Showing results by narrator "Esther Wane" in All Categories

Fairy tales are not just fairy tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy-Tellers, award-winning travel-writer Nick Jubber explores their secret history of fairy tales: the people who told them, the landscapes that forged them and the cultures that formed them.

Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age is an edited volume of eight essays that look at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation.

December 1952. As the young Queen Elizabeth II prepares to deliver the first of her traditional Christmas Messages, dedicated staff work behind the scenes to prepare for festive celebrations at the Sandringham Estate. Among the hard workers are Jack Devereaux and Olive Carter – old friends who are about to be reunited. Over the course of five years, while Olive works as a royal correspondent and Jack is a chef in the Queen’s household, their paths will cross time and time again. But as the two grow closer, their relationship is threatened by a secret that Olivia is afraid to reveal.

Not long after receiving a devastating medical diagnosis, Amy Cooper is at the police station—reporting the disappearance of her husband, Callum. A few miles away, a mother and her children are outdoors enjoying a day in the snow when they discover a dead man in a ditch nearby. The mother calls the police, whose initial investigation indicates the body belongs to the missing husband, killed in a hit-and-run. But the autopsy results reveal to DI Samantha Freeman and DS Jenny Newcombe that the man didn’t die in a car accident.

This hilarious, thought-provoking debut novel is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is an unforgettable, unputdownable adventure with a small but global cast of characters shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation in one of Europe's last great wildernesses.

Available for the first time: audio editions of Milly's brilliant short stories 'Here Come the Boys', 'The Wedding Dress', 'Ladies Who Launch' and 'The Barn on Half Moon Hill'. Milly Johnson is the sparkling and irrepressible author of six best-selling novels. She is also a columnist, greetings card copywriter, poet and after-dinner speaker. Her books are about the universal issues of friendship, family, betrayal, babies, rather nice food and a little bit of that magic in life that sometimes visits the unsuspecting.

In Parliament Ltd, investigative journalist Martin Williams reveals the true extent of greed and corruption in Westminster. Containing explosive new revelations about the activities of those at the top, this is a shocking untold tale that goes to the rotten heart of British politics.

I gasp out loud as I step through the door of the beautiful country hotel. My hands fly to my mouth in shock as I see the room is filled with my friends and family, my grown-up daughters and grandchildren at the center, gathered to celebrate my special birthday. Everyone raises their glasses to toast me. I should be enjoying the moment but I'm on edge and I can't relax. Who organized this surprise party? How did they know I was going to be here? Because I didn't come back to Burcott House to drink champagne and dance. Ten years ago, someone was murdered at this hotel.

On a brisk day in 1970, a daughter arrives at her mother's home to take care of her as she nears the end of her life. 'Home' is the sprawling Italian castle of Roccasinibalda, and Diana's mother is the legendary Caresse Crosby, one half of literature's most scandalous couple in 1920s Paris, widow of Harry Crosby, the American heir, poet and publisher who epitomised the Lost Generation.

King Henry VIII is set to marry a woman he's never met. Wary of rumours whispered by foreign envoys, he sends Susanna Gilman, royal painter and trusted friend, to Kleve to find out more about his chosen bride. Before long, Susanna is returning to England with the Princess Anna, assuring the king she is a suitable match. But the king is disappointed - Anna is not as beautiful as her portrait.

What secrets are hidden within the walls of a desolate farmhouse in a forgotten corner of Lapland? Early spring has its icy grip on Ödesmark, a small village in northernmost Sweden, abandoned by many of its inhabitants. But Liv Björnlund never left. She lives in a derelict house together with her teenage son, Simon, and her ageing father, Vidar. They make for a peculiar family, and Liv knows that they are cause for gossip among their few remaining neighbours.

From an irresponsible baron whose body is discovered beneath a silver birch tree, to a classic detective duo solving a historic case as the lights go out across Europe, and an exclusive Tony Hill and Carol Jordan story, the characters McDermid conjures are enigmatic and dangerous. These evocative, atmospheric tales will shock and delight.

Suzy fell for Harry the moment she showed him her husband's sperm sample. It didn't really belong to her husband, though, because she wasn't married. It wasn't a sperm sample either, it was a drinks carton containing the dregs of her milkshake. But when you're trying to get off a speeding charge you just have to improvise, don't you? And it wasn't actually love at first sight. Still, it was undeniably a healthy attack of lust. And it might just be the beginning of something special....

Once upon a time Gabrielle Price wrote and published an extraordinary novel. But 20 years on her literary star has dimmed, her "work of genius" is all but forgotten, and no further novels have materialised. She now lives an unremarkable life: middle-aged, living alone in the sleepy village she grew up in, and working as a housekeeper for the local vicar. Her lonely existence is dominated by memories of her best friend Madeleine, who died young, in tragic and mysterious circumstances.

Only fourteen, Stella Infuriati is the youngest member of her town's resistance network during World War II. Risking imprisonment and death, she relays messages, supplies, and weapons to partisan groups in the Tuscan Hills. Her parents have no idea, consumed instead by love and fear for their beloved son, Achille, a courier and unofficial mechanic for a communist brigade fighting the fascists.

Meet Henri and Louise. Two strangers, travelling alone, on the train from Belgrade to Istanbul. Except this isn't the first time they have met. It's the 1960s, and Louise is running. From her past in England, from the owners of the money she has stolen - and from Henri, the person who has been sent to collect it. Across the Continent - from Granada to Paris, from Belgrade to Istanbul - Henri follows. He's desperate to leave behind his own troubles and the memories of his past life as a gendarme in Algeria. But Henri soon realises that Louise is no ordinary traveller.

As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London's museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation's highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the nation's greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures.

Two years ago, Beth turned her back on her three-year-old niece for just a few seconds. She disappeared without a trace. One day, Beth receives a photograph from an anonymous number; she is sure it's a photograph of her niece. She is determined to find her and bring her home. But someone isn't pleased when Beth returns, and they will do what it takes to get rid of her for good.

Jill Mansell's hugely entertaining best seller Good at Games is perfect for you if you love listening to Cathy Kelly, Milly Johnson and Lucy Diamond. Suzy fell for Harry the moment she showed him her husband's sperm sample. It didn't really belong to her husband, though, because she wasn't married. It wasn't a sperm sample, either, it was a drinks carton containing the dregs of her milkshake.

As the Black Plague lays waste to Italy, Ginevra di Gasparo is summoned back to Florence after nearly a decade of lonely exile. Ginevra has a gift: using the ancient practices of alchemy she learned as a young girl, she can heal the sick. But when word traveled of her unusual craft, she was condemned as a witch and banished. Now, the same men who expelled Ginevra are begging for her return.