Audio Sample of A New Life for Ariana Byrne
The first three of my books are now available as audio books so I thought I would share a sample with you. You can listen to them on kobo, apple, audible or platform of your choice. I hope you enjoy them!
Play to Listen
Text extract if you like reading along
‘Hi Clem, are you sitting down? I have some good news and bad news.’
‘Hang on,’ she mumbled, no doubt to spit out the pins she was holding between her lips. As a fashion designer, Clem always seemed to have tape or scissors or pins between her lips. ‘Shoot.’
Ari took a deep breath. ‘Greg’s dead.’
‘What the fuck?! Hang on.’ Ari heard her shouting instructions to a few of her team and then a door closed. ‘Did you say Greg’s dead? What the hell happened?’
Ari was about to start explaining when Clem interrupted her. ‘Wait, are you okay, are the boys okay?’
Ari reassured her and explained what had happened.
‘So what were you doing uptown anyway?’
‘What?’ Ari didn’t expect grief or even sadness from Clem. She was always looking to get ahead of the next fight. Already she spotted that Ari was in central London, an unusual event. ‘That’s the other thing. Do you remember how Mum’s family basically cut her out of the family?’
‘Yes. Tossers!’
‘Well, and now here’s the funny thing. Our uncle died last month and he was the last one on his side of the family.’
‘Don’t we have cousins, though?’
‘Car crash. Site debris suggested they were high or drunk or both. Their mother died the following year.’
‘Right. Christ, we don’t have to go to our uncle’s funeral, do we? Greg’s will be bad enough.’
‘No, the solicitor told me he has already been buried, as per his wishes, in the family plot with no service or mourners.’
‘Solicitor? Did we actually get something? Is that wrong of me?’
Ari laughed. Since sixteen, when their parents had died, Clem had been working hard, alongside her sisters, trying to bring in every penny they could to survive. Social services kept threatening to break the siblings up and it was a daily battle to prove they could cope.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s not like they cared about us when we needed them. The thing is Mum never mentioned that she had a title. Our grandfather was an honest-to-God Earl. And Mum was known as the Right Honourable Lady Elizabeth de Foix.’
‘Seriously! Holy cow! And she never told us. So, when is Greg’s funeral? Do you need help with it?’
‘No, Annette wants to do it all. Look I don’t care about that. If it’s what she wants to do to cope, then fine. We have a different problem.’
Clem told her to wait whilst she shouted something over the noise of a sewing machine and then she shut the door again and told her to carry on.
‘Well, this is a bit weird. Major league out of your mind weird. But I inherited everything and we are all also ladies. All five of us have a title.’
Ari paused as Clem took this in. ‘Clem, are you still there?’
‘Sorry Sis. Just, well you know. Wow. So now what?’
Ari sighed deeply, what indeed. The sisters began to discuss what needed to be done as Clem hung up she suddenly remembered something.
‘You said there was bad news?’
‘Greg.’
‘Oh yes. I suppose.’
Liz Hurley as well as being the owner of this blog, runs a bookshop in Cornwall, right by the sea and writes books. You can buy them in her shop (of course), Waterstones and other outlets, as well as Amazon.
When she’s not reading, she’s writing and when she’s not writing, she’s walking. And when she’s not doing any of that she’s binging on box sets and sleeping.
This website is for her fictional works. Her Cornish non-fiction titles and walking guides can be found at https://www.cornishwalks.com
