Showing results by narrator "Rachel Bavidge" in All Categories

When the West End Gallery in London's fashionable Coal Drops Yard is set alight, the fire service must use the list of paintings lodged with it - a grab list - to snatch the key paintings from the flames. But the list has been altered. It’s the wrong list. Then the ashes reveal another tragedy: an unidentified dead body. Someone who shouldn’t have been in the gallery. Crusading journalist Famie Madden wants to know who it is and why they were there. Soon it becomes apparent that the ashes are hiding much more than they should be - and that this is much more than a casual act of arson…

From genetic engineering to the eternal complications of family, from fear of the future to the cruel world of the English boarding school, Haddon showcases masterfully how we are subject to the same elemental forces that obsessed the Greeks. Whether describing Laika the Soviet space-dog on her fateful orbit, or St Anthony wrestling with loneliness in the desert, his astonishing powers of observation are at their height when illuminating the thin line between human and animal.

Anna grew up in a house that was loving, even if her mum was ‘a little eccentric’. They knew to keep things clean, to stay quiet, and to look the other way when things started to get ‘a bit much for your mum’. It’s only when her mother reaches her 70s and Anna has a family of her own, that the cracks really start to appear. More manic. More irrational. More detached from the world. And when her father, the man who has calmed and cajoled her mother through her entire life is diagnosed with cancer, the whole world turns upside down.

June, 1877: the petite 29-year-old Annie Besant stands motionless before the 75-year-old Judge towering over her in the Palace of Westminster. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn is presiding over the scandalous 'trial of the century' where Annie Besant and her confidante Charles Bradlaugh have been charged with the unforgiveable crime of publishing and selling a guide to birth control. Charged with obscenity, she argued—controversially and outrageously, for the time—that it was a woman's right to be able to choose to have children.

Morecambe and Wise - the most famous and best-loved British comedy double-act of all time. In this unique book, Eric Morecambe's son Gary sheds new light on the comic geniuses who became the nation's best friends. Gary reveals what it was like behind the scenes, with touching and hilarious stories of life in the Morecambe and Wise family homes, along with memories from Eric's wife Joan and his daughter (and Ernie's goddaughter) Gail, who has never written about her father before.

Nicole and André, a retired French couple, take a summer holiday to Russia. It is the 1960s and Russia is a beautiful, complicated place. Their guide is Macha, André's daughter from a previous relationship - a woman they both love. Adventure, inspiration, good food and good vodka are promised. Once thrilled by their romance, Nicole and André have now become too used to each other. Both harbour a growing feeling of not being fully understood - of being alone.

1985: A man runs for his life - exhausted, wounded, hunted remorselessly by a woman assassin known only as The Head Hunter. At the end, he has just enough energy to spit in her face. 2001: Sixteen-year-old Kerry Lumsdon runs across the same terrain. She runs to win and she runs to forget. When a headless body is found in the wastelands of the Seahills Estate, Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt is called in to investigate. Kerry and Lorraine, different ages and from different worlds, come together when Claire Lumsdon, Kerry's sister, is violently kidnapped.

What was mothering like in the past? When acclaimed historian Sarah Knott became pregnant, she asked herself this question. But accounts of motherhood are hard to find. For centuries, historians have concerned themselves with wars, politics and revolutions, not the everyday details of carrying and caring for a baby. These details matter: they shape our feelings and give structure to our hours. But they leave little historical trace. Much to do with becoming a mother, past or present, is lost or forgotten.

From its opening sentences Agnes Grey introduces a heroine who is honest, perceptive and charming. Unfortunately, the Bloomfields, who engage her as a governess, are rather less appealing, and the incarnation of the suppressed cruelties and hypocrisies of the Victorian age. When Agnes moves to a marginally less alarming family, one of her charges sets out to disrupt her only romantic hope. Critical, satirical, direct, and honest, Agnes Grey is a fine reflection of its author.

The frost and fairy lights only remind her it's been a year since she lost the mother who took her in as a baby and raised her. She's never felt more alone - until she discovers her birth mother's identity. And where to find her. A lifetime and thousands of miles have separated Evangeline and Bonnie. Now, travelling to New Zealand could be Evangeline's chance to confront the woman who gave her up. But is she ready for what she'll find there? The answers she's been looking for, a new family to heal her... Or someone she could never have expected?

There's the lost. There's the missing. And there's the taken. She asked me once if we had any secrets, and I shook my head. 'No secrets between us', she said. 'No' I answered. 'Never ever.' In a Durham hotel at dawn, celebrated preacher Tristan Snow is murdered as he prays. None of the other guests - not even his daughter, his wife, or her sister - saw or heard anything. But then again, they each had a motive for murder.

It is the early 1930s, and Europe is holding its breath. As Hitler's grip on power tightens, preparations are being made for the Berlin Olympics.

Prayer and ingenuity have kept the remote English convent of St Winifreda in the Fen going for centuries, but now the roof leaks, the bell tower is crumbling, and rats have moved in. The Bishop’s accountant wants to send the retired sisters to a home, disperse the working nuns, pull down the buildings, and sell the land off as a car park. But he has reckoned without the unstoppable force that is Reverend Mother Elizabeth.

In an empty car park, Ryan James sits in his car contemplating death. He has set up a hose pipe that is pouring carbon monoxide into the car, and his deciding whether or not to close the last window and end it all. Finally, he gets a text and decides to end his life. Detective Martin is called to the scene the next day. At first she is convinced it is a simple suicide but as she looks deeper into the boy's life and his relationships she begins to wonder if someone else was involved. .

A week before Christmas Debbie Stansfield's life falls apart. Her son - her funny, cheeky, kind Richard - has been found hanging from a tree at the Seven Sisters. The police think its suicide but Debbie won't - can't - accept it. Her son would never kill himself. Not her Richard. No way. Richard's four friends know something about his death. Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt can feel it. The teenagers are clearly terrified about something - something that scares them more than the police. But they're not about to tell....

He watches them from afar. He knows who they are and where they are. He is waiting in the dark.... A stranger stalks the streets of Houghton le Spring and he is getting too close for comfort for Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt. Selina, the daughter of Lorraine's partner, DS Luke Daniels, is a beautiful and wilful 16-year-old with a dark past. Just as it seems she's finally getting back on her feet, she's attacked. Is Selina's past catching up with her? Or is there an even more sinister motive to the assault?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) were both regarded as the female poet laureates of their time, and between them their writings spanned almost the entire Victorian age, from the end of Romanticism to the beginnings of Modernism. This selection of their shorter works contains all the major themes that animated them - social justice, faith, love and mortality - and some of the best-loved poetry in English, including "In The Deep Midwinter" and "How Do I Love Thee?"

A young woman walks home by herself, the tapping of her high heels the only sound. At two o' clock in the morning, it's cold, the streets are deserted and she thinks she's all alone. Waiting for her, sleeping soundly in his bed, is her baby son. When he wakes the next morning his mother still isn't back. She's never coming back. Because the streets weren't as deserted as she thought.... Three women are dead and Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt is searching for a serial killer.

Classic Poems for Boys comprises a delightfully varied set of over 20 poems for 5- to 10-year olds. From rousing favorites like Felicia Dorothea Hemans’ "Casabianca" and John Keats’ "A Song About Myself", to dreamy, thoughtful poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Rudyard Kipling, this is a collection to be treasured.

In the final months of 1945, victory ceases to be a distant dream and for Rhoda Harding and many others, a feeling of hope is in the air. Rhoda is hoping for a change. Married to Alec for more than twenty-five years, she now finds herself reluctant to settle into premature middle-age. Both her daughters lead busy, fulfilling lives, whilst Rhoda feels her days are filled with dull routine. Alec is a happy man, content with his family life and successful business.