Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios for Bloomsbury" in All Categories

Wynne’s entire life is dictated by the Union: the clothes she wears, the books she reads, even the genes she inherited. And like every other girl in the Union, Wynne dreams of being chosen as a Carrier on her 16th birthday - one of the elite selected to carry the future generation within her womb. Wynne and her best friend Odessa are certain they will both make the cut, but when Odessa is chosen and whisked off to a life of privilege, Wynne is left behind to work as an assistant, delivering perfectly planned babies for the Union.

Once upon a time football was run by modest local businessmen. Today it is the plaything of billionaire oligarchs, staggeringly wealthy from oil and gas, from royalty, or from murkier sources. But who are these new masters of the universe? Where did all their money come from? And what do they want with our beautiful game? In The Billionaires Club James Montague delves deeper than anyone else has dared, to tell this story for the first time.

Ben Watt’s father was a working-class Glaswegian jazz musician - a politicized left-wing bandleader and composer - whose heyday in the late 1950s took him into the glittering heart of London’s West End. His mother, Romany, the daughter of a Methodist parson, was a Shakespearean actress who had triplets in her first marriage before becoming a leading showbiz feature writer and columnist in the ’60s and ’70s. They were both divorced and from very different backgrounds, and they came together at a fateful New Year’s Day party in 1957 like colliding trains.

After Justin and Linda Tyers lost everything in a devastating house fire, they rebuilt their lives by building a classic wooden yacht from scratch - starting by felling the trees. This story was told in their first book, Phoenix from the Ashes. This sequel follows their voyage from the Scottish Islands across to Ireland, down the Irish Sea to Cornwall and thence to Brittany, meeting interesting, curious and larger-than-life characters along the way.

In the winter of 1976, Simon Cardoso is arrested by the military and is never seen again. Thirty years later, Emilia Dupuy, his wife, is stunned to find him in New Jersey. Her world, which had crumbled after losing him, is alight with life again. There is a caveat, however: for Simn Cardoso time stopped when he disappeared. Using this enigma as the foundation, Tomas Eloy Martinez' story of the anguish of a lost and recovered love is masterfully tied to the sinister sense of unreality created by a regime.

Every day Mathilde takes the Metro, then the commuter train, to the office of a large multi-national where she works in the marketing department. Every day, the same routine, the same trains. But something happened a while ago - she dared to voice a different opinion from her moody boss, Jacques. Bit by bit she finds herself frozen out of everything, with no work to do.

The Truth About Death, the title novella of this virtuosic collection, is a masterpiece of sardonic humor that confronts Death head-on and emerges bloody but unbowed. Simon, an undertaker, embalms his own father and faces his own death. Louisa, Simon's mother, makes peace with her husband over his dead body in a cooler in the basement of the funeral home. Simon contemplates the mystery of death over a plate of spaghetti cacio e pepe in Rome with an Italian undertaker.

From the moment she first learned the truth about witches...she knew she was born to fight them. Now, at sixteen, Iris is the lone girl on the Witch Hunters Special Ops Team. But when Iris meets a boy named Arlo, he might just be the key to preventing an evil uprising in Southern California. Together they're ready to protect the human race at all costs. Because that's what witch hunters do. Welcome to Hollywood.

Tanya Tania is a story about two young women coming of age in two countries that are coming of age. Tanya Talati in Karachi and Tania Ghosh in Bombay, daughters of college best friends, write to each other of what cannot be said to anyone else: a mother who has gone from quiet to silent, sex that has become a weapon, a servant with unforgettably soft hands and a country beginning to play with religion.

Many women - regardless of income, size, shape, ethnicity, and age - are uncomfortable in their own skin. We fixate on our body image and try endless diets, implants, hair extensions, and new shoes, but it's never enough. The problem is that girls and women have been socialized to mistakenly conflate body esteem and self-esteem. Body esteem refers to how you think and feel about your physical appearance: your size, shape, hair, and features.

When a bunch of mean and rotten pirates, led by a captain who is afraid of blood, raid an abandoned ship, they find far more than they bargained for on board. They find a baby girl whom they happily adopt and call Violet: "Vile" for short. Soon the pirates are busy caring for the little girl and teaching her lots of piratical ways. Great times are had as the pirates and Violet happily sail the seven seas in their trusty ship, the Sleek Sally.

The Tall Book is a celebration of the tall-advantaged, which notes and explores the myriad benefits that come with living large - from the simple pleasures of being able to see over crowds at a parade, to the professional joys of earning more money, and having others perceive you as a natural leader. The Tall Book also offers well-researched explanations into the great unanswered questions of tallness, including: Why are people tall to begin with? How have tall people figured throughout history?

Dawn Buckle spends most of her days trying to get people to notice her. But whether at home or at school, it's as if she's completely invisible. And that's exactly what makes her the ideal recruit for S.H,.H. (Strictly Hush Hush) - a secret intelligence agency. How the world's most forgettable girl transforms herself into a world-class spy and tracks down a surprising secret agent will delight listeners.

This charming account of the voyage of two men in a small boat half way round the world from Plymouth to New Zealand in 1953 is a rare insight into a time, not long ago, when sailors had no GPS, electronics, radio or any of the mod cons that we take for granted today. Without lifejacket or a life raft, they 'just took what came along', hand steering all the way, navigating by sextant, hand-cranking their engine and using oil lamps for light at night and for navigation. Sailors will be staggered how primitive conditions were only a few decades ago, even though it was the norm at the time.

What do bubbles in a soft drink, a bullet-proof vest, a plastic chair, and our DNA have in common? Carbon. It is, and forever has been, the ubiquitous architect of life and civilization, forming the chemical backbone of every living creature. And yet, when we hear the word today, it is more often than not in a crisis situation: carbon dioxide emissions are destroying the ozone layer and warming the planet; the volatile Middle East explodes atop its stores of hydrocarbons; carbohydrates threaten obesity and diabetics.

In 1947 Tilly’s grandmother bought an island. Its name is Småhølmene and it sits just off the coast of Norway. At first sight, the island seems bare, hardly more than a collection of rocks rising determinedly out of the water. Glittering and bittersweet, Island Summers lovingly portrays three generations of women and the island that became so irrevocably part of their lives. Now Mor-mor’s great-grandchildren are taking their turn, enjoying endless summers on Småhølmene, continuing the story that was begun over 50 years ago.

Millions of people witnessed Emma Taylor's first kiss - a kiss that needed 12 takes and four camera angles to get right. After spending years performing on cue, Emma can't help but wonder if any part of her life is real anymore… particularly her romances. She's been burned by heartthrobs (and the press) one too many times, but there's something about Emma's co-star on her new TV show Coyote Hills that is irresistible. Jake Elliott is gorgeous, smart and actually cares about Emma's charitable foundation.

In 2018, the world will be commemorating the centenary of the end of the First World War. In many ways, 1918 was the most dramatic year of the conflict. After the defeat of Russia in 1917, the Germans were able to concentrate their forces on the Western Front for the first time in the war, and the German offensives launched from March 1918 onward brought the Western Allies close to defeat. Having stopped the German offensives, the Entente started its counterattacks on all fronts with the assistance of fresh US troops, driving the Germans back, and by November 1918 the Central Powers had been defeated.

In 1940, Leland Langtry ran off with his redheaded secretary and $10,000 in company funds. Or so everyone believed. Forty years later, Langtry's remains are found in a boarded-up silver mine tunnel. And as the knife still jammed between his ribs had belonged to his partner in Lang-Star Mining, Tom Starbuck - also long since dead - a jury decided that Tom had killed Langtry. But Tom's widow, Delia, resists the verdict and persuades that very private investigator Conan Flagg to find the real murderer.

It's the summer before senior year of high school. It's supposed to be one of the biggest summers of her life, but Pippa is headed to an art program she has no interest in. The one saving grace is that it's in Italy. And when the opportunity strikes, she decides to ditch the program and travel around Italy accomplishing her own list of goals - things like swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, eating a whole pizza in one sitting… and falling in love with an Italian boy!