Showing results by narrator "Christine Rendel" in All Categories

Pursuing the family name as the finest silk producer in Lyon, the young Huguenot Rachelle Dushane-Macquinet is thrilled to accompany her famous couturier Grandmere to Paris, there to create a silk trousseau for the Royal Princess Marguerite Valois.The Court is magnificent; its regent, Catherine...

Harding’s Luck tells the exciting story of brave Dickie Harding, a little disabled boy and his many adventures. One day, Dickie accidentally discovers an old magic that allows him to travel into his own past across 500 years. There he meets Elfrida and Edred Arden (as told in The House of Arden), and together they seek a long-lost treasure. It’s a story of injustice, poverty, deformity, magic, romance, suspense, sacrifice, and eventual triumph over adversity.

Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, Europeans are increasingly airbrushing from history their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But this legacy lives on in some of Europe's most recognizable buildings, from Notre-Dame Cathedral to the Houses of Parliament.

Many people feel completely burnt out but do not understand how this affects their body or what they can do about it. Unfortunately, mainstream medicine has almost nothing to offer the person who wakes up feeling exhausted and unable to cope with the smallest stress. Having helped people for more than twenty years to recover from these illnesses, Jo Dunbar passes on her knowledge and experience in this accessible book.

Kate gave up her dreams of being a painter years ago. But six little words pinned to the bulletin board of her local café could change her path forever. “To be, or not to be …”—printed on an orange card with no explanation—appears one morning. Each day, a new line from a different Shakespeare play is added, sparking curiosity throughout the café. Among the regulars is Bardy, a retired English teacher grappling with writer’s block.

It was the turning point before he became a bestselling author: Hans Fallada handed himself in to the police in September 1925, following repeated cases of embezzlement to finance his alcohol and morphine addiction. At the time, a court-appointed doctor was assigned to assess the extent to which Fallada could be made accountable. This expert opinion, thought to have been lost, was only recently rediscovered. It is an extraordinary find, because it includes unpublished and rewritten stories by Fallada that focus on hitherto taboo topics such as abortion.

Rose Fleming has been presumed dead for the last decade. It required leaving everything-and everyone-she loved behind, including MacAllister Campbell. But faking her death allowed her to stay safe until the threat posed by a mysterious villain had passed. Believing it's finally safe again, she returns . . . and runs smack into the only man she ever loved. But Rose was wrong and the stalker she escaped years ago still has her in his sights.

Before she became a legend she was just known as Thyra, the unimportant daughter of the English king. She was no fool and knew what her future held for her: marriage or a nunnery. Neither option particularly appealed to her. Then an offer for her hand is made by a mischievous looking lord from across the sea. Despite her family's wishes she refuses to sell herself short. She agrees to marry him but in exchange he must give her a kingdom. After all, if she is going to tie her fate to a stranger, she might as well be a queen.

Thessaloniki lived in a time when Alexander the Great was racing across the known world conquering all in his path. She was his half-sister living the privileged life of a Macedonian Princess. Under the protective eye of Olympias she learned to see everyone as an enemy. Then Alexander perishes. Suddenly, she finds herself thrust forward onto the political stage as those around her struggle for power. In a world, where loyalty is for sale, and words are empty promises, she must find a way to survive—even if that means turning to her enemies.

In this fascinating account, Margarette Lincoln charts the impact of national events on an ever-growing citizenry with its love of pageantry, spectacle, and enterprise. In addition to events at court and in parliament, she evokes the remarkable figures of the period, including Shakespeare, Bacon, Pepys, and Newton, and draws on diaries, letters, and wills to trace the untold stories of ordinary Londoners. Through their eyes, we see how the nation emerged from a turbulent century poised to become a great maritime power with London at its heart—the greatest city of its time.

Emily stood in front of a full length mirror in her well-appointed Camberwell apartment. She turned sideways on and looked over her shoulder before doing the same the other side. “Anna, do you think I could pass for a man?" “Why ever would you want to do that miss?” Anna was never surprised by anything her mistress said, she was always unpredictable and had some very funny notions. “I’m going to dress as a man and pass myself off as a detective in the London police force. I’m never going to get anywhere as a woman”.

The House of Arden is a timeless tale of adventure, fantasy, and mystery for children (and adults) of all ages.

The 12 Pound Look by James M Barrie read by Christine Rendel, a biting comic satire depicting man's overblown pride. It is that day in your career when everything went wrong just when everything seemed to be superlatively right. Harry Sims' preparations to receive a knighthood are disrupted by an unexpected arrival. But who is she? From the author of Peter Pan comes a grown-up comedy with a feminist slant which reveals Barrie's sharp wit and keen sense of social satire.

Uprooted from her beloved Great Western Beach, Emma Smith moves with her family from Newquay to the Devonshire village of Crapstone. But the dust has hardly settled when tragedy strikes, and Emma’s father, a DSO-decorated hero of the Great War, is so frustrated by the hardship of life as a lowly bank clerk and by his thwarted artistic ambitions that he suffers a catastrophic breakdown - from which disaster Emma's resourceful mother rallies courageously. Then, in 1939, the war again becomes a reality.

A historical and romantic adventure woven around the story of Florence Nightingale.Gervase Howard is in her mid-teens when her working-class mother dies and she must go to live with relatives in service to a wealthy, noble family, outside of London. While learning various jobs, she is drawn to...

Parenting for a Digital Future moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change.

In the spring of 1916, we meet orphaned sister and brother Jay and Kew Martin in London. Jay (real name Jane Elizabeth) has run away from her strange, claustrophobic, interfering, well-heeled family to the simplicities of the Brown Borough (otherwise Hackney), to live amongst its working-class people, to a job as a bus conductor, and to discover her own wild self. Kew is on recuperative leave from the War, and manages to find Jay in her humble new abode. She begs him to preserve her newfound freedom and not reveal her whereabouts to their family.

A Romance of Wastdale, published in 1895, is a novel by the British writer A.E.W Mason. In 1921, it was turned into a film of the same name directed by Maurice Elvey and made by Stoll Pictures, Britain’s biggest studio of the silent era. The novel is set in the scenic area of Wastdale, Cumbria, situated in the Lake District National Park and surrounded by some of England’s highest mountains. Wastdale Head has been a starting point for walks and climbing trips into the mountains, in this context, this story of mountains, mountaineers, romance, and treachery unfolds.

Here are short stories by the incomparable Virginia Woolf, including the story that was the original basis for the novel Mrs. Dalloway.

Drawing on a vast quantity of unexplored archival materials, Deborah reconstructs the texture of Emily Brontë's days, bringing us closer to one of the greatest and fiercest writers we have, by showing us her creative process and her confidence in her strange art. This book has much to reveal to readers of Wuthering Heights, as we accompany Emily around the wild moorlands she loved so much.