Family Stories

ABANDONED CHILD

by Kitty Neale

read by Annie Aldington

running time 11hrs mins

Penny's childhood was spent in the shadows of her mother's business schemes, feeling alone and unimportant. It fell to Lorna, her mother's acquaintance, to take care of the lonely little girl, but the rejection always cut deep. When Penny turns 16 and tragedy strikes, Lorna's cousin Maureen, a feisty ex-stripper from London, strides into her life. Penny determines to make her own way in the world and, with Maureen, throws herself into a thrilling new life on the grimy streets of Soho. In this seedy world of dancing girls and gangsters Penny must grow up quickly, she must be brave, and she's forced to face the truth about some very dark secrets from her past.

BAKER TOWERS

by Jennifer Haigh

read by Christine Heffer

running time 10hrs 50mins

Bakertown is teeming with immigrants from Europe, all chasing the American Dream. This is the story of Stanley Novak and his five offspring and the lives they make for themselves in post-war America.

CALL NURSE MILLIE

by Jean Fullerton

read by Penelope Freeman

running time 17hrs 30mins

It's 1945 and, as the troops begin to return home, the inhabitants of London attempt to put their lives back together. Twenty-five-year-old Millie, a qualified nurse, tends to the needs of the East End community around her. But when misfortune befalls her own family, it is the enduring spirit of the community that shows Millie that even the toughest of circumstances can be overcome.

DAISY'S SECRET

by Freda Lightfoot

read by Brenda Usherwood

running time 12hrs 15mins

Grieving for the baby she was forced to have adopted and rejected by her family, Daisy agrees to be evacuated to the Lakes. When she meets a young airman, Harry Driscoll, she hopes to have a second chance at love, but her past is about to come back to haunt her.

EARLY ONE MORNING

by Una Horne

read by Rachel Bavidge

running time 10hrs 30mins

After the birth of their son, Eliza naively hopes her husband Jack will put his gambling days behind him. But after he loses their house and abandons her, she has no choice but to return to her parents' home. When Jack unexpectedly returns, Eliza believes he has changed his ways, but she only comes to fully understand his addiction when he uses her as his stake in a bet with ruthless mine-owner, Jonathan Moore...

FACING THE LIGHT

by Adele Geras

read by Pat Steadman

running time 20hrs 30mins

Leonora is a formidable matriarch and the daughter of a celebrated Edwardian artist. On her 75th birthday her extended family gather in Wiltshire to celebrate. By the end of the party two shocking events from the past have resurfaced, and these will change the lives of Leonora and her family forever.

GATES OF PARADISE

by Virginia Andrews

read by Patricia Knight-Webb

running time 15hrs 30mins

Book 4 of 'Casteel Family' series: Sequel to 'Fallen Hearts' (4320). Annie is a loving young woman whose happy home is shattered by a tragic car crash. Whisked away by her mysterious great-grandfather she falls into despair until she unearths a mystery!

HALFPENNY FIELD

by Iris Gower

read by Di Langford

running time 8hrs 45mins

Jessie Price travels from South Wales on the drovers' road to London's Smithfield Market. Her ambition is to raise herself up from her lowly position as a milkmaid and to run her own dairy. For a while she succeeds - but before long this ambition leads to poverty and shame as the man she loves is taken to Newgate Prison to face the death penalty for a crime he did not commit.

I'M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF

by Jean Stubbs

read by Jacqueline Tong

running time 8hrs 45mins

Growing up on her parent's flower farm Kate always felt like an outsider. She had brains and ambition and wanted to make something of her life. Now a successful and well known name in the town, with friends in high places, she still has lessons to learn and battles to fight.

JAILBIRD'S DAUGHTER

by Irene Carr

read by Joy Dansette

running time 8hrs

Alison Grant is just five when her father is sent to prison for murder. Her mother blackens his character and when she's taunted at school for being a jailbird's daughter she feels ashamed of him. Then Doreen Grant abandons Alison and the little girl goes to live with her grandmother, the housekeeper at Bellhanger House. And when she becomes friends with the owner's nephew, she tells him her mother is dead and her father is a ship's captain. It is the beginning of a new life of betrayal and deception, which continues when Alison leaves Bellhanger House after her grandmother's death. She begins to dream of owning a chain of cafes and becoming a lady. But her family's shaming secret will come back to haunt her once more.

KANE AND ABEL

by Jeffrey Archer

read by Jason Culp

running time 19hrs 30mins

William Lowell Kane and Abel Rosnovski had only one thing in common. One the son of a Boston millionaire, the other a penniless Polish immigrant, the two men were born on the same day on opposite sides of the world. But their paths were destined to cross in a ruthless struggle to build a fortune.

THE LADY'S MAID

by Dilly Court

read by Patience Tomlinson

running time 13hrs 30mins

Despite differences in their circumstances, Kate and Josie have been friends since childhood. But their past binds them together in ways they must never know. A chance meeting forces Kate and Josie to confront a truth that turns both their worlds upside down and threatens to destroy their friendship forever...

MADAME BARBARA

by Helen Forrester

read by Brenda Usherwood

running time 13hrs 15mins

In 1948, while visiting the grave of her husband in Normandy, Barbara Bishop meets Frenchman Michel Benion. As the attraction grows between them there is the prospect of a new life together, if they can only overcome many difficulties.

THE NARROWBOAT GIRL

by Annie Murray

read by Annie Aldington

running time 13hrs 30mins

To escape her abusive stepfather, young Maryann Nelson befriends Joel Bartholomew, who works on the canal. Aboard his narrowboat, she finds herself falling in love with her new life. But old nightmares that she had thought were long buried resurface, and in panic she takes flight...

THE OLD WIVES' TALE

by Arnold Bennett

read by David Haig

running time 24hrs 30mins

The story follows Constance and Sophia Baines from their early years in their father's drapery shop in Bursley, during the mid-Victorian era. It continues through their married lives and on to the modern industrial age when they are reunited as old women.

PADDINGTON GREEN

by Claire Rayner

read by Margaret Hodgson

running time 15hrs

Sequel to 'The Haymarket' (2140). Crisis in a Victorian family unites them and yet turns them against each other.

QUEENIE'S CASTLE

by Lena Kennedy

read by Elizabeth Charles

running time 6hrs

On his release from prison on a wrongful charge of murder, Joe Walowski heads to the East End of London to find the real killers. There he meets the mysterious Queenie, proprietor of the Ship and Castle pub, and as he falls under her spell, he gradually becomes entangled in London's underworld.

RAGAMUFFIN ANGEL

by Rita Bradshaw

read by Joy Dansette

running time 14hrs

Connie Bell, newly orphaned, is taken on at the laundry in Sunderland's grim workhouse. Although she's little more than a child, the events of her past have forged a driving determination to rise above her beginnings. Connie gets work as assistant housekeeper at the Grand Hotel and starts saving hard for her own business. When her path crosses Dan Stewart's, though, everything Connie's ever dreamed of is threatened. There's a dark and terrible history between the Bells and the Stewarts, and Dan's mother will do anything to keep them apart.

SALT OF THE EARTH

by Michael Taylor

read by Brenda Usherwood

running time 13hrs

To her friends and family Arthur Goodrich is a solid reliable man, the ideal match for Lucy Piddock. Lucy herself dreams of excitement, especially in the form of Dickie dempster. Only when tragedy strikes does Lucy understand her true feelings.

THE TAILOR'S WIFE

by Alexandra Connor

read by Alexandra Connor

running time 15hrs

Jacob Clark has been training his beautiful daughter Suzannah to take over his tailoring business. Edward Lyle, the son of a powerful local politician, has got his eye on Suzannah, but his father is horrified at his association with such a lowly family…

UNDER THE APPLE TREE

by Lilian Harry

read by Anne Dover

running time 14hrs

Life is anxious for the Taylor family, as it is for everyone in Portsmouth during the early days of 1941. During a Luftwaffe raid, the Taylors lose their home, and when Judy's fiancé is killed a few months later, she is befriended by the Lady Mayoress who invites her to join her team of WVS workers. As they work on various projects for the WVS her grief heals, and she finds love in the least likely manner...

VAGABONDS

by Josephine Cox

read by Pat Steadman

running time 15hrs

It is 1885 and Emma returns from Australia to be reunited with Marlow Tanner. She has a loving family, yet she is still haunted by the past, unable to forget how her uncle Caleb Crowther ignored her when she needed help. Caleb curses his niece's return and hounds both Emma and her daughter Molly. Molly flees with no money and three children, but she has inherited Emma's indomitable spirit... Book 3 of the trilogy.

WAIT TILL SUMMER

by Grace Thompson

read by Anne Cater

running time 10hrs 30mins

In 1939, evacuees arrive in the small Welsh seaside town of St David’s Wells. When Eirlys Price convinces her parents to take in three young children, she never imagined it could lead to shocking family revelations which threaten all her future plans. Amidst homesickness, local gossip and the challenges of wartime, the community must pull together and wait until summer, when the town will come alive in all its seasonal glory…

THE YEAR OF THE VIRGINS

by Catherine Cookson

read by Georgine Anderson

running time 8hrs 15mins

It had never been the best of marriages, yet in 1960, Winifred and Daniel Coulson still presented an acceptable family facade to the outside world. But there was something potentially explosive just below the surface of life at Wearcill House. It came in an unforeseeable form, plunging the Coulsons into an excoriating series of crises out of which would emerge both good and evil.