Showing results by narrator "Kristin Atherton" in All Categories

The village of Nether Appleford calls itself ‘England’s Kindest Village’. Overseen by the Kindness Committee, this close-knit community strives to live their lives with kindness at the heart of everything they do. Just Be Kind. It’s as simple as that. But what is kindness? Is it doing something to help someone else? Is it giving up your time to help your community? Or, perhaps it’s something a lot less obvious.

Ten-year-old Ava has swapped city life for mud, wellies and animals on Whistledown Farm while her parents are working abroad. With the arrival of Autumn and as the leaves begins to fall, she rescues a tawny owl called Ruby. As she helps him learn to fly, she soon realises that learning to love means letting go as well.

Letty and Alf are the only English speakers at an Italian class in Rome, where they discover the language that really connects them is dance: Letty’s first love was ballet, while Alf was a junior ballroom champion. They come from different worlds, until the moment they waltz around the Piazza Navona, and everything changes. But one moment can’t change the past, and it’s clear that Alf and Letty still have their secrets. When the unthinkable happens, Letty returns to London and Alf to Blackpool. Will they spend their lives apart or discover a future together?

For Ruth, a new mother recovering from postpartum psychosis, every day is difficult and, after months spent hearing voices in the walls and trusting no one, she’s no longer confident in her own judgement. Neither, it seems, is anyone else. So, when she hears a scream from the local petrol station one night, she initially decides it must be her mind playing tricks again.

Berlin, 1926. After the death of their parents, sisters Leni and Annette only have each other. Dreaming of better days, but desperate, Leni finds work at a notorious cabaret: the Babylon Circus. From the dancer’s barely-there costumes, to the glimmering mirrors that cover the walls, the Babylon Circus is a place where reality and fantasy merge. For Leni, it’s an overwhelming new world, and she’s happiest hiding in the shadows. Until she meets the cabaret’s resident pianist, Paul…

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Since that day, prize-winning independent journalist Katerina Gordeeva has travelled to refugee centres across Europe to record the human voice and cost of war. Take My Grief Away reveals twenty-four raw, heartbreaking first-person accounts from people united in grief and their first-hand experiences of the brutality and senselessness of war. These twenty-four voices will transform what you think you know about war, grief and human nature.

Joey and Harry do NOT like each other. Stuck together on a school trip to a museum, things couldn’t get any worse, until they meet some incorrigble monsters! The monsters are on a field trip of their own, bringing BAD LUCK to the human world. Quickly, they decide to take the children back to where they’ve come from and feed them to their king. But what exactly lies ahead for Joey and Harry at the Ministry of Mischief? Will they make it back home in time for tea? Or will they be stuck with these misbehaving monsters forever?

Josef was an illegitimate child, a charity case from Salzburg, schooled by a benefactor. He was drafted to fight in the Second World War while still at school and sent to Russia, returning with only one leg. He married his nurse, and brought his family to the high, idyllic slopes of the Austrian Alps, where he took a position as manager of a home for injured soldiers, a strangely suspended, deeply isolated place with a remarkable library. He was a man of many mysteries. To his daughter, Monika, none was greater than his obsession with these cloistered, crumbling books.

April Eden is about to have the night of her life. The Vanished Woman, the film she wrote and directed, is up for a raft of major awards. Her leading lady, Essie Lay, is on the cusp of a stunning comeback after the disturbing scandal that ended her small-screen career a year before. When Essie messages April to say she can’t face the ceremony, April presumes nerves and goes to her Hampstead mansion to persuade her to attend. Instead, April finds Essie dead in her swimming pool. In that moment, April makes an agonising decision.

We know heartbreaks are inevitable. We also know that somehow it is within our power to break free of the suffering and transform pain into meaning. Yet, somewhere between the sad songs, the late-night fixations, and the social media stalking, we get lost. Alice Haddon, psychologist, and Ruth Field, self-help author, show us how we can dissect heartbreaks, mine them for strength and live our most empowered life. They also examine how society sets up women to fall into love traps and engage bad habits of self-sacrificing and enabling. With Alice and Ruth’s help, those patterns end forever.

Agnes Grey was written not only as a beautifully lyrical novel, but an exposé of the frequently isolated, stagnant, and emotionally starved conditions under which many governesses worked in the mid-nineteenth century. A deeply personal novel written from the author’s own experience, Agnes Grey has a power and poignancy which mark it out as a landmark work of literature dealing with the social and moral evolution of English society during the last century.

The Complete Katherine Mansfield Collection contains the five volumes of short stories written by Mansfield between 1911 and 1924 which established her as one of the best short story writers of her generation, as-well as the only novel she ever penned: The Aloe. Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a New Zealand-born English writer, famous for her expertly observed short stories. She had a great influence on the development of the short story as a form of literature.

After a heart attack, Mathias Taillefer wakes up in hospital with a stranger at his bedside. The mysterious girl reveals herself to be Louise Collange, a volunteer who has come to play the cello for patients. When she finds out Mathias is a cop, she asks him to take charge of a very special case. Her mother, a former ballerina at the Paris Opera Ballet, died last year after falling from her balcony, and Louise has a hunch she was pushed. Though hesitant at first, Mathias agrees to help her, sending them both headfirst into a deadly chain of events.

It's summer at Whistledown Farm and there's plenty for Ava to do – from helping to shear the sheep to bailing the hay. But then she meets a litter of border collie pups and suddenly the sunny days get a lot more complicated . . .

The Complete Charlotte Brontë Collection includes Brontë's 4 finished novels and a selection of her poetry. Read by an incredible cast comprising of Rachel Atkins; Ben Allen; Kristin Atherton; and Emma Gregory, this collection is the perfect opportunity to delve beyond Jane Eyre and discover Charlotte Brontë's complete writings.

Hannah's family farm is in trouble again as their landlord threatens to evict them all. As homelessness looms, Hannah resolves to raise the money to buy the farm and secure the family's future once and for all. But how are a bunch of schoolkids going to raise two million pounds in six months...?

When young child Kimberley Painter vanishes, her disappearance shakes her tight-knit community to the core. Thirty years later, when her body is found in the woodlands next to a manor house, WPC Alessandra Cano must investigate what happened to Kimberly all those years ago. However, as Alessa immerses herself in the historic case, she's besieged by eerie signs and messages, becoming convinced that Kimberley's restless spirit is reaching out from beyond.

Relocated to a coastal town, widowed teacher Sarah Grey is slowly rebuilding her life, along with her young son Alfie. But after an inadvertent séance one drunken night, her world is shaken when she starts to experience frightening visions. She tries to explain them away. But Alfie sees them too and Sarah believes that they have become the targets of a haunting attack.

Nora is done with dating, but still dreams of finding the one. So when a handsome stranger comes to her rescue one night and vanishes leaving only a business card, it's like a scene out of a movie... It doesn't take long for the two to 'bump' into each other again, and Nora falls for the perfect-on-paper Gabe. Only a few weeks later, he invites her to Sicily, and she cannot believe her luck!

Hedgerows, moors, meadows and woods - these hold a veritable feast for the forager. In this hugely informative and witty handbook, John Wright reveals how to spot the free and delicious pickings to be found in the British countryside, and how to prepare and cook them.