Showing results by narrator "Sara Powell" in All Categories

Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. She has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother - the only parent who raised her - is dead. Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president - some would say dictator - of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive.

Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. Unlike Shakespearean English or even Chaucer's Middle English, Old English—the language of Beowulf—defies comprehension by untrained modern readers. Used throughout much of Britain more than a thousand years ago, it is rich with words that haven't changed (like word), others that are unrecognizable (such as neorxnawang, or paradise), and some that are mystifying even in translation ( gafol-fisc, or tax-fish).

Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the US to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation's largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A killer at work but a failure in love, Kemi's move is a last-ditch effort to reclaim her social life.

In this New York Times best seller, award-winning author Simon Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology - a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. One of the great landmarks of modern history publishing, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is the most authoritative social, cultural and narrative history of the French Revolution ever produced.

Product management has become a critical function for modern organizations, from small startups to corporate enterprises. And yet, the day-to-day work of product management remains largely misunderstood. In theory, product managers are high-flying visionaries who build products that people love. In practice, they're hard-working facilitators who bring clarity and focus to their teams. In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition, Matt LeMay provides real-world guidance for current and aspiring product managers.

Ree is a woman with a violent past – a past she thought she’d left behind. After years of wandering, she and her niece Javani have finally built a small life for themselves at the edge of the known world. But sometimes the past refuses to stay there, and Ree’s is about to catch up with her. This time, there will be blood. For the land is in turmoil and professional killers have arrived in their town looking for an older woman and child, setting off a desperate chase through deserts, mountains, and mines. Ree will have to discover her former self if she is to keep them both alive.

Seeking a better life, Ree and Javani have travelled west into the mountains, and left their pasts – and their troubles – behind. But new places bring new problems, and when they stumble across a lone traveller under bandit attack, they make the mistake of lending a hand. Forced to take refuge in the traveller's village, they quickly find allies among the lush, wooded hills. But then the true nature of the bandits is revealed.

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah spent decades talking openly and intimately to African women around the world about sex. In this book, she brings together their extraordinary stories, whilst also chronicling her own journey towards sexual freedom. From finding queer community in Egypt to living a polyamorous life in Senegal to understanding the intersectionality of religion and pleasure in Cameroon, their necessary narratives are individual and illuminating.

This groundbreaking new collection addresses the burning issue of how we interpret history today. What stories are told, and by whom, who should be celebrated, and what rewritten, are questions that have been asked recently not just within the history world, but by all of us. Featuring a diverse mix of writers, both bestselling names and emerging voices, this is the history book we need NOW.

All Men Want to Know traces Nina Bouraoui's blissful childhood in Algeria, a wild, sun-soaked paradise, with hazy summer afternoons spent swimming, diving and driving across the desert. Her mother is French, her father Algerian. When racial tensions begin to surface in their neighbourhood, her mother suffers an unspeakable act of violence that forces the family to flee the country.

The Day I Fell Off My Island tells the story of Erna Mullings, a teenage Jamaican girl uprooted from her island following the sudden death of her beloved grandmother. When Erna is sent to England to be reunited with her siblings, she dreads leaving behind her elderly grandfather, and the only life she has ever known. A new future unfolds, in a strange country and with a mother she barely recognises. The next decade will be a complex journey of estrangement and arrival, new beginnings and the uncovering of long-buried secrets.

Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize 2019 with her novel, Girl, Woman, Other. The author of ten books and numerous essays, literary criticism, poetry and drama, her 2013 novel Mr Loverman was adapted into an eight-part BBC 1 TV drama series in 2024. She has received over 80 awards, honours and nominations and was elected President of the Royal Society of Literature 2022-2025. Featured here are some of her most innovative works, as well as an illuminating documentary about her life and career.

Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. She has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up and her mother—the only parent who raised her—is dead. Searching through her mother's belongings, she finds clues about the West African father she never knew. Through reading his student diary, chronicling his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London, she discovers that he eventually became the president—some would say the dictator—of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive.

Cameroon, 1929. As colonial powers fight for influence in Africa, French military surgeon Eugène Jamot is dispatched to Cameroon to lead the fight against sleeping sickness there. But despite his humanitarian intentions, the worst comes to pass: seven hundred local villagers are left blind as a result of medical malpractice by a doctor under Jamot’s watch.

Seventeen-year-old Savannah is cursed. It's a sinister family heirloom; passed down through the bloodline for hundreds of years, with one woman in every generation destined to die young. The family call them Hella’s girls, named for their ancestor Hella; the enslaved woman with whom it all began. Hella’s girls are always angry, especially in the months before they die.

Horrified at the thought of facing an arranged marriage, Valda runs away from her home in the beautiful French countryside. Determined to become a photographer, she heads to the south of France in the company of a Romani caravan. Learning about their way of life makes her question everything she has been raised to believe. A disastrous run-in with an arrogant and handsome stranger sends her plans awry. She is once again awakened to the possibility of a life of adventure, passion and if she dares believe it, true love.

On the eve of the planet Ileri's historic vote to join the Commonwealth, the assassination of a government minister threatens to shatter everything. Private investigator Noo Okereke and spy Meiko Ogawa join forces with police chief Toiwa to investigate - and discover clues that point disturbingly toward a threat humanity thought they had escaped.

Paulette's the kind of woman who likes the future all mapped out: the wedding to Denton, the Caribbean honeymoon, the gingham quilt on the baby's crib. Until one morning Garfield, Denton's friend, arrives at her door with the news that Denton won't be coming around any more, that there won't be time for her to say goodbye. Somehow Garfield finds his way into her bed, and sooner than anyone can believe there is a baby, and suddenly giving Bird, her son, the best of everything is what gives Paulette's life meaning.

She wondered what kind of world she had brought her two daughters into, the tedious cycle of rural Jamaican life. No chance for them to set off upon adventures and see the outside world. But sisters Jenny and Hortense Rodney, do get to see the outside world. Growing up in rural Claremont, working amid the hustle and bustle, lawn parties and houses of joy in Trenchtown, the two sisters take a chance and move to England with their husbands, that far-off land of riches, where they settle down to motherhood among the jazz cafés and bleak streets of Brixton.

In 1988 two girls with identical names and the same love of ballet meet for the first time. They seem destined to be best friends forever and to become professional dancers. Years later, however, they have both been dealt so many cruel and unexpected blows that they walk away from each other into very different futures - one enters a convent, the other becomes a minor celebrity. Will these new 'invisible' lives be the ones they were meant to live, or will they find that kind of salvation only when they are reunited 20 years later?