Showing results by narrator "Adjoa Andoh" in All Categories

Wayward daughters. Missing husbands. Philandering partners. Curious con men. If you've got a problem, and no one else can help you, then pay a visit to Mma Ramotswe, Botswana's only female private detective. Her methods may not be conventional, and her manner not exactly Miss Marple's, but she's got warmth, wit, and canny intuition on her side - not to mention Mr J.L.B. Maketoni, the charming proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

A gripping new recording of Philip Pullman's nerve-shattering thriller, set in the murky streets and opium dens of Old London. When 16-year-old Sally's father drowns in suspicious circumstances, she is left to fend for herself in Victorian London. Although she doesn't know it, she is already in terrible danger.

14-year-old Adunni has a dream: to be educated. But her father needs her bride-price, so sells his daughter to an older man, who demands she give him the fine boy-children his first two wives have failed to produce. When things go tragically wrong, Adunni flees to Lagos. It's what she has always wanted, to leave Ikati and see the world, and though her heart is full of sorrow for her lost family and the shame she has left behind, still Adunni will not be quiet and do as she's told.

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan and a list. After almost - but not quite - dying, she's come up with a list of directives to help her 'Get a Life'. But it's not easy being bad, even when you've written out step-by-step guidelines. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job: Redford 'Red' Morgan. With tattoos and a motorbike, Red is the perfect helper in her mission to rebel, but as they spend more time together, Chloe realises there's much more to him than his tough exterior implies.

Born from a long line of female warriors and crusaders, yet too coarse, too wild, too rough-hewn for courtly life, Marie de France is cast from the royal court. Woefully, she is sent to the muddy fields of Angleterre to take up her new duty as the prioress of an impoverished abbey. The abbey is a dreadful place: its inhabitants are on the brink of starvation, beset by disease, stoic and stern, yet plagued with an unholy tendency to gossip. Marie cannot help but pine for the decadence and comfort of France, her secret lover Cecily, her queen Eleanor and the court that had spited her.

If you are the founder and managing director of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, you may expect complete strangers to approach you with their problems when they see you having dinner with your husband in a peri-peri restaurant. And if you are Precious Ramotswe, you are a kind and helpful person who will be willing to take on a quest to find the relatives of a man who, many years ago, left the country for the uncertainties and dangers of a distant conflict.

Precious Ramotswe, that cheerful Botswanan private investigator of 'traditional build', is now married to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. The Agency is busy, but Mma Ramotswe cannot ignore the plea made by a woman who comes to her with a tale of particular misfortune. Unfortunately, her attempts to help are interrupted by a close encounter between her tiny white van and a bicycle.

It has never occurred to Precious Ramotswe, as she discusses over cups of bush tea with her associate Mma Makutsi such important matters as the afterlife and the purchase of a fine new bed with a heart-shaped headboard, that there may be disadvantages to being the best-known lady detective in Botswana.

Freema Agyeman, Reggie Yates, Adjoah Andoh and Will Thorp are the readers of these eight original novels featuring the 10th Doctor and Martha, as played on TV by David Tennant and Freema Agyeman. The titles are 'Sting of the Zygons' by Stephen Cole; 'The Last Dodo' by Jacqueline Rayner; 'Wooden Heart' by Martin Day; 'Forever Autumn' by Mark Morris; 'Wetworld' by Mark Michalowski; 'Sick Building' by Paul Magrs; 'The Pirate Loop' by Simon Guerrier; and 'Peacemaker' by James Swallow.

Peregrine Quinn has always loved hearing her godfather Daedalus Bloom's stories about his life as an immortal, but that's all they were - stories. That is, until the portals that connect the Terran Realm with the Cosmic Realm mysteriously shut down and Daedalus, the only one who can fix them, is kidnapped. Peregrine is then swept into a nail-biting adventure, racing through the streets of Oxford, down the riverways of London and into the Under-Underground. She soon realises that not only are the creatures from her godfather's stories real, but they're shooting at her with laser blasters.

Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother, Bailey, are sent to live with their grandmother and uncle in the small Southern town of Stamps in Arkansas. Struggling with rejection, they endure the prejudice of their white neighbours and suffer several racist incidents. One day, their father unexpectedly returns and takes the children to live with their mother in St Louis, Missouri. Aged only eight, Maya is abused by her mother's boyfriend, an experience that haunts her for a lifetime.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is also drawn into the work of the agency when he investigates a case involving an errant husband. But can a man investigate such matters with as much skill as one of the ladies? Mma Ramotswe has her doubts. One thing, though, that she does not doubt is the good nature of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who stands for all that is solid and true in a shifting world.

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi have always relied on the advice of the classic guide to their trade, The Principles of Private Detection. But who is the eminent author, Mr Clovis Andersen, and what if he was to come to Botswana? That seems a very unlikely possibility, and yet… When Mr Andersen visits Botswana on holiday, he is delighted and intrigued to stumble across a roadside sign that reveals the existence of the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Jim Taylor, Sally's oldest friend, is engaged as bodyguard to a princess. But Crown Princess Adelaide of Razkavia is not what you'd expect. She's the slum-girl Jim has been searching for ever since she vanished 10 years ago. Now her life is in mortal danger, and together they must battle against unknown enemies in a country where no one can be trusted.

Following on from the brilliant The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe charts the further adventures of Mma Ramotswe, Botswana's only female private detective. It's going to take all her intuition and eminent sensibility for Mma Ramotswe to crack her hardest case yet: the decade-old disappearance of an American on the edge of the Kalahari.

On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. Here begins the epic story of a small African nation, told by a mysterious swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis. The tale? A playful panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction. The moral? To err is human. In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy.

As Botswana awaits the familiar blessing of the rains and their eternal cycle, upheaval is taking place at the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Not only is Mr J. L. B. Matekoni attempting to reform himself into a modern husband but, following her marriage to Phuti Radiphuti, Mma Makutsi has joyful news.With the arrival of an heir to the Double Comfort furniture empire and Mma Makutsi busy with motherhood, cobras and a senior aunt, Mma Ramotswe must grapple alone with tea-making, detective work and a new uncertainty.

When Mma Potokwane suggests to Mma Ramotswe that she run for a seat on the City Council, Mma Ramotswe is at first unsure. But when she learns about the proposed construction of the flashy Big Fun Hotel next to a graveyard, she allows herself to be persuaded. Her opponent is none other than Violet Sephotho, who is in the pocket of the hotel developers. 

Mende Nazer tells the story of her kidnap, at age 12, from an idyllic life with her family in a village in Sudan, and being sold into slavery. Trafficked to Europe and the London home of a diplomat, Nazer escaped - only to find she had to fight for asylum.

Gertrude Bell was leaning in 100 years before Sheryl Sandberg. One of the great woman adventurers of the 20th century, she turned her back on Victorian society to study at Oxford and travel the world and became the chief architect of British policy in the Middle East after World War I. Mountaineer, archaeologist, Arabist, writer, poet, linguist, and spy, she dedicated her life to championing the Arab cause and was instrumental in drawing the borders that define today's Middle East.