Creator: Julian Glover
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1999-09-30
Price: £8.99
Review The White House Connection / Penguin Audiobooks:
Creator: Hugh Laurie
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1998-06-25
Price: £7.99
Review Great Expectations (Puffin Audiobooks Classics) / Penguin Children's Audiobooks:
Publication date: 2004-11-04
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.99
Price: £0.01
Review Deep Black / Random House Audiobooks:
Publication date: 1994-03-24
RRP: £19.99
Price: £13.09
Review The Hippopotamus: Complete & Unabridged / Random House Audiobooks:
Creator: Prunella Scales
Edition: Library Ed
Publication date: 1996-02-15
Dewey code: 813
Price: £49.95
Review Wives and Daughters / Cover to Cover Cassettes Ltd:Wives and Daughters is set in the mid-19th century in the small village of Hollingford, in rural England. The Industrial Revolution hasn't yet thrown the country into turmoil, and the railway is just beginning to cut a swathe through the land. It sounds old-fashioned, (and there are themes in the novel which date it) but Gaskell's witty, warm tale of love and longing is surprisingly contemporary. Much of the fun in Wives And Daughters comes from Gaskell's sprightly characterisation, and willful insistence on the unconventional hero and heroine, both worthy, principled, and a little tedious. Molly Gibson, the doctor's daughter, is intelligent, spiritedly dutiful and given to much silent endurance. The object of her affections is Squire Hamley's younger son "Good Roger! Kind Roger! Dear Roger!", a sort of duller Darwin. The course of true love doesn't run smooth, thanks in the main, to the scintillating Cynthia, Molly's step sister. Cynthia is a glorious creation, willful, sinful and incredibly attractive, who, with her French education, strolls through the novel with "the free stately step of some wild animal of the forest"-moving almost, as it were, to the continual sound of music. Cynthia's mother, the epitome of snobbery and self-deceit, whose "words were ready-made clothes, and never fitted individual thoughts" adds to the piquant entertainment. The novel revolves around the trails and tribulations, the questionable reputations of the inhabitants of Hollingford. [+]It was Gaskell's last and most mature work, powerful and engrossing in structure and unfinished. As her daughter reported, in January 1866, Elizabeth Gaskell died: "quite suddenly, without a moments warning, in the midst of a sentence" leaving the last chapter incomplete. Wives and Daughters is just a few pages short of an all embracing happy ending. -Eithne Farry.
Creator: Julian Glover
Publication date: 2000-09
RRP: £43.42
Price: £45.41
Review A Fool's Alphabet: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:
Creator: Julian Glover
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2000-03-15
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £8.99
Price: £0.96
Review Shout at the Devil / Macmillan Audio Books:
Creator: Martin Jarvis
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 1994-08-04
Dewey code: 813
Price: £9.99
Review Martin Chuzzlewit / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Creator: Geoffrey Palmer
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1996-08-12
Price: £8.99
Review The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (Reed Audio) / Random House Audiobooks:
Creator: Frances Tomelty
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1993-04-26
Price: £8.99
Review Time and Tide / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Alec McCowen
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1996-08-29
Dewey code: 813
Price: £8.99
Review Rites of Passage (Penguin/Faber Audiobooks) / Penguin Audiobooks:
Creator: Frances Tomelty
Publication date: 1996-03
Price: £7.99
Review Time After Time / Random House Audiobooks:
Creator: William Gaminara
Publication date: 2004-02
RRP: £40.95
Price: £42.94
Review Sharpe's Havoc / Chivers Audio Books:One thing is as sure as death and taxes: that each successive Bernard Cornwell novel will be as exhilarating as its predecessor. Sharpe's Havoc continues the trend, demonstrating once again why the Richard Sharpe books by Cornwell are among the most cherished examples of historical derring-do around. While the novels are all assiduously detailed, with a precise sense of period, Cornwell knows how essential it is that his hero, the danger-prone Richard Sharpe, is as vividly characterised as ever. True to form, in Sharpe's Havoc we never lose sight of the character of the protagonist and the many members of the idiosyncratic supporting cast. This time, we are taken to the spring of 1809 when a few British soldiers are stationed in Lisbon as Marshal Soult undertakes his assault on the garrison of Northern Portugal. It's not for Sharpe and his trusty crew of riflemen to dwell on the finer points of politics when they are sent into the city of Oporto to save the lives of two British women who have elected to stay. But when one of the women, Kate Savage, goes missing, Sharpe (along with Sergeant Patrick Harper and several battle-hardened colleagues) finds himself besieged in the city when the bridge over the river falls to the enemy. The English are forced on in a desperate journey back to the safety of the British encampment, but things become very murky when an enigmatic English officer informs them that they will be staying in the hellhole that is Northern Portugal. Cornwell admirers will know exactly what to expect, and all the heady pleasures that distinguished such earlier books as Sharpe's Battle and Sharpe's Company are fully in place here, with the added impetus that comes from a notably picaresque narrative. All the central characters are drawn with the customary forcefulness, and instead of the expected tension and release that is the hallmark of most Cornwell novels, there's a steadily increasing excitement engendered here that leads to an all-stops-out finale. [+]-Barry Forshaw.
Creator: Alan Cumming
Publication date: 1996-07-11
RRP: £8.99
Price: £7.99
Review Mr. Norris Changes Trains (Penguin Classics) / Penguin Audiobooks:
Creator: Patricia Hodge
Publication date: 2001-11-08
Price: £12.99
Review Something Dangerous (Tape) (Spoils of Time Trilogy) / Orion:Particular skills are required in a novel the size of Penny Vincenzi's Something Dangerous: strong, powerfully drawn characters, yes; colourful, authentic scene-setting, of course. But what's needed above all else is organisation: an author must know how to bring together all the elements to create an inexorable hold on the reader. It's no surprise to find Vincenzi doing just that. Through such engrossing novels as Another Woman, Forbidden Places and No Angel, she has effortlessly woven an unbreakable spell that ensures few readers will be able to put her intelligently written romantic sagas down. Something Dangerous (like No Angel) introduces a sharply observed element of social commentary into its epic-saga format, along with a vivid panoply of international history from the frantic 20s to the two World Wars. Adele and Venetia Lytton are twins enjoying all the social prestige and wealth that their position as daughters of the founder of a highly successful publishing empire can give them. At the age of 18, they make up for a lack of formal education with a confidence and cheek that isn't too far from arrogance. As the 30s begin, the twins put the horrors of the 1914 conflict behind them-but their adulthood coincides with the sinister rise of Nazi Germany. Soon, their privileged position comes to seem hollow indeed: Venetia finds that being trapped in a grim marriage is only the beginning of her misery, while Adele struggles to bring up two young children in a Paris that is being engulfed by the war. Then there is Bart Miller, taken from the slums by the twins' mother and more able to cope with life than Adele or Venetia. [+]And crucial to the narrative is Laurence Elliott, scion of the family's New York members, single-mindedly pursuing an almost obsessive love. The interaction of Vincenzi's fascinatingly rendered cast is choreographed with her usual aplomb, and the epic backdrop never dwarfs the agonies and ecstasies of her characters. -Barry Forshaw.
Creator: Annette Crosbie
Publication date: 1999-03-01
Price: £9.99
Review Sense and Sensibility (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Carole Boyd
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2006-12-01
RRP: £13.99
Price: £13.29
Review Storm in the Village (Tape) / Orion:
Publication date: 1996-03-04
Dewey code: 813
Price: £11.00
Review The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: Four Classic Stories - With Clive Merrison & Michael Williams as Heard on Radio 4 Vol 2 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Authors
- Lewis Carroll
- Johanna Spyri
Publication date: 1996-02-28
Price: £4.99
Review Alice in Wonderland (Classic Collections) / Ladybird Books Ltd:
Creator: Amanda Root
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1995-06-01
Dewey code: 813
Price: £6.99
Review Persuasion (The Classic Collection) / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
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Models & Brands:
The White House Connection, Great Expectations (Puffin Audiobooks Classics), Deep Black, The Hippopotamus: Complete & Unabridged, Wives and Daughters, A Fool's Alphabet: Complete & Unabridged, Shout at the Devil, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (Reed Audio), Time and Tide, Rites of Passage (Penguin/Faber Audiobooks), Time After Time, Sharpe's Havoc, Mr. Norris Changes Trains (Penguin Classics), Something Dangerous (Tape) (Spoils of Time Trilogy), Sense and Sensibility (BBC Radio Collection), Storm in the Village (Tape), The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: Four Classic Stories - With Clive Merrison & Michael Williams as Heard on Radio 4 Vol 2 (BBC Radio Collection), Alice in Wonderland (Classic Collections), Persuasion (The Classic Collection) |
