Creator: Richard (Bob) Hope
Publication date: 2000-03-06
Dewey code: 813
Price: £10.75
Review The Diary of a Provincial Lady: A BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation. Starring Imelda Staunton & Richard Hope (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: et al
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1998-08-27
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.00
Review King John: Unabridged (Arkangel complete Shakespeare) / Penguin Audiobooks:One of Shakespeare's most unpopular history plays, King John deals with the life and death of King John, who reigned from 1199 to 1216. This is as early as Shakespeare goes in his treatment of English history, concentrating more successfully on the later 14th and 15th centuries in the plays which stretch from Richard II to Henry VI. As a result, King John suffers from being so historically distant in time, as well as offering a rather weak and vacillating king, who lacks the charisma and authority of Richard III or Henry V. The play begins with King John struggling to retain his throne, under attack from rebellious courtiers and Philip, the king of France. As the quarrel escalates into war with France, the plays begins to take on a contemporary Elizabethan flavour-the feared invasion from a foreign (Catholic) nation, and the extent to which such an invasion is based on the questionable paternity of King John (like Queen Elizabeth, John is accused of being a bastard and is excommunicated). The play is saved from its rather colourless political machinations by Philip the Bastard, John's favourite, a dramatic forerunner of dubious but charismatic malcontents like Edmund in King Lear. It is also Philip who is given the most powerful and patriotic lines, when he claims that "This England never did, nor never shall, / Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror". King John's mysterious and anticlimactic death through illness at the end of the play deflates expectations-something that could be said of the play as a whole. -Jerry Brotton.
Authors
- Griffin Dunne
- Scott B Smith
Publication date: 1993-11-01
Dewey code: 813.54
Price: £7.99
Review The Simple Plan / Simon & Schuster Audio:
Creator: Brad Pitt
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1998-07-20
RRP: £10.99
Price: £7.89
Review Cities of the Plain / HarperCollins Audio:On a Texan ranch, soon after the second world war, a group of solitary, inarticulately lonely men gathers to work animals as the sun sets for good on the mythic American West. All of these men nurse losses both personal (siblings or wives) and collective (a shared lifestyle and philosophy). Among them is John Grady Cole, the adolescent hero of the first book in Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy, All the Pretty Horses. John Grady remains the magnificent horseman he always was, and he still dreams too much. On the ranch, he meets Billy Parham, whose own tragic sojourn through Mexico in The Crossing, the second book of the set, continues to quietly suffocate him. The two form a friendship that will nurture both but save neither from the destiny that McCarthy's characters always sense lurching to meet them. Soaked in storm-heavy atmosphere but brightened by the ranchers' easy camaraderie and gentle humour, Cities of the Plain surprises with its sweetness. The awkward doomed-romance plot at the centre of this tight, concise novel fails to convince, but, remarkably, does little to undercut the book's impact. What lingers here, and what matters, are the brooding, eerie portraits of the plains and the riders, glimpsed mostly alone but occasionally leaning together, who slip across them, over the horizon and into memory. - Glen Hirshberg.
Creator: Tim Piggot-Smith
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1998-01-19
Price: £10.99
Review The Buddha of Brewer Street / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Juliet Stevenson
Publication date: 1984-02
RRP: £35.59
Price: £35.59
Review Kate Hannigan: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1989-12
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £37.95
Price: £37.95
Review The Mallen Streak: Unabridged / Soundings:
Publication date: 2002-01-11
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.00
Review The Legacy / Macmillan Audio Books:
Creator: Alan Cumming
Publication date: 1996-07-11
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £8.99
Price: £14.99
Review Goodbye to Berlin (Penguin Classics) / Penguin Audiobooks:
Creator: Kerry Shale
Publication date: 1994-08-01
Price: £8.80
Review The Education of Hyman Kaplan (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Samuel West
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1994-12-05
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.99
Price: £15.00
Review In Pale Battalions / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Paul Scofield
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1992-05-21
RRP: £8.99
Price: £24.99
Review David Copperfield / HarperCollins Audio:
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 1995-07-20
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.01
Review McEwan's, Geraldine, Jane Austen: Performed by Geraldine McEwan with Music (Hodder headline audiobooks) / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Creator: Eleanor Bron
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2001-06-22
RRP: £9.99
Price: £9.87
Review The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) / Macmillan Audio Books:
Creator: Anna Massey
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1995-04-24
Price: £8.80
Review Land Girls (Reed Audio) / Random House Audiobooks:
Creator: Gwen Watford
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1990-08
Price: £36.37
Review News from Thrush Green: Complete & Unabridged (Thrush Green Chronicles) / Chivers Audio Books:
Run time: 120 min.
Creator: Michael Leighton
Publication date: 1994
Price: £1.95
Review Great Expectations narrated by Michael Leighton [1994] / Castle Communications Ltd.:120 minutes. cassette format. A mysterious benefactor provides Philip Pirrip with the chance to escape his poor upbringing. Aspiring to be a gentleman, and encouraged by his expectations of wealth, he abandons his friends and moves to London. His expectations prove to be unfounded, however, and he must return home penniless. read by michael leighton.
Creator: C.J. Critt
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1997-02-28
Price: £37.01
Review One for the Money (Recorded Books) / ISIS Audio Books:
Creator: Nigel Lambert
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2000-04
Dewey code: 813
Price: £35.59
Review Lord Emsworth and Others: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:
Creator: Stephen Thorne
Publication date: 2001-03
RRP: £53.99
Price: £53.99
Review In a Dry Season: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:On the outs with their superiors, Detective Inspector Banks and Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot are lumbered with a case that is supposed to frustrate and annoy them-and find the challenge fascinating. When a reservoir dries out, a flooded village emerges and a boy finds a skeleton buried in an outhouse-by solid police work, and the use of experts, Banks and Cabbot find out who she was and when she died, and then have to find out why. The reader knows more than they do of course-elderly crime writer Vivien has written her own account of what happened during World War Two when she was an intense unhappy teenager, and this is presented in alternate chapters-but there are surprises still in store. An intense sense of period and a celebration of the virtues of solid investigation, this admirable combination of the police procedural and the psychological period thriller was nominated for the Edgar, the US crime writers' best of the year award. Peter Robinson's acute portrayal of his flawed, humane detectives and the charismatic doomed victim the truth of whose death they are trying to uncover has a desperate sadness which comes together in a climax of unexpected power. -Roz Kaveney On the outs with their superiors, Detective Inspector Banks and Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot are lumbered with a case that is supposed to frustrate and annoy them-and find the challenge fascinating. When a reservoir dries out, a flooded village emerges and a boy finds a skeleton buried in an outhouse By solid police work, and the use of experts, Banks and Cabbot find out who she was and when she died, and then have to find out why. The reader knows more than they do of course-elderly crime writer Vivien has written her own account of what happened during World War II when she was an intense unhappy teenager, which we get in alternate chapters-but there are surprises still in store. [+]An intense sense of period and a celebration of the virtues of solid investigation, this admirable combination of the police procedural and the psychological period thriller has been nominated for the Edgar, the US crime writers' best-of-the-year award. Peter Robinson's acute portrayal of his flawed, humane detectives and the charismatic doomed victim the truth of whose death they are trying to uncover has a desperate sadness which comes together in a climax of unexpected power. -Roz Kaveney.
| Browse Fiction:
Models & Brands:
The Diary of a Provincial Lady: A BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation. Starring Imelda Staunton & Richard Hope (BBC Radio Collection), King John: Unabridged (Arkangel complete Shakespeare), The Simple Plan, Cities of the Plain, The Buddha of Brewer Street, Kate Hannigan: Complete & Unabridged, The Mallen Streak: Unabridged, The Legacy, Goodbye to Berlin (Penguin Classics), The Education of Hyman Kaplan (BBC Radio Collection), In Pale Battalions, David Copperfield, McEwan's, Geraldine, Jane Austen: Performed by Geraldine McEwan with Music (Hodder headline audiobooks), The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle), Land Girls (Reed Audio), News from Thrush Green: Complete & Unabridged (Thrush Green Chronicles), Great Expectations narrated by Michael Leighton [1994], One for the Money (Recorded Books), Lord Emsworth and Others: Complete & Unabridged, In a Dry Season: Complete & Unabridged |
