Showing results by narrator "Antonia Beamish" in All Categories

Detlef Sierck, the self-proclaimed greatest playwright in the world, has declared that his next production will be a recreation of the end of the Great Enchanter Drachenfels - to be staged at the very site of his death, the Fortress of Drachenfels itself. But the castle's dark walls still hide a terrible secret which may make the opening night an evening to remember!

Meet Detective Maddie Ives in this new series that will have you gripped from the explosive start to one of the most shocking twists of the year. Early Sunday morning, a rainy city centre. A 10-year-old-boy steps out in front of traffic. He is dazed, confused and barefoot. He is covered in blood. It’s not his. Detective Maddie Ives is called out and finds the boy backed up against a shop front. He can’t or won’t speak. His face is a mask of shock and his whole body is tense. He’s ready to run again. He can’t tell her why. Who scared this boy out of his wits?

Exploring more than 100 of the most important ideas, organisations, and events to have defined the feminist movement, this is an essential introduction to feminism. Joining DK's best-selling Big Ideas series, The Feminism Book, narrated by Antonia Beamish, is a complete study of feminism. Trace the subject from its origins, through the suffrage campaigns of the late 19th century, to recent developments such as the Everyday Sexism Project and the #MeToo movement.

Charlie Wolfe jumps at the chance to help his uncle renovate a tumbledown cottage overlooking Nomansland Common. Number One Constable’s Cottages was once the home of the man charged with ridding the common of the highwaymen who terrorised travellers. But it’s the story of The Wicked Lady, the notorious female highway robber, that captures Charlie’s imagination, and some long winters’ nights he’s sure he can the hoofbeats of her horse echoing across time.

When first published in 2001, it divided female critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk's children were taken into care, that was she was unfit to look after them. Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself and the book as protests grew about its honest, gritty account of the misery of those early months. It is a seminal, stand-out book on the complications of being an ambivalent mum in an age of white-washed, Annabel Karmel'd new families.

Present day. As a love affair comes to an end, and with it her dreams for her future, artist Selena needs a retreat. The picture-postcard Sloe Cottage in the Somerset village of Ashcombe promises to be the perfect place to forget her problems, and Selena settles into her new home as spring arrives. 1682: Grace Cotter longs for nothing more than a husband and family of her own. Separated by three hundred years, two women are drawn together by a home bathed in blood and magic.

Laura is watching the world go by without her. Unable to leave her house since suffering a trauma, Laura is stuck gazing out of her window at Willow Crescent, relying on husband Jim and best friend Debbie for help. Then one day, Jim doesn’t come home. A day becomes two, days become a week, and still no sign of Jim. And with the police half-hearted in their efforts to look for him, Laura is forced into a decision. She’s going to have to face the world outside and find her husband herself. But what Laura hasn’t realised is that Willow Crescent is a community, eager to help.

At 28, Violet's father is beginning to worry she will never find a husband. But every suitor he presents, Violet finds a new and inventive means of rebuffing. Because Violet does not want to marry. She wants to work, and make her own way in the world. But more than anything, she wants to find her mother Lily, who disappeared from Hastings Pier 10 years earlier. Finding the missing is no job for a lady, but when Violet hires a seaside detective to help, she sets off a chain of events that will put more than just her reputation at risk.

When one of the notorious Johnson brothers is murdered and a bag of money goes missing, a deadly game of cat and mouse is set in motion. Detective Allie Shenton and her team are called in to catch the killer, but the suspects are double-crossing each other and Allie has little time to untangle the web of lies. As she delves deeper into the case, things take a personal turn when Allie realises she is being stalked by the very same person who attacked her sister seventeen years ago and left her for dead.

Orlando King is a trilogy about a beautiful young man, raised in a remote and eccentric wilderness, arriving in 1930s London and setting the world of politics ablaze. In a time of bread riots and hunger marches, with the spectre of fascism casting an ever lengthening shadow over Europe, Orlando glidingly cuts a swathe through the thickets of business, the corridors of politics, the pleasure gardens of the Cliveden set, acquiring wealth, adulation, a beautiful wife and a seat in parliament.

Grace Hughes: kicked to the bathroom floor by her partner, her back and side aching from where he slammed the door on her frail body, fighting to regain her breath, she can no longer ignore a simple truth: she must leave or he will kill her. Grace is a prisoner in her own home but she has a plan to get free. Detective Sergeant Maddie Ives is going to help her. Maddie now works with a team specialising in getting abused women to safety. She tells Grace to keep a diary, to write everything down so it forms part of the compelling evidence needed to send her abuser to prison.

So when mum of two Beth moves out of her beloved marital home and into an unloved and unkempt cottage, she can’t help but feel demoralised. Faced with months of DIY and dust, her children Jacob and Olivia aren’t impressed either. But when Beth finds a box of letters while she’s clearing out the children’s room, things start to look up.

It’s summer and holidaymakers are flocking to the idyllic Brittany coast. But when first an old traveller woman dies in suspicious circumstances, and then a campaign of hate seemingly drives another victim to take his own life, events take a very dark turn. Mila Shepherd has come to France to look after her niece, Ani, following the accident in which both Ani’s parents were lost at sea. Mila has moved into their family holiday home, as well as taken her sister Sophie’s place in an agency which specialises in tracking down missing people, until new recruit Carter Jackson starts.

Abigail Jex never expected to see any of the Radleys again. They were extraordinary, captivating creatures transplanted from a bohemian corner of North London to outer suburbia, and the young Abigail found herself drawn into their magic circle: the eccentric Frances, her new best friend; Frances' mother, the liberated, headstrong Lexi; and of course the brilliant, beautiful Rad. Abigail thought she'd banished the ghost of her life with them and the catastrophe that ended it, but 13 years later a chance encounter forces her to acknowledge that the spell is far from broken.

When Adrianna arrives at the small, run-down cottage, near the sea in rural Norfolk, she can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Here she can forget her life in the city, and the problems she’s left behind there, at least for a while. But – like Adrianna herself – the cottage holds secrets. And when Adrianna finds a mysterious bundle of notes hidden under a floorboard, she can’t shake the idea that they’ve been waiting for her. Especially when – in the rambling, overgrown garden – she then finds a strangely-carved stone, drawing her into a centuries-old mystery…

This is a book for any Individual who wants to succeed. This is a book for any Team who wants to thrive. This is a book to help You fulfil your potential. Lessons in success from the front line of performance psychology to help you find your purpose, fulfil your potential, and thrive. During her two decades as a sport psychologist, Dr Kate Hays has been developing ‘The Building Blocks of Success’, a framework which has become a transformative programme for forging a winning mentality in both an individual and group setting.

Lisa tells lies. Most of them are small white lies intended to make the life of her daughter, Ava, easier. But her biggest lie of all about to be exposed. Because Lisa is lying to everyone. Lisa isn’t who she says she is. Lisa isn’t even called Lisa at all. Her real name is Charlotte Nevill and as a child she was convicted of the brutal murder of her half-brother, Daniel. Someone out there knows the truth. They’re determined to make Lisa pay. And they won’t stop until everything she loves is destroyed.

Paris, near the turn of 1933. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking. Pointing to his drink, he says, 'You can make philosophy out of this cocktail!'

Famous killers have fan clubs. Hamish Wolfe is no different. Locked up for the rest of his life for the abduction and murder of three young women, he gets countless adoring letters every day. He's handsome, charismatic and very persuasive. His admirers are convinced he's innocent and that he's the man of their dreams. Who would join such a club?

The scandalous image of the Empress Messalina as a ruthless and sexually insatiable schemer, derived from the work of Roman historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius, has taken deep root in the Western imagination. The stories they told about her included nightly visits to a brothel and a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute. Tales like these have defined the empress's legacy, but her real story is much more complex. In her new life of Messalina, the classicist Honor Cargill-Martin reappraises one of the most slandered and underestimated female figures of ancient history.