Showing results by narrator "Eve Karpf" in All Categories

In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important but natural and even supernatural forces, too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

The Sounds of Crime is an exclusive collection of five brand new short stories by some of the best crimewriters around. Using the theme of 'audio', this unique collection features brand new stories by Lawrence Block, Peter James, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Christopher Fowler.

Along the centuries numerous interpretations and definitions of Sufism have waxed and waned but the undeniable beauty of their verse in its myriad of forms including the musical Ghazal (love song), Masnavi (narrative) and Rubai (quatrain) always remains. Our chronological volume of the classic Sufi poets helps us understand the spiritual direction of Sufism, starting with Rabia in the 8th century through to Khwaja Ghulam Farid over a thousand years later.

This century unfolds with a fast-changing world riven by immense wars and glutton hungry Empires. Women strive to win the most basic of rights, the right to vote. Their literary testament is now a vital part of our cultural world. They write on all manner of subjects with truth, with imagination and with undeniable talent. We are all the richer for their words.

Anne Bradstreet was born in 1612 in Northampton, England. Her parents' position allowed them to educate Anne across many subjects, which was unusual for its day. She married and had eight children. She and her family emigrated to America, where they moved often from place to place. She wrote some beautiful poetry in 1650; the publication of her collection of verse The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America made her the first female poet ever published in England and the New World.

The inevitable is understood by each and every one of us who faces the final calling. So too are the effects on those left behind. The memories are there but the empty space, the void can never be refilled. It remains a dark, unreliable pit of loneliness. The sadness and often depression, the lack of will to continue may swamp us all. Unquenchable, undeniable. But loss can, after mourning, give the opportunity to reappraise the lost and how we can each move forward. In the literary world an accessible balance can be given.

Perhaps England’s greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë’s, they were rather good at that too.

For holidaymakers it’s a glorious time of breathtaking scenery, picnics on beaches, and flocks of tourists on their summertime holidays. But for Miss Judy Dimont, this is all a trifle dull. As a reporter for local rag, The Riviera Express, she needs scandal and intrigue - and one morning, as the clock strikes the quarter hour, she gets it. A woman has been shot dead in one of Buntorama’s upmarket holiday huts, the toffee-nosed rival hotelier next door is rubbing his hands with glee, and Judy and her trusty moped, Herbert, are off like a shot to survey the scene of the crime.

Perhaps England's greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë's, they were rather good at that too.

In the small village of Haworth in Yorkshire, the Bronte family created novels and poems that are still admired to this day around the world. The middle of the three Bronte sisters, Emily Jane was born on 30th July 1818. The author of Wuthering Heights, she was also a very talented poet, as witnessed here in this collection.

‘Oh, if only I could have a room like this!’ said Flossie Teacake, as she gazed at the wonderful things in her sister Bella’s bedroom. A few minutes later, both Flossie and the most wonderful thing in the room had disappeared down the stairs as Flossie’s dreams began to come true...A magical story about a young girl with an extraordinary fur coat, from best-selling author Hunter Davies.

Mirabai was a Rajput princess born to the Rathore clan in 1498 in Kudaki, Rajasthan, in northern India. Despite being one of the most significant saints in the Bhakti tradition and an immensely popular Hindu mystic and religious poet, very few facts are actually known about her life including her date of birth. It is clear that her mother died when she was very young and she was greatly influenced by her father, also a worshipper of Krishna. From a young age, Mirabai’s devotion to Krishna was absolute surrender and complete devotion.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began as a group of painters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, who wished to reject the stern and academic strictures of current painting and return to the simpler and more uncomplicated days before the Italian High Renaissance and the days of Raphael. The movement was short lived but very influential and, as well, was taken up by a number of different arts.

'Malachi’s Cove' tells the story of Mally Trenglos and Barry Gunliffe, who both earn their living by gathering seaweed. They are sworn enemies unit la near fatal accident seals their fate forever. Father Giles of Ballymoy is a hospitable Irish priest whose strange ways are at first misinterpreted by an English visitor.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in Campden Hill, Kensington, on May 29th, 1874. Originally, after attending St Paul's School, he went to Slade to learn the art of illustration. In 1896 he joined a small London publisher and began his journalistic career as a freelance art and literary critic before going on to writing weekly columns in the Daily News and the Illustrated London News. Chesterton's poems range from the virtues and vices of England and the English to his worldview and religious beliefs.

These three stories are amongst the finest by Katherine Mansfield, a woman highly regarded as one of the greatest writers of short stories. In these bittersweet tales, she gently reveals the emotions and feelings within the lives of apparently unexceptional people. Her stories offer a sensitive insight into human behaviour, achieved not by creating scenes of high drama, but by revealing the motives and thoughts of believable characters.

Elizabeth Gaskell is equally well known as Mrs Gaskell. When her mother died, she was three months old and she was sent to live in Knutsford, Cheshire with her Aunt Hannah, this setting would become the basis for her novel Cranford.

We begin with one of Hardy’s best regarded stories, 'The Fiddler of the Reels'. Here Hardy exposes a supernatural and demonic theme, against a realistic and historical background of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the first trains. A typical Wessex girl is gripped by the power of music and dance when a lone fiddler casts his spell on her, causing her cloying but plain suitor to leave suddenly for London.

Harmony Parker thought animals much nicer than people, and saw everyone she knew as some non-human species. Her father, for example, was most definitely a bald-headed Sea Lion, her mother a tubby, fussy Pouter Pigeon, and her tiresome older sister a Siamese cat. But Harmony's parents would not allow her to have real pets of any kind – not even a harmless gerbil. Then Uncle Ginger arrived from India and gave Harmony a very special present ...

Flossie Teacake, the youngest member of the family, is back! As always she is clad in her magical fur coat which turns our heroine from a timid ten year old into an extremely exciting 18 year old! Nothing stops Flossie and her helter-skelter life which races along at its usual frantic pace. This time she manages to become a dancing teacher at the Grapefruit Dance Studios in Covent Garden...