Showing results by narrator "Rachel Atkins" in All Categories

This collection of three of Henrik Ibsen's most well-known and important plays is voiced by a sparkling cast and features music, SFX and a full soundscape. Born in 1828, Norwegian playwright, theatre director and poet Ibsen, wrote in Danish yet lived for many years in Italy and Germany. Heralded as one the most distinguished dramatists after Shakespeare, by the early 20th century A Doll's House became the world's most performed play.

Jenny Tanner opens the box she has cherished for decades. Contained within are her most precious mementoes, amongst them a pebble, a carving and a newspaper cutting she can hardly bear to read. But Jenny knows the time is finally here. After the war, in a mountainside village in Italy, she left behind a piece of her heart. However painful, she must return to Cinque Alberi. And lay the past to rest.

Gracie Burton is a grandmother living quietly in Devon. She has rarely left the village over the past 40 years. Her daughter, Carina, is immensely high-powered, with her own fast-paced business in London. She has very little time for her 17-year-old daughter, Anastasia, away at boarding school, and even less time for her ageing mother. In many ways, the three of them barely know each other.

When troubled teenager Immy disappears, she leaves her widowed mother Bea completely devastated. Bea pours her love into her six-year-old niece Phoebe, even taking her in when her single father Ewan takes a job abroad. Then Immy returns, in desperate need of her mother’s help and love. But Ewan is clear: he will never let Bea see Phoebe again if she welcomes her daughter back. As Bea grapples with this impossible choice between two girls who sorely need her, a long-buried secret comes out that changes everything.

Diary of a War Crime is the first book in the DI Ruth Hunter crime prequel series. If you like chilling police procedurals, true-to-life characters and psychological twists, then you’ll love Simon McCleave’s addictive thrill ride. London, 1997. A series of baffling murders. A web of political corruption. DC Ruth Hunter thinks she has the brutal killer in her sights, but there's one problem. He’s a Serbian War criminal who died five years earlier and lies buried in Bosnia.

Alison is lucky, and she knows it. She has the life she always craved, including a happy home with Jeff and their brilliant, vivacious teenage daughter, Katherine - the absolute centre of Alison's world. Then a knock at the door ends life as they know it. Fifteen years ago someone else took Alison's baby from the hospital. And now Alison is facing the unthinkable. Her daughter belongs to someone else. What would you do if you discovered your beloved child is not yours?

The Man on the Mountaintop tells the story of Holy Man Joe, an ageing and unassuming man who lives in a hermitage on top of a mountain. During the summer months, thousands of hopefuls line the path leading to his door, seeking his wisdom. From bombastic, wealthy nobles intent on cheating their way to the top to drunkards who gradually build the physical and mental strength they need to quit their addiction, The Man on the Mountaintop is a rousing tale full of humour, wit and life lessons.

Wilkie Collins' follow-up to The Woman in White and No Name is an innovative take on mistaken identity, the nature of evil, and the dark underbelly of Victorian England. The story concerns two distant cousins, both named Allan Armadale, and the impact of a family tragedy, which makes one of them a target of the murderous Lydia Gwilt, a vicious and malevolent charmer determined to get her hands on the Armadale fortune. Will the real Allan Armadale be revealed, and will he survive the plot against his life?

It's amazing what you can buy online these days: memorabilia, fashion accessories, a crumbling Italian farmhouse... After a Prosecco-fuelled girls' night in gets out of hand, Ruthie Collins awakes to discover that she has bid for her dream Italian home online - and won. Recently out of a relationship, a new start is just what she needs. Anything is better than sleeping on her mum's settee.

The students at Morton Academy are high-achievers, selected based on academic excellence. So when a series of murders target the school's brightest and best, the pressure is on. Someone is determined to stop at nothing to clear their path to the top. But who is it? And can they be stopped?

London, England, 1952. Meet the mercurial genius Professor Quanderhorn (James Fleet) - a maverick scientist with absolutely no moral compass. Join him and his rag-tag crew on their frontal-lobe-knotting escapades as they battle insane hybrid creatures: the Gorrirrel and the Squirrilla, to the death; become gods to a Stone-Age tribe; are engulfed in a Martian invasion of Earth; escape shipwreck on the Moon in a spacecraft powered by anger; and evade multiple fiendish traps in the Alien Ziggurat of Death. Will our crew of Brave Boffins survive?

When Gill Swanley decides to take up gardening to fight a midlife malaise, she never expected it to become quite such a dangerous hobby. Pushing herself to 'get out there', Gill picks herself up the secateurs and joins the Bromley Botanists. Here she finds a seven-strong group whose main agenda is how to win the coveted Golden Trowel for best community club of the year. But when a dead body turns up in the community greenhouse, they suddenly have more serious matters to consider than victory.

1937. War with Germany is dawning and a civil war already raging in Spain. Split across political lines, the six Mitford sisters are more divided than ever. Meanwhile their former maid Louisa Cannon is now a private detective, working with her ex-policeman husband, Guy Sullivan. Louisa and Guy are surprised when a call comes in from novelist Nancy Mitford requesting that they look into the disappearance of her Communist sister, Jessica, nicknamed Decca. It quickly becomes clear that Decca may have made for the war in Spain - and not alone.

It's former lady's maid Louisa Cannon's wedding day, but the fantasy is shattered shortly after when she is approached by a secretive man asking her to spy on Diana Mitford - who is having an affair with the infamous Oswald Mosley - and her similarly fascist sister Unity. Thus as summer 1933 dawns, Louisa finds herself accompanying the Mitfords on a glitzy cruise, full of the starriest members of Society. But the waters run red when a man is found attacked, with suspects everywhere.

You lost your daughter. You will never forgive yourself. And now someone is determined to make you pay.... Seventeen years ago, something happened to Jess' daughter, Beth. The memory of it still makes her blood run cold. Jess has tried everything to make peace with that day, and the part she played in what happened. It was only a brief moment of desire...but she'll pay for it with a lifetime of guilt.

Wedlock is the remarkable story of the Countess of Strathmore and her marriage to Andrew Robinson Stoney. Mary Eleanor Bowes was one of Britain's richest young heiresses. She married the Count of Strathmore, who died young, and, pregnant with her lover's child, Mary became engaged to George Gray. Then in swooped Andrew Robinson Stoney. Mary was bowled over and married him within the week. But nothing was as it seemed. Stoney was broke and his pursuit of the wealthy Countess a calculated ploy.

Set in the extreme landscape of Alaska, The Quality of Silence follows the story of Yasmin and her deaf daughter, Ruby. Yasmin arrives in Alaska to be told her husband, Matt, is dead, the victim of a catastrophic accident. Yasmin, unable to accept this as truth, sets out into the frozen winter landscape, taking Ruby with her, in search of answers. But as a storm closes in, Yasmin realises that a very human danger may be keeping pace with them.

When an old television rival, Deirdre Shaw, is found dead at the Cotswolds manor house where she was catering for a prestigious shooting weekend, Prudence is asked to step into the breach. Prudence is only too happy to take up the position, and soon she is working in the kitchens of Farleigh Manor. But Farleigh Manor is the home to secrets, both old and new. The site of a famous unsolved murder from the 19th century, Farleigh Manor has never quite shaken off its sensationalist past. It's about to get a sensational present, too.

Eighteen months after Natalie Gray loses her husband, Bernie, in a horrific hit and run accident, she finds love with his best friend, Ed Cooper, and moves into his home with her teenage daughter, Scarlett. But she begins to suspect Ed has a dark side - and even darker intentions. Natalie must get her troubled child to a safer place, but when Scarlett starts to hear voices coming from the empty apartment next door it seems she has unwittingly moved them into the heart of danger.

In England's stately manor houses, murder is not generally a topic for polite conversation. Mallowan Hall, home to Agatha Christie and her husband, Max, is the exception. And housekeeper Phyllida Bright delights in discussing gory plot details with her friend and employer. The neighboring village of Listleigh has also become a hub of grisly goings-on, thanks to a Murder Fete organized to benefit a local orphanage. Members of The Detection Club will congregate for charitable events, including a writing contest for aspiring authors.