Showing results for "Laurie Lee" in Literature & Fiction

Dr. Margaret Richter has it all. She’s rich, thanks to her best-selling self-help books. She has a beautiful home in Cape Cod overlooking the beach. And she has a monthly book club that everyone is dying to get invited to. Literally. Because behind the crystal wine glasses, the fine linens and the catered hors d'oeuvres lies a tangled web of secrets, of deceit, of murder. No member of the book club is innocent—and many are guilty. And the person with the most to hide is Margaret Richter herself.

Read by Juliet Stevenson and Simon Callow, A Literary Christmas is a seasonal anthology that collects together poems, short stories, and prose extracts by some of the greatest poets and writers in the English language. Like Charles Dickens’ ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, they are representative of times old and new - from John Donne’s Elizabethan hymn over the baby Jesus to Rudyard Kipling’s "Christmas in India", from Thomas Tusser counting the cost of a Tudor feast to Laurie Lee’s "Cider with Rosie".

Two years ago, I chose him over me. Just because I was stuck in this small town, living a small-town life, didn't mean he had to be stuck, too. He had so much talent, and he was destined to do big things, but I knew he'd never leave without me. Not unless I made him. I knew it would break his heart, but it was the price I'd have to pay for his freedom.

Everyone loves a bedtime story. And here are eight of the best from BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, each with a Christmas theme, written by an array of literature's best-known names. They include Laurie Lee, Charles Dickens, and Hans Christian Andersen - just some of the storytellers included in this collection.

Avery Kingwood’s marriage crashed and burned…on his honeymoon. After he finds out his wife Cassie’s devastating truth, she forces him to sign a separation agreement — one that's more like a gag order. Unable to say what happened to his marriage, Cassie expertly manipulates Avery’s entire family against him. Tucked away on the opposite end of the country from his wife and family, Avery finds something that gives his life renewed meaning and hope: Sheila Beller. Perfect, well-respected, charming — and untouchable.

The terrorized children of Governor's Road grew up without resolution or closure to the most devastating event of their young lives. Their friend, a child their age, disappeared one afternoon and somehow, they never seem to learn what happened. Saddened parents decide to protect their children, and the obvious fear recedes in the face of the calm that settles back over the neighborhood. But, fear never really disappears until it's confronted.

Despite their 12-year age difference, and all his efforts to forget her, green-eyed Lily Beller has imprisoned Dr. Darren Mansfield’s heart for the last five years. He left his father’s medical practice to avoid the too-young temptation, but now she’s inexplicably working at the same hospital as him.

What Alex, illegitimate daughter of an alcoholic novelist and an artist, has always wanted is family. At 15, she falls in love with a 27-year-old photographer, whom she will leave when she comes under the spell of Ted Neal, a charismatic activist on his way to Mississippi for 1964’s Freedom Summer. That fall, Ted organizes a collective that turns to the growing antiwar movement.