Showing results by narrator "Alix Dunmore" in All Categories

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Debutante of the year. Able politician. Femme fatale. Just some of the many labels attached to the irrepressible, controversial Raine Spencer: Countess, socialite and stepmother to Diana, Princess of Wales. But who was the real Raine? What was hidden behind the immaculately manicured public façade and her overwhelmingly negative tabloid image? From her childhood days as daughter of romantic novelist powerhouse, Barbara Cartland, to Westminster councillor and wife of Earl Spencer, Three Times a Countess recounts Raine's compelling and glamorous life.

In 1603 England was on the edge of crisis. Queen Elizabeth I had died, bringing the Tudor line to an end. Enter King James, who reached London after an unprecedented procession from Scotland. James established a new dynasty on the English throne and the first ‘united’ kingdom of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales was born. The Stuarts had arrived. But first, this new ‘Great Britain’ had to play catch up. England was behind, but James’s global ambitions began to shift the tide.

Margaret Tudor, the elder sister of her more famous brother Henry VIII, is the single most important Tudor figure of this era that historians have consistently overlooked. Married at thirteen to the charismatic James IV of Scotland, a man more than twice her age, she would learn the skills of statecraft that would enable her to survive his early death, and to construct a powerful position in her adopted country of Scotland as she dealt with domestic issues as well as navigating international relations with England and France.

Hotshot lawyer Rebecca Madison is dreading the annual family Thanksgiving break where the question on everyone’s lips will be ‘why are you still single?’. When it comes to her career, she’s the best of the best, hired for her take-no-prisoners approach and sharp instincts. But when it comes to her love life…well, she hasn’t found the loophole for happy ever after yet. So when she has a one night stand with a gorgeous stranger she meets in a bar, Becca decides to do what she does best: make a deal with Mr One Night to be her Mr Right (just for the holidays).

In a bold and magisterial work of immense scope, Josephine Quinn argues that the real story of the West is much bigger than this established paradigm leads us to believe. So much of our shared history has been lost, drowned out by the concept – developed in the Victorian era – of separate ‘civilisations’. Moving from the Bronze Age to the Age of Exploration, How the World Made the West reveals a new narrative: one that traces the millennia of global encounters and exchange that built what is now called the West, as societies met, tangled and sometimes grew apart.

Our brains stay active for 10 minutes after our heart stops beating. For Leila, each minute brings with it a new memory: growing up with her father and his wives in a grand old house in a quiet Turkish town; watching the women gossip and wax their legs while the men went to mosque; sneaking cigarettes and Western magazines on her way home from school; running away to Istanbul to escape an unwelcome marriage; falling in love with a student who seeks shelter from a riot in the brothel where she works.

It was easy for Elizabeth. She married the man she loved, bore him two children and made a home for him which was the envy of their friends. It was harder for Ruth. She married Elizabeth’s son and then found that, somehow, she could never quite measure up. Isolation, deceit and betrayal fill the gaps between the two individual women and between their different worlds. In this complex thriller, Philippa Gregory deploys all her insight into what women want and what women fear, as Ruth confronts the shifting borders of her own sanity.

One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I need to have an abortion', she announces. She is 19 years old and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life. Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse, all the Kaznci men die in their early 40s, so it is a house of women, among them Asya's beautiful, rebellious mother Zeliha, who runs a tattoo parlour; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as clairvoyant; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster.

It’s 1916 and, as war rages in Europe, Gráinne leaves her job in a department store to join Countess Markiewicz’s revolutionary efforts. It is a decision which will change her life forever. A rebellion is brewing, and as Dublin’s streets become a battleground, Gráinne soon discovers the personal cost of fighting for what you believe in. Decades on, student Nicky is recovering from a break-up when a research project leads her to her great-grandmother’s experiences in revolutionary Ireland.

Steven is one unlucky closeted sixth former. Whenever he has a strong emotion, be that happiness or sadness, weird things happen. Like, potentially dangerous things. Recently, he kissed another boy for the first time and...the boy's head literally exploded. Steven flees to the miserable town of Grunsby-on-Sea, determined not to hurt anyone else with his "Emomancy". With a best friend as determined as Freya, it is impossible to stay hidden for long though, especially when she realises Steven might be in danger after a mysterious organisation called DEMA start asking questions about him.

Wry, compassionate and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively's stories gets beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience. In intimate stories of growing up and growing old, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled in history, and small acts ripple through the generations. From new and never-before-published stories to forgotten treasures, Metamorphosis showcases the very best from a literary master.

In Threads of Empire, Dorothy Armstrong tells the histories of some of the world's most fascinating carpets, exploring how these textiles came into being then were transformed as they moved across geography and time in the slipstream of the great. She shows why the world's powerful were drawn to them, but also asks what was happening in the weavers' lives, and how they were affected by events in the world outside their tent, village or workshop.

The bride is marrying the love of her life, but is he really the person she thinks he is? The chief bridesmaid is keeping a secret that could destroy her best friend. The mother of the bride is surprised by the appearance of her first love… When a family gather together for a wedding on the Amalfi coast, it sets the scene for scandal, secrets and sizzle under an Italian sun.

Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe were philosophy students at Oxford during the Second World War when most male undergraduates (and many tutors) were conscripted. Taught by refugee scholars, women and conscientious objectors, the four friends developed a philosophy that could respond to the war's darkest revelations.

Paris, 1940. A woman in a red hat and a black fur coat hurries down a side-street. She is Mathilde Carré, codenamed 'the cat', known as Agent Victoire. She is a charismatic spy; her story is one of resistance and survival. These are the darkest days for France, half occupied by Nazi Germany, half run by the collaborationist Vichy regime; and dark days for Britain - isolated and under threat of invasion.

When Hannah's family flee from the Nazis to Amsterdam, she soon strikes up a friendship with a girl just like her freshly arrived from Germany. Precocious and outspoken, the girl's name is Anne Frank and for seven blissful years the inseparable pair navigate school, boys and coming of age.

In traditional Japanese culture, people eat, sleep and wear the seasons, from kimono motifs to petal-shaped sweets, and festivals dedicated to nature’s spectacular displays. This mindful celebration of nature leads to a deep awareness of the seasons, called kisetsukan. This audiobook reveals the hidden depths of kisetsukan, and how its concepts can transform your life.

Charlotte and Perry long for summers at Cliff View, their gorgeous holiday home overlooking the turquoise waters of Pine Ridge. And now that city friends Amy and Linus have bought a property nearby, they plan lazy weeks of sun, sea and sipping rosé on Charlotte’s summerhouse veranda. A rising tide of resentment towards second-home owners is heading their way and small acts of criminal damage are escalating into something more menacing. By the end of the summer, families and friendships will be torn apart and Pine Ridge will be known for more than its sun-drenched beaches.

A short feminist polemic that argues that the afterlife of the witch hunts continues today: the same reasons for which women were demonized in the past—being single, ageing, deciding to not have children—lead to them be persecuted now.