Showing results by narrator "Sian Thomas" in All Categories

Aristotle was an extraordinary thinker, perhaps the greatest in history. Yet he was preoccupied by an ordinary question: how to be happy. His deepest belief was that we can all be happy in a meaningful, sustained way - and he led by example. In this handbook to his timeless teachings, Professor Edith Hall shows how ancient thinking is precisely what we need today, even if you don’t know your Odyssey from your Iliad.

Dylan Thomas was the 20th Century's first rock star author, famed for his dazzling imaginative poetry and chaotic personal life. Best known for Under Milk Wood, he also wrote numerous poems, short stories and screenplays, and made regular BBC broadcasts. A legend in his own lifetime, he remained hugely popular after his death at the age of 39, influencing cultural icons from Bob Dylan to The Beatles....

The man who had died was Ismay's stepfather, Guy. Nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother lives upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy drowned, has disappeared. Ismay works in public relations, and Heather in catering. They get on well. They always have. They never discuss the changes to the house, still less what happened that August day.

Two 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; the ghosts of her past that threatened to topple her, banished to the sidelines once more.

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. Why was Marshall behaving so strangely before he died?

Poet and playwright Federico García Lorca is one of the most famous figures in 20th-century Spanish literature. A member of the 'Generation of '27' avant-garde movement that included Dalí and Buñuel, he became well known for his lyrical, symbolic works mixing modernism and the folkloric traditions of his native Andalusia. He was executed by Nationalist forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War, aged only 38. More than 80 years later, his poetry is revered worldwide and the plays in his 'Rural Trilogy' are widely regarded as masterpieces.

A beautifully wrought and unlikely love story, exploring the power of storytelling. The new audiobook from the acclaimed author of Birds Without Wings and Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a love story at once raw and sweetly funny, wry and heartbreakingly sad. Chris is bored, lonely, trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage. In his forties, he's a stranger to the 1970s youth culture of London, a stranger to himself on the night he invites a hooker into his car.

Kerstin Kvist didn't know what to expect when she took up a job with the Cosway family at their odd, almost grand, house. The family turned out to be even odder than the house: living at home with the widowed Mrs. Cosway were her four daughters and a son who haunted the house. Then, just as Kerstin was getting some inkling of what was going on, a stranger sets the family on a path to self-destruction...

Harriet Goodman, brave, wry and handsome, is determined to triumph no matter what. With a decade of therapy under her belt and a new large inheritance, it seems there is nothing she cannot achieve. When she finds herself in charge of a school full of precocious little girls, rich in everything but care, she vows to make their childhoods amongst the happiest ever spent.

A wonderfully atmospheric collection of stories from one of our most captivating writers, inspired by ghost stories, traditional folk tales and country legends from England and France. These tales are richly populated by spirits and ghosts seeking revenge; by grief-stricken women and haunted men coming to terms with their destiny - all rooted deep in the elemental landscapes of Sussex, Brittany and the Languedoc.

It is the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of the hospital in Iasi, Romania. He is deaf and mute, but a young nurse named Safta recognizes him from the past and brings him paper and pencils so that he might draw. Gradually, memories appear on the page: The man is Augustin, the cook's son at the manor house at Poiana, where Safta was the privileged daughter.

A spirited factory worker on a mission. A nerdy manager with a propensity for puzzles. An unexpected adventure. Charmingly British and off-beat, Miscellaneous 0125 is a story about following your dreams, healing past traumas, and the joy of truly being understood.

England's 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 and the reign of new monarchs William and Mary signified a turning point for Restoration comedy with laws being passed to restrict playwrights' freedoms. The latter years are marked by a shift towards more moral storylines, mixing humour with social and political issues, alongside the lighthearted 'comedy of manners'. The works in this collection bring together these complementary styles, full of humour while also focusing on hard hitting themes.

Georgie Sinclair's husband has left her; her 16-year-old son is busy exploring fundamentalist Christian websites and becoming more distant by the day; and all those overdue articles for Adhesives in the Modern World aren't looking too appealing either.

So when she spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old Jewish émigré neighbour with an eye for a bargain and a fondness for matchmaking, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, it's just the distraction she needs.

Hidden by London’s wealth, energy and need for cheap labour, the city’s immigrant population is powerless, despised and often illegal. So when a young woman’s body is discovered on Hampstead Heath one cold morning, she could be anyone...Rich or poor, outsider or insider, five strangers are connected in undreamed-of ways as greed, courage, murder and kindness link their lives.

Autumn 1928. The Kaiser-i-Hind is en route to Bombay. In Cabin D38, Viva Holloway, an inexperienced chaperone, is beginning to feel as though she's made a mistake. Her advert in The Lady has resulted in three unsettling young charges to be escorted to India. Rose, a beautiful, dangerously naive English girl, is about to be married to the cavalry officer she has met a handful of times. Victoria, her bridesmaid, is determined to lose her virginity en route before finding a husband of her own.

Nicole and Tom's lives are changed overnight by a ten-million-pound lottery win. Before they know it they've moved into a state-of-the-art Glass Barn conversion in the stunning grounds of Lancaut Manor in Gloucestershire. But their dream quickly turns into a nightmare when Tom is found dead in the swimming pool, with a nasty wound on the back of his head. Someone close to home must be responsible. But other than the young couple who live in the Manor, and their housekeeper in the Coach House next door, there's no one around for miles.

Marcus and Doro were part of a left-wing commune from the late 1960s until the early 1990s: lentils, free love, spliffs, radical politics, cheesecloth blouses, sex, housework and cooking rotas, crochet, allotments. Their children have grown up rather different from them: primary schoolteacher Clara craves order and clean bathrooms, son Serge is pretending to his parents that is still doing a Maths Ph.d. at Cambridge, while in fact making loadsamoney in the City; third child Oolie Anna, who has Down's Syndrome, is desperate to escape home and live on her own.

Georgie Sinclair’s husband has walked out and work is getting her down. So when she spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old neighbour, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, it’s just the distraction she needs. And although they mistrust each other at first a firm friendship is formed. Then Mrs Shapiro is admitted to hospital and, to Georgie’s surprise, she is named as her next of kin.

Julia is a child psychologist who every day deals with young girls said to be behaving badly. Some are stealing, some are running away from home, some are terribly untidy, some won’t eat or get out of bed. Julia has a special knack with these girls. She understands which really are troubled, and which are at the mercy of the way they are seen by the adults around them. But one day, Julia’s own troubled past starts to creep into her present.