Showing results by narrator "Olivia Dowd" in All Categories

Mariel, a newly blooded captain of the Merry Men, is desperate to live up to the legacy of her grandfather, the legendary Robin Hood. Clem, a backwoods assistant healer known for her new-fangled cures, just wants to help people. When Mariel's ramshackle band kidnap Clem as retribution for her guardian helping the Sheriff of Nottingham, all seems to be going (sort of) to plan … until Jack Hartley, Mariel’s father and Commander of the Merry Men, is captured in a deadly ambush. Determined to prove herself, Mariel sets out to get him back – with her annoyingly cheerful kidnappee in tow.

Platform Seven at 4am: Peterborough Railway Station is deserted. The man crossing the covered walkway on this freezing November morning is confident he's alone. As he sits on the metal bench at the far end of the platform it is clear his choice is strategic - he's as far away from the night staff as he can get. What the man doesn't realise is that he has company. Lisa Evans knows what he has decided. She knows what he is about to do as she tries and fails to stop him walking to the platform edge. Two deaths on Platform Seven. Two fatalities in 18 months - surely they're connected?

Meet the Blanchard twins: Rose is practical, sharp, and protective. Specialty: manta rays. Finn is too sweet and kind for his own good. Specialty: sharks. Rose and Finn are looking for sharks on the sea bed. When they return to the Dauphin they make a terrible discovery: their colleague has been murdered on the ice - with a harpoon that should never have been there. Everyone else on the luxury cruise ship - the wealthy passengers, the researchers hard at work, the tight-knit crew and their strangely calm Captain - were all aboard at the time, so they are all under suspicion.

Thirteen-year-old Ava Bonney is unlike other children. Exceptionally bright, she has an obsessive interest in the rate at which dead animals decompose. The motorway she lives by regularly offers up roadkill, and in the dead of night Ava likes nothing better than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den so she can study it. But one day when she arrives she stumbles across the body of fellow pupil, Mickey Grant. DI Seth Delahaye is given the case, one of the most challenging of his career.

A men-only charity dinner. A clutch of young waitresses. The jokes are uncomfortable. The hands linger. The collars loosen. Behind closed doors, the wine flows. The night is dark. The faces blur. The memories warp. Behind closed doors, the money flows. But revenge is sweet and justice is a burning flame. Behind closed doors, the blood flows…

Twenty-one years ago, Dr Richard Carter and his wife, Pamela, were killed in what has become the most infamous double murder of the modern age. Their 10-year-old daughter - nicknamed the Angel of Death - spent eight years in a children’s secure unit and is living quietly under an assumed name with a family of her own. Now, on the anniversary of the trial, a documentary team has tracked down her older sister, compelling her to break two decades of silence.

As Mara and Tom navigate their break-up/non-break-up, Mara becomes fixated on the perfect couple living in the flat above her. While her best friend accuses her of being self-involved and her already overfamiliar boss keeps getting her drunker and drunker, the Happy Couple become a symbol for everything Mara and Tom could have been – but, crucially, are not.

Boldly original, dramatic story of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots – three queens exercising power in a world dominated by men – Young Queens weaves the personal stories of these three queens into one, revealing their hopes, dreams, desires and regrets in a time when even the most powerful women lived at the mercy of the state.

Maggie is trapped. Dumped on her wedding day, rejected by her family and hounded by a man determined to make her suffer. Charlotte is desperate. Double-crossed by her only friend and facing total ruin, she will go to any lengths to save what matters. Two women, one night. A decision that will change everything.

Westminster in the 2020s, where the business of governing is the last thing on the agenda for anyone worth their salt. In the SW1 bubble, politics moves fast, schemes are hatched and foiled - through both accident and conspiracy - within hours, and sex and power preside. When Bobby Cliveden decides to campaign against the closure of her local mental health unit, she scarcely thought it would take her straight to the heart of the UK's bustling political centre.

Between working at her brother’s school and typing up Inspector Robert Curran’s police reports, Harriet Gordon has little time for personal pursuits and she has been enjoying the rehearsals for her role in the Singapore Amateur Dramatic and Musical Society’s latest production - Pirates of Penzance. But Harriet quickly discovers tensions run deep within the theatre company and when the leading man is found murdered, suspicions abound, exposing scandalous behavior as well as some insidious crimes.

Nineties girl band Breathe were the girls every teenage girl wanted to be – until the lead singer, Enola, went missing at the height of her fame and was never found. Conspiracy theories abounded, and the people closest to her came under suspicion; her boyfriend Max, her manager, her stepdad, and even Angel, the lead singer of rival girl band Attitude. But no evidence of any wrongdoing was ever found and, bar various unverified sightings of her over the years, no trace of Enola has ever been found.

From getting the best out of others, to thinking more creatively about financial problems (even without maths skills), Jo Owen tackles 50 of the most common 'thinking' challenges that can derail the best-laid plans and intentions. Be more decisive in the face of uncertainty, make better decisions for you and your colleagues, and tackle any of the unexpected problems that our busy work lives can throw at us, with Smart Thinking.

An old house, a secret heartbreak, a second chance at love. Lizzie Greene is about to lose everything when her husband suddenly dies and his debts come to light. To make ends meet she opens up her quirky old house to be used as a set for a film based on a bestselling romance novel. Her life and household are turned upside down when a whole cast of colourful characters enters her family's lives: from an enigmatic author, a handsome location scout, a brooding director, to a heart-throb leading man, never mind her now ex-mother-in-law camped out in her drive.

Best friends forever. That's the pact you made. You'd do anything for her. And you have. She's always had it all. If you could take it for yourself...would you?

The king has been appointed by god to marry six queens. Those six queens are all that stand between the kingdom of Elben and ruin. Or so we have been told. Each queen vies for attention. Clever, ambitious Boleyn is determined to be Henry's favourite. And if she must incite a war to win Henry over? So be it. Seymour acts as spy and assassin in a court teeming with dragons, backstabbing courtiers and strange magic. But when she and Boleyn become the unlikeliest of things—allies—the balance of power begins to shift. Together they will discover an ancient, rotting magic at Elben's heart.

Frances’ parents were not prepared for her birth: they had a blanket and an easel and some paint, but not anything useful, like a car or a phone. So it’s no wonder Frankie has always had a temper. She was born on a beach, in a storm. What Frances was not prepared for was dying in a freak natural disaster that wiped out her whole town. Waking up 100 years later, Frances finds a whole load of new things to be angry about. And that’s before the visitors start turning up, treating her home like it’s a tourist attraction. Which it is.

The Kellaway sisters - Winter, Jen and Alyssa - share an unbreakable bond which hides a lifetime of secrets. A-list celebrity, Winter, is hosting the party of the decade to celebrate Jen’s wedding but the day which dawns full of love and promise ends in devastation and recrimination. Detective Saul Anguish is called in to investigate and uncovers a long buried and shocking family truth. And as the trail takes a sudden, dramatic turn, they must now all face the truth that you can never leave the past behind.

Bettina and Bart have grown up as best friends, so surely they will end up together? After all, Bettina is young, rich, headstrong...and gay. Bart is young, rich, charismatic...and also, definitely, gay. Any doubts are dispelled by, in short order: that ghastly kiss; a torrid encounter for Bettina in the school boiler-rooms; and an eye-opening Parisian visit for Bart. Society will never stand for it. What else can they do but enter into a ‘lavender marriage’ and carry on indulging their true natures in secret?

The sudden withdrawal of British and American troops from Afghanistan in 2021, ended the 20 year war on terror, yet it also left Afghanistan to be reconquered by the Taliban. As violence and religious fundamentalism once again overwhelmed the region, thousands of Afghans who loyally served the British and American armies were left behind.