Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

Mr. Fred Grange claims to work as a clerk for a biscuit company, but he's out and about on the London streets at odd hours, and girl detective Maisie Hitchins soon discovers something very precious hidden in his rooms. Maisie is determined to unmask him as a thief, but the truth is far more complicated - and dangerous. Before long, Maisie and her friends are led into a web of mystery lurking in the London Underground.

A ruthless killer is spreading panic in a quiet village in the Italian Alps. Police Inspector Teresa Battaglia is the only one who can stop them. But how can you catch a monster when you're slowly losing your mind?

In the middle of the night, a woman wraps herself in a blanket and starts writing. In answer to a question you asked a long time ago, she writes, and so begins a letter that both women have preferred to forget. She writes night after night - a letter of friendship, by turns a belated outlet of rage and forgiveness, the letter dissects what is left of a friendship caught between the forces of hatred and love.

Wiltshire, 1922. Fifteen-year old Pudding Cartwright has begun the career she always wanted, as 'girl groom' to the Hadleigh family's horses at Manor Farm. Irene Hadleigh is struggling to adjust to her new life in sleepy Slaughterford, having married Alistair to escape a scandal in London. At a loss to occupy herself, Irene sets about restyling Manor Farm, and during the work the chance finding of a strange object hidden away in the house for years will change everything.

Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall is an Edwardian history book for younger listeners (age six to 12) that tells the story of England, concluding with the reign of Queen Victoria. Having released it unabridged in three volumes, Naxos AudioBooks now offers an attractive collection of the main stories and personalities. This skilful abridgement nevertheless maintains the narrative of British history, from the arrival of Julius Caesar to the height of the British Empire and the long reign of Queen Victoria.

When Charlotte is mugged and breaks her hip, her daughter, Rose, cannot accompany her employer, Lord Peters, to Manchester, which means his niece, Marion, has to go instead, which means she sends a text to her lover which is intercepted by his wife, which is…just the beginning of the ensuing chain of life-altering events.

In this engaging, utterly absorbing and brilliantly told novel, Penelope Lively shows us how one random event can change the courses of many lives.

As night falls, 17-year-old Cassie Baker leaves Winchcome and takes her usual shortcut down a moonlit country lane. She never makes it home. With no body and no evidence, she's just another teenage runaway.

Inspired by the lost voices of the Romany Holocaust, this heartbreaking and tender novel will appeal to readers who loved Sophie's Choice, Schindler's Ark, and The Book Thief. "Remarkable - brave, big-hearted and beautifully written" (Andrew Miller, author of the Costa Award-winner PURE) Austria, 1944. Jakob, a gypsy boy - half Roma, halif Yenish - runs, as he has been told to do. With shoes of sackcloth, still stained with another's blood, a stone clutched in one hand, a small wooden box in the other.

This is not quite a memoir. Rather, it is the view from old age. And a view of old age itself, this place at which we arrive with a certain surprise - ambushed, or so it can seem. One of the few advantages of age is that you can report on it with a certain authority; you are a native now, and know what goes on here. Taking in old age, the context of one's life and times, memory, reading and writing, and the identifying cargo of possessions - two ammonites, a cat, a pair of American ducks, and a leaping fish sherd, amongst others - this is an elegant, moving, and deeply enjoyable memoir by one of our most loved writers.

The chances of Cornish gentlewoman Maria Branwell even meeting the poor Irish curate Patrick Brontë in Regency England, let alone falling passionately in love, were remote. Yet Maria and Patrick did meet, making a life together in the heartland of the industrial revolution. An unlikely romance and novel wedding were soon followed by the birth of six children. They included Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, the most gifted literary siblings the world has ever known. Yet Maria has remained an enigma, while the fame of her family spread across the world.

A photograph taken in 1971 sets two people on the path to uncovering the truth about their parents and themselves.

The hilarious and poignant new novel from the best-selling author of The Kicking the Bucket List. When a box set of Broadchurch is more appealing than having sex with your husband, then perhaps it's time to hide the remote.... Cait and Matt have been married for 30 years. They are rock solid. An inspiration to others. Stuck together like glue - aren't they? But Cait can't shake off the feeling that something is missing.

Jane Gardam reveals again her brilliant diversity and deep understanding of the human condition. In "Light", an evocative, lyrical piece of magic realism, a beautiful Himalayan girl defies the destiny laid out for her by her mother but in so doing destroys the village in which she was born. In "Missing the Midnight", a young woman, having failed her exams and lost the man she loves, journeys home on Christmas Eve to the family she despises.

James Markham's family are shocked when he jilts his fiancée for a woman he met only days earlier and about whom he appears to know very little. When they meet Abigail they are swayed by her beauty and charm, but puzzled by the aura of mystery that surrounds her.

There are some things you can never leave behind… Kate Forrest is invisible…her husband doesn’t seem to know she’s alive and her two children have become stroppy adolescents. With her fortieth birthday approaching, Kate walks out of her life, and gets on a plane to Italy. With no responsibilities, she soon finds herself caught up in the arms of a man half her age. But eventually Kate will be forced to choose between her past and the future.

One cold January day the police are called to a sleepy little hamlet in the north of Sweden where they discover a savagely murdered man lying in the snow. As they begin their investigation they notice that the village seems eerily quiet and deserted. Going from house to house, looking for witnesses, they uncover a crime unprecedented in Swedish history. When Judge Birgitta Roslin reads about the massacre, she realises that she has a family connection to one of the couples involved and decides to investigate.

The hilarious and heartfelt new novel from the best-selling author of Out of Practice! The Practice at Larkford has suddenly been thrust under the spotlight - and its nomination as an NHS Model Surgery is causing the team major headaches. Dr Holly Graham should be basking in the glow of her new romance with fellow doctor Taffy - but she is worried that the team is prioritising plaudits over patients, and her favourite resident, the irreverent and entertaining Elsie, is facing a difficult diagnosis.

Joan Bomford, BBC Countryfile's Farming Hero of 2015, has lived all her life in the lush, rolling countryside of the Vale of Evesham, where cows graze the water meadows of the River Avon and modern life seems far away. Farming is in Joan's blood. Generations of her family have worked the land, and in Up with the Lark, Joan tells us with warmth, wit and great insight what it's been like to live through an era of such enormous change.

In a gorgeous quay-side hotel in Cornwall, the long weekend is just beginning...Claire Marlowe owns 'The Townhouse by the Sea' with Luca, the hotel's charismatic chef. She ensures everything runs smoothly - until an unexpected arrival checks in and turns her whole world upside down.And the rest of the guests arrive with their own baggage. There's a couple looking for distraction from a family tragedy; a man trying to make amends for an affair he bitterly regrets...and the young woman who thinks the Cornish village might hold the key to her past.

An old school photograph in which someone has been deliberately blacked out marks the start of a new case for Rona Parish. Who was this person and why would someone want to hide his or her identity? Rona sets out to uncover the secret and soon finds that the school in question closed down many years ago due, it was rumoured, to a long-forgotten scandal. Could this be the link that will solve the mystery? Meanwhile, a visit to a stage hypnotist results in more than Rona and her friends bargained for...