Showing results by narrator "Samuel West" in All Categories

Dickens wrote into life some of the most beloved and well-known characters in the history of English literature, introducing us to Pip, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Nell, Scrooge, Nicholas Nickleby, Miss Haversham, and many more who have lived in the imagination of generations of readers and listeners. In this definitive and beautifully curated collection, you discover not only Dickens’s most loved classics, but also hear a short introduction to his life and body of work from Dr Pete Orford.

It’s 5 November, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in–she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this? Rewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own deadly secret–and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors.

Framed as a first-person narrative from the eponymous horse, this much-loved family classic follows Black Beauty's journey from a well-born colt to a painfully overworked cab horse. Brimming with vivid detail and relatable characters, each chapter of Black Beauty's long and varied life communicates an important message about kindness, sympathy and understanding.

Unfinished Tales is a collection of narratives ranging in time from the Elder Days of Middle-earth to the end of the War of the Ring and provides those who have read The Lord of the Rings with a whole collection of background and new stories from the 20th century’s most acclaimed popular author.

His code name was “The Needle.” He was a German aristocrat of extraordinary intelligence - a master spy with a legacy of violence in his blood, and the object of the most desperate manhunt in history.... But his fate lay in the hands of a young and vulnerable English woman, whose loyalty, if swayed, would assure his freedom - and win the war for the Nazis....

The day that Christopher saved a drowning baby griffin from a hidden lake would change his life forever. It’s the day he learned about the Archipelago—a cluster of unmapped islands where magical creatures of every kind have thrived for thousands of years, until now. And it’s the day he met Mal—a girl on the run, in desperate need of his help. Mal and Christopher embark on a wild adventure, racing from island to island, searching for someone who can explain why the magic is fading and why magical creatures are suddenly dying.

Set in the Dorset landscape familiar to Hardy novels, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-do-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of a dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterious Mrs Charmond further complicates the romantic entanglements, marital choice and class mobility become inextricably linked.

J.R.R. Tolkien famously described the Second Age of Middle-earth as a ‘dark age, and not very much of its history is (or need be) told’. And for many years readers would need to be content with the tantalizing glimpses of it found within the pages of The Lord of the Rings and its appendices, including the forging of the Rings of Power, the building of the Barad-dûr and the rise of Sauron.

Harlow Dawson went through something terrible while working a case in Los Angeles. She fell in love. To be fair, the love part wasn’t so bad, but the betrayal left her devastated and in police custody. She returned home to decide how to move forward. One thing was for certain. Her life wouldn’t include Jensen Wiley.

Gondolin, beautiful but undiscoverable, is central to the enmity of two of the greatest powers in the world. Morgoth of the uttermost evil seeks in vain to discover the marvellously hidden city of his Elven enemies, while the gods in Valinor refuse to support Ulmo Lord of Waters' designs to protect it. Into this world comes Tuor, cousin of Túrin, and guided unseen by Ulmo he sets out on the fearful journey to Gondolin to warn them of their coming doom.

When prominent don and celebrity TV historian Peter Devanti dies after dining at High Table, his colleague Gilbert suspects foul play and invites his former student Simon Harrison, a disillusioned health and safety officer, to investigate. Meanwhile, Simon’s former girlfriend Zoe, a freelance journalist, arrives to write an article about Devanti’s death, reopening old wounds for Simon.

In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley—aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless—is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.” She’s also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.

The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world’s greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.

Tim Cornish thought he'd gotten away with murder. For months after he'd killed his lover off the Alaskan coast, there hadn't been a word. But then the letters started to arrive. It seems that someone knows what Tim has done.... This compelling thriller delivers such a dark picture of romantic love that murder seems its natural mate. Frightening, suspenseful, and deeply unsettling, No Night Is Too Long is a modern crime masterpiece and will be enjoyed by readers of P. D. James and Ian Rankin.

In this late romantic novel, the author explores the powers of telepathy while telling a skilful tale that interweaves suspense with the familiar ingredients of Victorian melodrama.

Mercury, a lifeless victim of the Sun’s expanding power. Venus, once thought to be lush and fertile, now known to be trapped within a toxic and boiling atmosphere. Mars, the red planet, doomed by the loss of its atmosphere. Jupiter, twice the size of all the other planets combined, but insubstantial. Saturn, a stunning celestial beauty, the jewel of our Solar System. Uranus, the sideways planet and the first ice giant. Neptune, dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds. Pluto, the dwarf planet, a frozen rock.

A boy called Christopher is visiting his reclusive grandfather when he witnesses an avalanche of mythical creatures come tearing down the hill. This is how Christopher learns that his grandfather is the guardian of one of the ways between the non-magical world and a place called the Archipelago, a cluster of magical islands where all the creatures we tell of in myth live and breed and thrive alongside humans. They have been protected from being discovered for thousands of years; now, terrifyingly, the protection has worn thin, and creatures are breaking through.

In Aramanth, exams are everything. When Kestrel rebels, her family are sentenced to the harshest punishment. To save them, Kestrel learns the secret of the wind singer and she sets out to discover the true source of the evil that grips Aramanth.

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson's epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. The recording is divided into three volumes.

It is 1944 and weeks before D-day. The Allies are disguising their invasion plans with a phony armada of ships and planes. Their plan would be ruined if an enemy agent found out...and then The Needle - Hitler’s prize undercover agent, a cold and professional killer - does just that. Hunted by MI5, he leads a murderous trail across Britain to a waiting U-boat. But he hasn't planned for a storm-battered island and the remarkable young woman who lives there.