Juanita McMahon

For thirty years, best friends Stephanie and Philippa have been practically inseparable. There's nothing they would not do for one another...until a few simple words change everything. Both women have always believed that friendship is built on mutual selflessness, compromise and trust. Are those beliefs now to be tested beyond endurance?

Here are six magical stories to thrill and enchant you. Listen as Blackberry Blue rises from the bramble patch; follow Emeka the pathfinder on his mission to save a lost king; and join Princess Desire as she gallops across the Milky Way on her jet-black horse. These beautifully written and original stories will delight listeners of all ages.

On a summer's day in Paris, tourists on a river trip watch in horror as a small boy falls overboard and disappears below the surface of the water. As his mother stands frozen to the spot, another passenger jumps... This is the story of how a single act of courage transforms the lives of all those involved.

London 1893: When Cora Seaborne and her son Francis reach Essex, rumours spread from the estuary that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming lives, has returned to the coastal parish of Aldwinter. Cora, a keen amateur naturalist is enthralled, and sets out on its trail.

The Hurlingham Club in Buenos Aires is a little piece of England. Here the Anglo-Argentinean community devour gossip as eagerly as the scones and Earl Grey tea. And it is here that Audrey Garnet loses her heart to Louis Forrester, the talented, troubled composer who sets tongues wagging with his eccentricities and chequered past...

Gina Bellamy is starting again, after a few years she'd rather forget. But the belongings she's treasured for so long don't seem to fit who she is now. So Gina makes a resolution. She'll keep just a hundred special items - the rest can go. But that means coming to terms with her past and learning to embrace the future, whatever it might bring . . .

Gianluca's life is empty. His City job, his seven-figure income, his glossy girlfriends - all have long ceased to satisfy him. His marriage is over and he barely knows his young daughters. In search of serenity and a deeper purpose, he flees to Italy. But life on the sun-drenched Amalfi coast is not as peaceful as Luca anticipates...

Willow and Holly are identical twins. They’re alike in every way, except one - Willow is afraid on the inside. For a long time Willow has felt separated from Holly by one terrible moment in time, and when the past catches up with her, Willow realises it’s finally time for her to face her fears, and learn to laugh again. Also published as 'The Other Sister'.

When Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw receives a report of a missing woman, she knows the first 72 hours are critical: you find her, or you look for a body. And as soon as she sees a picture of Edith Hind, a Cambridge post-graduate from a well-connected family, she knows this case will be big...

The story of four Londoners with a past: Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war; clever, sweet Helen who harbours a painful secret; Viv, the glamour girl stubbornly loyal to her soldier lover, and; Duncan, an apparent innocent, who has his own demons to fight. Their lives and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways.

As dusk falls, a young man staggers through a park, dying from a stab wound; DI Manon Bradshaw is horrified to discover that both victim and prime suspect are more closely linked to her than she could have imagined. And as the Cambridgeshire police force closes ranks against her, she is forced to contemplate the unthinkable.

Clayton Miller's promising media career and personal life are in tatters. To put it all behind him he retreats to a secluded country house. There he meets Alice, who goes to great lengths to avoid telling the truth about herself. When Alice and Clayton discover the truth about each other they form an unlikely friendship...

The body of a young migrant is found hanging from a tree. No signs of struggle. No indication that it is anything other than a tragic suicide. Except for a note, pinned to his trousers, that reads ‘The dead cannot speak’. A murder investigation begins with DI Manon Bradshaw at the helm. But with the other migrants unwilling to speak, and protests on the streets, hatred is starting to drown out the facts. Can Manon uncover the truth before it happens again?

Angie has everything that Molly lacks. But when Angie's father dies and leaves Molly a share in the Beckett pottery, it's on the condition that she takes a job there. Forbidden by her husband to work outside the home, she nevertheless seizes the opportunity to explore her new-found independence.

When Alice Talbot is twelve her sister is killed in a road accident, and their devastated mother, Rose, starts to abuse her. Alice runs away to trace her grandmother. At first Honour wants nothing to do with her but gradually they forge a bond and Alice starts to forget her unhappy past. But then war breaks out and Rose decides to rear her ugly head again.

When Beatrice gets a call to say that her younger sister is missing, she returns home to London. As she learns about the circumstances surrounding the disappearance, she discover how little she actually knows of her sister's life and is unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face. Richard & Judy Bookclub

A seaside holiday at Shell Cottage in Devon has always been the perfect escape for the Tarrant family. This year everything seems to have changed. Harriet is looking forward to a break with her lovely husband Robert and teenage daughter Molly. Unknown to Harriet, Robert is hiding a secret - and so, for that matter, is Molly…

When George Bolton returns home to Devon at the end of the war, Rita assumes that her childhood sweetheart will marry her and that their future will be a reassuring continuation of their past. But the boy who joined the RAF has come back a man, and a man irrevocably changed by the horrors that he has seen...

In Edwardian Suffolk, a manor house stands alone in a lost corner of the Fens: a glinting wilderness of water whose whispering reeds guard ancient secrets. Maud is a lonely child growing up without a mother, ruled by her repressive father. When he finds a painted medieval devil in a graveyard, unhallowed forces are awakened. Maud's battle has begun. She must survive a world haunted by witchcraft, the age-old legends of her beloved fen - and the even more nightmarish demons of her father's past. Spanning five centuries, Wakenhyrst is a darkly gothic thriller about murderous obsession and one girl's longing to fly free by the bestselling author of Dark Matter and Thin Air.