Showing results by narrator "Juliet Stevenson" in All Categories

Written at the request of Charles Dickens, North and South is a book about rebellion that poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Gaskell expertly blends individual feeling with social concern and her heroine, Margaret Hale, is one of the most original creations of Victorian literature. When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience she is forced to leave her comfortable home in the tranquil countryside of Hampshire....

A collection of BBC radio full-cast dramatisations of Jane Austen's six major novels. Jane Austen is one of the finest writers in the English language, and this volume includes all six of her classic novels. Mansfield Park: on a quest to find a position in society, Fanny Price goes to live with her rich aunt and uncle. Northanger Abbey: young, naïve Catherine Morland receives an invitation to stay at the isolated Gothic mansion Northanger Abbey.

One of Jane Austen's most popular novels. Arrogant, self-willed, and egotistical, Emma is her most unusual heroine.

Anne Elliot has grieved for seven years over the loss of her first love, Captain Frederick Wentworth. But events conspire to unravel the knots of deceit and misunderstanding in this beguiling and gently comic story of love and fidelity.

This Audible Exclusive production revisits Charles Dickens’ tragi-comic novel Little Dorrit. Written during the Crimean War, it a story of fortunes won and lost and a masterly portrayal of the failings of Victorian Society, with the ever-present spectre of law enforcement and imprisonment looming over a fearful population. Divided into two parts, Book One: Poverty and Book Two: Riches, Little Dorrit satirises the debtors prisons and the detrimental effect of enforcing a British class system.

Autumn is the season of misty mornings and cosy nights in, but as the leaves begin to fall the nights get longer and the shadows grow darker… Secluded cottages, eerie manors and ghostly hauntings and cursed tombs abound in this collection of 12 supernatural mysteries and murderous plots featuring Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple and Agatha Christie’s other favourite detectives.

For sixteen years, Angela Merkel was Chancellor of Germany. She led the country through numerous crises, shaping both Germany and international politics with her actions and attitudes. In her memoirs, co-written with her long-time political advisor Beate Baumann, she reflects on her life in two German states - thirty-five years in the German Democratic Republic, thirty-five years in reunited Germany.

Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.

The work tells the story of Jane's early life, her experience at Lowood School and as a governess. Her refusal to accept Rochester's love on any but her own strictly moral terms is a passionate cry for independence.

Jane Austen’s most popular novel, originally published in 1813, some 17 years after it was first written, presents the Bennet family of Longbourn. Against the background of gossipy Mrs. Bennet and the detached Mr. Bennet, the quest is on for husbands for the five daughters. The spotlight falls on Elizabeth, second eldest, who is courted by Mr. Darcy, though initially she is more concerned with the fate of her other sisters. This marvelous account of family life in Regency England is read with customary panache by Juliet Stevenson.

From the author of the Seven Sisters series, The Angel Tree is Lucinda Riley's compelling mystery of family secrets and forgotten pasts on the sweeping pastures of south-east Wales. Read by the award-winning actor Juliet Stevenson (Truly, Madly, Deeply) 'Sweeping, absorbing, beautifully written...

When Mrs. Dashwood is forced by an avaricious daughter-in-law to leave the family home in Sussex, she takes her three daughters to live in a modest cottage in Devon. For Elinor, the eldest daughter, the move means a painful separation from the man she loves, but her sister Marianne finds in Devon the romance and excitement which she longs for.

1840: 23 years after the death of her famous sister Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury, and the home of her family’s friends, the Fowles. She knows that, in some dusty corner of the sprawling vicarage, there is a cache of family letters which hold secrets she is desperate should not be revealed. As Cassandra recalls her youth and her relationship with her brilliant yet complex sister, she pieces together buried truths about Jane’s history and her own.

When Catherine Morland, a country clergyman's daughter, is invited to spend a season in Bath with the fashionable high society, little does she imagine the delights and perils that await her. Captivated and disconcerted by what she finds, and introduced to the joys of "Gothic novels" by her new friend, Isabella, Catherine longs for mystery and romance. When she is invited to stay with the beguiling Henry Tilney and his family at Northanger Abbey, she expects mystery and intrigue at every turn.

The days are growing warmer and the nights are growing shorter... It's the perfect time to relax in the garden with this spring-themed collection from legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie. Blossoming flowers and countryside strolls may sound innocent enough, but not when there’s murder in the air. Beware of secluded cottages, stolen treasure and fatal revenge schemes. This compendium of short stories, some featuring beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, is an essential omnibus for Christie fans and the perfect gift for mystery lovers.

In this follow up to Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth, a midwife working in the docklands area of East London in the 1950s, tells more stories about the people she encountered. There's Jane, who cleaned and generally helped out at Nonnatus House - she was taken to the workhouse as a baby and was allegedly the illegitimate daughter of an aristocrat. Peggy and Frank's parents both died within six months of each other, and the children were left destitute. At the time, there was no other option for them but the workhouse.

Ian McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty audiobook of betrayal and intrigue, love, and the invented self. Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed...

At the tender age of 10, Fanny Price is 'adopted' by her rich relations and is removed from the poverty of her home in Portsmouth to the opulence of Mansfield Park. The transplantation is not a happy one. Dependent, helpless, neglected and forgotten, Fanny struggles to come to terms with her new life until, tested almost to the limits of endurance, she assumes her rightful role....

Winter, with its unsettling blend of the cosy and the sinister, has long been a popular time for gathering by the bright flame of a candle, or the warm crackling of a fire, and swapping stories of ghosts and strange happenings. Now eight best-selling, award-winning authors, master storytellers of the sinister and the macabre bring this time-honoured tradition to vivid life in a spellbinding collection of new and original haunted tales.

The remarkable double life of an American-turned-British spy, Virginia Hall, a 'bolshie' woman from Maryland who, determined to overcome a physical disability that threatened to define her life, successfully infiltrated Vichy France for England's SOE before America's entry into WWII and then, three years later, for the SOS, providing crucial intelligence and logistics for the mounting French Resistance and, later, Allied troops.