Showing results by narrator "Sian Thomas" in All Categories

When lawyer Jenny Cooper is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she's hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce, but the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets and a trail of buried evidence. Could the tragic death in custody of a young boy be linked to the apparent suicide of a teenage prostitute and the fate of Marshall himself?

On a summer's night in 1994, 16-year-old Flora Powell vanished from her sleepy seaside town without a trace. Their hearts shattered, Flora’s mother, her sister Heather, and Heather’s best friend Jess had to somehow carry on not knowing what happened. Twenty-five years later, tragedy strikes again when Heather walks into a stranger's house and allegedly kills two people in cold blood. Why would this loving wife and doting new mother commit such a heinous crime? Jess, now a reporter, returns to the hometown she left behind to cover the case and dig for answers.

Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survives. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.

Under Platform 13 at Kings Cross Station there is a secret door that leads to a magical island. It appears only once every nine years. And when it opens, four mysterious figures step into the streets of London. A wizard, an ogre, a fey, and a young hag have come to find the prince of their kingdom, stolen as a baby nine years before.

The day they've all been waiting for is at hand. The last British combat soldiers in Helmand are counting the minutes until their departure for home. For their excited families in Highcliffe, it spells the end of an agonizing six-month wait. But in the final hours, disaster strikes. Nineteen-year-old private Pete 'Skippy' Lyons is abducted, and the patrol sent out to locate him is ambushed. One killed, two injured. One still missing in action... Their loved ones are left desperate for answers the army won't provide.

A man's body is discovered in a church yard, the sign of the cross carved into his abdomen. Later he is found to be Alan Jacobs, a troubled psychiatric nurse. It seems to Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner, this is likely to be an open and shut suicide case, but something tells her to probe a little deeper. After another tragic death, Jenny’s suspicions turn toward a powerful new global phenomenon: the politically ambitious and intoxicatingly charismatic Mission Church of God. Meanwhile Jenny must finally confront the demons of her past....

Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was 84 and she was 36. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside. Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina.

A BBC radio collection of full-cast dramatisations, bringing together Edith Wharton’s most popular and best-loved works.

Deep in an Estonian forest, two women - one young, one old - are hiding. Zara is a prostitute and a murderer, on the run from brutal captors, men who know about inflicting punishment. Aliide offers refuge, but not safety: She has her own secrets, traitorous crimes of passion and revenge committed long ago, during the country’s brutal Soviet years. Both women have suffered lives of abuse. But this time their survival depends on revealing the one thing history has taught them to keep safely hidden: the truth.

Gertrude Bell was leaning in 100 years before Sheryl Sandberg. One of the great woman adventurers of the 20th century, she turned her back on Victorian society to study at Oxford and travel the world and became the chief architect of British policy in the Middle East after World War I. Mountaineer, archaeologist, Arabist, writer, poet, linguist, and spy, she dedicated her life to championing the Arab cause and was instrumental in drawing the borders that define today's Middle East.

A dense, bitterly cold fog has settled over the Wye Valley when Bristol coroner Jenny Cooper is called to the scene of a dreadful tragedy: in the village of Blackstone Ley, a house has burned to the ground, with three members of a family inside. Though evidence of foul play is quickly uncovered, it isn't long before the police investigation is drawn to a close. It seems certain that the fire was started by one of the victims, Ed Morgan, in a fit of jealous rage. But their infant son is still missing, and Ed had left a message for his surviving wife....

Two young British students, Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan, vanish without a trace. The police write them off as runaways, but seven years later, Nazim's grief-stricken mother is still unconvinced....Jenny Cooper is finally settling into her role as coroner for the Severn Valley; the ghosts of her past banished to the sidelines once more. But as an inquest into Nazim's disappearance gets underway, the stink of corruption and conspiracy becomes clear.

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.

Dylan Thomas was the 20th Century's first rock star author, famed for his dazzling imaginative poetry and chaotic personal life. Best known for Under Milk Wood, he also wrote numerous poems, short stories and screenplays, and made regular BBC broadcasts. A legend in his own lifetime, he remained hugely popular after his death at the age of 39, influencing cultural icons from Bob Dylan to The Beatles....

Poet and playwright Federico García Lorca is one of the most famous figures in 20th-century Spanish literature. A member of the 'Generation of '27' avant-garde movement that included Dalí and Buñuel, he became well known for his lyrical, symbolic works mixing modernism and the folkloric traditions of his native Andalusia. He was executed by Nationalist forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War, aged only 38. More than 80 years later, his poetry is revered worldwide and the plays in his 'Rural Trilogy' are widely regarded as masterpieces.

From renowned classicist Edith Hall, Aristotle's Way is an examination of one of history's greatest philosophers, showing us how to lead happy, fulfilled, and meaningful lives.

In Jilly Cooper's latest, raciest novel, Rupert Campbell-Black takes centre stage in the cutthroat world of flat racing. Rupert is consumed by one obsession: that Love Rat, his adored grey horse, be proclaimed champion stallion. He longs to trounce Roberto's Revenge, the stallion owned by his detested rival, Cosmo Rannaldini, which means abandoning his racing empire at Penscombe and his darling wife, Taggie, and chasing winners in the richest races worldwide, from Dubai to Los Angeles to Melbourne.

Acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall's Introducing the Ancient Greeks is the first book to offer a synthesis of the entire ancient Greek experience, from the rise of the Mycenaean kingdoms of the sixteenth century BC to the final victory of Christianity over paganism in AD 391. Each of the ten chapters visits a different Greek community at a different moment during the twenty centuries of ancient Greek history.

Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates…. An unlikely suicide or a deadly conspiracy? When Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the fatal plunge of a man from a motorway bridge, she little suspects that it has any connection with the sudden death of a friend’s thirteen year old daughter from a deadly strain of meningitis. But as Jenny pieces together the dead man’s last days, she’s drawn into a mystery whose dark ripples stretch across continents and back through decades.

Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates… A tragic accident or a terrible crime? When Flight 189 plunges into the Severn Estuary, Coroner Jenny Cooper finds herself handling the case of a lone sailor whose boat appears to have been sunk by the stricken plane, and drawn into the mysterious fate of a ten year-old girl, Amy Patterson, a passenger on 189, whose largely unmarked body is washed up alongside his.