Showing results by narrator "Jenny Agutter" in Romance

"I write this sitting at the kitchen sink" is the first line of a novel about love, sibling rivalry, and a bohemian existence in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Cassandra Mortmin's journal records her fadingly glamorous stepmother, her beautiful, wistful older sister, and the man to whom they owe both their isolation and poverty: Father. The author of one experimental novel, and a minor cause celebre, he has since suffered from writer's block and is determined to drag his family down with him.

At 32, Harriet Swift thinks she has the perfect life: a satisfying career, her own flat, and a new boyfriend. But when her only sister is killed in a car crash, Harriet is forced to give up her well-ordered life and to help parents look after her orphaned niece and nephew. Moving back to her childhood home and sacrificing so much doesn't come easy, and Harriet discovers things about her family she never believed possible.

Overlooking Angel Sands, an idyllic bay tucked into the Pembrokeshire coastline, sits Paradise House. It is home to the Baxter girls, or the "Sisters of Whimsy" as they're known locally. Despite their own chaotic love lives, they're determined to find a suitable partner for their divorced father. But this will be no easy task, for he's a man so shy of women he would rather climb up onto the roof in a howling gale to fix a broken slate than go on a date.

Elizabeth Gaskell highlights the difference between the middle and working classes in this tale set in the time of the Industrial Revolution. A largely autobiographical story, she also highlights the good that each group can do for each other, and the friendships and understandings that can blossom between two seemingly irreconcilable means and modes of life. Gaskell shows her great love of people, and of love itself, in this touching and enlightening tale.

Bristol in 1787 is booming, from its stinking docks to its elegant new houses. Josiah Cole, a small dockside trader, is prepared to gamble everything to join the big players of the city. But he needs ready cash and a well-connected wife. An arranged marriage to Frances Scott is a mutually convenient solution. Trading her social contacts for Josiah's protection, Frances enters the world of the Bristol merchants and finds her life and fortune dependent on the respectable trade of sugar, rum, and slaves.

Elizabeth Roffe, only child of one of the world's richest men, has it all; beauty, intelligence, innocence and youth. But when her father dies, she discovers that she has inherited not only his vast pharmaceutical company, with offices and factories all over the world, but also an unspeakable terror that threatens to destroy the business. As she struggles to save the company that took her family four generations to build, she realizes that she herself is the target of an unknown assassin.

In this classic Victorian novel, Elizabeth Gaskell explores the themes of love and social justice in an industrial age. Set in the north of England, out-of-towner Margaret Hale finds herself simultaneously attracted to mill owner John Thorton, and repulsed by the way he treats his workers. Full of history, romance, and social commentary, North & South will provoke your mind and tug at your heart. This production is read for you actress Jenny Agutter, most famously known for The Railway Children.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." So opens this famous novel which has become Jane Austen's best loved and best known work.

Pride and Prejudice is a key title for the new Naxos AudioBooks series "Young Adult Classics". An abridged recording with music makes this Regency novel much more accessible to the 21st century young adult keen to get to grips with the classics. Pride and Prejudice is a leading title for "Young Adult Classics", being one of the pillars of English literature, and Jenny Agutter’s friendly reading bridges the gap between the films and the book.