Creator: Frances Jeater
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1993-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £37.95
Price: £39.93
Review A Natural Curiosity: Complete & Unabridged (Isis) / ISIS Audio Books:
Authors
- James D'Arcy
- Claire Rushbrook
- Thomas Hardy
Publication date: 2001-08-06
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £11.00
Price: £24.99
Review Tess of the D'Urbervilles: BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Sir Ralph Richardson
Publication date: 1995-01-05
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.01
Review The Best of Sherlock Holmes: v.1: Vol 1 (Golden Days of Radio) / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Creator: Diana Bishop
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2000-09-21
Price: £39.95
Review The Course of Honour / DELETED TITLES:
Creator: Anton Lesser
Publication date: 1999-07-01
RRP: £8.99
Price: £4.73
Review Intimacy: Unabridged (Penguin) Hanif Kureishi / Penguin Audiobooks:
Publication date: 1998-06-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.99
Review A Study in Scarlet: Starring Clive Merrison & Michael Williams (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Tim Sample
Publication date: 1993-02-12
Price: £13.00
Review Four Past Midnight: The Sun Dog (Penguin Audiobooks) / Penguin Audiobooks:
Creator: Annette Crosbie
Publication date: 2001-07-02
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.99
Review Tom Jones (BBC Classic Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 1995-01-03
Dewey code: 813
Price: £11.00
Review His Last Bow: Wisteria Lodge/The Cardboard Box/The Red Circle/Bruce Partington Plans. Four Classic Stories with Clive Merrison & Michael Williams as Heard ... on Radio 4 Vol 1 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Sian Phillips
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1993-04
Price: £43.42
Review Sprig Muslin: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:
Creator: Peter Joyce
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2001-10-30
RRP: £19.99
Price: £21.98
Review The Autobiography of a Supertramp (Edwardian Collection) / Assembled Stories:
Creator: Chris North
Publication date: 2000-01-03
Price: £12.98
Review Saving Faith / Simon & Schuster Audio:
Creator: Niamh Cusack
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2000-02-11
Price: £8.99
Review Sushi for Beginners / Penguin Books Ltd:Sushi For Beginners has all the right ingredients for a thirtysomething novel. The thirtysomething girls are there, looking for a better job, a better man, ANYTHING other than what they've already got; there are men to die for and men you wish would drop dead, preferably in agony. And these "so-real you can pinch 'em" people live their lives in a funny, thrilling, sad world that you wish hadn't just ended when you turn the last page. But there is more, because this one is written by best-selling Irish author Marian Keyes. Where her previous best-seller, Last Chance Saloon, featured Irish folk living in London, Sushi For Beginners is set in Keyes' hometown, Dublin. The only "foreigner" here is Lisa from London, a real madam whose longed-for promotion to Manhattan magazine is knocked off-course a few thousand miles when she is forced to accept the editorship of Colleen, a new magazine for young women, billed by the publishers as "dumbed-down" but definitely "sexy". Lisa would frankly rather eat one of her freebie Patrick Cox stilettos. Still a job is a job, and anyhow, Irish MD Jack Devine could just turn out to be a major consolation prize. Lisa's deputy at Colleen is Ashling, a Little Miss Fix-It, whose early role reversal with her mother (thanks to the latter's nervous breakdown) has induced an organisational paranoia and a handbag filled with emergency equipment to meet any eventuality. Oh, and a best friend whose motives might not always be in Ashling's best interests. [+]This is a story of three girls' lives, what's made them what they are and their search for happiness-sometimes found in unlikely places and sometimes lost forever. With Sushi For Beginners, Keyes is fast becoming the undisputed Queen of her genre. She is wincingly accurate and wickedly funny, and while she can tackle big issues like homelessness (no pun intended) with honest feeling devoid of over-sentimentality, her insight into the aspirations of thirtysomething women at the turn of the 21st century sets her high above the competition. -Carey Green This review refers to the hardcover edition of this title.
Authors
- Eckehard Schulz
- Wolfgang Reuschel
- Günther Krahl
Publication date: 2000-10-15
Dewey code: 492.782421
RRP: £21.99
Price: £19.76
Review Standard Arabic Audio Cassette Set: An Elementary-Intermediate Course / Cambridge University Press:
Publication date: 1994-03-07
Dewey code: 813
Price: £11.00
Review The Return of Sherlock Holmes: Starring Clive Merrison & Michael Williams Vol 2 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 1998-05-20
RRP: £6.99
Price: £12.99
Review This Sporting Life / Music Collection International:
Authors
- Jill Paton Walsh
- Dorothy L. Sayers
- Jill Paton
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1998-09
Dewey code: 823.912
Price: £43.42
Review Thrones, Dominations: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Children's Audio Books:Asked by her new husband, the gentleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey, why she is having trouble writing her latest mystery novel, Harriet Vane explains, "When I needed the money, it justified itself. It was a job of work, and I did it as well as I could, and that was that. But now, you see, it has no necessity except itself. And, of course, it's hard; it's always been hard, and it's getting harder. So when I'm stuck I think, this isn't my livelihood, and it isn't great art, it's only detective stories. You read them and write them for fun. " Is this a clue to the mystery of why Dorothy L. Sayers put aside her 13th full-length Lord Peter novel in 1938 and never finished it? She had made lots of money, and was much more interested in translating Dante and writing about religion. Or is it another excellent novelist, Jill Paton Walsh, speculating-in a perfect imitation of Sayers's voice-on what might have happened? Walsh was invited by the estate of Sayers' illegitimate son, Anthony Fleming, to finish Thrones, Dominations. She has done a splendid job, certain to please Sayers loyalists on the "dorothyl" listserv as well as those new to the Wimsey canon. [+]Lord Peter has been made much more human and interesting by marriage; Harriet is a wise and acerbic companion; and the story, about the murders of two beautiful young women involved with a theatrical producer, is full of twists and connivance. There's also a fascinating subplot involving the soon-to-abdicate King Edward VII and a country on the brink of the second world war. Earlier Wimseys in paperback include The Five Red Herrings, Gaudy Night, Murder Must Advertise, and Unnatural Death. Books in print by Walsh include a mystery called A Piece of Justice and a novel, The Serpentine Cave.
Creator: Author
Price: £7.99
Review Shadow Song / Simon & Schuster Audio:
Creator: Dennis Boutsikaris
Publication date: 2001-11-08
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.98
Review Skipping Christmas (Random House Audio) / Random House Audiobooks:John Grisham has turned a satirical eye on the overblown ritual of the festive season, and the result is Skipping Christmas, a modest but funny novel about the tyranny of December 25. Grisham's story revolves around a typical middle-aged American couple, Luther and Nora Krank. On the first Sunday after Thanksgiving they wave their daughter Blair off to Peru to work for the Peace Corps, and suddenly realise that "for the first time in her young and sheltered life Blair would spend Christmas away from home". Luther Krank sees his daughter's Christmas absence as an opportunity. An accountant, Luther quickly estimates that "a year earlier, the Luther Krank family had spent $6,100 on Christmas", and had "precious little to show for it". Luther makes an executive decision, telling his wife, friends and neighbours that "we won't do Christmas". Instead, Luther books a 10-day Caribbean cruise. All goes well until people get wind of the Kranks' subversive scheme. Everyone, from Christmas card salesmen to horrified neighbours, besieges the couple with questions; what about the Christmas party, carols and the erection of Frosty the Snowman? Things start to turn nasty in the local neighbourhood. Grisham builds up a funny but increasingly terrifying picture of how the tightknit community turn on the Kranks, who find themselves under increasing pressure to conform. [+]As the tension mounts, will they ever manage to board their plane on December 25? Skipping Christmas is Grisham-lite, with none of the serious drama of earlier books such as The Pelican Brief, but a funny poke at the craziness of Christmas. -Jerry Brotton.
Publication date: 2004-01-05
RRP: £14.99
Price: £3.35
Review Absolute Friends / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:John le Carré's Absolute Friends is his best in years, capturing the verve and mastery of the magnificent early work. In fact, as a prelude to the book, you could do worse than reread The Spy Who Came in from the Cold again, and be forcibly reminded how le Carré transformed the spy thriller 40 or so years ago. And the consolidation of his achievement came with the George Smiley sequence (inaugurated with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy). As the Cold War came to an end, le Carré seemed to be in need of a new focus for his literary universe, but this was soon to come as the author explored newer social threats, with The Constant Gardener utilising the power of the pharmaceutical companies as nemesis, and producing yet another critical and popular success. Absolute Friends, even before publication, had some of the best word of mouth any le Carré novel had enjoyed, and every word of it was justified. As a penetrating character study, it's nonpareil, with the (very different) friends of the title brilliantly realised. Ted Mundy is the son of a British Infantry officer who left India under a cloud after partition, while Sasha is the crippled son of a religious German family who became a star of Far Left politics in the 1960s, at which point he encounters the ungainly Ted, taught by his father-and a committed girlfriend-to loathe British imperialism and all its current offshoots. In the present, Ted finds himself acting as an eccentric tour guide at Ludwig's palaces in Bavaria. When the two men meet again, they once more become involved in clandestine activities-with lethal results. If the author's own anti-Blair/Bush feelings are sometimes foregrounded, this is still le Carré at his considerable best, and a reminder of what a great talent the UK has in this writer. [+]-Barry Forshaw.
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A Natural Curiosity: Complete & Unabridged (Isis), Tess of the D'Urbervilles: BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation (BBC Radio Collection), The Best of Sherlock Holmes: v.1: Vol 1 (Golden Days of Radio), The Course of Honour, Intimacy: Unabridged (Penguin) Hanif Kureishi, A Study in Scarlet: Starring Clive Merrison & Michael Williams (BBC Radio Collection), Four Past Midnight: The Sun Dog (Penguin Audiobooks), Tom Jones (BBC Classic Collection), His Last Bow: Wisteria Lodge/The Cardboard Box/The Red Circle/Bruce Partington Plans. Four Classic Stories with Clive Merrison & Michael Williams as Heard ... on Radio 4 Vol 1 (BBC Radio Collection), Sprig Muslin: Complete & Unabridged, The Autobiography of a Supertramp (Edwardian Collection), Saving Faith, Sushi for Beginners, Standard Arabic Audio Cassette Set: An Elementary-Intermediate Course, The Return of Sherlock Holmes: Starring Clive Merrison & Michael Williams Vol 2 (BBC Radio Collection), This Sporting Life, Thrones, Dominations: Complete & Unabridged, Shadow Song, Skipping Christmas (Random House Audio), Absolute Friends |
