Showing results by narrator "Marcella Riordan" in All Categories

Beth ran away from her family when she was a teenager. She left behind a terrible evil that took her innocence. She also left behind her sister, Sara. When Beth returns home, she is shocked to discover her terrible secret is not just hers alone...she shares it with Sara. Under the shadow of a remote headland, the sisters make an oath they promise never to break.

Finnegans Wake, the greatest avant-garde novel of all time, was first published 70 years ago - and people are still trying to work out what it is about. There is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker - aka HCE (Here Comes Everyone) - and Anna Livia Plurabelle, but also Finnegan the hod carrier (or was he a giant?), whose wake is the subject of the book. This is a masterly reading of the abridged version, with copious notes aiding comprehension.

J J Liddy sometimes blames his unreliable temperament on the visit he made to Tir na nOg, the land of eternal youth, when he was 15 years old. It's perhaps not surprising that his children have also turned out to be a little eccentric, especially eleven-year-old Jenny. She forgets to go to school, can't bear to wear shoes, and spends entire days roaming the mountainside.

Two sisters, one dangerous truth.... One hot August night, Rachel Darcy gets the call everyone fears. It's the police. Her younger sister Evie's had a car crash; she's in a coma. Can Rachel fly to London right away? With Evie injured and comatose, Rachel is left to pick up the pieces of her sister's life. But it's hard fitting them together, especially when she really doesn't like what she sees. Why was Evie driving when she doesn't even own a license?

Following on from The New Policeman and The Last of the High Kings, The White Horse Trick travels from the now to far distant futures: from world's end to world's beginning. From the Winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Whitbread Children's Book Award.

Bella is a clever girl who trains as a schoolteacher, determined to escape the limitations of her genteel impoverishment. However, when the married manager of the school turns his unwanted attention towards her, the only escape is in marriage with a young army corporal. Years later, her husband, Nicholas, dies from syphilis, and Bella realises she is not the only one who has been keeping secrets.

A warm, feel-good novel about the importance of finding a place where you belong - perfect for fans of Maeve Binchy. Local librarian Hanna Casey is wondering where it all went wrong.... Driving her mobile library van through Finfarran's farms and villages, she tries not to think of the sophisticated London life she abandoned when she left her cheating husband. Or that she's now stuck in her crotchety mum's spare bedroom.

A heartwarming story about secrets between four generations of women and the healing power of books, love and friendship. The Garden Café, in the town of Lissbeg on Ireland's Finfarran Peninsula, is a place where plans are formed and secrets shared.... But Jazz - still reeling from her father's disclosures about the truth of his marriage to her mother, Hanna - has more on her mind than the comings and goings at the café.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audio edition of Only We Know by Karen Perry, read by Brian Fenton, Niamh Daly and Marcella Riordan. In 1982, on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday beneath the stifling heat of the midday sun, three children start a game that ends in tragedy. Now, thirty years later, Nick, Luke and Katie are estranged, yet still bound together by the dark truth of what happened at the river that day.

A BBC Radio 4 comedy drama starring James Alexandrou (Martin Fowler, 'EastEnders'), originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 7 December 2010. Giant. Upstairs. Ten quid a look. A touchingly real and comically disingenuous story about the awkwardness of being misshapen, and the misery of not fitting in.

"I wonder today how no one else could see the bad thing coming. Not that I knew back then what the bad thing was; and if I had - if I'd known one of us was going to die - would there have been anything I could have done to prevent it? I play it all back in my mind, over and over. The clues were all there." On New Year's Eve, eleven-year-old Ruth and her brother and sister sit at a bedroom window, watching the garden of their new Dublin home being covered in a thick blanket of snow.