Creator: Carole Boyd
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1998-09
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £41.95
Price: £43.94
Review The Fifth Summer: Complete & Unabridged (Isis) / ISIS Gold Audio Books:
Creator: Pearce Quigley
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2004-10-07
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £9.99
Price: £1.98
Review Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction / Penguin Audiobooks:
Publication date: 2006-03-13
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.25
Review Alphabet Weekends / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Creator: James Frain
Publication date: 2002-09-02
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.99
Price: £0.01
Review Man and Wife / HarperCollins Audio:Man and Wife, the sequel to Tony Parsons' bestselling debut Man and Boy, follows the marital and parental misadventures of Harry Silver, a mawkish North London television producer. Harry has remarried. Second wife, Cyd, and her feisty daughter, Peggy, provide him and his Phantom Menace obsessed son, Pat, with a family. Harry's luck couldn't be better. His television show, Fish on Friday, is a hit and Cyd's posh catering company, Food Glorious Food, is thriving. However, Harry is not the only one starting again. His ex-wife Gina has also remarried. Her partner Richard (who must be the only thirtysomething male on the planet who hates Star Wars) is Pat's "new father. " When the couple announce they are moving to America-taking Pat with them-Harry reacts, in time-honoured fashion, by attacking Richard. Separated from his son by the Atlantic and struggling as Peggy's stepfather, Harry begins to yearn for a good old-fashioned "normal, family life"-the kind his lovely old mum and dear departed dad enjoyed. [+]Rather surprisingly, he decides that Kazumi, an attractive Japanese photographer friend of Gina's, could be the answer to his prayers. Male frailty and the perils of modern parenting are Parsons' forte, but Man and Wife, although occasionally touching, is overburdened by plot twists, unlikely conceits and whiffs of reactionary sentimentality. Parsons' fans are unlikely to be disappointed but, to indulge in a vaguely pertinent comparison, this follow up is definitely more Attack of the Clones than The Empire Strikes Back. -Travis Elborough, Amazon. com.
Creator: Tony Britton
Publication date: 1984-04
Price: £36.37
Review Trial Run: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:
Creator: Lorelei King
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1998-09
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.99
Review The Hammer of Eden / Macmillan Audio Books:
Creator: Ian Carmichael
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1994-08
Price: £48.12
Review Busman's Honeymoon: A Love Story with Detective Interruptions: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:
Creator: Francine Brody
Publication date: 2002-05-02
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.90
Review The Weight Of Water (Tape) / Orion:
Creator: Tom Conti
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1994-12-05
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.99
Price: £7.25
Review "Kidnapped" Robert Louis Stevenson, read by David Rintoul / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Paul Shelley
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1999-05
Dewey code: 823.914
RRP: £43.42
Price: £68.68
Review The Sound of Trumpets: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:In Paradise Postponed and Titmuss Regained John Mortimer took some fairly hefty swipes at the Thatcherite Conservative governments and the way the Labour Party had let them get away with it. The fact that Labour is the government at this writing appears to have changed nothing and the final part of this post-war political trilogy launches a pretty good swipe at them as well. New Labour-or "conservatism with water" as the trilogy's most enduring character, Leslie Titmuss, calls them-are seen, like the appearance of identical high streets in every town, as just another example of the blanding of Britain. So enter Titmuss-now retired from the Thatcher cabinet and called Lord Titmuss, First Baron Skurfield-to shake things up. He plays a wonderful Mephistopheles to a proto-Blairite parliamentary candidate's Faust as the electors in the tranquil Rapstone Valley again become a microcosm of British public life. Champagne socialists seem to come out of it all rather well, (as, it must be said, do reactionary old brutes like Titmuss) and the real venom is again reserved for the insipid political clones and power junkies. All in all vintage Mortimer. -Nick Wroe.
Publication date: 2008-01-29
RRP: £13.99
Price: £8.82
Review The Appeal / Random House Audiobooks:
Authors
- Ruth Dudley Edwards
- Ruth Dudley Edwards
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2001-06
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £36.37
Price: £38.36
Review The Anglo-Irish Murders: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:
Authors
- Edward J. Mason
- David Turner
- Bruno Milna
- Geoffrey Webb
Price: £11.00
Review Vintage "Archers": v. 2 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Simon Callow
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1996-03-18
RRP: £10.99
Price: £29.99
Review The Throwback / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Patricia Hodge
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1998-03-16
RRP: £10.99
Price: £1.94
Review Other People's Children / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Hugh Fraser
Publication date: 2006-04-03
RRP: £14.99
Price: £6.48
Review Postern of Fate: Complete & Unabridged / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Cherie Lunghi
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1996-01-22
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.99
Price: £9.99
Review Midnight Is a Lonely Place / HarperCollins Audio:
Publication date: 2002-11-04
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £11.00
Price: £4.99
Review Further Tales of the Unexpected (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Sanjeev Bhaskar
Publication date: 2001-09-21
RRP: £8.99
Price: £15.90
Review The Mystic Masseur / Macmillan Audio Books:
Creator: Emilia Fox
Publication date: 2004-06-07
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £13.99
Price: £8.42
Review Eleven Minutes / Thorsons:Paulo Coelho's astonishingly beautiful writing in Eleven Minutes virtually guarantees it the cult status that The Alchemist already enjoys. But what is the Paulo Coelho phenomenon? How can an author who (only a short time ago) was virtually unknown to most readers have taken the world of books by storm-and without the benefit of glitzy advertising? The answer is simple: quality. Such books as The Fifth Mountain andThe Devil and Miss Prym are enough to explain a considerable following for the author, with their atmospheric prose and involving characters. Eleven Minutes tells the story of young Maria living an innocent life in a Brazilian village and is played out in a measured fashion, but with all the author's brilliant scene-setting (very lush here) fully in place. But then Maria experiences love and suffers great pain. From this point, Coelho has us inexorably in his grip. Maria's disillusionment with love leads her to Geneva where she finally ends up selling her body (Coelho may offer us the beauty of life, but never at the expense of its harshness). Maria's approach to sex is complex-this is no mere revulsion arising from what she is now doing with her life. And then she meets a seductive young painter, who may or may not offer her a new path in life. But does she prefer to continue on the dark sexual odyssey she has embarked on, at the expense of real love? There are echoes of DH Lawrence in Coelho's exploration of the sacred and spiritual aspects of sex and it's a brave author who tackles a subject that can so easily slip into strained seriousness. [+]That never happens here, and Maria's journey is one that the reader willingly undertakes; the lesson she learns are lessons for the reader. -Barry Forshaw.
| Browse Fiction:
Models & Brands:
The Fifth Summer: Complete & Unabridged (Isis), Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, Alphabet Weekends, Man and Wife, Trial Run: Complete & Unabridged, The Hammer of Eden, Busman's Honeymoon: A Love Story with Detective Interruptions: Complete & Unabridged, The Weight Of Water (Tape), "Kidnapped" Robert Louis Stevenson, read by David Rintoul, The Sound of Trumpets: Complete & Unabridged, The Appeal, The Anglo-Irish Murders: Complete & Unabridged, Vintage "Archers": v. 2 (BBC Radio Collection), The Throwback, Other People's Children, Postern of Fate: Complete & Unabridged, Midnight Is a Lonely Place, Further Tales of the Unexpected (BBC Radio Collection), The Mystic Masseur, Eleven Minutes |
