Showing results by narrator "Louise Brealey" in All Categories

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening, her husband, Gabriel, returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face and then never speaks another word. Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety.

Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge. Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? 

For 15 years, Lexi and Jake have played the same six numbers with their friends. Over drinks, dinner parties and summer barbecues, the three couples have discussed the important stuff — kids, marriages, careers — and they’ve laughed off their disappointment when they failed to win anything.

The debut psychological thriller that will forever change the way you look at other people's lives. Every day the same. Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life - as she sees it - is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

Cilka is just 16-years-old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in 1942, where the commandant immediately notices how beautiful she is. Forcibly separated from the other women prisoners, Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly taken, equals survival. When the war is over and the camp is liberated, freedom is not granted to Cilka: She is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to a Siberian prison camp. But did she really have a choice?

In an abandoned warehouse, a schoolboy makes a grisly discovery: 96 containers, each filled with exquisitely preserved bodily remains. Detective Eva Harris knows the line between life and death better than most. Having survived a near fatal encounter with the criminal underworld once before, she is still haunted by the repercussions of her actions - and fearful of the whole truth emerging.

On the first day of her new job, Harris is called to the scene of a brutal murder at the heart of Surrey society. A shocking crime, with a meticulous killer: the victim’s eyes have been removed and the body drained of blood, with no forensic evidence left at the scene. Her boss insists it must be the return of a killer who escaped justice several years ago, leaving a trail of bloody ritualistic killings. Harris isn’t so sure: both sets of victims have had their eyes removed, but other details are significantly different.

In a glass-enclosed city of perfectly straight lines, ruled over by an all-powerful “Benefactor”, the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState are regulated by spies and secret police; wear identical clothing; and are distinguished only by a number assigned to them at birth. That is, until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. He can feel things. He can fall in love. And, in doing so, he begins to dangerously veer from the norms of his society, becoming embroiled in a plot to destroy OneState and liberate the city.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told.

On Midsummer’s Eve, Alinor waits in the church graveyard, hoping to encounter the ghost of her missing husband and thus confirm his death. Until she can, she is neither maiden nor wife nor widow, living in a perilous limbo. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run. She shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marshy landscape of the Tidelands, not knowing she is leading a spy and an enemy into her life. England is in the grip of a bloody civil war that reaches into the most remote parts of the kingdom. 

Midsummer Eve, 1670. Two unexpected visitors arrive at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the River Thames. The first is a wealthy nobleman seeking the lover he deserted 21 years earlier. Now, James Avery has everything to offer: a fortune, a title, and the favor of the newly restored King Charles II. He believes that the warehouse’s poor owner Alinor has the one thing he cannot buy - his son and heir.

Letters of Note, the book based on the beloved website of the same name, became an instant classic on publication in 2013, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. This new edition sees the collection of the world's most entertaining, inspiring, and unusual letters updated with 14 riveting new missives and a new introduction from curator Shaun Usher.   

In an unnamed British city, the virus is spreading, and like everyone else, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness retreats inside. She isolates herself in her immense studio, Burntcoat, with Halit, the lover she barely knows. As life outside changes irreparably, inside Burntcoat, Edith and Halit find themselves changed as well: by the histories and responsibilities each carries and bears, by the fears and dangers of the world outside, and by the progressions of their new relationship. 

Edinburgh, 1847. Will Raven is a medical student, apprenticing for the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson. Sarah Fisher is Simpson’s housemaid and has all of Raven’s intelligence, but none of his privileges. As bodies begin to appear across the Old Town, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh’s underworld. And if either of them are to make it out alive, they will have to work together to find out who’s responsible for the gruesome deaths. 

Edinburgh, 1849. Hordes of patients are dying all across the city, with doctors finding their remedies powerless. And a whispering campaign seeks to paint Dr. James Simpson, pioneer of medical chloroform, as a murderer. Determined to clear Simpson’s name, his protégé Will Raven and former housemaid Sarah Fisher must plunge into Edinburgh’s deadliest streets and find out who or what is behind the deaths. Soon they discover that the cause of the deaths has evaded detection purely because it is so unthinkable.

Letters of Note, the book based on the beloved website of the same name, became an instant classic on publication in 2013, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. This new edition sees the collection of the world's most entertaining, inspiring and unusual letters updated with 14 riveting new missives and a new introduction from curator Shaun Usher.

Every year, Tess and Maggie meet up to try a different activity, something they've never done together before. This year, it's baking, and for a few hours each Friday afternoon, they put the rest of their lives on hold to make cakes. And not just ordinary cakes, but spectacular, unique and glorious gateaux, to celebrate special occasions and commemorate landmark events. When they help a neighbour in distress, they create their first showstopper - a dark, sultry bitter chocolate cake. 

Near the dying English seaside town of Ilmarsh, local police Detective Alec Nichols discovers 16 horses’ heads on a farm, each buried with a single eye facing the low winter sun. After forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen travels to the scene, the investigators soon uncover evidence of a chain of crimes in the community - disappearances, arson and mutilations - all culminating in the reveal of something deadly lurking in the ground itself.

Maggie has an impossible choice. Stay and protect her family from the hooded stalker in the woods? Or return to Rose and help her fight the doctors who want to remove life support from their sister, Daisy? There’s a man at Daisy’s bedside. He says Rose can trust him. But he's telling her disturbing things about her devoted new husband that can’t possibly be true.

In Letters of Note: Dogs, Shaun Usher brings together a delightful collection of correspondence about our canine friends, featuring affectionate accounts of pups' playful misdemeanors, heartfelt tributes to loyal fidos, and shared tales of remarkable hounds.