Showing results by narrator "Jane Slavin" in All Categories

'A delicious story that wraps itself around your heart' Evie Woods 'This book felt like a cozy blanket—comforting, gentle, and full of charm.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Everyone has a story… The local library is a place for community members to enjoy a cup of coffee, to read a book, to swap a book, to...

She does Britain's dirty work, but this time she needs help. Beatrix Rose, meet John Milton.... Beatrix Rose has a knack for making the British government's problems go away. When the assassin is sent to Venezuela to track down a missing scientist, she meets a contact who knows the lay of the land: none other than John Milton. As the state-sanctioned assassin and the special forces soldier team up in South America, they'll do more than capture a missing scientist....

A new investigation from Dr Mark Aldridge, exploring a lifetime of Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple. Winner of the 2025 H.R.F Keating Award for the best 2024 biography or critical book related to crime fiction. In Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness,‘Agathologist’ Dr Mark...

One winter evening, bestselling crime author Elín S. Jónsdóttir goes missing. There are no clues to her disappearance and it is up to young detective Helgi to crack the case before its leaked to the press. As Helgi interviews the people closest to her—a publisher, an accountant, a retired judge—he realizes that Elín’s life wasn’t what it seemed. In fact, her past is even stranger than the fiction she wrote.

Dot's had quite enough of making tea in the Cabinet War Rooms. When she finds a cryptic message in the newspaper she enlists the help of her gals - will this be the big break Dot's been waiting for? Follow Dot as she gets squiffy over Agent Bertie Whiff-Whaff, concocts stirring yet pithy slogans for the war effort and goes on a mission to St Horribly Vulture’s School for Boys to enlist a teacher for...'shhhh...Bletchley Park!'

This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century —and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world "Simply, a masterpiece...Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in...

Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own... When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it's a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shaped Orwell's work and her practical nous saved his life. But why - and how - was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwell's marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WWII in London.

For the Tenth Doctor, the festive season always brought adventure. In fact, he's saved Christmas across space and time more times than we ever knew. Join the Doctor (and Donna and Martha and Rose, and other friends old and new) for incredible tales of daring and danger. From Daleks plotting to save humanity to Sycorax working to exploit it...from star-narwhals massing on the Moon to a toy factory in space. Because even in the jolliest of seasons there's a world or two to save.

Brought to you by Penguin. A blazing, genre-bending masterpiece from one of the most inventive writers of our time Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember...

Benedict Cumberbatch and Louise Brealey read a love story in letters, played out against the backdrop of the Second World War. 'Can you feel, as you read these words, that I am thinking of you now; aglow, alive, alert at the thought that you are in the same world, and by some strange chance loving me.' A small blue box opened in 2008 revealed a wartime world of love, longing and frustration. Inside were bundles and bundles of letters written neatly on thin blue airmail paper or headed army notepaper.

On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the Wentshire Forest Pass when a burst tyre forced his father, Sorrel, to stop the car. Leaving the car to summon the emergency services, Sorrel returned to find his son gone. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995. Elusive online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night.

In November 2014 Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father and sister to death with a hammer. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation. King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five witnesses and Arla herself as he questions whether Arla's responsibility for the massacre was a diminished as her legal team made out.

Stories by: Desmond Barry, Ken Bruen, Stewart Home, Barry Adamson, Michael Ward, Sylvie Simmons, Daniel Bennett, Cathi Unsworth, Max Décharné, Martyn Waites, Joolz Denby, John Williams, Jerry Sykes, Mark Pilkington, Joe McNally, Patrick McCabe, and Ken Hollings. Cathi Unsworth moved to Ladbroke Grove in 1987 and has stayed there ever since. She began a career in rock writing with Sounds and Melody Maker, before co-editing the arts journal Purr and then Bizarre magazine. Her first novel, The Not Knowing, was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2005.

Brought to you by Penguin. One winter evening bestselling crime author, Elín S. Jónsdóttir goes missing. There are no clues to her disappearance and it is up to young detective, Helgi, to crack the case before it's leaked to the press. As he interviews the people closest to her – a...

Len lived her life alongside her bird neighbours, with some sleeping in her bedroom and many flitting in and out all day long. This is the book she wrote about the birds – a study not just of their behaviour but their individual personalities. We learn about their intelligence, emotional lives, and characters, their capacity for play and humour, the range of their song, their likes and dislikes, and their bond with Len.

In Fay Weldon's 1983 classic, The Life and Loves of a She Devil, women fought men for power and won. In 2017 men take the ultimate step to get their power back. Ruth Patchett, the original 'She Devil,' is now 84 and keen to retire. But who can take up her mantle? Enter Ruth's grandson Tyler, a confident 20-something: beautiful, resentful and unemployed. Tyler won't be satisfied until he can transition into the ultimate symbol of power and status. A woman.

1730. Driven by a wild romantic impulse, Francis Herries uproots his family from Doncaster to the lakeland valley of Borrowdale. Accompanied by his housekeeper/mistress, Alice, they settle in his tumbledown ancestral home, Herries, in the shadow of the Cumberland fells. Proud, stubborn and temperamental, Francis cuts himself off from his brother, spurns his long-suffering wife and becomes embroiled in drink and debauchery. When he sells Alice at Keswick Fair, his reputation is ruined, and the locals dub him 'Rogue' Herries.

When Sarah Haywood rescues a young girl in trouble, she expects nothing in return. But her instinctive act of bravery puts her in the debt of a powerful and dangerous man, and he has other ideas. He lives by his own brutal code, and all debts must be repaid - in the only way he knows how. He offers Sarah a way to solve an impossible situation with her intolerable boss.

This book tells the story of one exceptional great tit that Len called Star. With patience, consistency and sensitivity, Len succeeds in teaching this little bird to count using taps. Star's character and intelligence is revealed in this intimate bird biography, unlike any told before. In opening her home to wild birds, Len gains their trust enough to make astonishing discoveries about their capabilities.

Have you ever loved someone enough to die for them? Or even kill for them? Ellen Millar is an independent soul. An actress whose star is in the ascendant, she also has a partially decorated flat, a mountain of debt and some great friends to sustain her. Into her life comes Aedan. An Irishman. Their attraction is instant; their affair intense and all-consuming. This five-day courtship is the prelude to a life together, until Aedan returns to Ireland and realises that some emotional entanglements are impossible to untie.