Showing results by narrator "Matt Stephens" in All Categories

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss.

Big Swiss. That's Greta's nickname for her - she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two front teeth, her penetrating blue eyes. She's a head-turner: including the heads of infants and dogs. Well that's how Greta imagines seeing her; they haven't actually ever met in person. Nor has Greta actually ever been to Switzerland. Greta and Big Swiss are not in the same room, or even the same building.

It’s rumoured that Dickens wanted to return to his classic novel Oliver Twist, to bring him back into a later book as an older character, but he never managed this before he died. However, if Oliver had returned, what would he have been like? Would the scars of his childhood affect the man he would become? And what of ‘Dodger’, sent to a land halfway around the world, his friend, mentor and master dead because of Oliver? Dodge & Twist is that story. The tale of two boys, 12 years later, returning into each other’s lives - for both good and bad.

Jude Sullivan has one more chance to prove he isn’t a danger to the paranormal community. If he fails, he’ll be stripped of his magic, a painful process to make a witch human. As a test, the coven sends him to Mercy South, Colorado, to stop a creature that’s been mutilating cows and scaring the locals.

A bride so desperate to get in shape for her wedding that she enrolls in a new kind of workout program that promises the moon but costs more than she bargained for. A snowman who, on the wish of a child, comes to life in a decidedly less savory way than in the childhood classic. And in the title story, a time-hopping 1940s starlet tries to claw her way to the top in modern-day Hollywood, despite being ridiculously unwoke.

Ten years ago, Dylan Lynch left home to pursue a music career against his mother’s wishes. Now he’s riding the waves of being rock star with number one albums and more money than he ever imagined, and he did it without using his deadly magic. But with his brother’s death, he knows it’s only a matter of time until he is summoned home to take his place as heir to a business he doesn’t want.

In this comprehensive anthology, former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion has gathered together exceptional poems from the 14th century through to the present day, creating an extraordinary poetic journey for the listener. From the love poems of Shelley and Keats to the grim war elegies of Owen and Sassoon, there is a poem here for every sentiment, each with something different to offer.

The need for love - obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable - takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates. In ten razor-sharp stories, National Book Award winner Oates shows that the most deadly mysteries often begin at home.

He came looking for revenge; will he walk away from love? Twenty years after fleeing Madison Gully as a scared 16-year-old who witnessed the murder of his sister, Kirk Gracewell returns as a powerful energy vampire. He wants to find the cougar shifter who killed her and make them pay. Every 10 years, the Madison cougars get together. It’s a time of celebration and meeting new partners, but also listening to the seer announce who’ll get the greatest honor - becoming a familiar to a witch.

Larry Miller is the tough-as-nails, fun-loving, working-class bad boy who in the 1960s saved young North Carolina coach Dean Smith's job by winning his first two ACC titles and a trip to the National Championship game. A two-time All American, Miller is still the only Tar Heel ever named ACC Player of the Year twice. He was also the first heartthrob of the modern ACC before moving on to become "the Joe Namath of the ABA", setting the pro league's all-time single-game scoring record. And then he simply disappeared.

Afghanistan, 2009. Eighteen-year-old squaddie Briggsy is just three weeks into his first posting in Helmand Province and he's thrilled to be part of the action. But when his Rifle Section loses a man in battle, Briggsy is forced to confront the realities of war. Also included is the fascinating interview with Andy McNab, in which he speaks to Jo Fidgen about his childhood, military career and writing.

Wounded and left for dead, shifter Kit Linfield is stuck in his eagle form. A Christmas Eve flight with his family turned to slaughter when some hunters took aim. Kit played dead, but he needs help, or he’ll die. He wants to live to have vengeance. Errol Hart is spending Christmas alone for the first time since his divorce. When a badly wounded eagle is delivered to his care, it’s the first animal that Errol can’t communicate with. The eagle is so badly injured Errol isn’t sure it will survive. But the way it looks at him, like it understands every word he says...

Demon lights, granted wishes, strange things, and brutal love at the Lucky Lounge Motel. A haunted sister, desperate parents, a little human touch, and the end of the world. These are the stories whispered among dead leaves, the script etched bare for all to see. Welcome to Glenn Rolfe’s Land of Bones, 14 tales of the strange and macabre.

When biologist Beau Evans goes on holiday to enjoy a week of snorkeling and diving, he isn’t planning to have a holiday fling…or for that fling to turn out to be his mate.

Ken and Abby Gardner were raised in a remote home on Cape Cod. As adults, their relationship is strained, but their lives are still deeply intertwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family, but when his wife walks in on him in an internet chatroom, she demands they go to therapy. Abby is a talented artist who depends on her brother's goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.