Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

Lou Clark knows a lot of things. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop, and she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live, and now everything feels small and joyless. What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

He is Dexter Mayhew, tall, dark, and (she can't deny it) handsome. She is Emma Morley, bottled red hair, wilfully badly dressed, all principles and no action. Could this be the dawn of the rest of their lives? Or are Dex and Em living proof that - despite an unlikely beginning - men and women really can be just good friends?

When Tim Whitby checks into a hotel, he’s not intending to check out again – but then he meets Katrina Blake, a woman in need of rescue. When Arkle, Baxter and Trent inherit the family business, they’re not planning on making a go of it – there are quicker ways of getting rich. But when Zoë Boehm agrees to track down the masked men who robbed Harold Sweeney’s jewellery shop, she’s just looking for some cash to pay off the taxman. She’s not expecting to wind up in a coffin.

Since her husband walked out, Louise has made her son her world, supporting them both with her part-time job. But all that changes when she meets...David. Young, successful and charming - Louise cannot believe a man like him would look at her twice let alone be attracted to her. But that all comes to a grinding halt when she meets his wife...Adele. Beautiful, elegant and sweet - Louise's new friend seems perfect in every way.

Belle Hatton has embarked upon an exciting new life far from home: a glamorous job as a nightclub singer in 1930s Burma, with a host of sophisticated new friends and admirers. But Belle is haunted by a mystery from her past - an old newspaper clipping found in her parents' belongings after their death, saying that the Hattons were leaving Rangoon after the disappearance of their baby daughter, Elvira. 

Socially critical and emotionally complex, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is Hardy's masterpiece. It tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, forced by her family's poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy d'Urbervilles. Violated by the son, Alec, her hopes of rebuilding her life with the gentle and bookish Angel Clare founder when he learns of her past.

One summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for 'asylum'. Decades will pass before Holly understands what sort of asylum the woman was seeking.… The Bone Clocks follows Holly's life: not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air, and brief lapses in the laws of reality.

Malaya, 1949. After a career spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, - herself the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp - seeks solace among the jungle fringed plantations of Northern Malaya. There she meets the enigmatic Aritomo, an exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Yun Ling asks Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister. But the jungle holds secrets of its own…

Fresh from the cultivated hothouse of Renaissance France, Anne draws attention at the English court. A nobleman, a poet and a king vie for her love. She has a spirit worthy of a crown - and a crown is what she seeks. It is a more powerful aphrodisiac than love. And so she embarks on her perilous course, which will plunge a kingdom into turmoil. Blood will flow on her account. Her only protection is the King's great love.

When celebrity chef Brede Ziegler is discovered stabbed to death on the steps of the Olso police headquarters, it sends a shockwave through the city. Police investigator Billy T. takes on the case, but it seems nobody really knew the dead man. While Billy T. struggles to break the case, Hanne Wilhelmsen returns to Oslo after a six-month absence following the death of her partner. Hanne discovers that not only had Ziegler been stabbed, but he had also ingested a lethal dose of painkillers.

Here is a tale straight from the fireside. We are compelled to follow the humble and mysterious figure of the linen weaver Silas Marner, on his journey from solitude and exile to the warmth and joy of family life. His path is a strange one; when he loses his hoard of hard-earned coins all seems to be lost, but in place of the golden guineas come the golden curls of a child - and from desolate misery comes triumphant joy.

Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn’t remember to drink it. She sometimes thinks her daughter Helen is a total stranger. But there’s one thing Maud is sure of: Her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, Maud will get to the bottom of it.

When a man with a gun breaks into her school, nursery teacher Louise Kennedy knows there's not likely to be a happy ending...But Jaime isn't there on a homicidal whim, and he's as scared as the hostages he's taken.

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists....

When a woman dies beneath the wheels of a train and her newly acquired love fails to turn up at the funeral, private investigator Zoë Boehm is hired to find him. And in attempting to unlock the secrets of a woman she's never met, in search of a man who might be anyone, Zoë finds only more questions. As her search leads her nearer to two different kinds of criminal, she starts to wonder if the man she is looking for has found her first. And if he has, is that going to make her another victim?

The secrets of an aristocratic dynasty are about to be revealed.... London, 1949. The New Look is in, Princess Elizabeth's wedding has raised morale and the capital is filled with a new energy. The Earl of Mowbray's niece, Alicia Stanton, is making her mark in the glamorous film world. Alongside her, Victoria Brown, a wartime evacuee, is starting out as a fashion photographer. Life is full of opportunity. But at Cavendon Hall, the stately home where they both grew up, the Second World War has exacted a terrible price....

Summer, 1981: The body of Kate Rokesmith is found by the River Thames in London. Her four-year-old son is wandering nearby, traumatised and mute. Detective Inspector Darnell cancels yet another trip he had promised his daughter Stella and heads for the scene of the crime. The murder is never solved. Winter, 2011: It's another busy day at the Clean Slate office. Owner and head cleaner Stella Darnell is annoyed to have her routine interrupted by the news that her father has died of a heart attack.

As night falls, 17-year-old Cassie Baker leaves Winchcome and takes her usual shortcut down a moonlit country lane. She never makes it home. With no body and no evidence, she's just another teenage runaway.    

Historian and broadcaster Tessa Dunlop tells the story of the women of Bletchley Park through exclusive and unprecedented access to the women themselves. The Bletchley Girls weaves together the lives of 15 women who were all selected to work in Britain's most secret organisation - Bletchley Park. It is their story, told in their voices; Tessa met and talked to 15 veterans, often visiting them several times. Firm friendships were made as their epic journey unfolded on paper.

Out of Practice is based around a large country medical practice, which proves to be a hotbed of rivalry, resentment and romance - and that's just the doctors. Think James Herriot meets House.