Showing results by narrator "May Roger" in All Categories

It is September 1940, and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around Epping Forest, the home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons. Duchess has proven to be the most extraordinary of all Susan's birds, as the two share a special bond and an unusual curiosity about the world. Thousands of miles away in Buxton, Maine, a young crop-duster pilot named Ollie Evans has decided to travel to Britain to join the Royal Air Force.

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

Featuring some of Lewis Carroll's most famous and best-loved poems - including "Jabberwocky" (1871) and "The Hunting of the Snark" (1876) as well as lesser-known gems such as "Brother and Sister" and "My Fairy" (1845) - this production wonderfully illustrates Carroll's fondness for impish satire, verbal wizardry, and pure imagination. The selection ranges from pieces written when Carroll was just 13 to his mature work and is read with great character and charm by Roger May.

Blending fact and fiction, this trilogy by a very young Tolstoy centres on the inner life of Nikolai as he navigates the universal challenge of growing up. In relating his thoughts and feelings, his self-awareness and embarrassing mistakes, the work is timeless: regardless of era, location and environment, we are given an unvarnished portrait of one boy—both self-important and self-deprecating—as he tries to find his place in the world. The sense of nostalgia, with its strange blend of sadness and solace, is tangible as the years pass and the child becomes a young man.

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

When the aging Russian Prince Prince K. arrives in the town of Mordasov, Marya Alexandrovna Moskaleva, a doyenne of local society life, takes him under her protection with the aim of engineering his marriage with her 23-year-old daughter Zina. Yet with many rivals for the hands of both parties, events are not guaranteed to run smoothly. A rare foray into comedy by the giant of Russian literature, this tale still possesses all the hallmarks of Dostoevsky's psychological and philosophical writing.

Upon its first publication in 1846, Poor Folk was an immediate critical triumph. Composed entirely of an exchange of letters between a middle-aged copy clerk and a young seamstress who live on opposite sides of a Petersburg tenement courtyard, the novel explores the emotional and psychological effects of a threatening urban environment on the psyches of poor people struggling to survive.

In the village of Iping, a strange man arrives at a local inn wrapped in bandages. He refuses to leave his room where he is carrying out experiments to make himself invisible. The stranger's success has grave implications for everyone. When he realises that he cannot reverse the experiment, he is gradually driven insane.

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

At a dinner party in Richmond, the host tells an astonishing story of his travels into the future, where, at first, it seems that man has moved on to a higher plane of existence - suffering and war seem to have been eliminated. But in fact there are two races living on the Earth: the Eloi, a leisured, decadent, androgynous group; and the Morlocks, an underground tribe of bestial workers.

When it comes to his daughter’s school, Bergerac has a lot to learn. Bergerac’s daughter, Kim, is a reluctant pupil in a liberal Jersey school stuffed with the offspring of jet-setting parents. But there’s trouble in store when the headmaster’s wife is assaulted and a member of staff disappears. Asked to investigate by Hungerford, a school governor, Bergerac uncovers a rich seam of corruption, centred on one of the more notorious of the school’s pupils, and shoots to the top of the class.

The body of a suspected blackmailer poses a problem for Bergerac. The elderly corpse has been discovered on a deserted Jersey beach. While Bergerac investigates the man’s shady past, the mainland is being threatened by a nationwide programme of IRA assassinations. At first the connection is unclear, but as scarlet fever sweeps through Jersey, Bergerac enlists the help of the doctor to uncover the origins of the epidemic.

Picardie, France, 1964, the exclusive Clos du Lac sanitarium: A man is discovered standing in the therapy pool. But he's not there for his health; someone has chained him to the bottom and left him to die very, very slowly. Inspector Lucas Rocco believes it's an unusual and elaborate method of execution. But nobody seems to have heard or seen anything, the staff are resolutely unhelpful - or dead - and ministry officials sent from Paris to 'assist' attempt to impede Rocco's efforts to find answers.

No great composer’s story is more predominantly happy than Haydn’s, though even his has its share of clouds. A classic rags-to-riches tale, it sees him move from humble beginnings through decades as a liveried servant to his emergence as the most popular and successful composer of his time. One of the healthiest and least neurotic artists in musical history, he did more than any other single figure to pioneer the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet - and he was the first truly great practitioner of each.