unattractive - and he’s enticingly single. But when she meets painter Matthew, Ellen has to remind herself very strongly indeed that Duncan is the man for her....

In 18th-century Venice, Minguillo Fasan, heir to a fortune, contrives to dispatch of his sister, Marcella, condemning her to the fate of a nun. But Marcella Fasan is tougher than Minguillo imagines, and, aided by a servant, a painter, a skin-obsessed doctor, a Scottish merchant and a cigar-smoking pornographer, she pitches her wits against her brother….