Showing results by narrator "Sian Thomas" in All Categories

Kerstin Kvist didn't know what to expect when she took up a job with the Cosway family at their odd, almost grand, house. The family turned out to be even odder than the house: living at home with the widowed Mrs. Cosway were her four daughters and a son who haunted the house. Then, just as Kerstin was getting some inkling of what was going on, a stranger sets the family on a path to self-destruction...

Marcus and Doro were part of a left-wing commune from the late 1960s until the early 1990s: lentils, free love, spliffs, radical politics, cheesecloth blouses, sex, housework and cooking rotas, crochet, allotments. Their children have grown up rather different from them: primary schoolteacher Clara craves order and clean bathrooms, son Serge is pretending to his parents that is still doing a Maths Ph.d. at Cambridge, while in fact making loadsamoney in the City; third child Oolie Anna, who has Down's Syndrome, is desperate to escape home and live on her own.

There's a gathering of high-achieving ladies at the remote and expensive Castle Spa over the 10 days of Christmas and New Year. None of them have met before. Have they no homes to go to? Why have they put their lives on hold? Perhaps they think they've come to seek (through Botox, aromatherapy, and extravagant pampering) a better understanding of their lives?

Best known for her posthumously published novel Suite française, Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903. Her family fled the Russian Revolution for Paris, where she found fame as a novelist. But when the Nazis occupied France, she was arrested as a Jew and sent to Auschwitz, where she died aged just 39. This collection includes four of her best works, dramatised for radio with a full cast.

A wonderfully atmospheric collection of stories from one of our most captivating writers, inspired by ghost stories, traditional folk tales and country legends from England and France. These tales are richly populated by spirits and ghosts seeking revenge; by grief-stricken women and haunted men coming to terms with their destiny - all rooted deep in the elemental landscapes of Sussex, Brittany and the Languedoc.

A new way to remember the dead has been developed. The Maken Corporation can construct an interactive avatar - a perfectly realistic representation of the deceased - in cyberspace, using all the data available on an individual. At first, this appears to be a huge comfort for the bereaved. They can see and speak to their dead. The pain of mourning is eased. But it's a controversial issue, one that divides society and divides families....

Julia is a child psychologist who every day deals with young girls said to be behaving badly. Some are stealing, some are running away from home, some are terribly untidy, some won’t eat or get out of bed. Julia has a special knack with these girls. She understands which really are troubled, and which are at the mercy of the way they are seen by the adults around them. But one day, Julia’s own troubled past starts to creep into her present.

Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Hill, Lancashire. A mysterious gathering of 13 people is interrupted by local magistrate Roger Nowell. Is this a witches' Sabbat? Two notorious Lancashire witches are already in Lancaster Castle awaiting trial. Why is the beautiful and wealthy Alice Nutter defending them? And why is she among the group of 13 on Pendle Hill? Elsewhere, a starved, abused child lurks. And a Jesuit priest and former Gunpowder plotter, recently returned from France, is widely rumoured to be heading for Lancashire. But who will offer him sanctuary?

Georgie Sinclair’s husband has walked out and work is getting her down. So when she spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old neighbour, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, it’s just the distraction she needs. And although they mistrust each other at first a firm friendship is formed. Then Mrs Shapiro is admitted to hospital and, to Georgie’s surprise, she is named as her next of kin.

At a remote railway station in Norfolk, Kitty Fulton runs the ticket office and her pet project is the lost and found. Nothing gives her more pleasure than to reunite possessions with their rightful owners. It is an experience that remains elusive in her own world as her mother’s Alzheimer’s pulls them further and further apart and, on top of this, she must endure the disintegration of a close relationship with a childhood friend.

Strawberry pickers in the English countryside, mostly from Eastern Europe, are leading dangerous lives, coping with exploitative employers, British regulations, and gang masters with guns, all threatening their existence as they take to the caravan road - until each of them peels off to find his or her destiny.

A beautifully wrought and unlikely love story, exploring the power of storytelling. The new audiobook from the acclaimed author of Birds Without Wings and Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a love story at once raw and sweetly funny, wry and heartbreakingly sad. Chris is bored, lonely, trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage. In his forties, he's a stranger to the 1970s youth culture of London, a stranger to himself on the night he invites a hooker into his car.

Autumn 1928. The Kaiser-i-Hind is en route to Bombay. In Cabin D38, Viva Holloway, an inexperienced chaperone, is beginning to feel as though she's made a mistake. Her advert in The Lady has resulted in three unsettling young charges to be escorted to India. Rose, a beautiful, dangerously naive English girl, is about to be married to the cavalry officer she has met a handful of times. Victoria, her bridesmaid, is determined to lose her virginity en route before finding a husband of her own.

It's not easy being the mother of a 12-year-old boy who's in love with his babysitter and having trouble at school. Nor are matters helped by the unexpected arrival of an elderly mother who's suddenly footloose and fancy-free. There are times when Susie Vine wonders how she'll ever survive. At least she feels secure at Arland & Shaw, London's leading theatrical agency.

Russia, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police herd Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia, where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed. Germany, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing to explain her presence, Anna Anderson is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless horrific scars.

Greece 1936. A young British diplomat and his wife have been posted to Athens. Hugh loves the life there but his spirited and unconventional wife, Heavenly, finds it hard to fit into the whirl of endless parties and socialising. When Hugh is sent to Crete to sort out a problem, they stay in a rundown house owned by his family. Heavenly falls in love with the place and the people, and stays on when Hugh returns to his duties.

Nell lives with her grandmother, the local cunning woman and healer, in 17th century Somerset. When one of the minister's daughters falls pregnant, she and her sister attempt to conceal it by accusing Nell of putting a curse on them.

Bedtime is never an easy time of day for a parent - especially when you have three playful little goslings to look after! Luckily Mother Goose soon discovered that her family loved listening to nursery rhymes, and now their favourite bedtime rhymes are collected together for you to enjoy too.

Rhyme time with Mother Goose and this download! Once there was a mother goose who had three little goslings. Her playful young family could be a handful at times but luckily Mother Goose soon discovered that they loved listening to traditional nursery rhymes. Now all the goslings' favourite playtime rhymes are collected in this download for you and your family to enjoy. With original short stories linking the traditional rhymes this is the perfect addition to any family library.

Anna, a young countess, has lived in the glittering city of St Petersburg all her life in an ice-blue palace overlooking the River Neva. But when revolution tears Russia apart, her now-penniless family is forced to flee to England. Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of Westerholme's crumbling but magnificent mansion.