Penelope Freeman has narrated 56 audiobooks on Listento.it by 22 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 29 ratings. The most-rated is A Shilling for a Wife.
Peppercorn Street
Summary
Janey is 18 and living in a small flat with her baby daughter. Just as her new life starts to show promise, her past catches up with her. Nicole is renting one of the new luxury flats. She’s just walked away from her husband and teenage sons, tired of being treated as a servant, suspecting her husband of having an affair. Winifred has lived in her large family home for over 80 years but it’s all getting too much, though she doesn’t want to leave. Things are not what they seem, and danger can strike both rich and poor. The trick is to survive it, and for this you need good friends and courage: all freely available in Peppercorn Street.
©2014 Anna Jacobs (P)2015 Soundings
Her Patriotic Duty
Summary
Esme Colborne is about to marry Richard Trevannion. When she finds out she is adopted - from a working-class family - she cannot allow Richard to marry so far beneath his station. Fleeing the life she knew, she starts working as a ‘decoy woman’, testing British undercover operatives who may otherwise reveal secrets in a moment of weakness. However, she still has feelings for Richard. Will she be brave enough to risk having her heart broken all over again?
©2020 Rosie Meddon (P)2020 Story Sound
After the Storm
Summary
Hugo Kendal and his wife, Margaret, finally receive a royal pardon and are permitted at last to return to their beloved homeland. Most of the family warmly welcome the couple and the news that they are soon to become three. However, despite the smiles, Hannah Kendal cannot help but dwell on the threat that Hugo might pose to her husband Simon's position as Master of Heron. She is not alone; Luke, the father of Simon, is acutely aware that Hugo, as his elder brother's son, could declare a more legitimate claim. To complicate matters further, Maria Lessor, a headstrong 12-year-old verging on womanhood, nurtures a secret love for Hugo and seems willing to stop at nothing to claim him as hers.
©1981 Pamela Oldfield (P)2016 Soundings
The Proof of the Pudding
Summary
A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. It’s 1946, and tensions are running high in the Morris household. It’s no secret that Frank is handy with his fists, but what will finally tip him over the edge as they all sit round the table for Christmas dinner?
©1998 Peter Lovesey (P)2020 Soundings
The Dark Side of the Heart
Summary
When Jean Sinclair's parents are killed in an accident she travels from the US to Scotland to trace her family roots, despite the disapproval of her fiancé, Don. There she meets Adam Crawford, a handsome but arrogant landowner and, despite her initial dislike, has a tempestuous physical union with him at a glamorous highland ball. Devastatingly, and cruelly, he immediately rejects her. Broken-hearted, she flies back to Texas, only for Don to treat her with a sudden and terrifying harshness. Adam follows her to America, where the two men confront each other and Jean has to face the fact that her parents' deaths might not have been accidental, and that brutality and fear might well force her into a loveless future.
©2012 David Wiltshire (P)2013 Soundings
A Hopscotch Summer
Summary
Emma Brown is a happy-go-lucky child, content to work hard at school, and to play hopscotch with her friends on the pavement outside her house in the run-down Nechells area of Birmingham. As long as everything is all right at home with her Ma and Pa, her little sister Joyce and brother Sid, then life is good. But after Em's mother, Cynthia, has her baby she just doesn't seem to be able to cope. Her lifelong friend and neighbour Dot helps as much as she can, but she has children of her own, and no man to hand; Cynthia's husband Bob, too, does his best, but begins to feel that he's losing the wife he has loved so much; and little Em just can't find enough hours in the day to do all the washing and cleaning. Soon, it seems, the only thing is for Cynthia to go and stay across the city with her tyrannical older sister. With Cynthia away, life only gets harder for Em. Her best friend, Kate, ostracizes her, leaving only poor, stinky Molly Fox at her side, and when the Board Man comes to call, wanting to know why she's not at school, things are really bad. When Bob stays out later and later in the evenings, always the worse for wear, and spending too much time with a local very merry widow, Em decides to travel across Birmingham to fetch her mother home, but the mother she discovers is a far cry from the proud, upright, and loving figure she has known so well....
©2009 Annie Murray (P)2014 Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd
Pop
Summary
When Maggie is 13 she goes to live with her grandfather, Pop, in Sutton Coldfield. Pop knows everything - he's quiz champion of the Plough and Harrow and his ambition is to appear on Sale of the Century. Maggie knows about the great comedians - Max Wall, Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Eric and Ernie - about country music, and about how her mother died. Pop sings with the poetry of the suburbs and aches with the poignancy of adolescence. Kitty Aldridge has a wonderfully distinctive voice and a deliciously sharp eye for the extraordinariness of ordinary lives.Kitty Aldridge was born in the Middle East but grew up in England. A graduate of the Drama Centre, London, she has since worked in theatre, film, and television as an actress and writer.
©2002 Kitty Aldridge (P)2013 Audible Ltd
Death's Dark Shadow
Summary
A nameless victim. An unknown killer. An impossible case for Monika Paniatowski. Before she can even begin to track down the killer of the old woman dumped by the lonely canal, Monika Paniatowski needs to find out who she is - and no one seems to know. Even when her daughter Louisa provides the vital clue, it only makes life more difficult, because the Chief Constable - intent on making Paniatowski's life difficult - refused to let her follow the obvious trail. And it is not until there is a second, even more brutal murder, that Paniatowski realises she will have to call on the help of her old mentor, ex-DCI Charlie Woodend.
©2013 Alan Rustage (P)2015 Soundings
Grace's Courage
Summary
Grace Woodruff fights for her sisters' happiness while sacrificing any chance for her own. The eldest of seven daughters, Grace must act as a buffer between her violent, ambitious father and the sisters who depend on her, while her disenchanted mother withdraws to her rooms. Rejected by her first love and facing a spinster's future, she struggles to hold the broken family together through her father's infidelity, one sister's alcoholism, and another's out-of-wedlock pregnancy by an unsuitable match. Grace faces fresh anguish when her first love returns to wreak havoc in her life. Will the possibility of true love lead Grace to embrace her own right to happiness?
©2017 AnneMarie Brear (P)2019 Story Sound
Christmas in Peppercorn Street
Summary
Christmas is approaching, but the mood on Peppercorn Street is anything but jolly. Claire is convinced her stalker ex will catch up with her and her young daughter, and Luke is finding that living with his estranged teenage daughter brings its own problems. When a road accident brings them together, Luke impulsively offers them shelter in his home. Will this Christmas give them the best present of all: a new family? Or will Claire’s ex again cause trouble?
©2019 Anna Jacobs (P)2019 Soundings
Against the Light
Summary
London, April 1912. The third Irish Home Rule Bill is passing through Parliament, and the situation is growing ever more tense. Closely involved in the negotiations, cabinet minister Edmund Latimer finds himself under growing pressure, which only intensifies when his seven-month-old niece, Lucy, is snatched away in her pram in Regent's Park. Could there be a connection between Lucy’s kidnapping and the Irish talks? With her husband under intolerable strain, Edmund's wife, Alice, makes it her business to find out. But the more she discovers, the more she realises how little she really knows the man she married five years before.
©2016 Marjorie Eccles (P)2017 Story Sound
Spitfire Girl
Summary
It is 1940 and Britain is at war with Germany. In London, eighteen-year-old Susan Banks longs to do her duty. Her secret ambition is to learn to fly - to serve her country and realise her dream. But she knows it is out of the question for a girl like her; a foundling, unwanted and unloved and dependent on strangers for her welfare. Just as she fears she will be trapped forever in a life of servitude and loneliness, she meets Tony Richards, a flying instructor based in Hampshire. And when she is forced to flee London, she heads out into the country. She is taken in by the kindly landlord of the local inn and his daughter. As Susan works hard to earn her keep, and her friendship with Tony - now recalled to duty - blossoms into love, she dares to hope that things are at last looking up for her. But then she receives devastating news - Tony is missing in action. And Susan wonders if she'll ever see the man she loves again and realise her dream of becoming a Spitfire girl....
©2011 Lily Baxter (P)2013 Magna Publishing, Random House Audiobooks
Mistress of Greyladies
Summary
During WWI Greyladies is requisitioned by the government as a POW internment centre. Harriet is now a widow, as she has always known she would be with such a frail husband as Joseph, but now has a son and daughter to care for. The three of them go to live with Joseph’s family when Greyladies is requisitioned. Harriet is worried that all her careful renovations will be destroyed and her search for other Latimer women has to be abandoned temporarily because of the war.
©2014 Anna Jacobs (P)2014 Soundings
A Loving Family
Summary
She longed to be reunited with her family. The compelling new novel from the Sunday Times top ten best-selling author of The Workhouse Girl. Eleven-year-old Stella Barry is forced into service when her family find themselves living hand-to-mouth. Leaving her mother and younger brother and sister behind, Stella goes to a big country house outside London. When she returns home one Sunday, she discovers they have disappeared. Thrown out of their lodgings, no one knows where they have gone. Seven years later it looks likely Stella will soon become Cook. But circumstances compel her to flee with no references and only a few personal possessions to her name.She has never forgotten her loving family and is determined to find out what happened to them – once and for all.
©2013 Dilly Court (P)2014 Magna Publishing, Random House Audiobooks
We'll Meet Again
Summary
It is April 1939 and unaware that the German war machine is advancing towards the Channel Islands, 17-year-old Meg Colivet and her sister are enjoying a holiday in Oxford with their aunt. Here Meg meets charismatic German undergraduate Rayner Weiss and the couple fall passionately in love. But all too soon, Britain is at war with Germany, Guernsey has been occupied and Meg's family home requisitioned by the German army. Meg insists on remaining with her father, determined to help save her beloved island from the ravages of war. And then she finds herself face to face with Rayner - now a German officer - once more and her life is thrown into turmoil as they risk their lives to meet in secret. As the conflict in Europe intensifies, basic provisions become scarce and soon the people Meg loves come under threat. Torn between her love for Rayner and her duty to her family and the island she grew up on, a heartbroken Meg has a terrible choice to make...
©2011 Lily Baxter (P)2013 Magna Publishing, Random House Audiobooks
The Ragged Heiress
Summary
On a bitter winter's day, an unnamed girl lies dangerously ill in hospital. When two coarse, rough-speaking individuals come to claim her, she can remember nothing of the events that brought her to her present state, not even her name. According to the men, she is their young sister, Lucy. As her health improves and her memory gradually returns, she realises she's been kidnapped. But she has no means of escaping the hideous confines of the filthy basement room in which they have imprisoned her in. They are hoping to claim her fortune as a ransom - for she is really Lucetta Froy, the daughter of a prosperous importer. Tragically her parents were drowned on the return voyage from Bali when their ship went down, but Lucetta survived as did the two villains. She is unable to prove her identity, especially when her uncle refuses to recognise her and claims her father's business for himself. But despite being virtually destitute, and her spirit almost broken, Lucetta is determined to reclaim what is rightfully hers.
©2010 Dilly Court (P)2012 Magna Publishing, Random House Audiobooks
Hold on to Your Dreams
Summary
London, 1899. As she prepares for a glittering ball, 20-year-old Gertrude Melrose considers her good fortune. Attractive, intelligent, with a loving family, her only concern is her brother, Edward, who seems intent on squandering his inheritance. A few days later the Melrose family's happiness is shattered when Edward's mounting debts threaten to destroy their prosperity, with the loss of both house and business. Edward is disowned by his father, and Gertie and her parents must face up to their changed circumstances. But with the support of Edward's friend David, and Alexander Glendale, one of Gertie's spurned suitors, Gertie finds the strength of character to fight for her family and, ultimately, to hold on to her dreams.
©2009 Beryl Matthews (P)2009 Soundings
The Ring of Death
Summary
DCI Monkia Paniatowski has seen dozens of murder victims in her time, but nothing could have prepared her for the corpse in the woods. It is not so much that the man’s throat has been slashed that shocks her, nor even the way he is naked – it is the way he has been carefully posed. Paniatowski has been assigned a new sergeant, who she does not entirely trust. Worse yet, an old enemy from the secret service announces he will be monitoring her every move. But why is a spy interested in a local murder? When a second victim is found it becomes clear to Monika that whatever the murderer’s message is, he will not stop killing until she understands.
©2010 Alan Rustage (P)2010 Soundings
Backlash
Summary
DCI Monika Paniatowski has a bitter personla history with Chief Superintendent Kershaw, but that is not the only reason she doesn’t want the investigation into the sudden – and probably violent – disappearance of his wife, Elaine, landing on her desk. Why should all the resources be channelled into this one case?Why doesn’t somebody take an interest in the disappearance of a young prostitue called Grace Meade? Though she has been old that solving the Kershaw case could make or break her career, she determines to devote part of her time to finding out what happened to Grace. But when a heavily mutilated body is discovered on the moors, it begins to look as if she has made the wrong decision…
©2011 Alan Rustage (P)2012 Soundings
A Walk with the Dead
Summary
When a young girl, Jill Harris, is murdered, the case soon becomes personal for Monika Paniatowski. She saw the victim looking distressed only hours before she was killed, and Jill was the same age as her own daughter, Louisa. Driven by guilt and pity, Monika throws herself into the investigation, but both the chief constable, who is away, and Colin Beresford - her right-hand man - think she is too emotionally involved to handle it. What none of them know is that the killer is planning to strike again....
©2012 Alan Rustage (P)2012 Soundings