Showing results by narrator "Julia Barrie" in All Categories

When 12-year-old Rhianna and her younger sister, Eleri, are thrown out of their home by their cruel stepmother, they must find food and shelter. Appealing to King Prasutagus in the name of the goddess Morrigan, they are rejected - but then Queen Boudica takes them into her household. As Rhianna settles into this new life, she learns that there's not only kindness in Boudica - there's a darkness waiting to be unleashed, and the Romans will suffer for their crimes against her. A great battle is looming....

In That Way Madness Lies, 15 acclaimed YA writers put their modern spin on William Shakespeare’s celebrated classics!

Videogame-obsessed Flo and her best friend, Max, get more than they bargained for when they find themselves inside their favourite games! Having successfully battled spaceships, Max and Flo are excited to return home. But when they wake up, they're in Max's favourite game, Blocktopia. The friends are accepted into a city, where they are protected from the dangerous monsters that attack daily.

When Flo's engineer mum creates a device that will make her image appear in her video games, Flo can't wait to use it! Ignoring her mum's warnings that it's not ready, Flo accidentally transports herself into the game, along with her not-so-keen-on-video games-and-wishing-he'd-stayed-home best friend Max. Immersed in the world of Star Smasher, they not only have to face armies of soldiers, but also the very real possibility that there may not be a way out....

In a world where magic is so powerful it has been outlawed, Cass is a rare creature - an obtuse, someone who is unaffected by magic. But what has always felt like a handicap becomes a strength when sorcerers and magicians begin to perform magical deceptions with malicious intent. The Queen of Minaris is in grave danger, and it's up to Cass to protect her.

Christmas: a time for family and festivity. Unless you’re in Adder’s Fork, home of the Essex Witch Museum, where it’s a time for ghostly spirits and demonic visits. In these 12 short stories, menacing ghosts and supernatural terrors haunt Rosie Strange and Sam Stone, as well as characters past and present from beyond the Essex Witch Museum. Featuring stories from The Strange Casebook as well as original short stories.

Selma Falck's personal life and career as a lawyer have hit rock bottom. That is until Hege Chin Morell - Norway's best female skier - approaches her desperate to overturn a doping charge. With two months to the Winter Olympics, Selma faces the seemingly almost impossible task of clearing Morell's name. However, when a male skier is found dead after a training accident, it becomes clear to Selma that there is something more serious at risk. Encountering corruption, hidden enmity and shady connections, the pattern of recent crimes and ancient sins becomes undeniable.

Seventeen-year-old Georgia has a secret - one that is isolating her from everyone she loves. She is desperate to tell her best friend, but Sophia is ignoring her, and she doesn’t know why. Before she can find out, Sophia is left fighting for her life after a hit-and-run, with Georgia a traumatized witness. As a school psychologist, Georgia’s mother Anya should be used to dealing with scared adolescents. However, it’s very different when the girl who needs help is your own child.

In Katy’s opinion, weddings should follow some basic rules: 1) No-one should ever have sex. Of course. The married couple has the rest of their lives for that, and the guests should be too busy partying. 2) If you are heavily pregnant (as Katy is) you should obviously not be invited to three weddings in the space of one summer. Your husband’s accident-prone best friend, your attention-seeking colleague, your 73-year-old mother’s marriage to her Spanish toy boy - all without even an alcoholic drink to make them bearable.

Katy and Ben and their four closest friends are going to Spain for a week with their kids. Sun, sex and sangria? Almost certainly not. The couples think they are prepared for all the joys and trials a family holiday has to offer but they have a shock coming, and not only from the kids. Into their first day by the pool crashes Ollie, who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, and Cassie, on her hen party holiday but having serious doubts about her impending marriage. A recipe for a relaxing week abroad? Let’s wait and see....

Catherine Cookson's well-loved novels Hamilton and Goodbye Hamilton tell the story of Maisie, who invented an imaginary horse to keep her company through the long years of an unhappy marriage and before she became a best-selling author. In this engaging sequel, Hamilton has vanished from Maisie’s life, and in the days after the death of her second husband she takes comfort from the company of a cheerful, bright-eyed little cockney boy named Harold.

It’s 1922, and the Depression is just beginning to rear its head in Britain, but Ruby Morgan is about to marry her childhood sweetheart, and nothing can mar her happiness. Or so she thinks. An unimaginable betrayal by those she loves causes her to flee her home and family one snowy night. Crushed and heartbroken, Ruby vows that despite the odds stacked against her, she will not only survive but one day will show the ones she left behind that she’s succeeded in making something of herself. Brave words, but the reality is far from easy.

You think you know him. Until he's dead.... When Cameron Swift is gunned down outside his family home, DC Beth Chamberlain is appointed Family Liaison Officer: a dual role that requires her to support the family and also investigate them. As the case unfolds and the body count climbs, Beth discovers that nothing is quite as it appears, and everyone, it seems, has secrets. Even the dead....

Maisie doesn't understand why her mother can’t love her, but she knows that her life is hard and deeply unhappy. When her stepfather George, the only person she trusts, leaves, Maisie has no protector until she begins to escape. She could never be quite sure when she first met up with Hamilton; most likely it was when she started talking to herself. But she didn’t call him that then; that came much later when she was 14 and Doctor Kane had to pay her a professional visit....

As a child, Kerry Darke witnessed the abduction of her sister, Sally, the final victim of the murderous Fell Man, a terrifying serial killer. Sally has never been found and the Fell Man never identified. Decades later, Kerry is a detective inspector in London. When a 10-year-old girl is murdered in a drive-by shooting, a ghost of Kerry’s past returns to trouble her. Tortured by the vengeful spirit of Swain, a notorious gang leader, Kerry struggles to maintain a grasp on the case and her sanity, but she is more determined than ever to lay all her ghosts to rest.

Ghosts, witches and all kinds of creepy things seem to congregate in the town of Adder's Fork, where the world-renowned Essex Witch Museum has its home. Death stalks the pages, cats offer companionship (of sorts) and ghosts haunt a variety of characters. Where are Rosie Strange and Sam Stone when you need them?

When she's fed up, Enna doodles. This time it's a scribbly, hunchbacked, squatting figure. Just the way she feels, in fact. And then the figure winks at her. It speaks, and jumps off the page. It's alive, with a mind of it's own. Will it be her friend? She needs one. Or will it make things worse? When Enna's little brother vanishes, she has to follow him to the place the doodle comes from - which is a very strange place indeed.

Emma Appleby's arrival in the County Durham village of Tow Law is sudden and mysterious, provoking deep suspicion in the locals. And because she has a child with her, seemingly out of marriage, they want nothing to do with her - except for pub landlord Mick Castle. When Emma opens an academy and sets herself up in competition with the local school, she provokes a savage response from the community.

Traumatized by her final case as a psychologist, Stella only feels truly safe hidden away in the isolated house she shares with her husband, Max. Then Blue appears in the middle of a snow-storm, begging to be let in. As secrets and lies gradually seep out of the young girl, Stella’s tightly controlled world begins to unravel.

Ellie's friend on the police force asks her to enquire about some deaths which might or might not be suicide. Unbeknown to the police, an elderly lady with dementia has come across some drugs and is using them to ease people in pain out of their misery. At the same time, the project to turn the quirky, turreted Pryce House into a hotel is dogged by problems and suspicion falls on the difficult twelve-year-old boy Mikey who Ellie has taken in.