Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall is an Edwardian history book for younger listeners (aged six to 12) that tells the story of England, concluding with the reign of Queen Victoria. Antonia Fraser and many other current historians declare that it was this book that opened the delights of history for them. It fell from fashion in the 1960s, but its recent re-release in hardback has seen it become a publishing surprise in the UK, with sales of some 75,000 copies in a few months.

Recently divorced, Jay Morton returns to her hometown and secures a job helping to set up a museum at the sinister-looking Pendle House, now derelict and overgrown. While searching for artefacts in the attics, Jay stumbles across some extraordinary original masks and is intrigued by their malevolent and threatening eyes…Those very eyes haunt Donna in her nightmares

Wish I was Here features tales of passion and jealousy, lust and romance from the award-winning author of Red Dust Road. This fierce, funny, and compassionate collection explores every facet of that most overwhelming and complicated of human emotions: love. With winning directness, Jackie Kay captures her characters' greatest joys and greatest vulnerabilities, exposing the moments of tenderness, of shock, of bravery, and of stupidity that accompany the search for love, the discovery of love and, most of all, love's loss.

This is a book about memories, love, sex and the power of the imagination to see us through the most difficult times. The women of Reality, Reality are mesmerising, whether in love or in solitude. Jackie Kay’s newest and most luminous of collections is full of compassion, generosity, sorrow, and joy. In 15 extraordinary stories, she celebrates the richness and power of dream-life to inspire, to repair, and to make real.

Farah Jafari needed sanctuary, but now she is dead. A man is in custody and soon the case will be closed. DC Tina Barraclough works with refugees like Farah and the man under arrest and she knows there is something wrong with the official version. She is off the case, but needs to find out what really happened. What price is she prepared to pay?

James Markham's family are shocked when he jilts his fiancée for a woman he met only days earlier and about whom he appears to know very little. When they meet Abigail they are swayed by her beauty and charm, but puzzled by the aura of mystery that surrounds her.

Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall is an Edwardian history book for younger listeners (age six to 12) that tells the story of England, concluding with the reign of Queen Victoria. Having released it unabridged in three volumes, Naxos AudioBooks now offers an attractive collection of the main stories and personalities. This skilful abridgement nevertheless maintains the narrative of British history, from the arrival of Julius Caesar to the height of the British Empire and the long reign of Queen Victoria.

Name: Sally Marshall Status: single mother Age: 32 Nationality: ten years in France, yet still English through and through I like: living in Paris, playing with my daughter Lila (four years old), the company of good friends, the smell of baking bread...So reads Sally’s ad, posted on a French online dating site called Rendez-Vous. Sally left Nicolas, her French boyfriend of ten years and Lila’s father, after she discovered that he was having an affair with his secretary.

This text centers around the purchase of an ancient amulet that can grant a family's heart's desire - the return of their parents - but which first sets them on a journey through time to ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Atlantis. Anna Bentinck's engaging reading captures the excitement and tension of the text.

Aria Rose, youngest scion of one of Mystic City's two ruling rival families, finds herself betrothed to Thomas Foster, the son of her parents' sworn enemies. The union of the two will end the generations-long political feud - and unite all those living in the Aeries, the privileged upper reaches of the city, against the banished mystics who dwell below in the Depths. But Aria doesn't remember falling in love with Thomas; in fact, she wakes one day with huge gaps in her memory. And she can't conceive why her parents would have agreed to unite with the Fosters in the first place.

Anna's family hope that a South African safari holiday will help her to get over her beloved husband's death. No one is more surprised than Anna herself when she finds herself strongly attracted to a fellow traveller, Lewis Masters, and despite her initial resistance, she is soon drawn into a new relationship. But back home, Anna's journalist son Jonathan is being repeatedly contacted by a young woman asking for his help, even though she's too frightened to say what is worrying her....

After the sudden death of David Bryant, the charismatic owner of a Derbyshire parkland, three people are left to mourn him in very different ways. Maggie, David's young widow; Louisa, who has harboured an infatuation with David since her youth; and Christopher, David'' eccentric teenage son from an earlier marriage. In the aftermath of disaster, they will each face decisions which will define them...

Perhaps England’s greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë’s, they were rather good at that too.

She was a daughter, a wife, a mother. She was my friend. But what secrets did Eloise take to her grave? After her best friend Eloise dies from breast cancer, Cathy is devastated. But then Cathy begins to have disturbing dreams that imply Eloise's death was not all it seems. With a history of depression, Cathy is only just recovering from a nervous breakdown and her husband Chris, a psychiatrist, is acutely aware of his wife's mental frailty.

Set against the rolling backdrop of a century of British history from the First World War to today, this is a family portrait captured in snapshots. First there is William, the factory lad who loses his life in Gallipoli. Then there is his son Billy, a champion cyclist who faces the D-Day Landings on a military bicycle, followed by his crippled son Will, who becomes an Oxford academic in the 1960s. Finally there is his daughter Billie, an artist in contemporary London.

Perhaps England's greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë's, they were rather good at that too.

It's April 1939, and, with their lives in Berlin and Vienna under threat, Esther and Kitty - two very different women - are forced to make the same brutal choice. Flee Europe, or face the ghetto, incarceration, death. Shanghai is a haven - and so they secure passage to the other side of the world. What they find is a city of extremes - wealth, poverty, decadence and disease - and of deep political instability.

The story of Julie D'Aubigny is well known. Her tumultuous childhood, her powerful lovers, her celebrated voice. Connected to most of the nobility of 17th century Paris, feted for her performance, unwilling to live by the rules of her society, she took female lovers, fought duels with noblemen and fled from city to country and back again. But now the real truth can be told. She also made a deal with the devil. He gave her no powers or help, but he kept her alive for only one reason. To take revenge....

Three very different people, connected by a thread of violence...and hope. Kay, recently widowed and coming to terms with life on her own, feels she has hit rock bottom. For years she and her husband fostered difficult children - including Becca, whom trouble follows like a stray puppy. And now Becca seems to be in the worst trouble of her life. A girl has been attacked so savagely she can’t be identified. She’s alive, but only just. Becca, tossed out of university and just let go from her dead-end job, is certain she knows who the victim is. But no one will believe her.

When Sam falls in love with Deptford thug Derek, and Anne’s best friend Kathleen takes her own life, they discover they are linked not just by a world of drugs and revenge - they also share the friendship of the uncanny and enigmatic Deborah. Seamstress, sailor, storyteller and self-proclaimed centenarian immortal, Deborah slowly reveals to Anne and Sam her improbable, fantastical life, a history of hidden Deptford and ultimately the solution to their crises.