Showing results by narrator "Susan Duerden" in All Categories

The modern audience hasn't had a chance to truly appreciate the unknowing dread that readers would have felt when reading Bram Stoker's original 1897 manuscript. Most modern productions employ campiness or sound effects to try to bring back that gothic tension, but we've tried something different. By returning to Stoker's original storytelling structure - a series of letters and journal entries voiced by Jonathan Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, and other characters - with an all-star cast of narrators, we've sought to recapture its originally intended horror and power.

Alexander Denford, Baron Sedgwick, is a gentleman to be envied. He lives a rakish life of well-celebrated ease and contentment and has one person to thank for his perfectly ordered existence - his dearest wife, Emmaline. She never complains about his mistresses or his penchant for late nights out. His friends are envious, but they don't know the truth - Emmaline doesn't exist. But when he starts receiving bills from London for clothes, shoes, hats, and a staggering amount of other female accouterments, he realizes something is decidedly amiss.

In the fair autumn of Our Lord's grace 1431, the nuns of England's St. Frideswide's prepare for the simply ceremonies in which the saintly novice Thomasine will take her holy vows. But their quiet lives of beauty and prayer are thrown into chaos by the merciless arrival of Lady Ermentrude Fenner and her retinue of lusty men, sinful women, and baying hounds. The hard-drinking dowager even keeps a pet monkey for her amusement. She demands wine, a feast.... And her niece, the angelic Thomasine.

When Arabella Barstowe is kidnapped, she believes her life and virtue are forfeit—until she's rescued by the notorious rogue Captain Rose. Bella never expects to see him again. But years later she learns the wicked truth behind her abduction, and she seeks out the only man who can help her take revenge.

This is a collection meant to be cherished for a lifetime. Whether encountering these cherished tales for the first or the 50th time, listeners will find enchantment in this collection.

Lady Betsy Wilde's first season was triumphant by any measure, and a duke has proposed - but before marriage, she longs for one last adventure. No gentleman would agree to her scandalous plan - but Lord Jeremy Roden is no gentleman. He offers a wager. If she wins a billiards game, he'll provide the breeches. If he wins...she is his, for one wild night. But what happens after Jeremy realises that one night will never be enough? He'll have to convince Betsy to say no to the duke.

A long time ago, when the earth was flat, beautiful, indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above, curious passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below, and mortals were relegated to the middle. Uhlume, Lord of Death, second of the Lords of Darkness, King of Shadow and Pallor, makes an unusual bargain, which sets in motion an intricate sequence of events that entangle men and gods, queens and kings, sorcerers and witches, and lowly wanderers.

Isla Palmer is crazy about cats - super-in-love crazy - but her vet-nurse mum has never let her have one. Then Isla meets Poppy, a gorgeous cat in need of a loving home, and comes up with the perfect way to convince Mum. It's not long before Poppy has transformed life at the Palmers - everyone is happier, especially Gran, and even Isla's older sister, Tilda, admits she likes having Poppy around. But Poppy isn't the only one in need of a home, and soon their house is full of cats. With Mum at her wits' end, Isla needs to come up with a plan and fast!

That Nelda Roundheels had been murdered would have been of little interest to anyone - except that her body turned up in the bishop of Winchester's bedchamber with a letter to the bishop, from the king's most important enemy, rolled up in her breastband. The bishop and his knight, Sir Bellamy of Itchen, realize immediately that the purpose of putting the body in Winchester's bedchamber is to embarrass and discredit the bishop. And the reason for this attack on Winchester is his calling of a convocation to chastise the king for acting high-handedly against the bishop of Salisbury.

Los Angeles, 1943. As the Allies beat back the Nazis in the Mediterranean and the United States military slowly closes in on Tokyo, Walt Disney cranks out wartime propaganda and the Cocoanut Grove is alive with jazz and swing every night. But behind this sunny façade lies a darker reality. Up in the lush foothills of Hollywood, a woman floats lifeless in the pool of one of California’s trendiest hotels. When Maggie Hope learns that this woman was engaged to her former fiancée, John Sterling, and that he suspects her death was no accident, intuition tells her he’s right.

With insight and great wit, Emmeline Pankhurst's autobiography chronicles the beginnings of her interest in feminism through to her militant and controversial fight for women's right to vote. While Emmeline received a good education, attending an all-girls school and being expected to conform to social norms, she rebelled against conventional women's roles. At the age of 14 a meeting of women's rights activists sparked a lifelong passion in her to fight for women's freedom and she would later claim that it was on that day she became a suffragist.

Georgiana Escott has one night to find the perfect man to ruin her and leave her with a tattered reputation so she can avoid an arranged marriage to an aging, despicable roue. With a misstep, she tumbles into the arms of the disgraced and dashing Lord Danvers. But Georgie doesn't know that the lover she has enticed to follow her into the night and the stranger she holds responsible for her misfortunes are in the same....

Though she can't afford the coal to heat her drafty Mayfair mansion, Felicity Langley still clings to her dream of marrying a duke - one she's had since her very first curtsy. After all, she's been promised to the very lofty duke of Hollindrake for the last four years. Now all she has to do is meet him. But what Felicity doesn't realize is that she has met her duke - he's the altogether too handsome man who Felicity has just mistaken...for her new footman!

Lady Arabella Tremont has spent her entire life protected and overshadowed by her restrictive father. But she is a Tremont, after all, and the morning after she is nearly ruined at a ball by a handsome stranger, Arabella's father demands she make an arranged match with the heir to a dukedom. In desperation, Arabella takes matters into her own hands.

Julia Lovat walks away from her seven-year affair with Michael with a broken heart and his final gift to her - an antique book full of secrets. The book is the diary of Catherine Treganna, who was kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery in Morocco 400 years ago. When Julia travels to Morocco to discover Cat's fate, she is quickly lost in an exotic and vibrant land. Her guide is Idriss, a man so charismatic and beguiling that their meeting feels like destiny. And so, in the heat and dust, two love stories, separated by four centuries, entwine and blossom....

Since being widowed, Kitty Cateril has been trapped in her late husband's home, where she is expected to mourn forever. Desperate to escape, Kitty will consider any option—even a hasty marriage to a stranger with no intention of abandoning his bachelor ways. London life suits Beau Braydon, especially his work keeping Britain safe. So when he inherits the title of Viscount Dauntry, he has no intention of resettling on a rural estate. He can't resist the opportunity to marry a widow who can manage Beauchamp Abbey for him—until he realizes Kitty is more than he bargained for.

Chef Charlie Hunter's arrival in the beautiful Chilterns is the fulfillment of a long-held dream: to open her own restaurant in an idyllic countryside location. The Old Forge sits on the village green (complete with duck pond and flint-faced houses) and seems just the place for the high-quality cooking she wants to be known for. But instead of rural peace and a chance to lick her wounds, Charlie finds something ugly stirring under the chocolate box perfection. When a prominent local builder is found dead in suspicious circumstances, Charlie the outsider becomes a suspect.

Long ago when the Earth was flat, beautiful, indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above; curious, passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below; and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle. Azhrarn, Lord of the Demons and the Darkness, was the one who ruled the night, and many mortal lives were changed because of his cruel whimsy. And yet, Azhrarn held inside his demon heart a profound mystery which would change the very fabric of the Flat Earth forever.

A little over 10 years ago, Janine Marsh and her husband gave up their careers in London to chase the good life in the countryside of northern France. Having overcome the obstacles of starting to renovate her dream home - an ancient, dilapidated barn - and fitting in with the peculiarities of the locals, Janine is now the go-to expat in the area for those seeking to get to grips with a very different way of life. In this book, Janine regales us with the delights and dramas of a year attempting to live the rural idyll.

Chloe Benson wakes up kidnapped and bound in an underground tomb with no memory of how she got there