Showing results by narrator "Phyllida Nash" in All Categories

In the imposing Glen Carrick House overlooking Scotland’s famous Loch Ness lives eighty-eight-year-old Mimi McKinlay, cared for by her three adult sons. Hamish has inherited his mother’s musical talents, Fin is the responsible brother, and Angus has the complicated and brooding personality to match his dashing good looks. But what all the brothers share is a concern that their beloved mother is living in her memories of her days on stage, while letting her present days pass her by.

It has been a long and lonely year for neighbours Vivienne, Mary and Gwen. All ladies of a ‘certain age’, their lockdown experience has left them feeling isolated and alone. They are in desperate need of a change. Things start to look up however, when Gwen comes up with a plan to get them out of London by borrowing a motor home. As their journey continues and their friendships deepen and while the seaside views turn into glorious mountains and moors, Mary, Vivienne and Gwen learn to smile again, to laugh again and maybe even to love again.

Brought to you by Penguin. In 402 AD, after invading tribes broke through the Alpine frontiers of Italy and threatened the imperial government in Milan, the young Emperor Honorius made the momentous decision to move his capital to a small, easy defendable city in the Po estuary - Ravenna. From...

Throughout her career prize-winning novelist Jane Gardam has been writing glorious short stories, each one hallmarked with all the originality, poignancy, wry comedy, and narrative brilliance of her longer fiction. Passion and longing, metamorphosis and enchantment are Gardam's themes, and like a magician she plucks them from the quietest of corners: from Wimbledon gardens and cold churches, from London buses and industrial backstreets.

When octogenarian sisters-in-law Sadie and Bronagh find themselves at the centre of a scandalous (and slightly explosive) bake-off fiasco, there’s only one thing to do – steal Sadie’s grandson’s gleaming red Ferrari and make a run for it. Sadie is the practical one, all cardigans and contingency plans. Bronagh treats rules as loose suggestions – especially if mischief or wine is involved. What begins as a quick getaway across Ireland soon spirals into a wild, cross-country adventure filled with fake identities, unexpected friendships, and more than a few brushes with the law.

Bloomsbury presents Madame Sosostris & The Festival for the Broken-Hearted by Ben Okri, read by Phyllida Nash. What do you do when your heart has been made a wasteland by love? Viv, who’s in the House of Lords, had the idea for the festival on the twentieth anniversary of the day her first...

Among the cobbled streets of the Somerset town of Frome, Lou is embarking on the start of something new. After the death of her beloved mother, she takes a deep breath into the unknown and is opening her own vintage clothes shop. In Upstate New York, Donna has just found out some news about her family that has called into question her whole upbringing. The only clue she has to unlock her past is a picture of a yellow dress and the fact it is currently on display in a shop in England.  

Settled into her new home - a picture-perfect fisherman’s cottage in the small Cornish seaside town of Lowenstowe – Val is ready to start a new chapter. And with her son due to get married next Christmas, there’s also the little job of finding herself a plus-one to help her face her ex-husband and his new girlfriend. With the support of her neighbour Connie, and after decades of married life, Val takes the plunge back into the world of dating with trepidation and excitement.

Evie is overjoyed when she is given her very own puppy. Alfie adores Evie - he loves to be cuddled, sleeps on her bed and welcomes her home from school every day with a wag of his tail. But it's not long before Evie's new baby brother, Sam arrives. Suddenly no-one has much time to look after Alfie, and soon he finds himself unwanted. Left all alone, he keeps dreaming that one day Evie and her family will come to love and care for him again - but will his dream come true?

A moving story of love, loss and family secrets set in Dorset and southern Italy from the author of The Villa. Amid the sun-soaked hills of southern Italy lies the Romano family olive grove, where Lara lives with her daughter Rose and her granddaughter Bea. Lara has spent a lifetime trying to...

Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international best seller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's best-selling authors. Despite her enormous popularity, she never gave an interview or appeared in public. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was 17 in order to amuse her convalescent brother. It was published in 1921 to instant success, and 90 years later it has never been out of print.

Acclaimed Swedish author Camilla Grebe makes her solo American debut with a psychological thriller as cunning in its twists as it is captivating in its storytelling. A young woman is found beheaded in a business tycoon's marble-lined hallway. Jesper Orre, the scandal-ridden CEO of the retail chain Clothes&More, has vanished. Who is the dead woman? And who is the brutal killer who wielded the machete?

On a normal day, in a normal house, on a normal street, wife and mother Fran has had enough. She packs a case, leaves a note for her bullying husband, Pete, and one for her beloved 21-year-old son, Harry, and heads to the airport - and freedom. In another house, on another street, Helena is desperately baiting her husband, Jack, into a fight. These days it feels like the only way to get Jack to take notice of her. Passionate, volatile, increasingly fragile, Helena is fast running out of hope.

Bloomsbury presents The New Neighbours by Diney Costeloe, read by Phyllida Nash. THE NEW NEIGHBOURS was previously published as DARTMOUTH CIRCLE. A gripping contemporary drama from the bestselling author of The Throwaway Children. When one of the houses in an exclusive cul-de-sac is sold to...

The number one bestseller - now a prime-time TV special starring Catherine Tate. Kate Long presents a tale of three generations of women, grandmother, mother, and daughter, as told from their separate perspectives, and which illustrates the complex relationships that exist between them.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband. So say the friends and family of impoverished widow Octavia Darcy when she unexpectedly inherits a fortune, but she has a different view and looks forward to a new life of independence.

Eleanor Lee is fiercely independent. She has lived alone well into her nineties, despite her now near-total blindness. Now, finally, she has been persuaded by her children to move into a home. She employs Peter, a recent graduate nursing a broken heart, to spend the summer sorting through her attic – papers, photographs, books and letters – ahead of the move.

Sir Clement Carnell was the most domineering and strait-laced of fathers, and his death has left his grown children, Louisa and Valentine, with a sense of release. While Valentine throws open the Devonshire estate of Pennacombe to their fashionable cousins from London, Louisa feels free at last to reject the man her father chose as her prospective husband - Pearce Lynley.

Ruby is thrilled when she gets to meet her aunt's dachshund's new puppies for the very first time. And her parents have a wonderful surprise - she is going to have one of them for her very own! Ruby chooses the cheekiest, most adventurous puppy, Toby, and the two have fun playing together. But Toby's inquisitive nature gets him into serious trouble on a woodland walk, when he slips his collar and goes off to investigate the woods by himself.

Fluff is the smallest and weakest of the farm kittens, but she surprises everyone with her strength and spirit. Ella falls in love with Fluff straight away, but Ella's mother won't let her have a cat. What happens to kittens that nobody wants?