Showing results by narrator "Patience Tomlinson" in All Categories

Homeless Bodies and Other Stories is an original fiction podcast featuring audio-exclusive short stories from award-winning authors and Sunday Times best-sellers, inspired by objects & artefacts from Wellcome Collection’s permanent exhibition, 'Medicine Man', in London. Exploring themes of otherness, humanity, history, society and belief, Homeless Bodies and Other Stories brings together a gripping collection of tales that are unsettlingly eerie and provokingly current.

After a health scare, 77-year-old Barbara goes to convalesce in the sleepy Somerset village of Winsleigh Green with her sister, Pauline, who is now a widow. The sisters are like chalk and cheese - Barbara, outspoken and aloof and Pauline, good natured and homely - so it’s not long before the tension starts to rise. But when Pauline accidentally knocks down a vagrant who goes by the name of Bisto Mulligan, the ladies find themselves with another houseguest.

When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth, irony and brilliant social observation which link the relationships and the inevitable conflicts as profound change comes to rural England.

Plagued by rumours that she poisoned her fiancé, Lucinda Bromley lives on the fringes of polite society, tending her beloved plants - and occasionally consulting on a murder investigation. But the death of a lord has shaken Lucinda to her core. At the murder scene, she picks up traces of a poison containing a very rare species of fern - stolen from her conservatory just last month.

Lady Jane Grey was born into the most dangerous of times. Child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother for whom she was a pawn in a dynastic game with the highest stakes, she lived a life in thrall to political machinations and lethal religious fervour. Growing up with the future Queen Elizabeth and her reluctant nemesis, Mary, she soon learned the truth of the values imparted to her by Henry VIII's last Queen, Katherine Parr.

We know what life was like for Victoria and Albert. But what was it like for a commoner like you or me? How did it feel to cook with coal and wash with tea leaves? Drink beer for breakfast and clean your teeth with cuttlefish? Dress in whalebone and feed opium to the baby? Surviving everyday life came down to the gritty details, the small necessities and tricks of living. Drawing on Ruth's unique firsthand experience gained from living on a Victorian farm for a year, this book will teach you everything you need to know about 19th-century living. 

In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds and how it came about. Consider, as Ackerman does, the Clark's nutcracker, a bird that can hide as many as 30,000 seeds over dozens of square miles and remember where it put them several months later; the mockingbirds and thrashers, species that can store 200 to 2,000 different songs in a brain a thousand times smaller than ours; and the well-known pigeon, which knows where it's going, even thousands of miles from familiar territory.

When someone hacks into the systems of eight self-drive cars, their passengers are set on a fatal collision course. The passengers are: a TV star, a pregnant young woman, a disabled war hero, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife - and parents of two - who are travelling in separate vehicles and a suicidal man. Now the public have to judge who should survive, but are the passengers all that they first seem?

In Paris, January 1943, 230 French women resisters were rounded up and sent on a train to Auschwitz - the only train, in the four years of the German occupation, to take women of the resistance to a death camp. The youngest was a schoolgirl of 15, the eldest a farmer’s wife of 68; there were among them teachers, biochemists, sales girls, secretaries, housewives and university lecturers. The women turned to one another, finding solace and strength in friendship and shared experience.

From the best-selling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Tulip Fever, a deliciously funny, poignant and wry novel, full of surprising twists and turns. James is getting on a bit and needs full-time help. So Phoebe and Robert, his middle-aged offspring, employ Mandy, who seems willing to take him off their hands. But as James regales his family with tales of Mandy's virtues, their shopping trips and the shared pleasure of their journeys to garden centres, Phoebe and Robert sense something is amiss.

When the Call The Midwife series became bestsellers Jennifer Worth received mountains of letters - not only praising her books, but also from people who remembered the world her books described; life in the east end of London during the late 1940s and early 50s. Often her books touched her readers and they felt moved to write, or they wanted to share their own memories.

The Tudor era encompasses some of the greatest changes in our history. But while we know about the historical dramas of the times, what was life really like for a commoner? To answer this question, the renowned 'method historian' Ruth Goodman has slept, washed and cooked as the Tudors did. She is your expert guide to this fascinating era, drawing on years of practical historical study to show how our ancestors coped with everyday life, from how they slept to how they courted.

Seven-year-old Jocelyn Holt loves her nanny Hannah more than her own mother. When Hannah disappears one summer night, Jo never gets over the loss. Thirty years on, now a young widow with a daughter of her own, Jo is forced to return to her family home, and the mother she’s always despised, just as a skull is pulled out of the lake in the grounds. Could this explain her beloved nanny’s disappearance? What other secrets will that lake give up to the police?

1916. Bella is working as a Voluntary Aid driving ambulances in England when she gets engaged to Philip, on leave from fighting in France. His family strongly disapprove of her, but the two of them are happy together. Georgie, Philip's sister, is in trouble, having broken her engagement and fled from her bullying family. Who can she turn to for help when she needs it most? When the worst happens, Bella must manage on her own, though there are shocks and dangers ahead that she did not foresee.

The Dhammapada, a collection of 423 verses in 26 chapters, is perhaps the most famous of all Buddhist texts. It presents the Buddha’s teachings in a clear and highly accessible form and has been used for personal instruction and teaching for centuries throughout the Buddhist world. It comes from the Khuddaka Nikaya section of the Pali Canon and is here collected with two other key texts from the same source.

Armistice Day, London, 1918. Fiercely independent Georgie is tired of being told what's best for her by men. When she defies her father's wishes by going out into the peace festivities, she tries to help a woman being attacked and encounters Patrick, a gallant wounded ex-soldier looking for a new calling now that the fighting is done. But the war isn't over for everybody. Enemy forces have infiltrated the bureau and sent her father into hiding. And they are coming for her, too. Georgie knows there's only one place where she'll be safe: Honeyfield. 

Wiltshire in 1901: Kathleen's family are determined to force her into marriage with a violent man. In desperation she runs away and finds what consolation she can for her lost dreams. Then tragedy strikes, and Kathleen seeks refuge at Honeyfield House, where a charitable bequest has created a hiding place for families in trouble. Nathan fought in the Great War and is now using his gift for finding lost people as a detective. Taking on the job of finding Kathleen, he is shocked to discover a woman he can love, not the vicious female he was led to expect.

The privileged daughter of one of the most powerful men in England, Mahelt Marshal’s life changes dramatically when her father is suspected of treachery by King John. Her brothers become hostages and Mahelt is married to Hugh Bigod, heir to the earldom of Norfolk. Adapting to her new life is hard, but Mahelt comes to love Hugh deeply; however, defying her father-in-law brings disgrace and heartbreak.

Colin Hardcastle has arranged for two men to meet and discuss the sale of a house. But when Nick Nash - the owner of the property - doesn't show, Colin cannot begin to imagine the events he has set in motion. Perplexed, Colin tells his friends in Steeple Martin, piquing the interest of Libby Sarjeant - and the Reverend Patti Pearson, who finds Nash's name strangely familiar.... 

Ten years ago, a missing person story causes a furore in Kent - and the national media. A beautiful young woman with a promising career as a singer walks home alone from a party and is never seen again. There is no evidence, forensic or otherwise, and no-one is ever arrested. A decade later Libby Sarjeant is talked into inspecting a derelict hotel in her home village of Steeple Martin. The body of a young boy is discovered - but is it anything to do with the mysterious disappearance from more than 10 years ago?