Sophie Roberts has narrated 19 audiobooks on Listento.it by 21 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 145 ratings. The most-rated is The Sun Sister.
The Sun Sister
Summary
To the outside world, Electra D’Aplièse seems to be the woman with everything: as one of the world’s top models, she is beautiful, rich and famous. Yet beneath the veneer, Electra’s already tenuous control over her state of mind has been rocked by the death of her father, Pa Salt, the elusive billionaire who adopted his six daughters from across the globe. Struggling to cope, she turns to alcohol and drugs. As those around her fear for her health, Electra receives a letter from a complete stranger who claims to be her grandmother. In 1939, Cecily Huntley-Morgan arrives in Kenya from New York to nurse a broken heart. Staying with her godmother, a member of the infamous Happy Valley set, on the shores of beautiful Lake Naivasha, she meets Bill Forsythe, a notorious bachelor and cattle farmer with close connections to the proud Maasai tribe. But after a shocking discovery and with war looming, Cecily has few options. Moving up into the Wanjohi Valley, she is isolated and alone. Until she meets a young woman in the woods and makes her a promise that will change the course of her life for ever. Sweeping from Manhattan to the magnificent wide-open plains of Africa, The Sun Sister is the sixth instalment in Lucinda Riley’s multi-million selling epic series, The Seven Sisters.
©2019 Lucinda Riley (P)2020 W. F. Howes Ltd
In Case You Missed It
Summary
The laugh-out-loud new romantic comedy from the Sunday Times best-selling author.
What if Mr Right was right in front of you all along?
When Ros comes home after three years away, she’s ready to pick up with life exactly where she left it. But her friends have moved on, her parents have rekindled their romance and her bedroom is now a garden shed. All of a sudden, she’s swept up in nostalgia for the way things were.
Then her phone begins to ping with messages from her old life. Including one number she thought she’d erased for good - the man who broke her heart. Is this her second chance at one big love? Sometimes we all want to see what we’ve been missing....
©2020 Lindsey Kelk (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Little Disasters
Summary
“Taut, clever, compelling, and guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat." (Paula Hawkins, number one New York Times best-selling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water) From the best-selling author of Anatomy of a Scandal - soon to be a Netflix series - a new thought-provoking novel exploring the complexity of motherhood and all that connects and disconnects us. You think you know her...but look a little closer. She is a stay-at-home mother-of-three with boundless reserves of patience, energy, and love. After being friends for a decade, this is how Liz sees Jess. Then one moment changes everything. Dark thoughts and carefully guarded secrets surface - and Liz is left questioning everything she thought she knew about her friend and about herself. The truth can’t come soon enough. With Sarah Vaughan’s signature “clever and compelling” (Claire Douglas, author of Last Seen Alive) prose, Little Disasters is a tightly wound and evocative story that will haunt you long after you finish listening.
©2020 Sarah Vaughan Limited. All lines from “Morning Song” from The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes. ©1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chanel's Riviera
Summary
Far from worrying about the onset of war, in the spring of 1938 the burning question on the French Riviera was whether one should curtsy to the Duchess of Windsor. Few of those who had settled there thought much about what was going on in the rest of Europe. It was a golden, glamorous life, far removed from politics or conflict.
Featuring a sparkling cast of artists, writers and historical figures including Winston Churchill, Daisy Fellowes, Salvador Dalí, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Eileen Gray and Edith Wharton, with the enigmatic Coco Chanel at its heart, Chanel's Riviera is a captivating account of a period that saw some of the deepest extremes of luxury and terror in the whole of the 20th century.
From Chanel's first summer at her Roquebrune villa La Pausa (in the later years with her German lover) amid the glamour of the prewar parties and casinos in Antibes, Nice and Cannes to the horrors of evacuation and the displacement of thousands of families during the Second World War, Chanel's Riviera explores the fascinating world of the Cote d'Azur elite in the 1930s and 1940s.
Enriched with much original research, it is social history that brings the lives of both rich and poor, protected and persecuted, to vivid life.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio on our desktop site.
©2019 Anne de Courcy (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group
Catherine the Great and Potemkin
Summary
It was history's most successful political partnership - as sensual and fiery as it was creative and visionary. Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin - wildly flamboyant and sublimely talented - was the love of her life and her co-ruler.
Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, defining the Russian empire to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving Potemkin free to love his beautiful nieces, and Catherine her young male favourites. But these 'twin souls' never stopped loving each other.
Drawing on their intimate letters and vast research, Simon Sebag Montefiore's enthralling, widely acclaimed biography restores these imperial partners to their rightful place as titans of their age.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio on our desktop site.
©2019 Simon Sebag Montefiore (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group
The Emerald Comb
Summary
Some secrets are best left buried.... Researching her family tree had been little more than a hobby - until Katie stepped onto Kingsley House’s sprawling, ivy-strewn drive. The house may be crumbling today, but it was once the intimidatingly opulent residence of the St Clairs, Katie’s ancestors. Arriving here 200 years later, emotion stirs in Katie: a strange nostalgia for a place she’s never seen before...and when Kingsley House comes up for sale, Katie is determined that her family must buy it. Surrounded by the mysteries of the past, Katie’s pastime becomes a darker obsession, as she searches through history to trace her heritage. But she soon discovers that these walls house terrible secrets. And when forgotten stories and hidden betrayals come to light, the past seems more alive than Katie could ever have imagined. Moving between the 21st and 19th centuries, The Emerald Comb is a hauntingly evocative novel, perfect for fans of Kate Morton and Rachel Hore.
©2020 Kathleen McGurl (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
The Silk Weaver's Wife
Summary
A heart-wrenching and unforgettable story of two women - centuries apart - linked by the hidden secrets of a beautiful woman in a Venetian painting. Venice 1704: Anastasia is desperate to escape her controlling father and plans to marry her childhood sweetheart. But instead of the life she has always dreamed of, she finds herself trapped in Venice, the unwilling wife of a silk weaver. Anastasia seeks comfort in painting and draws strength from her talents. Despite her circumstances, two women reach out to her and give Anastasia a reason to hope. And together they make a momentous decision which will change all of their lives.... London 2017: Millie wants more from her relationship and more from her life. So when her boss Max abruptly ends their affair, she takes the opportunity to write a feature in Italy. Staying in a gorgeous villa, Millie unexpectedly falls in love with the owner, Lorenzo. Together they begin to unravel an incredible story passed down through generations of women. And Millie finds herself compelled to discover the identity of a mysterious woman in a portrait.... A richly evocative story about lost secrets, family heirlooms and love against all odds. The Silk Weaver’s Wife is perfect for listeners who enjoyed Island of Secrets, The Secret Wife and Amy Snow.
©2019 Debbie Rix (P)2020 Audible, Ltd
Thirteen Storeys
Summary
A chilling thriller that's perfect for fans of Get Out and The Haunting of Hill House. A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building. None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced an unsettling occurrence within the building's walls. By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.
©2020 Jonathan Sims (P)2020 Orion Publishing Group
Secrets in Sicily
Summary
Sicily, 1977. Ten-year-old Lily and family arrive for their annual summer holiday in Sicily. Adopted as a toddler, Lily's childhood has been idyllic. But a chance encounter with a local woman on the beach changes everything.... Ten years later... Ever since that fateful summer Lily's picture-perfect life, and that of her family, has been in turmoil. The secrets of the baking hot shores of Sicily are calling her back, and Lily knows that the answers she has been so desperately seeking can be found only if she returns to her beloved island once more....
©2018 Penny Feeny (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd
All That She Can See
Summary
The top three Sunday Times best-selling novel from Carrie Hope Fletcher, the star of The Addams Family musical! A story of love, food and a little bit of magic, All That She Can See is an enchanting and beautiful audiobook that's guaranteed to be the most magical story you'll listen to all year. Feelings are part of life - feelings are life. If you take away what people feel, you take away anything meaningful. Wanting to diminish the evil in this world is a good cause, one I have fought for the majority of my life, but not like this.... Cherry has a hidden talent. She can see things other people can't, and she decided a long time ago to use this skill to help others. As far as the rest of the town is concerned, she's simply the kind-hearted young woman who runs the local bakery, but in private she uses her gift to add something special to her cakes so that after just one mouthful, the townspeople start to feel better about their lives. They don't know why they're drawn to Cherry's bakery - they just know that they're safe there, and that's how Cherry likes it. She can help them in secret, and no one will ever need to know the truth behind her gift. And then Chase turns up and threatens to undo all the good Cherry has done. Because it turns out she's not the only one who can see what she sees....
©2017 Carrie Hope Fletcher (P)2019 Hachette Audio UK
The Memory Collector
Summary
From the author of The Other Us. The Winner of the 2018 Speculative Romantic Novel Award. Heather Lucas lives her life through other people's memories. Heather doesn’t want to remember her childhood, not when her mother’s extreme hoarding cast her family life into disarray. For Heather's mother, every possession was intimately connected to a memory, so when Heather uncovers a secret about her past that could reveal why her mother never let anything go, she knows there's only one place she’ll find answers - behind the locked door of her spare room, where the remains of her mother’s hoard lie hidden. As Heather uncovers both objects and memories, will the truth set her free? Or will she discover she’s more like her mother than she ever thought possible? A powerful, uplifting story about love, loss an the things we leave behind.
©2018 Fiona Harper (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Toffee
Summary
The astonishing new novel from Carnegie Medal, CliPPA Poetry Award, YA Book Prize and CBI Book of the Year Award winning author Sarah Crossan. Allison is in danger at home. Her stepmother has run away and her father is getting worse. So she runs away too and with no where to live finds herself hiding out, miles from home, in an elderly woman’s shed. But this woman, Marla, has dementia and doesn’t recognise her as Allison, believing she is an old friend from her past called Toffee. So this is who Allison becomes, morphing into a person Marla usually knows and trusts but sometimes fears and fights. Eventually Allison’s stepmother shows up, armed with a new baby girl, a new sibling. Marla then finds herself, once lonely and vulnerable, the saviour to three desperate women. But Marla’s son is frustrated with his mother, and can be angry and violent. Is there a way for this new family to stay together? From one-time winner and two-time Carnegie Medal short-listed author Sarah Crossan, this new novel is poignant, stirring and huge-hearted.
©2019 Sarah Crossan (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
The Forest of Doom: Lost in Darkwood
Summary
When Vale Moonwing returns to Darkwood Forest, he discovers that her old friend, the wizard Yaztromo, has vanished...himself?
©2018 David N. Smith (P)2018 Fox Yason Music Productions Ltd
Faye, Faraway
Summary
A heartfelt, spellbinding, and irresistible debut novel for fans of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Outlander that movingly examines loss, faith, and love as it follows a grown woman who travels back in time to be reunited with the mother she lost when she was a child. Faye is a 37-year-old happily married mother of two young daughters. Every night, before she puts them to bed, she whispers to them: “You are good, you are kind, you are clever, you are funny.” She’s determined that they never doubt for a minute that their mother loves them unconditionally. After all, her own mother Jeanie had died when Faye was only seven years old and Faye has never gotten over that intense pain of losing her. But one day, her life is turned upside down when she finds herself in 1977, the year before her mother died. Suddenly, she has the chance to reconnect with her long-lost mother, and even meets her own younger self, a little girl she can barely remember. Jeanie doesn’t recognize Faye as her daughter, of course, even though there is something eerily familiar about her.... As the two women become close friends, they share many secrets - but Faye is terrified of revealing the truth about her identity. Will it prevent her from returning to her own time and her beloved husband and daughters? What if she’s doomed to remain in the past forever? Faye knows that eventually she will have to choose between those she loves in the past and those she loves in the here and now, and that knowledge presents her with an impossible choice. Emotionally gripping and ineffably sweet Faye, Faraway is a brilliant exploration of the grief associated with unimaginable loss and the magic of being healed by love.
©2021 Spacehopper Limited. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Summer Getaway
Summary
Ashley Moon is all set for a dream holiday with her daughter in the glittering French Riviera. But nothing can prepare her for the shock of discovering who’s staying in the villa next door.... A wonderfully heart-warming story of first love and second chances for fans of Jenny Oliver and Lucy Diamond. Ashley got much more than a suntan on her first ever foreign holiday; one whirlwind romance and nine months later she had a daughter, Molly. Too proud to ever contact the father, Ashley made a decision to go it alone and raise her daughter herself. Fifteen years later, she finally has the chance to take Molly on her first ever holiday; a gorgeous, all-expenses-paid trip to the charming French resort of St. Raphael. But fate has other plans. One look into her neighbour’s dark hazel eyes is all it takes to give her the shock of her life. Standing in front of her is Haydon, Molly’s long-lost father and the holiday fling she thought she’d never see again. As the temperature on the Cote D’Azure steadily rises and Ashley and Haydon begin to spend more time together, will Ashley find the courage to tell him who she is - and more importantly, who Molly is?
©2018 Tilly Tennant (P)2021 W F Howes
The Little Princesses
Summary
The touching and ground-breaking account of the Queen and Princess Margaret's childhood by their nanny, with a foreword by former BBC Royal Correspondent Jennie Bond. In little more than 50 years the regard with which the Royal Family are held has changed out of all recognition. Their private lives are now the stuff of soap opera, and it seems anyone who comes into contact with them sells their story to the magazines or to the newspapers. Marion Crawford, 'Crawfie' as she was known to the Queen and Princess Margaret, became governess to the children of the Duke and Duchess of York in the early 1930s, little suspecting she was nurturing her future Queen. Beginning at the quiet family home in Piccadilly in the early 1930s and ending with the birth of Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace in 1948, Crawfie tells how she brought the princesses up to be 'Royal' whilst also exposing them to the ordinary world of underground trains, buses and swimming lessons. The Little Princesses was published in 1950 to a furore we cannot imagine today. Crawfie was demonised by the press, and the Queen Mother, who had been a great friend and who had, Crawfie maintained, given her permission to write the account, never spoke to her again.
©2020 Marion Crawford (P)2020 Orion Publishing Group
The Stitcher and the Mute
Summary
There's power in stories. And power comes at a price. Detective Cora Gorderheim has found the man who strangled the Wayward storyteller. But he was just a small part of a much bigger tale. Someone powerful ordered a murder on Cora's patch. That someone still lurks in the shadows. But as she continues her investigations, Cora is warned not to pry into the great and the good of Fenest. Too stubborn to know better, Cora keeps digging and begins to piece together a conspiracy that reaches from the gutter dwellers of the Union of Realms right to the top: the Chambers. As the Audience hear the Torn and Perlish tales, Cora realises she must return to her own story, to its very beginning, if she's going to have any say in its end.
©2020 D.K. Fields (P)2020 Head of Zeus
We Just Clicked
Summary
Izzy’s always played by the rules. But now, it’s time to break them.... Izzy Brown has always dreamed of making it big on Instagram, but her followers just aren’t growing. So when her colleague and fellow ‘influencer’ Luke suggests they fake date to boost their profiles, Izzy says yes – against her better judgement. Now Izzy’s profile shows a confident, glamorous 30-something with the perfect boyfriend and her followers are shooting up by the thousands. So what if behind the scenes, things are a little different? Izzy can’t stop bickering with Luke, his habit of checking his quiff in EVERY SINGLE mirror is driving her insane and she’s hiding a secret heartache. But everyone tells a few fibs on social media, right? Then Izzy runs into Aidan, the mysterious stranger who saved her the day her world fell apart two years ago – and major sparks start to fly. Izzy’s sure she can have the online success she’s always dreamed of, whilst falling in love in real life. After all, Aidan doesn’t use social media...what could possibly go wrong? If you loved Sophie Kinsella’s My Not-So Perfect Life, Laura Jane Williams’ Our Stop or Sophie Ranald’s Sorry Not Sorry, you will fall head over heels for this touching and hilarious new novel from Anna Bell, the best-selling author of The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart. It will make you laugh until you cry!
©2020 Anna Bell (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Cathedral
Summary
A sweeping story about obsession, mysticism, art and earthly desire. At the centre of this story is the Cathedral. Its design and construction in the 13th and 14th centuries in the fictional town of Hagenburg unites a vast array of unforgettable characters whose fortunes are inseparable from the shifting political factions and economic interests vying for supremacy. From the bishop to his treasurer, from local merchants to lowly stonecutters, the fate of everyone, both Gentile and Jew, is affected by the slow rise of Hagenburg’s cathedral, a holy building growing over an often unholy city. Around this narrative core, Ben Hopkins has constructed his own monumental edifice, a choral novel that is rich with the vicissitudes of mercantilism, politics, religion and human enterprise. Ambitious, immersive, a remarkable feat of imagination, Cathedral deftly combines historical fiction, the literary novel of ideas and a tale of adventure and intrigue. Fans of authors like Umberto Eco, Elif Shafak, Hilary Mantel, Ken Follett and Jose Saramago will delight at the atmosphere, the beautiful prose and the vivid characters of Ben Hopkins’ Cathedral.
©2021 Ben Hopkins (P)2021 W F Howes