New audiobooks for April

1847, Shepherds Bush. Charles Dickens' home for fallen women is about to open its doors. Part refuge, part reformatory, the house and its location are top secret, and Martha Gelder and Josephine Nash among its first inmates. But faced with the chance to redeem themselves, how badly do they want it? Across town, in her Piccadilly mansion, Dickens' friend, the millionaire Angela Burdett Coutts, receives news that turns her orderly world upside down. Her stalker has been freed from prison, and she knows it's only a matter of time before their nightmarish game resumes once more. As the women's worlds collide in ways they could never have expected, they will discover that freedom always comes at a price.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until – betrayed and brokenhearted – she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

Daphne always loved the way Peter told their story. That is until it became the prologue to his actual love story with his childhood bestie, Petra. Which is how Daphne ends up rooming with her total opposite and the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra's ex, Miles. As expected, it’s not a match made in heaven – that is until one night, while tossing back tequilas, they form a plan. And if it involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their adventures together, well, who could blame them? But it’s all just for show, of course. Because there’s no way Daphne would start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?

One moment my beautiful daughter, her face flushed from the sun, her curls still wet from splashing in the ocean, was waiting in line for a strawberry ice cream, the next she was gone. It's been two years since Layla was murdered. The police have searched tirelessly for her killer, but they've found nothing – it's like whoever did it vanished into thin air. My once-perfect marriage is falling apart, we can hardly look at each other anymore. Our ten-year-old son Gale is struggling. Then one day, as I butter his toast for breakfast, my son tells me something that stops me in my tracks. "I know who killed Layla.” I can barely get the words out to ask how. Looking at me with his serious little boy expression, he puts a hand on my arm. “She told me.”

Anna has a life to envy. An apartment in New York. A well-meaning (too well-meaning?) partner. And a high-flying job in beauty PR. Who wouldn’t want all that? Anna – it turns out. Turning a minor mid-life crisis into a major life event she packs it in, heads back to Ireland, and gets a PR job for a super-high-end coastal retreat. Tougher than it sounds. Newsflash – the locals hate it. So much so, there have been threats – and violence. Anna, however, worked in the beauty industry. There’s no ugliness she hasn’t seen. No wrinkle she can’t smooth over. Anna’s got this. Until she discovers that leaving New York doesn’t mean escaping her mistakes. Once upon a time she’d had a best friend. Once upon a time she’d loved a man. Now she has neither. And now she has to face them. We all make mistakes. But when do we stop making the same one over and over again?