Showing results by narrator "Magda Allani"

Saint-Exupéry was himself an aristocrat, a pilot and a war hero. Here he tells the story of a pilot stranded in the desert who there encounters the Little Prince, a remarkable little fellow from another planet who is also looking for his way back home and to the beloved rose he abandoned there. Since its publication in 1943, this story has enchanted both adults and children alike, and no wonder. Its gentle humour and profound insights are capable of reminding us of all the things that really matter and of healing hearts and jaded souls, no less.

In this book's introduction, an autobiographical account of the author's years as an American Custom House official, Hawthorne describes how he came across a parchment from which fell a fraying piece of fabric, fantastically embroidered and inscribed with the scarlet letter A. He found himself compelled to tell the story of its owner, Hester Prynne, a young English woman who had lived in 17th-century Boston at the time when Puritan extremism - that which led to the infamous witch trials of Salem - was at its height.

Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is the highly explicit account of an innocent country girl who, on being orphaned, finds herself trapped into prostitution in London Town. The precise and intimate descriptions of her professional experiences, albeit couched in elegant language that never stoops to vulgarity, caused a scandal upon the book's publication in 1748, earning a fortune for its publisher and a court summons for its author.

Set in the relentlessly grey-skied, grey-walled world of a Midlands coal mining village just after the First World War, this tells the story of the love that developed between Lady Chatterley and Oliver Mellors, her husband's gamekeeper. The full text was not published in the United Kingdom until 1960, more than 30 years after it had been written, because of its explicit content and use of prohibited words. And yet, one cannot help wondering whether without its excoriating and often still accurate depiction of the British upper classes, the book might have been less harshly received.

At 19, Anne Elliott was deeply in love with Captain Wentworth, but she was persuaded by Lady Russell - her dead mother's closest friend - to break off her engagement with him because he had neither status nor fortune. Anne loses her bloom until eight years later, when chance brings Captain Wentworth back into her world. Success at sea has earned him wealth and honours, but can he ever get over his anger and hurt pride, and can or should Anne now resist the influence of Lady Russell, who still does not approve?

A New York 'it' girl, Lily Bart is a beauty of slender means and costly tastes, sought after at all the high society parties in town. Her outstanding looks and charm make it a given that she will soon be married to a man of exceptional wealth and status. One by one, the multimillionaires she meets fall at her feet, but somehow Lily finds herself incapable of making a purely mercenary match and so finds herself caught up in a destructive tussle between her emotional and financial needs.

With her wonderful storytelling abilities and endless array of gorgeous clothes and toys, little Sara Crewe seems to everyone at her boarding school like the luckiest girl in the world - a 'little princess'. no less. But one day disaster strikes, and she is moved into an attic and turned overnight into a drudge.

All but a little cluster of her most loyal friends turn their backs upon her. Constantly cold, with barely enough to eat, and reduced to wearing the outgrown tatters of her former wardrobe, how will she cope?

Emily Bronte's gothic love story of the undying love between Cathy and Heathcliff set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Moors. Few would like to have either as a best friend perhaps, but most would wish to be loved as they loved one another. "I cannot live without my life; I cannot die without my soul," is one of the many unforgettable lines of this timeless story.

A vital children's classic whose profound symbolism can inspire adults too. Alice's fall down a rabbit hole takes her on an odyssey of different states of being. She grows; she shrinks. She talks to creatures great and small, and also kings and queens. Alice in so doing learns both kindness and strength. Life after all is largely a matter of perception and reaction. Original book cover artwork by Magda Allani.