Showing results by narrator "Rachel Atkins" in All Categories

Following the death of Mr Dashwood, his wife and three daughters are forced to leave their estate and live in a small cottage in Devon. Austen's novel follows the sisters through love, loss, and heartbreak, until they find their way towards a happy ending.

Forty-four-year-old Londoner Olivia Holmes has a demanding office job, a big mortgage and an underwhelming love life. So, when she and two distant cousins inherit a ramshackle vineyard, she just may have found a wonderful distraction from her everyday existence. However, there’s a catch.

Ever since her sister, Anya, was murdered in Sotogrande, a playground for the rich, Natasha's life has gone off the rails. After three months of poring over the details of what happened, Natasha travels to the scene of the crime where she hopes to unravel the truth—about her sister's death and life. With no job, how did Anya end up in a multimillion-Euro apartment in one of the most exclusive areas on the continent? The police have no suspect. Publicly, they claim the killing was likely gang-related. But their key person of interest, a local with links to organized crime, is also now dead.

Jenny and Mark have been together since they were at school. Now they are getting a divorce - largely, it would appear, because it is easier than answering difficult questions. (For example, why has it taken them 15 years to get married?) Only Jenny and Mark are determined that their carefully planned separation will lead to the world's first truly amicable divorce. But Jenny and Mark's friends and family are not so happy about their plans for a 'perfect divorce'. They find their loyalties divided.

Heathcote, England, 1984. A mysterious figure is sneaking into homes through backdoors and open windows. Known locally as 'the Fox', he knows everything about everyone, leaving curious objects in their homes or taking things from them. When beloved Anna disappears, everyone believes the Fox is responsible. For the villagers, finding Anna will be difficult - but stopping the Fox from exposing their darkest secrets might just be impossible.

Wuthering Heights: Lockwood is an unwanted guest, forced by a snowstorm to pass the night at the lonely and inhospitable house of Wuthering Heights. A child’s ghost pleads at the window to be let in; a waif who has wandered the moor for 20 years. Jane Eyre: Orphaned Jane emerges from a cold, hostile upbringing at Lowood Institution to take her place as governess at Thornfield, home of Mr Rochester. Her petulant but loving charge, Adele, and the housekeeper, Mrs Fairfax, are her sole company, while Rochester remains a distant, mysterious and yet imposing presence.

Authentic leadership is a persuasive and popular idea that continues to gain traction in terms of management thinking. Authentic leaders give people a sense of control and agency that makes them feel better about themselves, their future and their work, sparking change and transformation. But authentic leadership can never be static if it is to be truly successful.

The shocking true story of a young woman forced into spying for Russia under the KBG. What would make you agree to work as a KGB agent? Love, blackmail, desperation? For this young woman, there is only one thing that could make her agree to a life of service under the brutal regime that she hates. They took her baby. So begins the most compelling and revealing story about spying you're ever likely to hear.

Winter 1939: Danusha and her family are forced to flee their home when the Nazis invade Poland. Danusha’s mother, Anna, changes her name and secures a position as a housekeeper in a German doctor’s mansion in Kraków where Gestapo meetings are hosted in the kitchen. Her secret is their salvation, but what Danusha remembers most is the solitude, with only her baby brother and the girl in the mirror for company.

Orphaned Jane emerges from a cold, hostile upbringing at Lowood Institution to take her place as governess at Thornfield, home of Mr Rochester. Her petulant but loving charge, Adele, and the housekeeper, Mrs Fairfax, are her sole company, while Rochester remains a distant, mysterious and yet imposing presence.

Cartoonist Steven Appleby asks where reality ends and fantasy begins, as he gives us his distinctly abnormal insights into everyday life. In these two series, he takes a look at a few of life’s fundamental topics, including Love, Death, Science, Truth and Oceanography.

The British Classics Collection: Volume One is a century-spanning collection of 24 classic works of fiction and poetry by British authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Stephen Fry, Joanne Froggatt, Jason Isaacs, Adjoa Andoh, and many more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Charles Dickens; Emily Brontë; Jane Austen; Thomas Hardy; George Eliot; D.H. Lawrence; and Mary Shelley, amongst a host of others.

Chris Beckett's thought-provoking and wide-ranging collection of contemporary short stories is a joy to listen to, rich in detail and texture. From stories about first love, to a man who discovers a labyrinth beneath his house, to an angel left alone at the end of the universe, Beckett displays both incredible range and extraordinary subtlety as a writer. Every story is a world unto itself - each one beautifully realized and brilliantly imagined.

Pride and Prejudice may be her most famous novel, Persuasion her most deeply affecting, but for many, Emma is Austen’s best novel; the most perfectly balanced between comedy and insight, sparkle and depth. Witty, headstrong Emma Woodhouse, more interested in making matches for others than falling in love herself, is a wholly delightful heroine.

I've always known Jack was different. Ever since he was eight years old and he killed his father. He was protecting me, just like I've always protected him. But now he's eighteen and this time he's gone too far. Steve is dead. He was a good man, and god, we could have been really great together—but now he's bleeding out on our kitchen table. I must keep my boy safe. No one can ever know what he's done. What he's capable of. And I won't let him get caught. I'll do whatever it takes to keep him safe, keep him with me. Even if it means becoming a monster myself.

After a tornado uproots her from her home in Kansas, Dorothy and her beloved dog, Toto, are whisked away to the strange and magical Land of Oz! Landing in Munchkin Country and accidentally killing the Wicked Witch of the East, Dorothy and Toto embark on a quest to find the only person who can help them return home: Oz, the Great and Terrible Wizard.

For almost thirty years they kept a terrible secret. Now their lives are falling apart. Many years ago, orphans Bea, her brother Sebastian, Helen, Sandra, and John all lived together in a home with their caretaker Miriam. However, Miriam didn't care at all. If you asked the children, they would have said that Miriam hated them, and it's not fun living with someone who hates you. Which is why the children decided to do something about it... However, a terrible accident changed everything, and the children were separated.

When two bodies wash up on a river bank in the Balkans, Simo Subotic is called in to investigate. It soon becomes clear that their deaths were the result of torture not seen since the Bosnian War. Meanwhile, after a drug bust prematurely ends the Tour de Balkans, former Olympic cyclist Heather Bishop is in freefall after her journalist boyfriend Ryan Mackinnon goes missing. Her desperate search for him uncovers not only Ryan's dark past, but that of a region still reeling from the trauma of war.

The Essential Classics: Volume 2 brings together 5 of the greatest classics ever written, perfectly read by an esteemed cast including Juliet Stevenson, David Rintoul, Rachel Atkins, Stephen Hogan, Aoife McMahon, and Lucy Scott. Spanning a broad range of British and Irish literature, this collection includes hilarious stories of the 'gentleman's gentleman' in My Man, Jeeves, the revolutionary and intense tale of Jane and Rochester in Jane Eyre, as well as Joyce's grand modern masterpiece, Ulysses, and many more.

The Virginia Woolf Complete Collection brings together 6 of her most iconic novels, a selection of her best short stories, as well as some of her most influential non-fiction writing. From the enduring importance of her ideas of female independence in A Room of One's Own to the modern masterpieces of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, alongside much more, this collection takes you across the broad breadth of Woolf's ever-inventive and timeless writings.