Showing results by narrator "Thomas Judd" in All Categories

We have a lifetime's association with our bodies, but for many of us they remain uncharted territory. In Adventures in Human Being, Gavin Francis leads the listener on a journey through health and illness, offering insights on everything from the ribbed surface of the brain to the secret workings of the heart and the womb; from the pulse of life at the wrist to the unique engineering of the foot.

A reclusive ex-film star living in the wilds of Ireland, Claudette Wells is a woman whose first instinct, when a stranger approaches her home, is to reach for her shotgun. Why is she so fiercely protective of her family, and what made her walk out of her cinematic career when she had the whole world at her feet? Her husband, Daniel, reeling from a discovery about a woman he last saw 20 years ago, is about to make an exit of his own. It is a journey that will send him off-course, far away from the life he and Claudette have made together. 

As war is declared once more, a shadow falls over Britain. The staff at the luxurious Buckingham hotel must do all that they can to keep their important guests happy, but behind the scenes, they are scared. Away from the glitz and the glamour of the ballroom, they must face this new reality. Newlywed Nancy knows that her brave husband, debonair dancer Raymond de Guise, will want to fight for his country and enlist. She loves and supports him but is heartbroken at the thought of them being apart and the dangers he will face.

When fiercely independent chambermaid Nancy Nettleton first moved to London and the Buckingham hotel, the last thing on her mind was finding love, let alone falling for the debonair demonstration dancer Raymond de Guise. As the festive season approaches, life at the exclusive hotel is busier than ever, with guests arriving from around the world, seeking comfort, relaxation and refuge as tensions build across Europe and it looks like another war is imminent.

An underground passage leads from the Dell nursery to Saint Patricia’s asylum. Only the children enter, leaving their minders behind. On the other side are their parents - some of the most dangerous psychopaths in the country. Jan has just started working at the nursery. He is a loner with many secrets and one goal. He must get inside the asylum.... What is his connection with one of the inmates, a famous singer? What really happened when a boy in his care went missing nine years ago?

My name is Kyle Straker and I don’t exist any more.' So begins the story of Kyle Straker, recorded on old audio tapes. You might think these tapes are a hoax. But perhaps they contain the history of a past world.... If what the tapes say are true, it means that everything we think we know is a lie. And if everything is a lie, does that mean that we are, too? A gripping, fabulously imaginative sci-fi story for older children from debut author Mike Lancaster.

Phineas G. Nanson, a disenchanted graduate student, decides to immerse himself in the messiness of ‘real life’ by writing a biography of a great biographer. But a ‘whole life’ is hard to find. Everywhere he looks he finds fragments and gaps. Phineas’ mind tracks the journeys of his subjects from the deserts of Africa to the maelstroms of the Arctic. Along the way he meets others building wholes from bits and pieces - taxonomists, ecologists, even travel agents - and begins to puzzle out his future. But who will guide him from the labyrinth and back into his own life?

We’ve learned that the way to get ahead is through strong will, grit and naked ambition. The belief that self-interest makes the world go round has served us well: it has helped make our society more affluent. But does that premise still hold? In Beyond Self-Interest, Krzysztof Pelc argues that those who prosper increasingly do so by spurning prosperity, or by convincing others that they are pursuing passion, purpose, love of craft—anything but their own self-advancement. 

The debut novel from YouTube sensation Oli White. Things haven't been easy for Jack recently - life as a teenager has its ups and downs. But when he meets a new group of friends who are every bit as geek as they are chic, his luck seems to be changing. Each of the group is talented, and when they pool together to create Generation Next, an incredible new kind of social media platform, it's clear that they're on to something special.

Dynamic naturalist Michael Blencowe has travelled the globe to uncover the fascinating backstories of eleven extinct animals, which he shares with charm and insight in Gone.

An evening out for five students ends in tragedy, with two dead and one critically injured. Nicci Waldock survives, but her life is left in tatters. Years later, a sighting of Jack Bailey, the brother of her dead friend, leaves her with a shocking realisation about the night of the accident. Helped by former journalist Celia Henry, Nicci sets out to learn the truth about what really happened and discovers a series of lies and dangerous secrets that have distorted everything she thinks she knows.

The sky is filled with dragons: the people are ready to burn the regime to the ground. The seas churn with monsters, and the tide is changing: revolution is coming. Steiner has at last realised the part he will play in this fight. Kimi knows now what it is to lead, but must learn to overcome differences if she is to unite and defeat the dragon factions. Silverdust inches towards a final revenge. Across the ocean, Kjellrun feels the call of war. But she must reconcile her new responsibilities to the people of the temple with the urge to find her family.

A small group of commuters and tube workers witness a fiery apocalypse overtaking London. They make their escape through a service tunnel. Reaching a door they step through...and find themselves on a wild shore backed by cliffs and rolling grassland. The way back is blocked. Making their way inland, they meet a man dressed in a wolf's cloak and with wolves by his side.

A horrific car crash in Belize has devastated Helen Pengilly’s family, leaving her daughter in a coma and her husband Michael missing. Alone and terrified, Helen’s memory is dragged back to that day 22 years ago. To protect their family, Helen and Michael both said they would forget what happened. But now it seems that there is someone who will stop at nothing to make them remember....

Jason Cowley, editor-in-chief of the New Statesman, examines contemporary England through a handful of the key news stories from recent times to reveal what they tell us about the state of the nation and to answer the question Who Are We Now? Spanning the years since the election of Tony Blair’s New Labour government to the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, the book investigates how England has changed and how those changes have affected us.

To be alive is to be in perpetual change: growing, healing, learning, aging. In Shapeshifters, award-winning writer and doctor Gavin Francis considers the transformations in mind and body that continue across the arc of human life. Some of these changes we have little choice about. We can't avoid puberty, the menopause, or our hair turning grey. Others may be welcome milestones along our path - a much-wanted pregnancy, a cancer cured, or a long-awaited transition to another gender.

Armchair General airdrops you, the listener, into the key historical moments and turning points of WWII - from the outbreak of war to D-Day - and thrusts you into the role of decision-maker. Taking the chair of Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery, General Eisenhower and other leaders and soldiers from the Allied Forces, you will be primed with the contemporaneous intelligence that real leaders would have been presented with during the war - including maps and secret dossiers. 

A space-obsessed child conjures up a vortex in his mother's airing cupboard. A musician finds her friendship with a flock of birds opens up unexpected possibilities. A rat catcher, summoned to a decaying royal palace, is plunged into a battle for the throne of a ruined kingdom. Two newlyweds find themselves inhibited by the arrival in their lives of an outsized and watchful stuffed bear.

Europe is facing a wave of migration unmatched since the end of World War II - and no one has reported on this crisis in more depth or breadth than the Guardian's migration correspondent, Patrick Kingsley. Throughout 2015 Kingsley travelled to 17 countries along the migrant trail, meeting hundreds of refugees making epic odysseys across deserts, seas and mountains to reach the holy grail of Europe. This is Kingsley's unparalleled account of who these voyagers are.

Paris, 1926. A young dancer Ray Cohen arrives from London to compete at the Exhibition Paris. He is led astray by Hugo, a charismatic dancer born of the streets, who introduces him to the city's nightlife and a beautiful stranger called Hannah Lindt. His life is forever changed. London, 1941. With the heroic Raymond de Guise away fighting in North Africa, his beloved wife Nancy must balance her new position - as Head of Housekeeping at the Buckingham Hotel - with her duties as a new mother to their child.