Showing results by narrator "Alison McKenna" in All Categories

An unmissable paraquel to the internationally best-selling Skulduggery Pleasant series, The Skulduggery Pleasant Grimoire is at once a thrilling recap of the books so far, a reference guide to characters and a treasure-trove of bonus content. As the Skulduggery Pleasant series nears its end (again), relive the adventure in this compendium of all things Skulduggery.

Shaneda Daly was only four when her father started grooming her. For nearly 15 years, he would go on to sexually abuse his daughter every day. The emotional and physical toll was immense and, eventually, her ex-army and prison officer father admitted to his family what he had been doing. Leaving home for only a year to get help, he was welcomed back 'a changed man'. With no choice but to accept it, Shaneda lived alongside him again only for him to try and abuse her once more.

Provocative and controversial, socially conscious and politically charged, wildly imaginative yet deeply grounded, the thirty-two never-before-published stories, essays, and poems in The Last Dangerous Visions stand as a testament to Ellison’s lifelong pursuit of art, uniting a diverse range of science fiction writers both famous and newly minted, including Max Brooks, Edward Bryant, Cecil Castellucci, James S. A. Corey, Howard Fast, Patricia Hodgell, Dan Simmons, Robert Sheckley, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Mildred Downey Broxon, and Cory Doctorow, among others.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Way We Were by Sinead Moriarty, read by Robert Portal, Rachel Louise Miller, Alison McKenna and Daniel Weyman. Alice and Ben are a couple like any other bound together by love, work, children, familiarity, and a shared sense of purpose. Arguing about the usual things, too - in-laws, whose career is more important, which of them is a soft touch with the children, who hates change and who craves it.

When new mother, Laura Caldwell, opens the card dropped through her letterbox, she expected to see a heartfelt note, congratulating her on the birth of baby Shay. Instead, she sees a message that makes her blood run cold. 'Your husband is a murderer.' It couldn't be true, could it? Not Conor, her adoring husband. He couldn't be behind the brutal killing of local barmaid, Vicky. Not him. But while Laura fights to discover the truth about her husband, she's also holding dark secrets of her own; secrets she's spent years trying to hide.

Single parent Louise is trying to help her fragile young daughter navigate life. So, when the nine-year-old insists on finding out who her father is, Louise organizes a sisters’ outing to track down her Italian one-night stand. Meanwhile, due to her sons’ sporting success, mother-of-four Julie is anointed Cook-Bottlewasher-and-Cheerleader-in-Chief for the rugby parents’ group. Finally, glamorous Sophie is determined that her daughter Jess won’t be boy-crazy and image-obsessed like she was. But when things go wrong at a teen party, Sophie and her sisters are forced to take drastic measures.

Sixteen-year-old twins Madeline and Catlin move to a new life in Ballyfrann, a strange isolated Irish town, a place where the earth is littered with small corpses and unspoken truths. A place where, for generations, teenage girls have gone missing in the surrounding mountains. As distance grows between the twins - as Catlin falls in love, and Madeline begins to understand her own nascent witchcraft - Madeline discovers that Ballyfrann is a place full of predators.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Secret Sisters Keep, read by Karen Cogan, Emma Lowe and Alison McKenna. The Devlin sisters rely on each other - but some things are just too painful to share, even when your sisters are your best friends.... Mum-of-four Julie thought that if her family had more money, life would be easier. But now that they've inherited a fortune, her problems are only starting. Lawyer Louise is used to having life go exactly as she wants it to. So accepting that she cannot control the most important thing in her life is beyond her. And former model Sophie can just about cope with getting older - that's until her ex-husband finds a younger model. All three women think that some battles are best fought alone. Maybe they need to think again.

Her dream wedding might become a nightmare. Tara Moore feels like the luckiest girl in the world. She's finally found the man of her dreams, and after the fairytale wedding, she's leaving Dublin to start a new life in Australia. Until Avril Ryan's body is discovered in a house that Tara lived in three years ago. Tara doesn't know Avril, so why was she the last person Avril called? How has she become the number one suspect?

The book opens in Paris with Eliza in bed with Francisco Solano Lopez - heir to the untold wealth of Paraguay. The fruit of their congress will be extraordinary, and will send her across the Atlantic on the regal voyage to claim her glorious future in Asunción. With the lavish imaginative richness of Márquez and the crazed panoramic sweep of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch is a bold and brilliantly achieved novel about sex, beauty and corruption at the end of the old world.

The complete historical fantasy romance trilogy by Sharon Lynn Fisher. This collection includes The Absinthe Earl, The Raven Lady, and The Warrior Poet.

After a busy day, what could be more soothing than getting into bed and listening to some of the world's most beloved classic bedtime stories exquisitely read by award-winning narrator Alison Larkin and iconic British actress Virginia McKenna, OBE? Exclusively for Audible, this delightful audiobook ends with The Tale of Peter Rabbit, read by Alison Larkin.

Catlin and Madeline are extraordinary sisters, living extraordinary lives - in a place that seems entirely ordinary, but which in fact, seethes with secrets, both sacred and sinister. Ballyfran is a village where, for centuries, people who are not quite human have gathered. Catlin has already fallen foul of one such creature - a dark, vicious predator who almost killed her - and only Madeline giving up a part of her own soul was able to bring Catlin back from the brink of death.

Miss Ada Quicksilver, a student of London's Lovelace Academy for Promising Young Women, is spending her holiday in Ireland to pursue her anthropological study of fairies. She visits Dublin's absinthe bars to investigate a supposed association between absinthe and fairy sightings. One night a handsome Irishman approaches her, introducing himself as Edward Donoghue. Edward takes absinthe to relieve his sleepwalking. She discovers that he's the earl of Meath, and that he will soon visit a mysterious ruin. On learning about Ada's area of study, he invites her to accompany him.

Rozlyn Ó Conchúir is used to waiting—waiting for the king, her father, to relent and allow her to leave the solitude of her tower; waiting for the dreaded and mysterious Beast of Connacht to at last be defeated; waiting for the arrival of the man destined to win her heart and break the terrible curse placed on her and her land. So when she meets Jamie—a charming and compelling suitor—she allows herself to hope that her days of solitude and patience are over at long last.

Soothe your soul at bedtime as you listen to some of the world's most beautifully written classic stories, exquisitely read by Alison Larkin and Virginia McKenna. Alison's AudioFile Earphones award-winning reading of Peter Pan is followed by Through the Looking Glass and The Snow Queen. How the Elephant Got Its Trunk is read by Virginia McKenna, OBE, the iconic English actress best known for the films Born Free, A Town Like Alice, and Ring of Bright Water.

Portland book artist Neve Kelly is having weird visions - vivid daydreams of lovers on a battlefield that yank her out of reality. A couple weeks before Halloween, a confused, strangely dressed man appears in her living room. He drops a slip of paper that describes a dream much like her own before disappearing without a trace.

Twenty essays on Irish women, historical and contemporary, who have defied cultural norms around femininity and achieved great things. The subjects include Irish women from Queen Medb to Eileen Gray, from Constance Markievicz to Sonia O’Sullivan, covering stateswomen, artists, writers, activists and rebels of all kinds. Written by multi-award-winning author and first Laureate na nÓg (Irish Children’s Laureate) Siobhán Parkinson. Perfect for use in schools as well as for leisure listening, this collection celebrates the role of women in Ireland’s changing society.

Her name was Kimbralin Amaristoth: sister to a cruel brother, daughter of a hateful family. But that name she has forsworn, and now she is simply Lin, a musician and lyricist of uncommon ability in a land where women are forbidden to answer such callings - a fugitive who must conceal her identity or risk imprisonment and even death. On the eve of a great festival, Lin learns that an ancient scourge has returned to the land of Eivar, a pandemic both deadly and unnatural.

In the aftermath of Ireland’s battle with her ancient enemies, Queen Isolde orders her cousin, smuggler Duncan O’Malley, to assume the throne of fairy as King Finvara. He’s a fish out of water when it comes to nurturing the alliance between Ireland’s mortal and fairy peoples. And the queen wants him to wed the daughter of Ireland’s enemy, the king of Icelandic shadow elves, to help keep the peace. But the Irish think of the elves as goblins, and Finvara refuses.