Showing results by narrator "Veronika Hyks" in All Categories

Philip II ruled France with an iron fist for over 40 years, expanding its borders and increasing its power. For his entire reign his counterpart on the English throne was a member of the Plantagenet dynasty, and Philip took on them all: Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, John and Henry III. And yet we know so little about medieval England’s greatest enemy.

1217 charts the nascent sense of national identity that began to swell. Three key battles would determine England’s destiny. The fortress of Dover was besieged, the city of Lincoln was attacked, and a great invasion force set sail and, unusually for the time, was intercepted at sea. Catherine Hanley expertly navigates medieval siege warfare, royal politics, and fighting at sea to bring this remarkable period of English history to life.

With elegant simplicity and unswerving honesty, Irene Nemirovsky chronicles the brutalizing effects of war on three ordinary Parisian families whose lives intertwine, spanning the years between 1912 and 1941. What starts out as a glorious campaign in 1914, full of optimistic declarations of France's greatness, soon turns to shame and cynicism as the conflict drags on. Parisians, suffering from cold and hunger, seem unable or unwilling to comprehend the horrors of the trenches.

Filth is Witch Sludgegooey’s Fiend; Arthur the Dragon is precise, meticulous, and lives with his mum; and O’Brian is a Leprechaun who is often mistaken for a Pixie. These three very different characters have two things in common - the band they play in (The Witchway Rhythm Boys) and the music they play - Crash ‘n’ Bang - which nobody likes very much. But then The Thing in the Moonmad T-shirt becomes their manager and sets their sights higher - on the forthcoming music competition The Battle of the Bands.

Virginia Woolf's semi-biographical novel, inspired by her life changing love affair with Vita Sackville-West, takes us on an exhilarating, fantastical roller coaster, tracing 400 years of English history, in the company of her shape-shifting, gender-bending, time-travelling hero Orlando, whose inner conflicts and triumphs challenge our preconceptions of the nature of love, the battle of the sexes, posing socal and metaphysical questions including what we now call climate change.

Lady Chatterley's Lover, written in 1928, tells the story of a passionate love affair between an upper-class woman and her husband’s gamekeeper, which was thought to be so shocking in its content and its straightforward use of explicit sexual terms, that it was not officially published until 1960.

Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was one of the most banned and censored books in the history of literature. John Cleland (a contrary man of letters, prone to boasting and getting into trouble with the law) wrote it while he was in Fleet debtor’s prison. First published in 1748 and withdrawn within a year, it was not legally republished until 100 years later. Widely considered to be the first example of literary erotica and a stylistic tour de force, with its combination of charm, daring, and love of pleasure.

Kenya, 1961. As a small plane carrying Nathalie Nelson lands at a remote airstrip in the Serengeti, Nathalie knows she’s run just about as far as she can from home. Trained as an archaeologist, she has fought hard to be included in a team excavating ruins in Kenya, her first opportunity to escape England and the painful memories of her past. But before she can find her bearings, the dig is surrounded by controversy - and murder. In a country on the brink of crisis, nowhere and no one is safe.

The Lifted Curtain and My Conversion are two short erotic classics written by the colourful, aristocratic political fire-brand, esteemed author, and renowned libertine the Comte Gabrel Honore Riquetti de Mirabeau, who spent much of his young adult life in prison at the behest of this father, who disapproved of his son's licentious behaviour. During one particular stretch, Mirabeau decided to put pen to paper, to while away the time and to make the separation from his then paramour more bearable.

Rebecca Finch is a highly successful romantic novelist who has fallen out of love with love. Things look bad. The High Princess of Romance is having a crisis of Faith. On Mount Olympus things aren't any easier. Aphrodite's is fretting because divorce is almost as popular as marriage. So with even her favourite earth-bound acolyte, Rebecca Finch, showing signs of disillusionment, Aphrodite resolves to take drastic action.