Showing results by narrator "Amelia Sciandra" in All Categories

Provence, 1919. When Elodie Sinclair is sent from Boston to a glamorous finishing school for socialites in training, she is determined to do all she can to rebel. Setting up The Wildflowers Club with best friends Genevieve and Lucille, the women make secret plans to escape their insufferable conversation classes. But just weeks later, a terrible scandal leaves the women reeling. And Elodie Sinclair is presumed dead.

With a fake name written on the papers in her pocket, American photographer Clarisse Alarie knows the dangers of Paris better than most. Haunted by the sight of children being dragged away and carrying a photograph of the brown-eyed little girl everywhere she goes, Clarisse is desperate to make a difference. Soon, Clarisse is risking her life every day. Taking photographs of the terror that has overcome the beautiful city, Clarisse follows members of the Gestapo and hides in plain sight in order to gather evidence of their terrible crimes.

Recently dumped and stuck with the mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the deliriously wealthy Naomi Duncan. The scrapbooks, a secret birthday gift for Naomi's husband Bryce, trace the Duncan's twenty-five-year marriage. As Esther binges true-crime podcasts and works through the near-two hundred-boxes of Duncan detritus, she finds herself infatuated with the gilded family - until, mid-project, Naomi dies suspiciously.

When I move to a remote spot in rural Kansas, I don’t know a soul. I’m delighted when I realise that the family next door has five children—perfect company for my baby boy. As I look at the smiling faces around the pine-scrubbed table in the sunshine-filled kitchen I feel a sense of hope. They’re all so loud. Soalive. But then I take a close look at their mom, SarahBeth. She’s strange, unfriendly, her face pinched. Almost as if she doesn’t want me there…

His first wife died in an accident, but I’m not so sure. Did he kill her? Am I next? Handsome and charming, Jack swept me off my feet when we met, and now we’re married and I’m moving into his imposing old house. I’m bursting with excitement until I see a face staring down at me from an upstairs window. Before I can wave, the face vanishes from view. Jack says nobody else was home, so who is hiding in the shadows? Taking in my new home, I’m startled to discover a long ivory wedding gown in one of the bedrooms. My heart pounds as I realise this was the room where I saw someone watching me.

It is every mother’s worst nightmare. Eight-year-old Kailey Richardson skips out of the school gates in her brand-new pink shoes and never makes it home. Between the school and the safety of her shiny red front door, someone has taken her.

Undercover in occupied Europe, risking her life daily, Elena never planned to fall in love. But everything changes when she meets Santiago in a crowded bar. His warm, dark eyes and kind smile draw her in...but he can never know her real identity, and opening her heart to him could put both of them in jeopardy. Elena cannot help but fall for Santiago, but can she truly trust him? Then Elena is tasked with a dangerous assignment: delivering coded maps for the Resistance.

When the body of a 16-year-old girl is found in a remote hunting cabin in the middle of the snowy Maryland woods a shiver runs down Private Investigator Lucy Kendall’s spine. The handprints around her neck, her broken bones, and the incense left burning at the scene are vital clues to who committed this terrible crime—Mary Weston, a notorious serial killer. She has outwitted the police for many years and left many parents without daughters. Is the girl in the cabin a sign she is killing again?

There’s a blood moon rising over the tiny Maine town of Coyote Cove when Chief Maggie Riley comes across the body of a man, blood seeping from stab wounds into the damp forest floor. As she desperately struggles to secure the scene as an approaching storm threatens to destroy all evidence, Heather, a local teenage girl, emerges from the woods terrified, a silent scream on her lips.

Old secrets emerge, tempers flare. And so we parents decide to leave the beach, telling the teenagers to enjoy themselves, reassuring them someone will be back to collect them in an hour or two. But when I return later, I know something is really wrong. Our teens are slurring their words, stumbling to the car. It’s clear they have been drinking, and I’m shocked. I never expected our kids to behave this way. I’m bracing myself to have firm words with them in the morning, but the next day my concerns fade to nothing when 17-year-old Bella claims my son Finn assaulted her.

Struggling writer Wren Lee hasn't slept properly in eighteen months. Not since the car accident that derailed her entire life. The night she still can't fully remember. So when she receives a surprise inheritance from her estranged grandfather, a house in rural Virginia seems like the escape...

Twenty years ago, my best friend, Bailey, was found dead by the train tracks, half of our friendship locket missing from her pale neck. She never took that off. Officially, it was ruled a tragic accident–but I knew better. She’d been crowned prom queen only hours earlier, and someone’s jealousy had finally gotten to them.

We were the perfect family once. Shep, my handsome husband. My darling little boy… and our tiny baby girl. The night she died I lost everything. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I would never, ever have hurt her. I was trying to save her. But nobody believed me. So, I can only watch through the rain-streaked window as Shep’s new girlfriend plays mother to my son. Hugs him, holds him. Does he even remember me? Now I am finally out of the hospital, I will make sure everyone knows what really happened. I will get my son back. The doctors might say my nightmares are dangerous…

Berlin, 1944. ‘No! Not my child!’ Annaliese screams, her voice breaking as she pounds the window uselessly. But no-one looks up as the man in the SS uniform cradles her precious baby and strides away. She lies unmoving on the threadbare cot, her throat hoarse from long hours of screaming but her tears keep falling. Her heart has been cleaved in two, now the Nazis have taken the only thing she has left–her child. She is utterly powerless against them. But as Annaliese cries herself to sleep, she makes a vow—she will find her precious baby again. Whatever it takes.

The extraordinary memoir of a childhood spent in the 'Children of God' cult. Rebel tells the story of Faith, a woman who grew up in the Children of God cult (known latterly as The Family). Now in her 40s with two teenage children of her own, Faith's first-person narrative alternates between her childhood adventures and traumas within the cult and her post-cult life following her escape at the age of 19. 

Libby Trent has worked hard to make a good life for herself. She has a happy, messy home in Virginia, full of family and laughter. And a job she’s enormously proud of at a charity helping the disadvantaged, that suits her strong sense of what’s right and wrong. But everything changes the day she’s contacted by a government official asking questions about a man named Hans Brenner, a Nazi who escaped Germany after the Second World War. A war criminal guilty of the most heinous deeds. And the man they suspect is Libby’s own father.

The sun is rising on another brutally cold winter’s day in Coyote Cove when Chief Maggie Riley finds an unmarked envelope on the steps of the police station. Inside is a photo of a teenage girl, bound and bruised. Maggie’s heart constricts at the terror evident in her tear-filled eyes. Who is she? What has happened to her? And most importantly, can Maggie find her, before it’s too late?

When Chief Maggie Riley sees the body of the small boy still dressed in pyjamas in Beaverhead Lake, her heart breaks. Little Patrick Warner went missing last night. Despite immediately calling the entire town of Coyote Cove into action, Maggie’s desperate search failed. Even worse, it’s clear it was murder: Patrick took his last breath long before he entered the water.

High up in the mountains of Clear Creek Forest, where mist clings to the pines, the bodies of Millie Woodward and Jolie Marin are discovered by their fading campfire. Could this be the work of the notorious Fawn Lake Killer? This forest was once his hunting ground. And Freya knows the tattered, red woolen scarf wound tightly around Jolie’s neck is hiding his chilling MO. Her throat has been cut.

Maggie’s heart pounds as she clutches the autopsy report. What she’s reading is impossible. Yesterday, a woman died in a fire. But her remains belong to someone who died twenty years ago. When the body of Ruby Anderson is found in a burnt-out trailer, Chief Maggie Riley is called to solve the biggest case Coyote Cove has ever seen. Ruby supposedly drowned on a kayaking trip twenty years ago—how could she have been alive today? For years there have been whispers about how Ruby died.