Showing results by narrator "Nicola Barber" in All Categories

In this short tale for fans of Cinderella and Bridgerton, Pearl’s ball gown may carry the whiff of mothballs, but her dance card for the duke’s ball is full…until she loses a shoe. In her enthusiasm, Pearl’s foot slides out of her too-big damask slipper in the middle of a dance and gets kicked around the ballroom to the amusement of the sophisticated guests. What is a spirited but clumsy heroine to do? Can her composure and good humor save her social dignity?

Eleanor, the charming manager of a cozy tea shop, enjoys the transportive ritual of making a cup of Masala Chai tea, reminisces about the tea's origins, and delights in the beauty of her quaint English village during the holidays. Bedtime stories are narrated by the world's most celebrated voices and written with no beginning, middle, or end so you don't stay up to hear what happens next. They're interesting enough to give your mind something to focus on, but delivered in a way that encourages sleep.

With the apocalyptic threat of moonfall looming ever closer, Nyx and her allies must venture into the eternally sunblasted lands to search for an ancient weapon buried untold millennia ago. All the while, enemies close upon her flanks, and a greater danger lurks ahead. For beneath a desert turned to glass, hidden from the scorching heat, life thrives—both wondrous and monstrous. But a more fearsome menace lies even deeper, where an ancient army has been seeded to protect a secret from any who dare seek it out.

London: 1968. Liz Houghton is languishing as an obituary writer at a London newspaper when a young girl’s disappearance captivates the city. If Liz can break the story, it’s her way into the newsroom. She already has a scoop: Her best friend Marisa is a police officer who is assigned to the case. Liz follows Marisa to Dorset, where they make another disturbing discovery. Over two decades earlier, three girls disappeared while evacuating from London. One was found murdered in the woods near a train line. The other two were never seen again.

At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history.

With a newborn and two children, Molly Murphy Sullivan is tackling motherhood. Her husband is off to work in Washington as Easter break begins in New York. Her dear friend and writer, Ryan O’Hara, is shooting a movie, one of the first to involve a real plot and actors. He invites Molly and the children to visit the set and watch the excitement. The movie industry is still experimenting with ways to get the best shot, but soon, their special effects start to malfunction. After a few mishaps where no one is hurt, the special effects turn deadly.

First published in 1924, The Man in the Brown Suit is a thrilling adventure and murder mystery by Agatha Christie. The protagonist is Anne Beddingfield, the orphaned daughter of a famous archaeologist, who goes to live with her father’s solicitor and his wife in London. Anne is searching for an adventure and something exciting to occupy her time when she is witness to the sudden death of a man at Hyde Park Corner tube station when the man falls onto the electrified train track and is killed instantly.

Dashiell Hammett was a crime writer who elevated the genre to true literature, and The Thin Man was Hammett’s last - and most successful - novel. Following the enormous success of The Thin Man movie in 1934, Hammett was commissioned to write stories for additional films. He wrote two full-length novellas for the films that became After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man.

Recruited as a codebreaker of enemy ciphers, ex-debutante Osla Kendall spends her days translating Axis military messages and her nights reading mystery novels. When Osla gets her hands on Agatha Christie's most recent work, N or M?, a mysterious signal within its pages catches her eye, and she and her eccentric book club get in touch with the famous but reclusive writer. Osla's outreach is a welcome distraction for Agatha, who feels restless and underestimated toiling away in a London pharmacy.

A gifted student foretells an apocalypse. Her reward is a sentence of death. Fleeing into the unknown, she is drawn into a team of outcasts: A broken soldier, who once again takes up the weapons he’s forbidden to wield and carves a trail back home. A drunken prince, who steps out from his beloved brother's shadow and claims a purpose of his own. An imprisoned thief, who escapes the crushing dark and discovers a gleaming artifact—one that will ignite a power struggle across the globe

Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider - brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets. Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture - one more after thousands - she can unlock the building blocks of life.

Long before they were spirit animals, the four were still legends - Great Beasts, the most powerful beings to roam the wilds of Erdas. Aided by a brave resistance of humans and animals, they gave their lives to protect the world from a threat more dangerous than any it had seen before: their own kind. Wise and cunning, gentle and ruthless, these are tales of the true heroes and villains in the war that started it all.

In The Gadwall Incident, listeners get a glimpse into James' life a mere 24 hours before the tipping point - before life as he knows it changes irrevocably and his childhood slips into the shadows. Listeners will come to know the dangers that surround the Moriartys before James and Moria are sent off to the hallowed halls of Baskerville Academy, where they first meet the insufferable, inexhaustible Sherlock Holmes.

I Let You Go follows Jenna Gray as she moves to a ramshackle cottage on the remote Welsh coast, trying to escape the memory of the car accident that plays again and again in her mind and desperate to heal from the loss of her child and the rest of her painful past. At the same time, the novel tracks the pair of Bristol police investigators trying to get to the bottom of this hit-and-run.

The world of Erdas will be changed forever. Conor, Abeke, Meilin, and Rollan were once ordinary kids. Then they discovered that they had spirit animals - wise and powerful partners who granted them with amazing gifts...and a legendary responsibility. Together the team has journeyed across Erdas, racing to stop a merciless foe. They have laughed and fought together. They've won challenges and lost friends. Some have even lost themselves.

The sun is shining in the Hundred Isles, and yet the path forward seems crowded with shadows. Conor, Abeke, Meilin, and Rollan have traveled across the world, seeking a set of powerful talismans in order to keep them from enemy hands. Throughout their journey the young heroes have been hounded by pursuers who always seem to know just where to find them. Now they know why…

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life. Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. Audrey's work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags her into the investigation of a serial murderer.

No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing - and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. This is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing and the anticorporate movement.

The four heroes of Erdas are fugitives on the run in this new chapter of the New York Times best-selling series!

Jenny Cavanaugh, the ghostly landlord of 926 Augur Lane, has enlisted the services of her detective-agency tenants to solve a decade-old murder - her own. Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, R. F. Jackaby, dive into the cold case, starting with a search for Jenny's fiancé, who went missing the night she died. But when a new gruesome murder closely mirrors the events of 10 years prior, Abigail and Jackaby realize that Jenny's case isn't so cold after all.