Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Family Life

Seven stories to span the Christmas holidays: 'A Faraway Smell of Lemon': The school term has ended. It is almost Christmas, but Binny, out last-minute shopping, couldn't feel less like wishing glad tidings to all men. Ducking out of the rain, she finds herself in the sort of shop she would never normally visit. 'The Marriage Manual': Christmas Eve. Two parents endeavour to construct their son's Christmas present from a DIY kit and in the process find themselves deconstructing their marriage.

In 1754, renowned maker of clocks and automata Abel Cloudesley must raise his new-born son Zachary when his wife dies in childbirth. Growing up amongst the cogs and springs of his father's workshop, Zachary is intensely curious, ferociously intelligent, unwittingly funny and always honest—perhaps too honest. But when a fateful accident leaves six-year-old Zachary nearly blinded, Abel is convinced that the safest place for his son is in the care of his eccentric Aunt Frances and her menagerie of weird and wonderful animals.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The House of Hope and Dreams by Trisha Ashley, read by Julia Franklin. When Carey Revell unexpectedly becomes the heir to Mossby, his family’s ancestral home, it’s rather a mixed blessing. The house is large but rundown and comes with a pair of resentful relatives who can’t be asked to leave. Still, newly dumped by his girlfriend and also from his job as a TV interior designer, Carey needs somewhere to lick his wounds. And Mossby would be perfect for a renovation show.

'Ma, I feel exhausted with consuming, with taking and grabbing and using. I am so bloated that I feel I cannot breathe any more. I am leaving to find some air, some place where I shall be able to purge myself, push back against the life given me and make my own. I feel I live in a borrowed house. It’s time to find my own… Forgive me…’ Calcutta, 1967. Unnoticed by his family, Supratik has become dangerously involved in extremist political activism.

A takeaway, TV and tea with two sugars is about as exciting as it gets for 30-something Sophie Stone. Sophie's life is safe and predictable, which is just the way she likes it, thank you very much. But when a mysterious benefactor leaves her an inheritance, Sophie has to accept that change is afoot. There is one big catch: in order to inherit, Sophie must agree to meet the father she has never seen. Saying yes means the chance to build her own dream home, but she'll also have to face the past and hear some uncomfortable truths....

Alice is one of a group of obsessed recreational swimmers for whom their local swimming pool has become the centre of their lives - a place of unexpected kinship, freedom and ritual. Until one day, a crack appears beneath its surface. As cracks also begin to appear in Alice's memory, her husband and daughter are faced with the dilemma of how best to care for her. As Alice clings to the tethers of her past in a home she feels certain is not her home, her daughter must navigate the newly fractured landscape of their relationship.

Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt's protégé, her curious fascination for pond-life fed by his passionate interest in the natural world. Now a zoologist, she can identify organisms under a microscope but seems blind to the tragedy of her own emotional life. She thinks she's outgrown her family, who were once her entire world - but she can't seem to outgrow her childhood or lighten the weight of their mutual past.

The Child in Time opens with a harrowing event. Stephen Lewis,a successful author of children's books, takes his three-year-old daughter on a routine Saturday morning trip to the supermarket. While waiting in line, his attention is distracted and his daughter is kidnapped. Just like that. From there, Lewis spirals into bereavement that has effects on his relationship with his wife, his psyche and time itself.

Daniel's marriage has fractured beyond repair, and Daniel's relationship with his son, Bertie, has been a failure since Bertie was a small boy. But after his brother Archie's death, Daniel is keen for new perspectives. He first travels to Peshawar to bury Archie in the place he loved best and then finds himself in Canada, avoiding his family and friends back in England. But some bonds are hard to break. Daniel and Bertie's different experiences of war, although devastating, also bring with them the opportunity for the two to reconnect.

A husband. A wife. A secret. Behind any great man, there’s always a greater woman. Joe and Joan Castleman are on an aeroplane, 35,000 feet above the ocean. Joe is thinking about the prestigious literary prize he is about to receive, and Joan is plotting how to leave him. For too long Joan has played the role of supportive wife, turning a blind eye to his misdemeanours, subjugating her own talents and quietly being the keystone of his success.

The war in Europe is over, but for Peggy Reilly and the residents of Beach View Boarding House the effects of the conflict are still far-reaching. Cockney evacuee Ivy and her sweetheart, Andy, are saving to get married and fulfil their dream of returning to the East End. But when tragedy strikes, Ivy is faced with a life-changing dilemma that only she can resolve. Rita also faces an impossible choice when her sweetheart, Peter, proposes and asks her to live with him in Australia - just as her widowed father returns from the fighting in Europe.

Little India, East London: Shyama, aged forty-four, has fallen for a younger man. They want a child together. Meanwhile, in a rural village in India, young Mala, trapped in an oppressive marriage, dreams of escape. When Shyama and Mala meet, they help each other realise their dreams. But will fate guarantee them both happiness? Brimming with warmth, wit and indignation, Meera Syal immerses us in a devastating story of friendship, family and the lengths a woman will go to have a child.

Here we are, just living in the first draft of creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart. In this first draft, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira's chest like a portal - to what, she doesn't know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters that strange and dizzying dimension that true loss opens up.

The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age 15 is not always enough to propel someone through life at age 30; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence.

When Funke’s mother dies in a tragic accident in Lagos, she’s sent to live with her maternal family in England. Traumatised by grief and against a backdrop of condescension and mild neglect, conformist Funke strives to fit in, determined to become one of them. Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family, resolved to be nothing like them. Fiercely protective of Funke, she at last has a purpose. And an ally. The two cousins give each other what they need most: love. But the past casts long shadows and the choices made by their mothers haunt Funke and Liv.

Get ready to fall in love with The Pink House - home of the novel from Sunday Times bestselling Queen of Romantic Comedy, Catherine Alliott.

On a summer night in 1985, the lives of three teenagers are shattered by a horrific car crash in which a young woman is killed next to the sprawling oak tree that marks the perimeter of 18 Division Street. For the Wilfs, it will become the deepest kind of family secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken. Secrets preside over the neighborhood along with the majestic oak. As we move through the decades, watching this family change and grow, we see how each of them is haunted by what they choose to ignore.

1620s Lancashire. Away from the village lies a small hamlet, abandoned since the Plague, where only one family dwells amongst its ruins. Young Sarah Haworth, her mother, brother and little sister, Annie, are a family of outcasts by day and the recipients of visitors by night. They are cunning folk: the villagers will always need them, quick with a healing balm or more, should the need arise. They can keep secrets, too, because no one would believe them anyway.

At sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor – is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man – Joe – with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children, now with families and petty dramas the likes of which Paula could only have hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.

A woman's teenage son takes his own life. It is incomprehensible. The woman is a writer, and so she attempts to comprehend her grief in the space she knows best: on the page, as an imagined conversation with the child she has lost. He is as sharp and funny and serious in death as he was in life, and he will speak back to her, unable to offer explanation or solace but not yet, not quite, gone.