Showing results by narrator "Sheila Mitchell" in All Categories

This classic memoir of the First World War is now a major motion picture starring Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington. In 1914 Vera Brittain was 20, and as war was declared she was preparing to study at Oxford. Four years later her life - and the lives of her whole generation - had changed in a way that would have been unimaginable in the tranquil prewar era.

London, 1930. A headless corpse; an apparent suicide in a locked room; a man burned alive during an illusionist's show in front of thousands of people. Scotland Yard is baffled by the sequence of ghastly murders unfolding across the city, and at the centre of it all is mysterious heiress Rachel Savernake. Daughter of a grand judge, Rachel is as glamorous as she is elusive. Jacob Flint, a tenacious young journalist eager to cover the gruesome crimes, is drawn into Rachel's glittering world of wealth and power....

Inspired by the novels of D.H. Lawrence, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love, this ambitious quartet from Booker Prize-winning novelist A.S. Byatt charts the lives of the Potter family between 1953 and 1970. Set against the changing social and political landscape of England in the '50s and '60s, it follows the heroine, Frederica, from precocious teenager to TV talk-show host and from her Yorkshire home to the heart of swinging London.

Harlem 1969; it's the height of the Civil Rights era and the community is still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King. Arthur Mitchell, the first Black principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, takes his protest to the stage and establishes the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Here begins the story of the five extraordinary women at the heart of this book. This is a book about ballet, the enduring allure of ballet for young girls, and about how these pioneers broke into a world that was closed to them and changed ideas of what a classical dancer could be.

Several years ago, Diana Athill accepted that she could no longer live entirely independently and moved to a retirement home in Highgate. There, she found herself released from the daily anxieties of caring for her own property and free to settle in to her remaining years. From this vantage point, she reflects on what it feels like to be very old and on the moments in her long life that have risen to the surface and which sustain her in these last years. What really matters in the end?

Crime classics featuring the gentleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey and amateur sleuth Montague Egg, plus a bonus short story and two programmes about the iconic Dorothy L. Sayers One of the four Golden Age ‘Queens of Crime’, Dorothy L. Sayers is best known as the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now. “This is the kind of history I wish...

It was six-thirty in the morning when Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens took the call that informed her that Britain’s number one tennis star and media darling, the wonderfully pretty Bubbles Xingara, has been murdered in the grounds of her big country house. Harriet is now in charge of a case that will have the world’s media – already massing for the start of Wimbledon out in force.

When Martin Trent rings home to announce his return from an assignment as a tour guide in Venice, Susan is filled with fear, a fear based on what has happened before, and her dread of further violence. Why does Susan put up with Martin's treatment? Though neighbours suspect what is going on, Susan covers her bruises with make-up and pretends that nothing is wrong and, despite everything, she loves Martin. But what is the truth about the relationship between Susan and Martin?

In honour of H.R.F Keating's 80th Birthday, his fellow Detection Club Members and the leading lights in crime fiction serve up a new selection of tantalising conundrums. Edited by Peter Lovesey. Foreword by Dick Francis. Stories include: Lionel Davidson's Tuesday's Child; Len Deighton's Sherlock Holmes and the Titanic Swindle; Reginal Hill's Uncle Harry; P.D. James' Hearing Ghote; H.R.F Keating's Arkady Nikolaivich and many others.

Harriet Martens is a tough cop, but now two of her officers have been murdered within hours of each other - the circumstances of their deaths echoing the Book of Exodus' "a life for a life, and eye for an eye". Harriet must now muster all her strength to prevent a serial killer completing a gruesome plan of revenge.

Harriet Martens, named ‘The Hard Detective’ by the media because of her unrelenting opposition to every sort of evil-doing, has been secretly summoned to London to investigate corruption in the country’s most prestigious crime-fighting team, the elite Maximum Crimes Squad. And she suddenly finds herself under fire. Not only is she opposed at every turn by the head of the Squad, but she is menaced by other, more mysterious, figures.

Nora is just 12 when the war breaks out and she joins trainloads of evacuees leaving London's East End for the safety of rural Kent. Her surrogate family,the Rivers,are unline anyone she has ever met and she soon comes to lover her new life with them,in particular with their daughter Grace. The two become as close as sisters,although, to Nora's confusion,even this is not quite as close as she would like. What happens next is a secret that wil eat away at Nora for the rest of her life.

Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens took great pride in her twin sons deciding to follow her into the police by moving to London and joining the Met. Imagine her horror when, as she sits with her husband over evening drinks, the phone rings and she learns that Graham has been killed by a terrorist bomb and Malcolm is in hospital, gravely injured. Her world falls apart around her.

Actress Sheila Mitchell, the widow of the late writer H.R.F. Keating, joins Robin Morgan in the Audible Studios to discuss A Kind of Light, a new piece of writing written by her husband, published for the first time, in audio only.

For a respectable governess like Harriet Unwin, her first few weeks in the shabby, inhospitable home of the Partingtons were as unhappy as any she could remember. The bone-chilling cold, the grim sparseness of the meals, the embittered meanness of old Mr Partington: But for the kindness shown by his son, her spirit must surely have been crushed. But worse was to come for Harriet. Her chance discovery of the old man's cherished secret was, she felt sure, the cause of the attack that finally stilled his heart. The doctor, however, thought otherwise. It was neither illness nor old age that killed poor Mr Partington. It was poison....

When Harriet Unwin takes the position of governess in the well-to-do Thackerton household, it would seem that fortune has smiled on her at last. That is until William Thackerton is found stabbed and Harriet is accused of murder.... In a desperate attempt to prove her innocence, she embarks on a daring scheme to save herself from the gallows. In doing so she uncovers the dark secrets which the family is trying to hide behind a veneer of Victorian respectability.

Sister Bernard has lived in a convent in rural France for more than 70 years. In that time, a once youthful and lively cloister has gradually emptied, until only Bernard and two other nuns remain. Now, the halls will fall silent as the three women pack away their few possessions into wooden boxes and prepare to leave the building that has been their home for decades. For the nuns, the closing of the convent means more than losing a home.

The Imperial Hotel, scene of the brutal murder of the Boy Preacher over 30 years ago, is about to be demolished, and the Chief Constable wants Harriet to take one last look at the scene. Seven people had waited outside the ballroom where the Boy Preacher was to begin his sermon shortly before he was found brutally strangled. Now, with the use of DNA, the suspects' clothes are to be scientifically examined. The Chief Constable is intending to close this case once and for all.

Meet five amazing Black ballerinas from The Dance Theater of Harlem, including some of the founding members. They broke barriers and made history in the world of classical dance, at a time when racism shut out Black dancers from major dance companies. A young adult adaptation of Karen Valby's...