Showing results by narrator "Fenella Woolgar" in All Categories

Not the End of the World is Kate Atkinson's first collection of short stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness, a world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality.

A collection of BBC dramatisations and readings of William Boyd's award-winning novels and short stories. One of Britain's foremost contemporary writers, William Boyd is renowned worldwide for his bestselling novels, which have been translated into over 30 languages. He has won numerous awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award (for A Good Man in Africa), the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for An Ice-Cream War) and the Costa Book Award (for Restless).

Single mum Kate Wilde has escaped an abusive marriage and hasn't had a holiday in years, so when she wins a five-day trip to Paris to learn about perfume – in a competition she can't remember entering – it's a dream come true. Or is it? Almost as soon as she arrives, Kate's ex texts with evidence that he's in Paris too. Kate can feel she's being watched, and she's sure someone has been in her apartment. Then she discovers that there's a killer in the city focusing on red headed women like her. And his kill count is rising.

Every year, on the winter solstice, the small town of Melcombe observes an annual custom, the roots and meaning of which are lost in the mists of time. A torchlit procession to the ancient tomb of Cairndale Knapp, overlooking the town, puts the old sun to bed and greets the new sun in the morning, restoring balance to the year. This year, however, Mr Sam Notice has bought the Knapp and has set about landscaping it.

Upon inheriting the Moonstone, a huge and priceless diamond, Rachel Verinder's delight turns to dismay when the gem suddenly disappears. But this is no ordinary theft. Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard is called in and immediately suspects an intricate plot. However, not even his powers of detection can penetrate fully the mysteries surrounding the diamond.

The collected BBC dramatisations of the fiction of Virginia Woolf, with star casts including Kristin Scott-Thomas, Vanessa Redgrave, Juliet Stevenson, Laura Fraser, Robert Glenister and Fenella Woolgar....

Written as a "report into the circumstances surrounding the decision to introduce salmon into the Yemen", this is a novel that is made up of e-mails, letters, diary extracts, records of the prime minister's Question Time, interviews, and chapters from the memoirs of a fantastically weaselly Peter Mandelson-type figure.

London, 1841. Two hundred Englishwomen file aboard the Rajah, the ship that will take them on a three-month voyage to the other side of the world. They're daughters, sisters, mothers - and convicts. Transported for petty crimes. Except one of their number is a secret killer, fleeing justice.

Pat Simms is reeling from her own role in her abusive husband's death, and the new freedom before her is daunting. Sarah Collingborne is struggling with the absence of her husband, who is stranded in a POW camp abroad, and trying her best to fill his treasured place in the village. Meanwhile, Teresa Lucas is anxious about her future as a parent, and her friend Alison Scotlock is on the verge of starting a new relationship. And Miriam Brindsley's good luck might be about to change.

In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a 10-month voyage around the British Empire with her husband as part of a trade mission to promote the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition. Leaving her two-year-old daughter behind with her sister, Agatha set sail at the end of January and did not return until December, but she kept up a detailed weekly correspondence with her mother, describing in detail the exotic places and people she encountered as the mission travelled through South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Canada.

Rachel has always loved being at the centre of her large family. She has fiercely devoted herself to her three sons all their lives,and continues to do so even now they are all grown up. They are, of course, devoted to her – she and Anthony, their father, hold the family together at their big, beautiful, ramshackle house near the wide, bird-haunted coast of Suffolk. But when Luke, her youngest, gets married, Rachel finds that control is slipping away.

What if punk heroes The Adverts had played a gig in Camberley in 1977, to an audience of 27 people? And what if, three decades later, someone tried to bring that audience back together for a reunion? That’s the premise of these five linked plays by award-winning screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce, telling the stories of some of those audience members as they look back on that life-changing night. Among the star casts are Doon Mackichan, Pauline Quirke, Siân Reeves, Rosie Cavaliero, Richard Ridings, Danny Webb and Manjinder Virk.

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time on audio. Sitting in front of a fire, Hastings listens as Poirot recounts his greatest failure. When a wealthy French deputy dies, everyone believes it is from natural causes. Poirot is on vacation from the Belgian police when a young lady comes to him convinced the man was poisoned. She creates a guise for him to enter the house as a journalist to investigate....

The year is 1785, and Thomas Peach, a gentleman of modest means, moves to a small village in the West Country, bringing with him a steamer chest of clothes, some books - and, apparently, his wife, Mrs Peach, who quickly becomes a source of fascination and suspicion to the villagers. Why is she never seen abroad? Why does Mr Peach refuse entry to her bedroom to their maidservant, who is unable to detect even a whisper of breath at Mrs Peach's door, try as she might? Does Mrs Peach even exist? And if so, is she the victim of her husband's cruelty?

At just ten years old, Fanny Price is sent from her poor Portsmouth home to live with the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the vast grandeur of Mansfield Park. Timid and fragile, Fanny is neglected by the indolent Lady Bertram, belittled by her conceited cousins Maria and Julia, and constantly reminded of her lowly status by her ever-critical Aunt Norris. Her only comfort is the kindness and attention shown by her cousin Edmund, and her sole strength the sense of her own moral integrity. But this strength is tested when the alluring Henry and Mary Crawford arrive.

The second gripping novel from the author of The CoronerTwo young British students, Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan vanish without a trace. The police tell their parents that the boys had been under surveillance, that it was likely they left the country to pursue their dangerous new ideals. Seven years later, Nazim’s grief-stricken mother is still unconvinced. Jenny Cooper is her last hope.Jenny is finally beginning to settle into her role as Coroner for the Severn Valley;

I know what my husband would say: that I have too much time on my hands; that I need to keep myself busy. That I need to take my medication. Empty nest syndrome, he tells his friends at the pub, his mother. He's always said I have a vivid imagination. Marta and Hector have been married for a long time – so long that she finds it difficult to remember her life before him. He has always taken care of her, and she has always done everything she can to be a good wife.

The Essential Classics: Volume 4 brings together 5 of the greatest classics ever written, perfectly read by an esteemed cast including Fenella Woolgar, Jonathan Keeble, Lucy Scott, David Rintoul, and Aidan Kelly. Spanning British, Russian, and Irish literature, this collection includes stories of modern Irish life in Dubliners, love and loss on an epic scale in War & Peace, as well as Dickens' tale of heroism in Nichols Nickleby, and many more.

I’m a Coroner. I spend my life laying things to rest . . . When lawyer, Jenny Cooper, is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she’s hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce, but the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets and a trail of buried evidence. Could the tragic death in custody of a young boy be linked to the apparent suicide of a teenage prostitute and the fate of Marshall himself? Jenny’s curiosity is aroused.

Across the sea in England, Thomas Peach lives in quiet retirement. Some call him a magician, others a madman. But when his friend the poetess Arabella Farthingay falls prey to a sinister seducer, Mr Peach's fading powers are called on once more. He follows her to France - and into a world where reason contends with terror, brotherhood with bloodshed, and the last remnants of faith with the oldest enemy of them all...