Showing results by narrator "Sian Thomas" in All Categories

Elisabeth Luard, one of the food world's most entertaining and evocative writers, has travelled extensively throughout her life, meeting fascinating people, observing different cultures and uncovering extraordinary ingredients in unusual places. In this enchanting food memoir, she shares tales and dishes gathered from her global ramblings.

It's not easy being the mother of a 12-year-old boy who's in love with his babysitter and having trouble at school. Nor are matters helped by the unexpected arrival of an elderly mother who's suddenly footloose and fancy-free. There are times when Susie Vine wonders how she'll ever survive. At least she feels secure at Arland & Shaw, London's leading theatrical agency.

A BBC radio collection of full-cast dramatisations, bringing together Edith Wharton’s most popular and best-loved works.

Under Platform 13 at Kings Cross Station there is a secret door that leads to a magical island. It appears only once every nine years. And when it opens, four mysterious figures step into the streets of London. A wizard, an ogre, a fey, and a young hag have come to find the prince of their kingdom, stolen as a baby nine years before.

Poet and playwright Federico García Lorca is one of the most famous figures in 20th-century Spanish literature. A member of the 'Generation of '27' avant-garde movement that included Dalí and Buñuel, he became well known for his lyrical, symbolic works mixing modernism and the folkloric traditions of his native Andalusia. He was executed by Nationalist forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War, aged only 38. More than 80 years later, his poetry is revered worldwide and the plays in his 'Rural Trilogy' are widely regarded as masterpieces.

Deep in an Estonian forest, two women - one young, one old - are hiding. Zara is a prostitute and a murderer, on the run from brutal captors, men who know about inflicting punishment. Aliide offers refuge, but not safety: She has her own secrets, traitorous crimes of passion and revenge committed long ago, during the country’s brutal Soviet years. Both women have suffered lives of abuse. But this time their survival depends on revealing the one thing history has taught them to keep safely hidden: the truth.

Kerstin Kvist didn't know what to expect when she took up a job with the Cosway family at their odd, almost grand, house. The family turned out to be even odder than the house: living at home with the widowed Mrs. Cosway were her four daughters and a son who haunted the house. Then, just as Kerstin was getting some inkling of what was going on, a stranger sets the family on a path to self-destruction...

The day they've all been waiting for is at hand. The last British combat soldiers in Helmand are counting the minutes until their departure for home. For their excited families in Highcliffe, it spells the end of an agonizing six-month wait. But in the final hours, disaster strikes. Nineteen-year-old private Pete 'Skippy' Lyons is abducted, and the patrol sent out to locate him is ambushed. One killed, two injured. One still missing in action... Their loved ones are left desperate for answers the army won't provide.

A dense, bitterly cold fog has settled over the Wye Valley when Bristol coroner Jenny Cooper is called to the scene of a dreadful tragedy: in the village of Blackstone Ley, a house has burned to the ground, with three members of a family inside. Though evidence of foul play is quickly uncovered, it isn't long before the police investigation is drawn to a close. It seems certain that the fire was started by one of the victims, Ed Morgan, in a fit of jealous rage. But their infant son is still missing, and Ed had left a message for his surviving wife....

The amazing experiences of the Queen Alexandra nurses in the World Wars is one of the greatest adventure stories of modern times, and - incredibly - remains largely untold. Thousands of middle-class girls, barely out of school, were plucked from sheltered backgrounds, subjected to training regimes unimaginably tough by today's standards, and sent forth to share the harsh conditions of the fighting services.

Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates…. An unlikely suicide or a deadly conspiracy? When Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the fatal plunge of a man from a motorway bridge, she little suspects that it has any connection with the sudden death of a friend’s thirteen year old daughter from a deadly strain of meningitis. But as Jenny pieces together the dead man’s last days, she’s drawn into a mystery whose dark ripples stretch across continents and back through decades.

Under Platform 13 at Kings Cross Station there is a secret door that leads to a magical island. It appears only once every nine years. And when it opens, four mysterious figures step into the streets of London. A wizard, an ogre, a fey, and a young hag have come to find the prince of their kingdom, stolen as a baby nine years before.

The day they've all been waiting for is at hand. The last British combat soldiers in Helmand are counting the minutes until their departure for home. For their excited families in Highcliffe, it spells the end of an agonizing six-month wait. But in the final hours, disaster strikes. Nineteen-year-old private Pete 'Skippy' Lyons is abducted, and the patrol sent out to locate him is ambushed. One killed, two injured. One still missing in action... Their loved ones are left desperate for answers the army won't provide.

Hidden by London’s wealth, energy and need for cheap labour, the city’s immigrant population is powerless, despised and often illegal. So when a young woman’s body is discovered on Hampstead Heath one cold morning, she could be anyone...Rich or poor, outsider or insider, five strangers are connected in undreamed-of ways as greed, courage, murder and kindness link their lives.

Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Author of the Year, 2007.
Winner of the British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year, 2006.
Strawberry pickers in the English countryside, mostly from Eastern Europe, are leading dangerous lives, coping with exploitative employers, British regulations, and gang masters with guns, all threatening their existence as they take to the caravan road - until each of them peels off to find his or her destiny.

England's 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 and the reign of new monarchs William and Mary signified a turning point for Restoration comedy with laws being passed to restrict playwrights' freedoms. The latter years are marked by a shift towards more moral storylines, mixing humour with social and political issues, alongside the lighthearted 'comedy of manners'. The works in this collection bring together these complementary styles, full of humour while also focusing on hard hitting themes.

Georgie Sinclair's husband has left her; her 16-year-old son is busy exploring fundamentalist Christian websites and becoming more distant by the day; and all those overdue articles for Adhesives in the Modern World aren't looking too appealing either.

So when she spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old Jewish émigré neighbour with an eye for a bargain and a fondness for matchmaking, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, it's just the distraction she needs.

It is the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of the hospital in Iasi, Romania. He is deaf and mute, but a young nurse named Safta recognizes him from the past and brings him paper and pencils so that he might draw. Gradually, memories appear on the page: The man is Augustin, the cook's son at the manor house at Poiana, where Safta was the privileged daughter.

Joining us at Audible Studios is Sian Thomas, a well-renowned actor on stage, in television and in films, and a regular audiobook narrator. She told us about her incredible career so far, her plans for the future and her role narrating the Mother in Fiona Barton’s new novel, The Suspect. The novel documents the media frenzy that occurs when two girls go missing in Thailand while travelling on their gap year. It is told (and read) from four different perspectives and will leave you cold, knowing danger is always nearby.

The 5 shortlisted titles for the BBC National Short Story Award 2010 administered in partnership with Booktrust, containing:Tea at the Midland by David ConstantineDavid Constantine 2010 Haywards Heath by Aminatta FornaAminatta Forna 2010Butcher’s Perfume by Sarah HallSarah Hall 2010If It Keeps on Raining by Jon McGregorJon McGregor 2010My Daughter the Racist by Helen OyeyemiHelen Oyeyemi 2010