Showing results by narrator "Alix" in All Categories

A summer holiday with her eccentric, infuriating family and assorted glamorous hangers-on is the last thing Tash French would usually volunteer for. But her mother is insistent and, out of a job and recently ditched by her boyfriend, Tash decides that spending July in the vast rambling Loire chateau might have its compensations. It's a summer of lust, bed-hopping, unresolved sexual tension, horses, dogs, bolshy kids and lots of bad behaviour. And in the midst of bedlam, at least two people fall in love.

Count Zero is a rustbelt data-hustler totally unprepared for what comes his way when the designer's defection triggers war in cyberspace. With voodoo gods in the Net and angels in the software, he can only hope that the megacorps and the super-rich have their virtual hands too full to notice the amateur hacker with the black market kit trying desperately to stay alive....

Sophie has become the figure within the family who is the comforter to its members and a reassuring and inspiring presence for the country. She is a modern woman and yet a throwback to happier Royal times. She is now the 'glue that binds'. During some of the darkest days of the Royal Family...

Brought to you by Penguin. From Booker-shortlisted author Elif Shafak, comes a powerful tale of faith, love and friendship set across Istanbul and Oxford Shirin, Peri and Mona, they were the most unlikely of friends. They were the Sinner, the Believer and the Confused. On a spring evening in...

Brought to you by Penguin. They knew they were changing history. They didn’t know they would change each other. 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...

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.

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.

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.

'A thought-provoking, discursive survey by Mona Chollet, a bright light of Francophone feminism' – The New York Times 'Rousing . . . a very interesting take on contemporary feminist politics' – Irish Times A source of terror, a misogynistic image of woman inherited from the trials and the...

Brought to you by Penguin. A gripping and beautiful novel from Elif Shafak, Booker-shortlisted author of The Island of Missing Trees and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World One rainy afternoon in Istanbul a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I want an abortion,' she announces. She is...

In present-day New York City, an Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions. As ill-fated decisions stack up, jeopardising the nameless narrator's marriage and mental health, she takes a spontaneous trip to reunite with her mother in Albania, where her life in the United States is put into stark relief.

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.

Brought to you by Penguin. SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But...

Brought to you by Penguin. Narrated by a full cast, featuring Juliet Stevenson. THE NAIL-BITING NEW THRILLER FROM THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER When Imogen is told she’s inherited a country house near Bath, she thinks it must be a mistake. She last saw its owner, reclusive artist...

A gripping, twisty bestseller, longlisted for the 2025 Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year Award and a Richard & Judy Book Club pick Shortlisted for the 2025 New York Festivals Awards – Audiobooks Ensemble 'Riveting' THE TIMES ‘A stylish, sun-soaked thriller… Our Holiday is destined to...

An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make-up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But while the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his 'Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality. Intertwined with the story of a bizarre freak-show organised in Istanbul in the 1880s, The Gaze is a humorous and carnivalesque exploration of what it means to look and be looked at.

Does your business feel stuck? Does growth and innovation feel unattainable? It may not be the fault of your business or your team. A combination of company culture, innovation process, misguided expectations, or an unrealistic approach to growth could be the culprit. Innovating to drive growth is not easy, regardless of where a company is in its life cycle. It is not impossible, but it can certainly be made easier by acquiring disruption. This can transform the trajectory of a company faster. Sometimes you need to innovate your business model and do something dramatic to catalyze growth!

'My mother died twice. I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten.' And so begins the story of Esma, a young Kurdish woman in London trying to come to terms with the terrible murder her brother has committed. Esma tells the story of her family stretching back three generations; back to her grandmother and the births of her mother and aunt, twin sisters, in a village on the edge of the Euphrates.

Brought to you by Penguin. This is the story of three women - one an orphan and refugee who finds a place in the studio of a famous French artist, the other a wife and mother who has stood by her husband for nearly forty years. The third is his daughter, caught in the crossfire between her...

A family from two nations, England and Greece, live a simple life on a tiny Greek island: Irini, Tasso and their daughter, sweet Chara, whose name means joy. Their life goes up in flames in a single day when one man starts a fire out of greed and indifference. Many are killed, homes are destroyed, and the island's natural beauty wiped out. In the wake of the fire, Chara bears deep scars across her back and arms. Tasso is frozen in trauma, devastated that he wasn't there when his family most needed him. And Irini is crippled by guilt at her part in the fate of the man who started the fire.