Showing results by narrator "Ben Allen" in All Categories

The Iremongers are a mean and cruel family, robust and hardworking, living in the Heaps, a vast sea of lost and discarded items. A storm is brewing over Heap House. The Iremongers are growing restless and the whispers are getting louder. When Clod meets Lucy, a girl newly arrived from the city, everything changes. The secrets that bind Heap House together begin to unravel to reveal a dark truth that threatens to destroy Clod's world.

When his village is destroyed by the evil Prince Mephtik, young Jarral Gullen must search for answers. With the help of his three friends Archer, Scythe and the Lady Mandragorina - a band of magically talented adventurers - Jarral must make a terrifying journey into the unknown. Only then will he be able to answer the questions that haunt him. Will he be able to discover what strange talents he possesses? And why does the spectre known as the Poisoner want to hunt him down?

The Red Waaagh! has fallen on Alaric Prime, and the mekboys are working on Big Mek Mogrok's cunning and brutal plan - to pull a comet from space with the massive and dangerous 'Klaw of Mork' and bring it down on the heads of the world's human defenders.

Married to a soldier who has returned from Afghanistan injured in body and mind, Stella Carey leaves the house every evening. During her nursing shifts, Stella writes letters for her patients to their loved ones - some full of humour, love and practical advice, others steeped in regret or pain - promising to post them after their deaths. Until one night Stella writes the letter that could give her patient one last chance at redemption, if she delivers it in time....

From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Harvest and Quarantine, a gorgeous, unforgettable retelling of the myth of Eden. The inhabitants of Eden are untouched by death. In the garden they care for their orchards and the land, and give thanks for their good fortune, because they know that...

The Essential Fyodor Dostoyevsky Collection brings together the definitive works of one of literature’s most profound psychological explorers. Through gripping drama, penetrating philosophy, and unforgettable characters, Dostoyevsky examines guilt, faith, freedom, suffering, and the mysteries of existence with unmatched intensity. This collection presents his greatest novels, novellas, and nonfiction—an ideal gateway for new readers and an indispensable treasury for devoted admirers.

Renaissance Venice is a furnace of ideas and ambition. Artists flock here, not just for wealth and fame, but for revolutionary colour. Yet artist Giorgione 'Zorzo' Barbarelli's career hangs in the balance. Competition is fierce, and his debts are piling up. When Zorzo hears a rumour of a mysterious, other-worldly new pigment, brought to Venice by the richest man in Europe, he sets out to acquire the colour and secure his name in history. Winning a commission to paint a portrait of the man's wife, Sybille, Zorzo thinks he has found a way into the merchant's favour.

‘No one is better . . . eden sees Crace at the top of his game’ - Telegraph Trouble has come to the garden. Its inhabitants live an eternal and unblemished life, tending to the bountiful fields, orchards and lakes, and serving their angelic masters. But now one of the gardeners has escaped...

1916. Young artist Sam Burke is spared death by firing squad on the battlefields of France and brought to a remote castle by the Irish Sea. At the ‘Tin Nose Shop’, he is tasked with creating intricate masks to hide the mutilated faces of his fellow soldiers from the Front. While he tries to come to terms with the death of his best friend and the promise he failed to keep, Sam and the disfigured soldiers struggle to return to their former lives and their loved ones.

In 1980s Yugoslavia, a young Muslim girl is married off to a near stranger, and the match quickly turns sour. Shortly thereafter, the country is torn apart by war and they flee to Finland, where her son Bekim grows up to become a social outcast, a foreigner, and a gay man in an unaccepting society. His only true companion is a boa constrictor that he lets roam around his apartment.

A well-to-do professor working in Moscow strikes up an unlikely friendship with a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by transplanting the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man into the dog. With a wild, but alarmingly human animal on the loose, the professor's previously respectable life becomes a nightmare beyond his imagination. A superb satirical novel, it is also a sharp and pointed criticism of Soviet society, especially the new rich that arose after the Bolshevik revolution.

Foulsham has been destroyed. Darkness lies heavily over the city; the sun has not come up for days. Inside the houses throughout the capital, ordinary objects have begun to move. There are rumours of a terrible contagion. From the richest mansion to the poorest slum, people have disappeared. The police have been instructed to carry arms. Someone has stolen a certain plug. Someone is lighting a certain box of matches. All will come tumbling down. The Iremongers have come to London.

In the aptly named borough of Foulsham, Grandfather Umbitt Iremonger has found a way of making everyday objects assume human shape, and turning real people into objects. Lucy Pennant has been discarded as a clay button, abandoned in the Heaps. Meanwhile, Clod has been turned into a gold coin and is being passed as currency through the town. Everywhere people are searching for Clod, who, it is believed, has the power to bring the mighty Umbitt down.

'Enchanting' Simon Russell Beale --- 'Remarkable' James Shapiro 'Wonderful . . . compulsively readable' Nicholas Hytner Why do the collected works of an Elizabethan writer continue to speak to us as if they were written yesterday? When Robert McCrum began his recovery from a life-changing stroke...

Stevie and Harry's wedding was meant to be the highlight of the year, a fantasy come true. So why did she jilt him at the altar? Three years later, Stevie's back. A successful journalist, on the surface she's returned to look after her sick father, but when she starts asking questions about Harry's family a suspicious light is soon cast on her. Even as Harry tries to stay away, the two are drawn to each other time and time again. Then Stevie is attacked and put in hospital. Someone is willing to go to any lengths to keep her quiet...

The Finance Collection is a wide-ranging collection of 6 classic works focused on the building of wealth, economics, and critiques of capitalism itself. Including works by authors as diverse as James Allen, George Samuel Clason, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx

The Ultimate Classics Collection: Volume Four is the fourth instalment of our wide-ranging classic collections. Volume Four features 12 timeless works that largely focuses on the greats of American and British literature, with novels from Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Thomas Hardy, Victor Hugo, and others. Read by a cast of incredible narrators including Miranda Raison, Pearl Mackie, Adam Sims, David Rintoul, and more, this is a chance to expand your listening with some of the greatest authors of all time.

“This sumptuous romance explores the relationship between Philip II of France and Richard the Lionheart. . . . Betrayal and tragedy lurk around every corner, yet there are moments of breathtaking loveliness.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “Absolutely captivating and...

The G.K. Chesterton Fiction Collection brings together thirteen of Chesterton's major novels and short story collections, including the complete compendium of his beloved Father Brown stories. This collection takes you from his first published novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (often cited as inspiration for 1984) to stories of his monocled amateur sleuth, Father Brown, and all the way through to his final novel, the high satire The Return of Don Quixote.

Set in the atmospheric town of Cloisterham, the novel centers on the sudden disappearance of young Edwin Drood, a man with a tangled web of relationships and a dark past. As those closest to him—his fiancée Rosa, his uncle Jasper, and a colorful array of town residents—become embroiled in the search for the truth, the lines between innocence and guilt blur in a chilling way.