Showing results by narrator "Laurence Bouvard" in All Categories

A stunning new emotional tour-de-force from the author of Shadow, Born to Run and War Horse. May, 1915. Alfie and his fisherman father find a girl on an uninhabited island in the Scillies - injured, thirsty, lost… and with absolutely no memory of who she is, or how she came to be there. She can say only one word: Lucy. Where has she come from? Is she a mermaid, the victim of a German U-boat, or even - as some islanders suggest - a German spy?

I don’t want the perfect marriage. I want revenge… If you had met me a year ago, you wouldn’t have noticed me. A beautiful woman, but a struggling nobody in a tiny apartment, invisible… Meeting Paul changed that. And now here I am in Paris, after a whirlwind courtship and a stunning beach proposal I smile at my handsome husband, my eyes shining in the candlelight, my huge diamond ring sparkling on the starched white tablecloth. Other women look at me in envy. They see a couple completely in love.

I first start worrying about my beautiful daughter Lennie when she claims her imaginary friend told her not to trust me or her father, Nathan. And as she retreats further into her own world and pushes us away, it feels like we are losing our little girl. Then one evening I see a shadowy figure in Lennie’s bedroom window, and I begin to worry her friend isn’t imaginary at all…

As a teenager in Chicago, May always dreamed of travelling the world. So when she falls in love with George Turner, she can’t wait to return to London as his wife. Two beautiful daughters follow, but George isn’t the husband he promised to be. Ten years on, May is wondering if she’s made a terrible mistake. The Great War has been declared in Europe, and all around, brave young men are being called up to serve. George, banned from conscription himself, has taken to the bottle, and May suspects he’s seeing other women, too.

Pearl Harbor, 1941: On the morning of December 7, Ginny is flying her little yellow plane above the sparkling seas when she spots an unknown aircraft closing in on her. She recognises the red symbol of the Japanese fighter planes almost too late. Somehow, she manages to land unscathed, but the choices she is forced to make in the terrible hours that follow have tragic consequences....

Alessandra is not quite fifteen when her prosperous father brings a young painter back from Holland to adorn the new family chapel. Fascinated by his ability she is lured into closer involvement. On the streets of Florence she observes a terrible evil stalking the city and a fiery priest, who has set out to rid the city of vice, even art itself.

Britain is under New Management. The disbanding of the Laundry - the British espionage agency that deals with supernatural threats - has culminated in the unthinkable: an elder god in residence in 10 Downing Street. But in true 'the enemy of my enemy' fashion, Mhairi Murphy finds herself working with His Excellency Nylarlathotep on foreign policy - there are worse things, it seems, than an elder god in power, and they lie in deepest, darkest America.

Living alone in New York, Frannie teaches creative writing to a motley bunch of students, and secretly compiles a dictionary of street slang: virginia, n., vagina; snapper, n., vagina; brasole, n., vagina. One evening at a bar, she stumbles upon a man, his face in shadow, a tattoo on his wrist, a woman kneeling between his legs. A week later a detective shows up at her door. The woman's body has been discovered in the park across the street. Soon Frannie is propelled into a sexual liaison that tests the limits of her safety and desires.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel, read by a returning cast. We always thought the biggest threat to humanity would come from the outside. We were wrong. As the human race picks up the pieces of destruction left behind, a new world order emerges. New alliances are formed. Old divisions are strengthened. And, with a power struggle fuelled by the threat of mutually assured destruction, nothing is certain.

Upstate New York, 1980s. The farm stood at the foot of the hill. Around it an aching emptiness of fields and wind. Within, a weight, a sense of being occupied with more than its inhabitants. The Clares got it cheap. George knew why, though he didn't let on -­ he didn't want to give Catherine any excuses. He'd given her an easy excuse to get married. He wasn't prepared to give away much more. Catherine, at home with their young daughter, has the feeling they're not alone.

A comedy/tragedy of manners. The new novel from the Man Booker-short-listed author of The Sisters Brothers. Frances Price - tart widow, possessive mother and Upper East Side force of nature - is in dire straits, beset by scandal. Her adult son, Malcolm, is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there's their cat, whom Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral lawyer whose gruesome tabloid death rendered them social outcasts.

The first major history of the International Brigades: a tale of blood, ideals and tragedy in the fight against fascism. The Spanish Civil War was the first armed battle in the fight against fascism, and a rallying cry for a generation. Over 35,000 volunteers from 61 countries around the world came to defend democracy against the troops of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. Ill-equipped and disorderly, yet fuelled by a shared sense of purpose and potential glory, disparate groups of idealistic young men and women banded together to form a volunteer army.

Miss Goering, an eccentric, impulsive New York heiress, resides in her house and tries not to be unhappy. Mrs Copperfield, an anxious, dutiful married woman, has a great fear of drowning, of lifts, of intruders in the night. Two serious ladies, nothing is natural for them and anything is possible. For Mrs Copperfield - a trip to Panama, where she abandons her husband for love of a local prostitute. For Miss Goering - a move to a squalid little house on an island and a series of sordid encounters with strangers.

For 40 years, "The 36-Hour Day" has been the leading work in the field for caregivers of those with dementia. Written by experts with decades of experience caring for individuals with memory loss, Alzheimer's, and other dementias, the book is widely known for its authoritativeness and compassionate approach to care. Featuring everything from the causes of dementia to managing its early stages to advice on caring for those in the later stages of the disease, it is widely considered to be the most detailed and trusted book available.

A secret diary. A forbidden love. A centuries-old mystery to solve. When a rare 16th-century manuscript lands on her desk, courtesy of William, a struggling painter, shy book restorer Rose makes a startling discovery: it is a palimpsest. Beneath the text is a different document, one that's been written over. What they discover is the secret diary of William's ancestor Giovanni Lomazzo, a Venetian painter who has just been commissioned by Venice's most powerful admiral to paint a portrait of his favourite courtesan....

Late one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; his widow Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country....

Two thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women, and children reportedly took their own lives rather than surrender to the Roman army. This dramatic event, which took place on top of Masada, a barren and windswept mountain overlooking the Dead Sea, spawned a powerful story of Jewish resistance that came to symbolize the embattled modern State of Israel. Jodi Magness, an archaeologist who has excavated at Masada, explains what happened there, how we know it, and how recent developments might change understandings of the story.

Aiming to make a fresh start in life, Sydney agrees to tutor the teenage daughter of an affluent couple during a summer spent in their New Hampshire cottage. But when the Edwards' two grown sons arrive, Sydney finds herself caught up in a web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt is threatened.

Meet the utterly irresistible Miss Petitfour (an odd name but possibly descended from bakers of tiny delicious cakes). She loves baking and making and dancing with her cats, but most of all she loves to fly.

Northern Finland, 1952, at the height of the Cold War with its neighbour the Soviet Union. A misunderstood, flawed, whip-smart Finnish woman police detective, Hella Mauzer, while fighting against prejudice and political interference, investigates a murder on the Finno-Russian border. But that is just the beginning of her involvement. In fact, the locals have been the victims of a crime so evil it is beyond anything any of them could have ever imagined.