Publication date: 2007-11-13
RRP: £11.99
Price: £6.08
Review Kidnapped (Mi-vox pre-loaded audio player) / audiobooksonline.co.uk:
Publication date: 2003-03-21
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.90
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: 2000-09-07
RRP: £14.99
Price: £4.50
Review The Gingerbread Woman / Headline Book Publishing:In The Gingerbread Woman, Jennifer Johnston again demonstrates her ability to create memorable and affecting characters. Clara, who at 35 makes her living doing "odd jobs for newspapers", is recovering from a serious operation and spends her days wandering around the cliff tops at Dublin Bay. Like the The French Lieutenant's Woman, she stares out to sea, trying to rediscover the direction in her life. One rainy afternoon, she encounters Laurence (Lar), a teacher who has run away from his life in Northern Ireland as he tries to come to terms with a family tragedy. The novel describes how these two unconventional people form a fragile friendship. Alternating the narrative voice, Johnston lets their stories unravel gradually. Both characters are trying to come to terms with loss and the novel examines the contrasting ways they cope: Clara is self-depreciating and humorous but can't shake off the knowledge that haunts her; Lar is bitter and coiled, bottling up his pain in an ever-present anger. Johnston has no difficulty in keeping the reader intrigued as the plot is never a foregone conclusion. The Gingerbread Woman is a short book but not a light read-it investigates loss, tragedy, loneliness and apparent hopelessness but does not weigh the reader down in doing so. It also considers the complexities of emotions not always recognised or voiced and their impact on everyone involved. [+]This is a book that lingers. -Christina McLoughlin.
Authors
- H.C. Andersen
- Laurie Lee
- Charles Dickens
Publication date: 2001-11-05
Dewey code: 641
RRP: £12.72
Price: £115.87
Review Christmas "Book at Bedtime" (BBC Radio 4) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
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: Wanda McCaddon
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2008-07-14
Dewey code: 823.7
RRP: £18.49
Price: £14.12
Review Emma / Tantor Media, Inc:
Creator: Stephen Fry
Publication date: 2004-07
RRP: £24.95
Price: £19.95
Review Montmorency / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 2004-11-01
Dewey code: 817
RRP: £48.94
Price: £152.94
Review Blackadder Anniversary Collection (Radio Collection) / Richard Curtis & Ben Elton:
Creator: Michael Prichard
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2003-02-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £19.08
Price: £16.31
Review Treasure Island / Tantor Media, Inc:
Creator: Rebecca Burns
Edition: Library ed
Publication date: 2005-10-15
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £24.94
Price: £22.18
Review The Man Who Would be King: And Other Stories (Unabridged Classics in Audio) / Tantor Media, Inc:
Creator: Morwenna Banks
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2006-07-13
RRP: £13.70
Price: £0.70
Review West End Girls / Time Warner AudioBooks:
Creator: Helen Fielding
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2004-10-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.99
Price: £0.34
Review Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason Film Tie-In / Macmillan Audio Books:
Publication date: 2003-03-01
RRP: £53.50
Price: £53.50
Review The Far Side of the World / Soundings:Captain Jack Aubrey sets sail for Cape Horn, determined to intercept an American frigate before it can wreak havoc on the British whaling trade. As always, he is accompanied by intelligence operative Stephen Maturin, and as always, Aubrey has no idea of what his companion is up to. Another impeccably written adventure, by the end of which you should be able to identify a mizzen topsail in your sleep.
Creator: Rachel Weisz
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2003-11-07
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.95
Review Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination / Macmillan Audio Books:Where do you go after Bridget Jones? Creator Helen Fielding's response has been to go somewhere completely different. Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, Fielding's fourth novel, is a spy-thriller whose sassy heroine, the eponymous Joules, doesn't fret about weight gain, laddering her tights or Chardonnay and fags in the manner of her predecessor. Oh no-Olivia, once plain old Rachel Pixley from Worksop, is a self-made, go-getting journalist for the Sunday Times and Elan magazine with, or so her colleagues at the ST maintain, "an overactive imagination" and an impeccable gift for languages. Both of these come in handy when Olivia is despatched to Miami to cover a face-cream launch, meets the enigmatic Pierre Ferramo, an international playboy, and finds herself on the scene of an al-Qaeda bomb attack. (Question: where, exactly, do Elsie and Edward rustle up that tray of tea from?) Cue meetings with suitably disreputable people (wannabe film stars, Arab carpet vendors, spies, terrorists) in an array of exotic locales (LA, Honduras, Egypt) as Olivia goes on the trail of the terrorists and, utterly implausibly, is recruited to MI6 (they can't get the staff nowadays). A ridiculous plot is not exactly a hanging offence in a spy-thriller, which is probably just as well here. Sadly, for Fielding, however, we do inhabit a post-Austin-Powers universe and Olivia, a walking digest of Susan Jeffers platitudes, is hard to take: seriously or otherwise. None of it is very funny, nor thrilling. Olivia is more Nancy Drew than Modesty Blaise or, crucially, Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum. Still, you can have great fun playing Bond-bingo with the clichés. [+]Family wiped out in freak accident. Tick. Greasy henchmen. Tick. Gadgets. Tick. Charismatic al-Qaeda villain, who to Olivia's amusement, admittedly, really does use the sentences: "It is a great delicacy in our land" and "Evidently, you are connoisseur of great beauty. As am I. " (Alas, "I expect you to die, Ms Joules" and "He's inside the belly of that steel beast", do not materialise. ) Maybe there's a clue in the title; perhaps the whole shebang is intended to be taken with a huge bag of Saxo. As Scott Rich, the CIA hunk, says to Olivia as the tale closes: "Oh don't be silly, lovey. It's just a figment of your overactive imagination. " If only. -Travis Elborough.
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2006-03-27
RRP: £8.81
Price: £5.23
Review How to Survive Summer Camp (BBC Audio) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Anton Lesser
Edition: Una Rei
Publication date: 2004-10
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £19.99
Price: £11.65
Review A Christmas Celebration: Including "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens (Collections) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: David Case
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2006-08-15
Dewey code: 823.8
RRP: £12.49
Price: £12.48
Review The Hound of the Baskervilles / Tantor Media, Inc:
Edition: First
Publication date: 2007-08-01
RRP: £11.74
Price: £7.93
Review The Man Who Would Be King / Saland Publishing:
Creator: William Franklyn
Publication date: 1996
Price: £9.89
Review Precipice / Mamillan Audio Books:
Creator: Shelly Frasier
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2003-03-01
RRP: £13.20
Price: £8.53
Review Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Unabridged Classics in Audio) / Tantor Media, Inc:
| Browse Authors A-Z:
Models & Brands:
Kidnapped (Mi-vox pre-loaded audio player), Cause Celeb, The Gingerbread Woman, Christmas "Book at Bedtime" (BBC Radio 4), Charm School (Cover to Cover), Emma, Montmorency, Blackadder Anniversary Collection (Radio Collection), Treasure Island, The Man Who Would be King: And Other Stories (Unabridged Classics in Audio), West End Girls, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason Film Tie-In, The Far Side of the World, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, How to Survive Summer Camp (BBC Audio), A Christmas Celebration: Including "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens (Collections), The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Man Who Would Be King, Precipice, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Unabridged Classics in Audio) |
