Showing results by narrator "Jessica Hayles" in All Categories

Life can be a lot. How are you supposed to maintain healthy relationships, build a career, keep up with the constant life admin, and prioritize your well-being? It’s so easy to get distracted and lose sight of your path, until one day you realize you’re completely lost, trapped in a cycle of self-sabotage and people pleasing. You are not alone. Following her own personal experience of dealing with anxiety and depression, Meggan Roxanne has united a community of 30 million people by sharing ways to navigate everyday struggles.

Tess is a Londoner whose relationship with Richard transports her from a Jamaican diaspora in the city to the English countryside, where predatory birds hover over fields, buses run twice a day, neighbors barter honey for cider, and no one looks like her. As Tess and Richard settle in, the dramatic arrival of their fraternal twins—one who presents as black and the other as white—recasts the family dynamic, stirring up complicated feelings and questions of belonging.

Meghan was 11 when she first advocated for women’s rights; a teenager when she worked in a soup kitchen feeding the homeless; a popular actress when she campaigned for clean water in Africa and passionately championed gender equality in a speech to a United Nations Women’s Conference. Even before she met Prince Harry, hers was an extraordinarily accomplished life. Meghan’s wedding to Harry was a joyful occasion, marking happiness at last for the Queen’s grandson who had captured our hearts 20 years earlier when he bravely walked behind his mother Diana’s coffin.

Welcome to Keeper Island, the private Caribbean paradise where the cocktails are chilled, the guests are not, and new manager Lola is hoping nothing messes up her badly needed fresh start. Her previous job in Hong Kong ended in tears – and quite a lot of blood – so she’s come to Keeper to lie low, as well as to provide the gold-star service the resort’s spoiled one-percenters expect. Her only connection to her previous life now is her old mentor and new boss, Mike Moxham. But nothing is that simple, and no secret is truly safe forever.

Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most enigmatic geniuses of European literature. He’s been hailed a profit and a diagnostician, and a century after his death, his unique perspective on the anxieties, injustices, and rapidly shifting belief systems of the modern world continues to speak to our contemporary moment.

Party girl actress Mercy Valentine is nobody’s hero, and that’s how she wants it. She’s sarcastic, sharp and always defensive—so no one can hurt her ever again. Mercy’s starring in a major theatre show and hitting the gossip headlines, but her glamorous world is about to come crashing down. And when Mercy crashes, there will be fireworks.

Hal loathes being a Prince; she's much more comfortable instated on the Throne of Misrule, a racous underground nether-court where passion rules all. She yearns to live up to the wishes of everyone she loves best - but that means sacrificing her own heart, and so she will disappoint everyone until the moment she can rise to prove those expectations wrong.

Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most enigmatic geniuses of European literature. What happens when his idiosyncratic imagination meets some of the greatest literary minds writing in English across the globe today? From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten specially commissioned stories are by turns mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting.

A young black man is arrested for murder. The case against him is strong - a mum and a teacher saw him standing over a body in a park, a knife still in hand. But his up-and-coming barrister Rosa knows how people prejudge, but most of all, she suspects something is amiss. This boy comes from her neighbourhood. From a good family. So she begins to dig. As Rosa discovers secret upon terrible secret, she moves closer to finding a testimony that could win the case - or bring the whole establishment down on her.

An anthology of heartfelt, real-life stories about allyship authored by multiple, diverse voices. It will inspire young listeners to inform themselves and further their knowledge to help, show respect, and champion the rights of people from all walks of life.

For years, the king and queen have longed for a child. Their wish is miraculously twice granted in the form of a little wooden robot and an enchanted princess, both of whom they raise lovingly. There’s just one catch: every night when the princess falls asleep, she transforms into a log. She can only be woken with the magic words “Awake, little log, awake.” The two siblings are inseparable, until the day when the sleeping princess is mistaken for an ordinary log and carted off to the frozen North.

Mermaids Beattie, Mimi and Zelda are enjoying a summer on land with legs when they receive a strange crabagram ordering them to return home at once. Some seriously bad mermaids are on the loose, and the girls are the only ones who can stop them. If they’re going to save the day, they’ll need answers. And a clam car. Definitely piranha-print nail polish. Possibly not the talking seahorse.

In The Love That Dares, queer love speaks its name through the words of lovers from years gone by. Alongside the more famous names coexist beautifully written letters by lesser-known lovers, giving us an insight into queer love outside of the spotlight of fame or fortune. These letters give us a glimpse into the passion and courage it took to continue a gay relationship in times when it was at best improper and at worst illegal. Enlightening introductions to each set of letters give readers an idea of the historical context in which they were written.

1770. Delphine lives in the shadows of London: a secret, vibrant world of smugglers, courtesans and small rebellions. Four years ago, she escaped enslavement at great personal cost. Now, she must help her brother Vincent do the same. While Britain’s highest court fails to administer justice for Vincent, little rebellions are no longer enough. What’s needed is a big explosive plot – one that will strike at the heart of the transatlantic slave trade. But can one Black woman, one fuse and one match bring down an Empire?

The Art of Mindful Baking is a delightful insight into how the act of baking is a practical meditation by its very nature. Julia Ponsonby, head of food at Schumacher College, looks at what it means to use our hands and why kneading promotes wellbeing, and explores the true and enduring value of eating real food. Containing a wealth of mouth-watering recipes that highlight how you can incorporate mindfulness into your baking, this book demonstrates how baking with awareness provides benefits for not only you, but also those around you.

As Tess traces the sunrise over the floodplains, light that paints the house a startling crimson, she yearns for the comforting chaos of life as it once was. Instead of Max and Sonny tracking dirt through the kitchen - Tess and Richard's 'rainbow twins' - Tess absorbs the quiet. The nights draw in, the soil cools and Richard fights to get his winter crops planted rather than deal with the discussion he cannot bear to have. Secrets and vines clamber over the broken red bricks and although its inhabitants seem to be withering, in the damp, crumbling soil - Sonny knows it - something is stirring.

When Kendra Tamale returns to England from Australia she rents a room from Kyle, a separated father of two, and begins a new job. She's looking forward to a fresh start and a simple life. Kyle's six-year-old twins, Summer and Jaxon, have other ideas and quickly adopt Kendra as their new mother - mainly because she lets them eat marshmallows for breakfast. Kendra eventually becomes a part of their lives, even though she's hiding a painful secret that makes her keep everyone - especially children - at arm's length.

Mindfulness in Wild Swimming explores how swimming in rivers, lakes, and seas is the epitome of conscious living. Zen-seeker Tessa Wardley reconnects the physical and spiritual cycles of life to the changing seasons and flow of wild waters worldwide and leads the listener on to a mindful journey through the natural world. With expert insight and personal anecdote, she shares a sparkling clarity on why our relationship with open water is so fundamental to pure wellbeing, and reveals how wild swimming can be the ultimate physical meditation.

Alexandra Wilson was a teenager when her dear family friend Ayo was stabbed on his way home from football. Ayo's death changed Alexandra. She felt compelled to enter the legal profession in search of answers. As a junior criminal and family law barrister, Alexandra finds herself navigating a world and a set of rules designed by a privileged few. A world in which fellow barristers sigh with relief when a racist judge retires: 'I've got a black kid today and he would have had no hope'.

Meri Pebble, professional spy mermaid, has a new mission. She’s going to be a personal assistant to the Sushi Sisters (famous for their notorious appearance on reality TV programme Catwalk Prawn, and for driving around in a submarine shaped like a giant bit of sushi). Beattie, Mimi, Zelda and Steve the talking seahorse are coming along for the ride as the least convincing glam squad ever.