Creator: Christopher Cazenove
Publication date: 2002-09-06
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £13.00
Price: £8.28
Review Eye of the Needle / Macmillan Audio Books:
Authors
- Sebastian Faulks Narrated by Michael Maloney
Publication date: 2007-12-03
RRP: £29.36
Price: £19.57
Review Engleby (unabridged edition): Unabridged / Whole Story Audio Books:
Creator: Juliet Stevenson
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 2004-11-30
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.42
Review To the Lighthouse (Modern classics) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: Tim Pigott-Smith
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2003-10-06
Dewey code: 813
Price: £9.65
Review Heretic (Grail Quest) / HarperCollins Audio:Heretic is the third book in Bernard Cornwell's much-acclaimed Grail Quest series, a series that many were initially cautious about because it represented something of a change of pace for the master historical novelist. But Cornwell quickly demonstrated that this period of history was well within his remit, and the sequence has proved to be among his most mesmerising work. Heretic begins with a bloody battle outside Calais in 1347, a short time before the city fell to the English. The sympathetic Thomas of Hookton is bending every sinew at the service of his master, the Earl of Northampton; after risking his life time and again, Thomas finds himself commissioned to track down the most sacred relic in Christendom, the Holy Grail. He travels to Gascony, seat of power of his nemesis, Guy Vexille. Utilising his archers, Thomas conducts a fierce guerrilla war against Vexille, and yearns for a face-to-face encounter. But then Thomas is routed and finds his campaign in shreds, facing the twin enemies of the church and the plague. In this third book, Bernard Cornwell ups the ante in every sense: along with the splendidly realised battle scenes (a Cornwell trademark), the evocation of the Middle Ages is more crowded and bustling than one might have thought possible without subsuming the protagonists. But most of all, it's the character of Thomas that powers the narrative; having his hero fall in love (sensitively handled here) sets off the ultimate conflict with his mortal enemy perfectly. Leave the 21st century behind and venture into a dark and foreign era-it's a journey you won't regret. [+]-Barry Forshaw.
Creator: Eve Arnold
Publication date: 2004-01-26
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £17.61
Price: £2.99
Review Brother and Sister / Bloomsbury Publishing PLC:
Edition: 2
Publication date: 2006-09-07
RRP: £29.99
Price: £11.20
Review Sherlock Holmes Collection / Hodder & Stoughton:
Publication date: 2003-03-21
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.05
Review Cause Celeb / Macmillan Audio Books:Rosie Richardson, short-skirted, under-appreciated Publicity Gel, dumps her egotistical, bullying, TV presenter boyfriend and heads to Africa to save the natives. But after four years in the plains, a plague of locusts and civil war take their toll, the frustrated and disillusioned Rosie is pushed back to her media-dahling roots in London. Armed with a bucket full of will power, she fends off the determined amorous advances of her ex whilst trying to enlist his celebrity-pulling power to further her personal Cause Celeb: a Live Aid inspired celebrity television appeal to raise cash for food in the country she left behind. Cause Celeb isn't exactly ground breaking but it does manage to bring a little gravitas to what is basically a novel about love, sex and a world where insincere celebs are fawned over by all and sundry. The descriptions of the African camp where Rosie spends four years of her life (concentrating on her career until a doctor-hunky, naturally-woos her over a few bloodied bodies) are vivid enough to force the dramatic irony forward as Rosie's past and present collide, and her jaded experiences of London life will certainly ring true for many readers. All in all, Cause Celeb is the kind of book you might read in the bath or on the beach-not too taxing but involving and spirited enough to make you want to find out what happens in the end. -Susan Harrison.
Publication date: 2005-08-29
RRP: £16.99
Price: £6.99
Review Human Traces / Random House Audiobooks:
Publication date: 2003-10-28
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £14.99
Price: £6.90
Review Monstrous Regiment / Corgi Audio:The Monstrous Regiment in question is made up of a vampire, a troll, Igor, a collection of misfits and a young woman who shoves a pair of socks down her pants to join the army. Here you have the characteristically charming novel by Terry Pratchett. Polly becomes Private Oliver Perks, who is on a quest to find her older brother, who's recently MIA in one of the innumerable wars the tiny nation of Borogravia has a habit of starting with its neighbors. This peevish tendency has all but expended Borogravia's ranks of cannon fodder. Whether Sergeant Jackrum knows her secret or not, he can't afford to be choosy as Perks and her/his comrades are among the last able-bodied recruits left in Borogravia. This collection of misfits includes the aforementioned vampire (reformed and off the blood, thank you), troll, and macabre Igor, who is only too happy to sew you a new leg if you aren't too particular about previous ownership. Off to war, Polly/Oliver learns that having a pair of, um, socks is a good way to open up doors in this man's army. For those who haven't made this underrated author's acquaintance, Monstrous Regiment is as good a place to start as any. Readers will encounter Pratchett's subtle and disarming wit, his trademark footnoted asides along with a not-too-shabby tale of honor, courage and duty in the face of absurd circumstances. -Jeremy Pugh, Amazon. [+]com.
Creator: Samantha Bond
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2004-06-28
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £13.99
Price: £2.87
Review The Family Way / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Colin Buchanan
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2001-07-02
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £13.99
Price: £2.89
Review Man and Boy / HarperCollins Audio:
Authors
- H.C. Andersen
- Laurie Lee
- Charles Dickens
Publication date: 2001-11-05
Dewey code: 641
RRP: £12.99
Price: £14.99
Review Christmas "Book at Bedtime" (BBC Radio 4) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Joanna Lumley
Publication date: 2007-01-15
RRP: £24.99
Price: £17.47
Review Best of Jane Austen (Csa Classic Author) / CSA WORD:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2006-03-27
RRP: £7.00
Price: £5.39
Review The Worry Website (BBC Audio) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:The Worry Website is Mr Speed the class teacher's idea of a Web site for his primary school pupils to write their worries down anonymously and then get help with solving them from their peers. Jacqueline Wilson has linked the worries of six children in the book through six short stories, and a seventh story is contributed by 12-year-old Lauren Roberts, winner of an online competition. Each story refers to the other class members, so that they do not sit in isolation, and "Greg's Worry", the second story, links particularly well with the first story, "Holly's Worry". From divorced parents to living with a disability, and from feeling useless at school to nightmares at home, Wilson has sensitively touched on the small and big problems that worry eight and nine-year-olds. Holly's story of wishing her potential stepmother turns out wicked brings a lump to the throat, while William's huge appetite but less huge academic achievements are described with knowing but kind humour. Lauren Roberts' story "Lisa's Worry" perhaps tells more about the reality of children and their worries than Wilson's own upbeat versions-as Wilson herself says, Lisa's "story ends so sadly". Unlike the other stories, it does not have a resolution and Lisa is evidently not as keen as Holly, Claire, Natasha, Greg et al. to share her concerns with her class or her teacher. This suggests that a real-life "worry Web site" might not be so avidly subscribed to as Mr Speed's, a reminder that despite Wilson's effortless knack in engaging with children, some worries sadly appear to remain safer when fictionalised or unspoken. However, here's hoping that if there are many Mr Speeds around UK schools no child is going to remain unhappy for long-every reader couldn't help but smile if he was their teacher! -Olivia Dickinson.
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2003-08-04
RRP: £19.99
Price: £12.67
Review Pole to Pole: BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:Having circumnavigated the globe from west to east in Around the World in 80 Days, Michael Palin proceeded to stretch even his endurance with his next journey, travelling due south from the North Pole, arriving five months later at the southernmost point of the globe, the South Pole. The result is Pole to Pole, Palin's account of his extraordinary journey between July and December 1991, passing through 17 countries from Greenland and the former Soviet Union in the north to Kenya, South Africa and Chile in the south. From the frozen wastes of both poles, to the scorching heat of Africa, Pole to Pole is a travelogue of bizarre extremes. Palin revels in the surrealism of it all as he travels through a range of vastly different European and African communities undergoing massive social and political upheavals in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Palin's shrewd observations are as ever interspersed with his eye for the weird and the comical, as he meets Santa Claus and Lenin, goes shopping for camels in Omdurman, and makes a final hectic dash to the South Pole via Chile. It's all quite exhausting! -Jerry Brotton.
Creator: Author
Publication date: 2001-08-06
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.98
Review The Clothes They Stood Up in (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:First published in the London Review of Books in 1996, TheClothes They Stood Up In takes the reader into familiar Bennett territory. Maurice and Rosemary Ransome are a typically dissatisfied, middle-aged, middle-class couple, childless and emotionally withdrawn. "They had no children and but for Mozart would probably have split up years ago. Mr Ransome always took a bath when he came home from work and then he had his supper. After supper he took another bath, this time in Mozart". However, one night, after returning from a performance of Cosi fanTutte, bath, supper, Mozart and everything disappeared. "There is a limit to what burglars can take: they seldom take easy chairs, for example, and even more seldom settees. These burglars did. They took everything". What unfolds is a brilliant account of the ways in which the lives of the Ransomes are subtly but profoundly changed forever, as Rosemary discovers the joys of shopping at the local Pakistani shop and the limits of counselling, and Maurice fantasises about new CD equipment with which to listen to Mozart. [+]However, just as life begins to return to normal, a letter arrives which throws new light on the Ransome's extraordinary burglary. Beautifully observed and written with a masterly economy of style, Bennett's story packs an enormous amount into just over 100 pages, and has not one but two delicious stings in its tail. -Jerry Brotton.
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2003-07-07
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £7.99
Price: £0.01
Review This Is Not a Novel / Headline Review:
Creator: Paul McGann
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2006-09-04
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.20
Review Sharpe's Fury / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Prunella Scales
Publication date: 2003-01-06
RRP: £9.00
Price: £5.33
Review Charm School (Cover to Cover) / Cover to Cover Cassettes Ltd:Bonny is certainly not keen to spend a day at Charm School, but her mother has to sit an exam and can't find a babysitter so she bites the bullet and heads off for a day of sheer agony. As the delightfully bitchy Charm School girls-prissy little Tinkerbells with fluffy hair and glittery dancing shoes-rev up for the competition to win the glistering tiara of Miss Supreme Queen, the confused and self-conscious Bonny finds herself in the middle of an out-and-out, no-holds-barred, war. Anne Fine has never fought shy of digging for emotional truth in her work, and here the author of Madame Doubtfire and Goggle-Eyes, doesn't fail the reader for one second as she skilfully takes one day in the life of a group of little girls and gives an exquisite, achingly sad yet robustly comical insight into what makes us all tick. -Susan Harrison.
Creator: David Timson
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2007-04-02
Dewey code: 823.8
RRP: £19.99
Price: £11.38
Review The Valley of Fear: Unabridged (Naxos Complete Classics): Unabridged (Complete Classics) / Naxos AudioBooks:
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Eye of the Needle, Engleby (unabridged edition): Unabridged, To the Lighthouse (Modern classics), Heretic (Grail Quest), Brother and Sister, Sherlock Holmes Collection, Cause Celeb, Human Traces, Monstrous Regiment, The Family Way, Man and Boy, Christmas "Book at Bedtime" (BBC Radio 4), Best of Jane Austen (Csa Classic Author), The Worry Website (BBC Audio), Pole to Pole: BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation (BBC Radio Collection), The Clothes They Stood Up in (BBC Radio Collection), This Is Not a Novel, Sharpe's Fury, Charm School (Cover to Cover), The Valley of Fear: Unabridged (Naxos Complete Classics): Unabridged (Complete Classics) |
