Showing results by narrator "Rachel Bavidge" in All Categories

Self-Portrait reveals a life truly lived through art. In this intimate short smemoir, Celia Paul moves effortlessly through time in words and images, folding in her past and present selves. From her move to the Slade School of Fine Art at 16, through a profound and intense affair with the older and better-known artist Lucian Freud, to the practises of her present-day studio, she meticulously assembles the surprising, beautiful, haunting scenes of a life. Paul brings to her prose the same qualities that she brings to her art.

Random House presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Into the Water by Paula Hawkins, read by Imogen Church, Sophie Aldred, Daniel Weyman, Rachel Bavidge and Laura Aikman. The addictive new psychological thriller from the author of The Girl on the Train, the runaway Sunday Times Number One best seller and global phenomenon. In the last days before her death, Nel called her sister. Jules didn't pick up the phone, ignoring her plea for help.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Sisters of Treason by Elizabeth Fremantle. Lady Jane Grey has just been executed by her cousin Mary Tudor and her two younger sisters, Mary and Catherine, live in the shadow of their sister's tragic demise. Lady Catherine's fatal flaw is her compulsive desire for love, while clever Lady Mary is burdened with a crooked spine and tiny stature - and both have inherited the curse of royal blood.

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Inside the walls of their old cottage, they make music, and in the garden they grow (and sometimes kill, everything they need for sustenance. But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. Jeanie and Julius would do anything to preserve their small sanctuary against the perils of the outside world.

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Virginia Nicholson's Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in the Second World War. A special multi-voice recording featuring five actresses that bring to life the hundreds of personal testimonies, diary entries and books that make up this superb study. Read by Patience Tomlinson, Annie Aldington, Rachel Bavidge, Julie Maisey and Georgina Sutton.

It is the early 1930s, and Europe is holding its breath. As Hitler's grip on power tightens, preparations are being made for the Berlin Olympics.

There's the lost. There's the missing. And there's the taken. She asked me once if we had any secrets, and I shook my head. 'No secrets between us', she said. 'No' I answered. 'Never ever.' In a Durham hotel at dawn, celebrated preacher Tristan Snow is murdered as he prays. None of the other guests - not even his daughter, his wife, or her sister - saw or heard anything. But then again, they each had a motive for murder.

A thought-provoking Colombian crime novel set in and around a beauty salon in Bogota. House of Beauty is a high-end salon in Bogotá's exclusive Zona Rosa area, and Karen is one of its best beauticians. But there is more to her role than the best way to apply wax or how to give the perfect massage. Her clients confide in her, and she knows all about them. Their breast implants, their weekends in Miami, their divorces and affairs. Karen has problems of her own. She's in trouble, and she needs money.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Shadow Hour by Kate Riordan, read by Eve Webster, Rachel Bavidge, Andy Secombe, Roy Mcmillan, Helen Fraser, Daniel Weyman and Steven France. Nineteen twenty-two. Grace has been sent to the stately and crumbling Fenix House to follow in her grandmother's footsteps as a governess.

What was mothering like in the past? When acclaimed historian Sarah Knott became pregnant, she asked herself this question. But accounts of motherhood are hard to find. For centuries, historians have concerned themselves with wars, politics and revolutions, not the everyday details of carrying and caring for a baby. These details matter: they shape our feelings and give structure to our hours. But they leave little historical trace. Much to do with becoming a mother, past or present, is lost or forgotten.

Cathy Wilson is driving to Norfolk, to begin her new job with the Harvey family. She is going to look after the two young children, Tim and Susan. Cathy meets the children’s father, and their grandmother, and their aunt. She meets Nick, the farmer who lives across the fields. But she doesn’t meet Miranda, the children’s mother, because Miranda is dead. She died two years ago, and Cathy cannot learn anything about her. Everybody remembers Miranda, but nobody wants to talk about her.

Anna grew up in a house that was loving, even if her mum was ‘a little eccentric’. They knew to keep things clean, to stay quiet, and to look the other way when things started to get ‘a bit much for your mum’. It’s only when her mother reaches her 70s and Anna has a family of her own, that the cracks really start to appear. More manic. More irrational. More detached from the world. And when her father, the man who has calmed and cajoled her mother through her entire life is diagnosed with cancer, the whole world turns upside down.

Richard is bored with the quiet life of his village. He would like to have a motor-car and drive it very fast. But Richard lives in a future world where there are no cars, only bicycles and small villages and green forests. And now he is 12 years old, and like the other children, he must do his "Year of Sharing". He must live alone in the forest with the wild animals. He must learn to share his world; he must learn how animals live and eat and fight... and die.

June, 1877: the petite 29-year-old Annie Besant stands motionless before the 75-year-old Judge towering over her in the Palace of Westminster. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn is presiding over the scandalous 'trial of the century' where Annie Besant and her confidante Charles Bradlaugh have been charged with the unforgiveable crime of publishing and selling a guide to birth control. Charged with obscenity, she argued—controversially and outrageously, for the time—that it was a woman's right to be able to choose to have children.

Selma van de Perre was 17 when World War Two began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had been of no consequence. But by 1941 this simple fact had become a matter of life or death. Several times, Selma avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. Then, in an act of defiance, she joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years 'Marga' risked it all.

Be truly inspired by these powerful true stories of animal heroes: meet heroic bears, drone-catching eagles, loyal dogs, sassy cats, and much, much more! This audiobook brings you the heart-wrenching stories of the real animals who traversed treacherous paths, made daring rescues and went above and beyond to save human lives. When faced with human conflict, these animals have all shown bravery, friendship, or brought comfort. Journey throughout history from Hannibal's elephants to a guide dog in the Twin Towers.

Celia Paul has felt a lifelong connection to the artist Gwen John. There are extraordinary parallels in their lives and work. Both have always made art on their own terms. Both were involved with older male artists. Both worked hard to keep themselves and the sacred flame of their creativity from being extinguished by others. Letters to Gwen John is Paul's imagined correspondence with Gwen John, whose life and work have loomed so large in hers.

Nicole and André, a retired French couple, take a summer holiday to Russia. It is the 1960s and Russia is a beautiful, complicated place. Their guide is Macha, André's daughter from a previous relationship - a woman they both love. Adventure, inspiration, good food and good vodka are promised. Once thrilled by their romance, Nicole and André have now become too used to each other. Both harbour a growing feeling of not being fully understood - of being alone.

A young woman walks home by herself, the tapping of her high heels the only sound. At two o' clock in the morning, it's cold, the streets are deserted and she thinks she's all alone. Waiting for her, sleeping soundly in his bed, is her baby son. When he wakes the next morning his mother still isn't back. She's never coming back. Because the streets weren't as deserted as she thought.... Three women are dead and Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt is searching for a serial killer.