Showing results by narrator "Eve Karpf" in All Categories

In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important but natural and even supernatural forces, too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

The Sounds of Crime is an exclusive collection of five brand new short stories by some of the best crimewriters around. Using the theme of 'audio', this unique collection features brand new stories by Lawrence Block, Peter James, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Christopher Fowler.

The name H H Munro is obscured beneath the literary mantle of his nom de plume; Saki. A writer of his times, the stories perfectly portray society’s whims and tastes in a delicate yet at times, barbed humour. A divine wit who conjured words into quite extraordinary works. Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

Along the centuries numerous interpretations and definitions of Sufism have waxed and waned but the undeniable beauty of their verse in its myriad of forms including the musical Ghazal (love song), Masnavi (narrative) and Rubai (quatrain) always remains. Our chronological volume of the classic Sufi poets helps us understand the spiritual direction of Sufism, starting with Rabia in the 8th century through to Khwaja Ghulam Farid over a thousand years later.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this decade the equality of the sexes is now law. In real life it’s patchy. Power refuses to ebb or cede. In literary terms though women are again second to none with writing that strides confidently forward addressing the issues, the characters and the stories in unique and individual ways.

"Remember you must die" says the telephone caller.This the voice, and message communicated in a series of anonymous calls made to many elderly people. Including; Dame Lettie, a blue-blooded reformer, Godfrey - her rather irritating brother, and his once fabulous novelist wife Charmian. But who is the caller? And why are they reminding them of this final truth? It's unsettling and mysterious. The activity increases and soon a witch-hunt is in full force, with nobody beyond suspicion.

Elizabeth Gaskell is equally well known as Mrs Gaskell. When her mother died, she was three months old and she was sent to live in Knutsford, Cheshire with her Aunt Hannah, this setting would become the basis for her novel Cranford.

In the small village of Haworth in Yorkshire, the Bronte family created novels and poems that are still admired to this day around the world. The middle of the three Bronte sisters, Emily Jane was born on 30th July 1818. The author of Wuthering Heights, she was also a very talented poet, as witnessed here in this collection.

'Malachi’s Cove' tells the story of Mally Trenglos and Barry Gunliffe, who both earn their living by gathering seaweed. They are sworn enemies unit la near fatal accident seals their fate forever. Father Giles of Ballymoy is a hospitable Irish priest whose strange ways are at first misinterpreted by an English visitor.

Anne Bradstreet was born in 1612 in Northampton, England. Her parents' position allowed them to educate Anne across many subjects, which was unusual for its day. She married and had eight children. She and her family emigrated to America, where they moved often from place to place. She wrote some beautiful poetry in 1650; the publication of her collection of verse The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America made her the first female poet ever published in England and the New World.

‘Oh, if only I could have a room like this!’ said Flossie Teacake, as she gazed at the wonderful things in her sister Bella’s bedroom. A few minutes later, both Flossie and the most wonderful thing in the room had disappeared down the stairs as Flossie’s dreams began to come true...A magical story about a young girl with an extraordinary fur coat, from best-selling author Hunter Davies.

These three stories are amongst the finest by Katherine Mansfield, a woman highly regarded as one of the greatest writers of short stories. In these bittersweet tales, she gently reveals the emotions and feelings within the lives of apparently unexceptional people. Her stories offer a sensitive insight into human behaviour, achieved not by creating scenes of high drama, but by revealing the motives and thoughts of believable characters.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in Campden Hill, Kensington, on May 29th, 1874. Originally, after attending St Paul's School, he went to Slade to learn the art of illustration. In 1896 he joined a small London publisher and began his journalistic career as a freelance art and literary critic before going on to writing weekly columns in the Daily News and the Illustrated London News. Chesterton's poems range from the virtues and vices of England and the English to his worldview and religious beliefs.

Ruby and Garnet are ten-year-old twins. They're identical, and they do everything together, especially since their mother died three years earlier – but they couldn't be more different. Bossy, bouncy, funny Ruby loves to take charge, and is desperate to be a famous actress, while quiet, sensitive, academic Garnet loves nothing more than to curl up with one of her favourite books.

Harmony Parker thought animals much nicer than people, and saw everyone she knew as some non-human species. Her father, for example, was most definitely a bald-headed Sea Lion, her mother a tubby, fussy Pouter Pigeon, and her tiresome older sister a Siamese cat. But Harmony's parents would not allow her to have real pets of any kind – not even a harmless gerbil. Then Uncle Ginger arrived from India and gave Harmony a very special present ...

For the female poet there was always the confining hand of men to instruct that their time was perhaps spent more productively elsewhere. These lines, these gilded verses often protest otherwise. The contribution of women in these earlier centuries is immense, and in this series we bring together poets who have created some of the most beautiful and expressive verses ever written. And remember these words, these telling lines, have been written against the grain of society's male bias. With their remembered words these female poets have given us a history that we can all now share.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began as a group of painters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, who wished to reject the stern and academic strictures of current painting and return to the simpler and more uncomplicated days before the Italian High Renaissance and the days of Raphael. The movement was short lived but very influential and, as well, was taken up by a number of different arts.

Hi! I'm Charlie (DON'T call me Charlotte – ever!). History is boring, right? Wrong! The Victorians weren't all deadly dull and drippy. Lottie certainly isn't. She's eleven – like me – but she's left school and has a job as a nursery maid. Her life is really hard, just work work work, but I bet she'd know what to do about my mum's awful boyfriend and his wimpy little son. I bet she wouldn't mess it all up like I do ...

The inevitable is understood by each and every one of us who faces the final calling. So too are the effects on those left behind. The memories are there but the empty space, the void can never be refilled. It remains a dark, unreliable pit of loneliness. The sadness and often depression, the lack of will to continue may swamp us all. Unquenchable, undeniable. But loss can, after mourning, give the opportunity to reappraise the lost and how we can each move forward. In the literary world an accessible balance can be given.

Mirabai was a Rajput princess born to the Rathore clan in 1498 in Kudaki, Rajasthan, in northern India. Despite being one of the most significant saints in the Bhakti tradition and an immensely popular Hindu mystic and religious poet, very few facts are actually known about her life including her date of birth. It is clear that her mother died when she was very young and she was greatly influenced by her father, also a worshipper of Krishna. From a young age, Mirabai’s devotion to Krishna was absolute surrender and complete devotion.