Showing results by narrator "Abigail Hardiman" in All Categories

Benjy, Penny, Rory and Sheila are spending the holidays with their aunt and uncle at Cherry Tree Farm. They play with the animals and learn to feed them, roam the countryside and hunt for the mysterious Tammylan, who lives deep in the woods. Everywhere is teeming with adventure and the children are bound to get into mischief!

After Josie got dumped by her ex through a note on the fridge, she hasn’t let herself get close to anyone. But when she meets Cameron at a Halloween party, who turns up in the same Ghostbusters costume as her, it’s virtually impossible to stay away. Cameron, a curly haired video-games designer with dazzling blue eyes, the sexiest dimples and the same encyclopedic knowledge of movies as Josie, seems too good to be true. And maybe he is.... Because there’s one teeny tiny problem as Josie falls madly in love.

Flick and Jonathan have faced countless dangers in their roles as part of the Strangeworlds Society and come out alive on the other side. But what do they really know about the Society they are risking their lives for? Why does it exist? Who is Strangeworlds there to protect? And what in the worlds is happening to the multiverse now? With worlds everywhere under threat of collapse and mysteries abounding, it's up to Flick and Jonathan to discover the answers to these questions. 

Set entirely on a London bus travelling from Hoxton to Highbury and taking place over just 36 minutes, the events of The 392 unfold through a cast of charismatic characters coming from very different worlds. On the 392 are all the familiar faces you might expect to see on any bus ride through inner-city London in the grip of gentrification; delinquent school kids, the high-flyers, the weird, the wonderful and the homeless. These Londoners share two things: a bus journey and a threat. A threat which is ready to blow apart everything they know.

Rae Earl's hysterically funny and very touching real-life 1989 diary. If Adrian Mole had a teenage sister, she'd sound like this. It's 1989, and Rae Earl is a fat, boy-mad 17-year-old girl, living with her mum and their deaf white cat in a council house with a mint-green bathroom suite and a kitchen Rae can't keep away from. This is the hilarious real-life diary she kept during that fateful year - with characters like her evil friend Bethany; Bethany's besotted boyfriend; and the boys from the school up the road.

Book one in a trilogy following one family over 40 years on an East London estate, Blood Sister is nonstop drama, perfect for fans of Kimberley Chambers and Mandasue Heller. There are two ways out of Essex Lane Estate, better known as The Devil's Estate. You make good, or you turn bad. Jen Miller is determined not to make the same mistakes her mother did. She's waiting to find herself a good job and a decent man. Her younger sister, Tiff, is running errands for a gangster and looking for any opportunity for fun and profit.

Flick is now a badge-wearing member of the Strangeworlds Travel Agency, so when an urgent summons arrives at Strangeworlds from Pirate Queen Nyfe, she and Strangeworlds Society Guardian Jonathan immediately pack their bags for an adventure to Queen Nyfe's world: the Break, a place of magic and piracy. Nyfe's world is falling apart. The Break is used to having ships vanish without a trace, but there has been a sudden increase that can't be explained by giant squid or mer-people. The edge of their flat world is coming ever closer to them, and they need to escape before it collapses.

When 12-year-old Flick Hudson accidentally ends up in the Strangeworlds Travel Agency, she uncovers a fantastic secret: there are hundreds of other worlds just steps away from ours. All you have to do to visit them is jump into the right suitcase. Then Flick gets the invitation of a lifetime: join Strangeworlds' magical travel society and explore other worlds. But, unknown to Flick, the world at the very centre of it all, a city called Five Lights, is in danger. 

Stuck in a dead-end job and hopelessly in unrequited love with her best friend, El needs a major life change. One New Year's resolution to 'Be More Wild' later, and she's committed to doing one wild thing every month for a year. Admittedly, so far it's amounted to one small tattoo, one bad hangover and one very disappointing threesome, but she's trying and surely it can only get better. So when a plan is hatched for El, Ray and their two closest friends to ditch the big city and move out to a ramshackle house in the middle of the English countryside, El can hardly say no.

Volume two of Rae Earl's hilarious teenage diaries chronicles her all-important final year of high school...but how can school compete with more pressing crises like romance, her looks and a crazy family life? Rae Earl is about to enter the most important year of her life - her actual bloody final year of school. But how the hell can she concentrate on that when it looks like the love of her life, Haddock, may be about to seriously do it with her?

In the 1970s London has stopped swinging, but it's not staying still. Babs thought she had all the world ahead of her. Then she got pregnant, and the father did a runner. Salvation comes in the form of a man who'll look after her. Or so she thinks. But Stan Miller is the devil in disguise...and over the next 20 years, Babs will have reason to regret she ever met him. Can she protect her family - or will he get the better of her?

What would you do if you received a love letter that wasn't meant for you? Bea's not sure where her confidence went. She's become so dependent on her routine, she seems to have fallen out of everyone else's. So when a mysterious battered envelope lands on her doormat, Bea wonders if her whole world is about to change. It isn't addressed to her, but it could be - if you squinted....  

Each week, six women meet at The Bluebell Inn. They form an unlikely and occasionally triumphant ladies darts team. They banter and jibe, they laugh. But their hidden stories of love and loss are what, in the end, will bind them. There is Mary, full of it but cradling her dark secret; Lena - young and bold, she has made her choice; the cat woman who must return to the place of her birth before it's too late. There's Maggie, still laying out the place for her husband; and Pegs, the dark-eyed girl from the travellers' site bringing her strangeness and first love....

The face of modern protest is wearing a brightly coloured ski mask. Nadya Tolokonnikova, founding member of the Russian activist group Pussy Riot, is a creative activist, professional protester, brazen feminist, shocking visual artist and force to be reckoned with. Her spontaneous, explosive approach to political action has involved jumping over barbed wire, kissing police officers, giving guerrilla performances in crowded subway cars and going on a hunger strike to protest the abuse of prisoners. 

A short guide to going vegan - the why, the what and the how. Ever thought about eating less meat and fewer dairy products? Concerned about animal welfare and the environment? Interested in the health benefits of a plant-based lifestyle? This is the book for you. In this fun, easy to follow and informative guide, the team behind the charity Veganuary provide everything you need to make changes towards leading a healthier, more ethical and sustainable lifestyle.

Each year, on the same night in July, a woman is taken from the streets of London. Gone without a trace; snatched by a killer who moves through the city like a ghost. Lex's wife is missing. She left for work on the morning of the July 7th bombings, and no one's seen her since. But was Olivia really among the attack victims? Or did she meet a different fate, like three other women on July nights before? Addie has a secret. On the night of the bombings, her dad came home covered in blood. 

They say blood is thicker than water. That's not going to stop it being spilled. Life hasn't been easy for the Miller family. Finally mum Babs has had one bit of luck. She plans to share the profits with her daughters. She thought they'd be pleased.... But money always causes trouble, especially when it's desperately needed. Jen wants to make a better life for her kids. Tiff owes a lot of bad men a lot of money. And Dee is worried that her husband is getting back into the criminal life.

15-year-old Kat wants to do good feminism, although she's not always sure what that means. She also wants to be a writer, get together with Hot Josh (is this a feminist ambition?), win at her coursework and not make a total embarrassment of herself at all times. But the path to true feminism is filled with mortifying incidents, muddling moments and Instagram hell. And it doesn't help that Hot Josh is just, well, properly, distractingly hot.

In the mountains of Bohemia, Mila, a Romani, works as a maid for an aristocratic Jewish family. They have no idea that she and their son Ben, with his amber eyes and kind smile, are madly in love—it is expressly forbidden. In the arms of one another, Mila and Ben try to forget that their village is close to the German borders—and could be invaded at any second. But as they huddle around a crackling radio, ice runs through their veins as news of the war gets grimmer by the day. 

A heartwarming saga from the best-selling author of The Workhouse Waif. Eighteen-year-old seamstress Kathryn Flynn lives in Whitechapel, London, struggling to support her widowed mother and younger siblings. But when her work starts drying up and her mother falls ill, she is forced to consider desperate measures.... Then she meets 'Squire', an older city gentleman, who falls instantly in love with her and offers to take her under his wing. 'Squire' could give Kathryn the life she's always wanted...but is there something darker lurking beneath his kindness?