Showing results by narrator "Sian Thomas" in All Categories

Russia, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police herd Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia, where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed. Germany, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing to explain her presence, Anna Anderson is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless horrific scars.

No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith, one of Britain's best-loved actors. This new biography shines the stage lights on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades. From her days as a West End star of comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era.

In Jilly Cooper's latest, raciest novel, Rupert Campbell-Black takes centre stage in the cutthroat world of flat racing. Rupert is consumed by one obsession: that Love Rat, his adored grey horse, be proclaimed champion stallion. He longs to trounce Roberto's Revenge, the stallion owned by his detested rival, Cosmo Rannaldini, which means abandoning his racing empire at Penscombe and his darling wife, Taggie, and chasing winners in the richest races worldwide, from Dubai to Los Angeles to Melbourne.

On a summer's night in 1994, 16-year-old Flora Powell vanished from her sleepy seaside town. She left no trace - only heartache for her mother and her sister, Heather. Twenty-five years later, Heather walks into a stranger's house. There, the loving wife and doting new mother kills two people in cold blood. So only one remains...Jess is sent to report on the case that shocked the hometown she left behind. But it's anything but business to her.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Everything Is Lies by Helen Callaghan. Sophia's parents lead quiet, unremarkable lives. At least that is what she's always believed. Until the day she arrives at her childhood home to find a house ringing with silence. Her mother is hanging from a tree. Her father is lying in a pool of his own blood, near to death. The police are convinced it is an attempted murder-suicide. But Sophia is sure that the woman who brought her up isn't a killer....

A truly inspiring and heartbreaking book from the mother of little James Bulger - whose murder by two young boys shocked the world. On 12th February 1993, Denise's life changed forever. As she was running errands at New Strand Shopping Centre, she let go of her two-year-old son's hand to take out her purse. Denise never saw her son again. In this extraordinary and heart-wrenching audiobook comes the unflinching account of that terrible day from James Bulger's mother, Denise.

When two 18-year-old girls go missing in Thailand, their families are thrust into the international spotlight: desperate, bereft and frantic with worry. What were the girls up to before they disappeared? Journalist Kate Waters always does everything she can to be first to the story, first with the exclusive, first to discover the truth - and this time is no exception. But she can't help but think of her own son, whom she hasn't seen in two years, since he left home to go travelling.

Intense, brilliant and moving, The Door is a compelling story about the relationship between two women of opposing backgrounds and personalities: one, an intellectual and writer; the other, her housekeeper, a mysterious, elderly woman who sets her own rules and abjures religion, education, pretense and any kind of authority. Beneath this hardened exterior of Emerence lies a painful story that must be concealed.

Aristotle was an extraordinary thinker, perhaps the greatest in history. Yet he was preoccupied by an ordinary question: how to be happy. His deepest belief was that we can all be happy in a meaningful, sustained way - and he led by example. In this handbook to his timeless teachings, Professor Edith Hall shows how ancient thinking is precisely what we need today, even if you don’t know your Odyssey from your Iliad.

Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was 84 and she was 36. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside. Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina.

When her father dies in battle, 14-year-old Thirrin becomes Queen of the Icemark. Not only must she win the respect of her people, but she has to raise an army to protect them from the most formidable threat of invasion her nation has ever known.

Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers - normal, at least, for identical 'mirror' twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn't know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London.

Two young British students, Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan vanish without a trace. The police tell their parents that the boys had been under surveillance, that it was likely they left the country to pursue their dangerous new ideals. Seven years later, Nazim’s grief-stricken mother is still unconvinced. Jenny Cooper is her last hope. Jenny is finally beginning to settle into her role as coroner for the Severn Valley; the ghosts of her past that threatened to topple her, banished to the sidelines once more.

Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Hill, Lancashire. A mysterious gathering of 13 people is interrupted by local magistrate Roger Nowell. Is this a witches' Sabbat? Two notorious Lancashire witches are already in Lancaster Castle awaiting trial. Why is the beautiful and wealthy Alice Nutter defending them? And why is she among the group of 13 on Pendle Hill? Elsewhere, a starved, abused child lurks. And a Jesuit priest and former Gunpowder plotter, recently returned from France, is widely rumoured to be heading for Lancashire. But who will offer him sanctuary?

A beautiful summer's evening in a Kent field and around their two caravans a group of strawberry pickers celebrates a birthday. But what lies behind the buy-one-get-one-free offers at your supermarket and who picks our strawberries? The Ukrainians: Irina, just off the coach from Kiev, and Andriy, the miner's son from the other Ukraine; the Poles: Tomasz and Yola; two Chinese girls; Emanuel, the round-eyed eighteen-year-old from Malawi. And although he can't pick strawberries, there's also the Dog…

Gertrude Bell was leaning in 100 years before Sheryl Sandberg. One of the great woman adventurers of the 20th century, she turned her back on Victorian society to study at Oxford and travel the world and became the chief architect of British policy in the Middle East after World War I. Mountaineer, archaeologist, Arabist, writer, poet, linguist, and spy, she dedicated her life to championing the Arab cause and was instrumental in drawing the borders that define today's Middle East.

When lawyer Jenny Cooper is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she’s hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce. But the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets and a trail of buried evidence. Could the tragic death in custody of a young boy be linked to the apparent suicide of a teenage prostitute and the fate of Marshall himself? Jenny’s curiosity is aroused. Why was Marshall behaving so strangely before he died?

Julia is a child psychologist who every day deals with young girls said to be behaving badly. Some are stealing, some are running away from home, some are terribly untidy, some won’t eat or get out of bed. Julia has a special knack with these girls. She understands which really are troubled, and which are at the mercy of the way they are seen by the adults around them. But one day, Julia’s own troubled past starts to creep into her present.

Anna, a young countess, has lived in the glittering city of St Petersburg all her life in an ice-blue palace overlooking the River Neva. But when revolution tears Russia apart, her now-penniless family is forced to flee to England. Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of Westerholme's crumbling but magnificent mansion.

Dylan Thomas was the 20th Century's first rock star author, famed for his dazzling imaginative poetry and chaotic personal life. Best known for Under Milk Wood, he also wrote numerous poems, short stories and screenplays, and made regular BBC broadcasts. A legend in his own lifetime, he remained hugely popular after his death at the age of 39, influencing cultural icons from Bob Dylan to The Beatles....