Showing results by narrator "Jane Collingwood" in All Categories

Anne Neville and her sister Isabel are daughters of the most powerful magnate in 15th century England. Ever ruthless, always plotting, in the absence of a son and heir, Warwick sets about using his daughters as pawns in his political games. Anne grows from a delightful child brought up at the court of Edward IV and his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, intimacy and friendship with the family of Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Her life is overturned when her father turns on his former allies, escapes England and invades with an enemy army.

A young woman's future is torn away in a heartbeat. Herded on to a train bound for Auschwitz, in an act of desperation she entrusts her most precious possession to a stranger. All she has left now is hope. Jean-Luc thought he had left it all behind. The scar on his face a small price to pay for surviving the horrors of Nazi Occupation. Now, he has a new life in California, a family. He never expected the past to come knocking on his door. On a darkened platform, two destinies become entangled. Their choice will change the future in ways neither could have imagined.

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation....

Evelyn Varley has always been ambitious and clever. As a girl, she earned a scholarship to a prestigious academy well above her parents’ means, gaining her a best friend from one of England’s wealthiest families. In 1939, with an Oxford degree in hand and war looming, Evelyn finds herself recruited into an elite MI5 counterintelligence unit. A secret society seeks an alliance with Germany and, posing as a Nazi sympathizer, Evelyn must build a case to expose their treachery. But as she is drawn deeper into duplicity, some of those close to her become embroiled in her investigation.

A fractured marriage. A silent family. A secret that connects them all. When DC Cat Kinsella is approached by Joseph Madden for help with his wife, Rachel, there's not much she can do. Joseph claims that Rachel has been threatening him but can't - or won't - give Cat details as to why. Dismissing it as a marriage on the rocks, Cat forgets about it. That is until Naomi Lockhart, a young PA, is found dead after a party attended by both Joseph and Rachel, and Joseph is arrested for the murder.

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter, with the language targeted at learners of English.

William Morris was a giant of the Victorian age, and his beautiful creations and provocative philosophies are still with us today: but his wife, Jane, is too often relegated to a footnote. In truth, Jane and William's personal and creative partnership was the central collaboration of both their lives. The homes they made together were works of art in themselves, and the great labour of their lives was life itself: through their houses and the objects they filled them with, they explored how we all might live a life more focused on beauty and fulfilment.

When beautiful and vivacious Charlotte Salter fails to turn up to her husband Alec’s 50th birthday party, her kids are worried, but Alec is not. As the days pass and there’s still no word from Charlie, her daughter, Etty, and her sons, Niall, Paul and Ollie, all struggle to come to terms with her disappearance. How can anyone just vanish without a trace?

Melissa and Paul: Five years after they split he's still looking for love in all the wrong places while all she wants is him. Chris and Vicky: They are deliriously happy, so why is Chris risking it all for an affair? Cooper and Laura: He wants to settle down, she wants to take a gap year - can their relationship survive a year apart?

The official autobiography from the Girls Aloud and Strictly Come Dancing star. In 2002 - along with Cheryl Cole, Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding and Nicola Roberts - Kimberley Walsh won a place in the Popstars The Rivals band Girls Aloud, and her life changed forever. Ten years later, after six platinum albums, twenty top-ten singles, a Brit Award, an entry in the Guinness Book of Records and a triumphant sell-out reunion tour, the girls have decided to go their separate ways.

Annie is morbidly obese, lonely and hopeful. Moving into her new home alone, she describes her increasingly bizarre attempts to ingratiate herself with her new neighbours, learn from past mistakes and achieve a "certain kind of intimacy" with the boy next door. As Annie struggles to repress a murky history of violence and sexual mishaps, she realizes her past is never too far behind her....

The next book in the gripping Flavia Albia series, by acclaimed author Lindsey Davis. A tragic accident...or was it? Emperor Domitian has been awarded (or rather, has demanded) yet another Triumph to celebrate two so-called victories. Preparations are going smoothly until one of the men overseeing arrangements for the celebration accidentally falls to his death from a cliff on the symbolic Capitoline Hill. But an old woman comes forward, insisting that the man was in fact pushed - and she refuses to leave it alone.

With hideous murders in the streets of Rome, a lone female traveller arrives with an agenda of her own. But when her corpse is dragged out of the river bearing signs of foul play, Flavia Albia is drawn in, concerned about her fellow Briton's fate. Albia's quest to find the killer becomes deeply personal when she discovers a man at the centre of the plot is an old adversary of hers. Will she be obsessed by revenge? Can she let the past go, or will it consume her?

Griffins are supposed to be extinct. So when Yukiko and her warrior father are sent to capture one for the Shogun, they fear that their lives are over. Soon Yukiko finds herself stranded: a young woman alone in the wilderness, with only a furious, crippled griffin for company. As Yukiko learns the horrifying extent of the Shogun’s crimes against her country and her family, she becomes determined to make him pay.

Were you a sherbet lemon or chocolate lime fan? Penny chews or hard boiled sweeties (you do get more for your money that way)? The jangle of your pocket money… the rustle of the pink and green striped paper bag… Rosie Hopkins thinks leaving her busy London life, and her boyfriend Gerard, to sort out her elderly Aunt Lilian's sweetshop in a small country village is going to be dull. Boy is she wrong. Lilian Hopkins has spent her life running Lipton's sweetshop, through wartime and family feuds. As she struggles with the idea that it might finally be time to settle up, she also wrestles with the secret history hidden behind the jars of beautifully coloured sweets. Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams - a novel - with recipes.

Watch out for cats in boots, three bears who live in the woods and strange unicorns in this magical collection of short stories by Enid Blyton. From lost slippers and fairy curses to imps without names and a dragon called Mr Wumble, there's fairy magic brewing. Who will live happily ever after? These traditional tales are ideal for younger children and for new listeners. Each story stands alone and is the perfect length for listening at bedtime or in the classroom.

Smart, courageous and blessed with good looks if not good fortune, Mary is excited by the prospect of adventure, and the chance to escape a miserable future teaching at Mrs Bunbury's school for young ladies. But a whispered warning from a man dying on the road, who carries a strangely familiar watch bearing her uncle's initials, exposes her to a ruthless conspiracy that threatens not only her family's reputation, but her very life.

This is the tale of three 14-year-old girls and a volatile combination of lies, jealousy and perversion that ends in tragedy. Except the tragedy is even darker and more tangled than their tight-knit community has been persuaded to believe. Blackly funny and with a surreal edge to its portrait of a northern English town, Jenn Ashworth's gripping novel captures the intensity of girls' friendships and the dangers they face in a predatory adult world they think they can handle.

Gwen’s life has stalled. She’s in her mid-thirties, perpetually single, her friends are busy procreating in the country and conversations with her parents seem to revolve entirely around herbaceous borders and the council’s wheelie-bin timetable. Above all she’s lonely. But then, isn’t everyone? When Gwen’s made redundant from a job she drifted into a decade ago and never left, she realises it’s time to make a change.

Masha's life has stopped. Once a spirited, independent woman with a rebellious streak, her life has been forever changed by a tragic event 12 years ago. Unable to let go of her grief, she finds solace in the silent company of the souls of her local Victorian cemetery and at the town's lido, where she seeks refuge underwater - safe from the noise and the pain. But a chance encounter with two extraordinary women - the fabulous and wise Kitty Muriel, a convent girl-turned-magician's wife-turned-70-something-roller-disco-fanatic, and the mysterious Sally Red Shoes, a bag lady with a prodigious voice - opens up a new world of possibilities, and the chance to start living again.