Showing results by narrator "Jane Slavin" in All Categories

Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own. When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it's a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shaped Orwell's work and her practical nous saved his life. But why—and how—was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Louise Brealey read a love story in letters, played out against the backdrop of the Second World War. 'Can you feel, as you read these words, that I am thinking of you now; aglow, alive, alert at the thought that you are in the same world, and by some strange chance loving me.' A small blue box opened in 2008 revealed a wartime world of love, longing and frustration. Inside were bundles and bundles of letters written neatly on thin blue airmail paper or headed army notepaper.

Bella instantly falls in love with scruffy puppy Sid when she sees him at the animal shelter. She gets her family to agree that he's the perfect pet for them. But Bella's friend, Megan, is pretty snooty about Bella's mongrel, so Bella decides to enter Sid in the local dog show.... Helena loves to help out at the vet's surgery where her older cousin, Lucy, works as a nurse. Then one day a young cat is rushed in after an accident. Helena helps care for the brave kitten, but where will he go if his owner can’t be found?

In November 2014 Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father and sister to death with a hammer. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation. King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five witnesses and Arla herself as he questions whether Arla's responsibility for the massacre was a diminished as her legal team made out.

She does Britain's dirty work, but this time she needs help. Beatrix Rose, meet John Milton.... Beatrix Rose has a knack for making the British government's problems go away. When the assassin is sent to Venezuela to track down a missing scientist, she meets a contact who knows the lay of the land: none other than John Milton. As the state-sanctioned assassin and the special forces soldier team up in South America, they'll do more than capture a missing scientist....

On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the Wentshire Forest Pass when a burst tyre forced his father, Sorrel, to stop the car. Leaving the car to summon the emergency services, Sorrel returned to find his son gone. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995. Elusive online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night.

This book tells the story of one exceptional great tit that Len called Star. With patience, consistency and sensitivity, Len succeeds in teaching this little bird to count using taps. Star's character and intelligence is revealed in this intimate bird biography, unlike any told before. In opening her home to wild birds, Len gains their trust enough to make astonishing discoveries about their capabilities.

1730. Driven by a wild romantic impulse, Francis Herries uproots his family from Doncaster to the lakeland valley of Borrowdale. Accompanied by his housekeeper/mistress, Alice, they settle in his tumbledown ancestral home, Herries, in the shadow of the Cumberland fells. Proud, stubborn and temperamental, Francis cuts himself off from his brother, spurns his long-suffering wife and becomes embroiled in drink and debauchery. When he sells Alice at Keswick Fair, his reputation is ruined, and the locals dub him 'Rogue' Herries.

Dot's had quite enough of making tea in the Cabinet War Rooms. When she finds a cryptic message in the newspaper she enlists the help of her gals - will this be the big break Dot's been waiting for? Follow Dot as she gets squiffy over Agent Bertie Whiff-Whaff, concocts stirring yet pithy slogans for the war effort and goes on a mission to St Horribly Vulture’s School for Boys to enlist a teacher for...'shhhh...Bletchley Park!'

Stories by: Desmond Barry, Ken Bruen, Stewart Home, Barry Adamson, Michael Ward, Sylvie Simmons, Daniel Bennett, Cathi Unsworth, Max Décharné, Martyn Waites, Joolz Denby, John Williams, Jerry Sykes, Mark Pilkington, Joe McNally, Patrick McCabe, and Ken Hollings. Cathi Unsworth moved to Ladbroke Grove in 1987 and has stayed there ever since. She began a career in rock writing with Sounds and Melody Maker, before co-editing the arts journal Purr and then Bizarre magazine. Her first novel, The Not Knowing, was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2005.

Beatrix Rose has been betrayed. Her husband has been murdered and her daughter, Isabella, abducted. She flees to the Hong Kong underworld to plot her revenge. Those who wronged her will pay. Beatrix is the most dangerous woman you’ve ever met. She was an assassin for The Firm, the beyond top secret agency that did the dirty work for the British Secret Services. She is lethal. Ethically flexible. Totally ruthless. And you know what they say about payback.

When Sarah Haywood rescues a young girl in trouble, she expects nothing in return. But her instinctive act of bravery puts her in the debt of a powerful and dangerous man, and he has other ideas. He lives by his own brutal code, and all debts must be repaid - in the only way he knows how. He offers Sarah a way to solve an impossible situation with her intolerable boss.

How Much Brain Do We Really Need? challenges you to think differently about the brain. Rather than solely concentrating on the many wonderful things the brain can do, it asks whether in fact we can live satisfactorily without some of it. It turns out that brain shrinkage, for instance, is no rare thing. While the bad news for all of us is that from our mid-30s our brains start to shrink, the good news is that somehow we generally still seem to muddle along. But how can this be?

Have you ever loved someone enough to die for them? Or even kill for them? Ellen Millar is an independent soul. An actress whose star is in the ascendant, she also has a partially decorated flat, a mountain of debt and some great friends to sustain her. Into her life comes Aedan. An Irishman. Their attraction is instant; their affair intense and all-consuming. This five-day courtship is the prelude to a life together, until Aedan returns to Ireland and realises that some emotional entanglements are impossible to untie.

In Fay Weldon's 1983 classic, The Life and Loves of a She Devil, women fought men for power and won. In 2017 men take the ultimate step to get their power back. Ruth Patchett, the original 'She Devil,' is now 84 and keen to retire. But who can take up her mantle? Enter Ruth's grandson Tyler, a confident 20-something: beautiful, resentful and unemployed. Tyler won't be satisfied until he can transition into the ultimate symbol of power and status. A woman.

Len lived her life alongside her bird neighbours, with some sleeping in her bedroom and many flitting in and out all day long. This is the book she wrote about the birds – a study not just of their behaviour but their individual personalities. We learn about their intelligence, emotional lives, and characters, their capacity for play and humour, the range of their song, their likes and dislikes, and their bond with Len.

For the Tenth Doctor, the festive season always brought adventure. In fact, he's saved Christmas across space and time more times than we ever knew. Join the Doctor (and Donna and Martha and Rose, and other friends old and new) for incredible tales of daring and danger. From Daleks plotting to save humanity to Sycorax working to exploit it...from star-narwhals massing on the Moon to a toy factory in space. Because even in the jolliest of seasons there's a world or two to save.

The Story Collector tells the story of three people, divided by time and circumstance yet bound by a long-held secret.

For over a decade, the Lancasters were celebrity royalty, with millions tuning in every week to watch their reality show, Living with the Lancasters. But then an old video emerges of one of their legendary parties. Suddenly, they're in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons: witnesses swore they'd seen missing teenager Bradley Wilcox leaving the Lancaster family home on the night of the party, but the video tells a different story. Now true crime investigator and YouTuber Tom Isaac is on the case.