Showing results by narrator "Penelope Keith" in All Categories

Gloria French was a jolly widow with dyed blonde hair, a raucous laugh, and rosy cheeks. When she first moved from London to the charming Cotswold hills, she was heartily welcomed. She seemed a do-gooder par-excellence, raising funds for the church and caring for the elderly. But she had a nasty habit of borrowing things and not giving them back. They're just small things - a teapot here, a set of silverware there - so it's quite the shock when she is found dead, murdered with a poisoned bottle of elderberry wine.

Amateur sleuth Agatha Raisin is going through a man-hating phase and is unmoved by news of a captivating new curate. But when she meets the golden-haired, blue-eyed Tristan Delon, she is swept off her feet...along with every other female in the village. She is positively ecstatic when he invites her to dine with him, but the next day Agatha is left with a hangover from hell and Tristan is worse off: he's dead.

This is the collected BBC radio productions of the internationally renowned playwright Tom Stoppard. One of the giants of British theatre, Sir Tom Stoppard has been writing for the stage and screen for over 50 years. Full of wit, verbal brilliance and big ideas, his plays appeal to critics and audiences alike and are among the most studied works of the last century.

Clayton Stumper is an enigma. He might be twenty-five years old, but he dresses like your grandad and drinks sherry like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by the sharpest minds in the British Isles and finds himself amongst the last survivors of a fading institution. When the esteemed crossword compiler, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle to him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for his future.

Meet Agatha Raisin, high-flying public relations boss turned village sleuth. After her many years of bullying and cajoling others, her early retirement to a picture-perfect village in the Cotswolds is a dream come true.

Agatha and her assistant, Toni, are driving to their friend Bill Wong's wedding, thinking of nothing more than what the beautiful bride will be wearing when a terrified young man comes running down the country lane towards them wearing...nothing at all. The encounter leads them to become embroiled with a naturist group, a disappearing corpse, fantasy games, witchcraft, an ice cream empire, intrigue and murder.

Suffering from bald patches thanks to a hair conditioner spiked with depilatory cream - supplied by the murderess in her last investigation - Agatha escapes to the coastal resort of Wyckhadden to allow her crowning glory to recover in privacy. A local witch provides her with hair tonic, and Agatha's lost locks begin to grow - but then the witch is found bludgeoned to death. The elderly residents at Agatha's faded hotel seem innocuous enough, if a little odd. But she turns up an alarming number of secrets....

When private detective Agatha Raisin comes across a severed leg in a roadside hedge, it looks like she is about to become involved in a particularly gruesome murder. Looks, however, can be deceiving, as Agatha discovers when she is employed to investigate a case of industrial espionage at a factory where nothing is quite what it seems. The factory mystery soon turns to murder, and a bad-tempered donkey turns Agatha into a national celebrity, before bringing her ridicule and shame.

Recently married to James Lacey, Agatha quickly finds out that it's not all 'happy ever after' - before long the newlyweds are living in separate cottages and accusing each other of infidelity. After a fight down the local pub, James vanishes completely, leaving a bloodstain as the only clue to his fate. Naturally, Agatha is Prime Suspect. Determined to clear her name and find her husband, Agatha begins her investigation - and promptly finds a murdered mistress....

Agatha is taken aback when she finds a new woman ensconced in the affections of her attractive bachelor neighbour, James Lacey. The beautiful Mary Fortune is superior in every way, especially when it comes to gardening - and with Carsely Garden Open Day looming, Agatha feels this deficiency acutely.

After being nearly killed by both a hired hit man and her former secretary, Agatha Raisin could use some low-key cases. So when Robert Smedley walks through the door of her detective agency, determined to prove that his wife is cheating on him, Raisin Investigations immediately offers to help. Unfortunately for Agatha, Mabel Smedley appears to be the perfect wife: young, pretty and a regular volunteer at church.

With deceptive economy in these nine short stories, Ruth Rendell indicates hidden depths in ordinary events and creates a sense of profound unease. The stories are: 'A Pair of Yellow Lilies', 'Paperwork', 'Mother’s Hel'p, 'Long Live the Queen', 'Dying Happy', 'The Copper Peacock', 'Weeds', 'The Fish-Sitter', and 'An Unwanted Woman'.

Agatha Raisin becomes embroiled in a turmoil of jealousy and lies when the tranquillity of her local bowls club explodes into a storm of accusation and intrigue - and murder. Her private life is no less turbulent when a past suitor reappears just as her ex-husband seems intent on rekindling their romance, and her close friend, Bill Wong, is in danger of losing the woman he loves. Events take an even darker turn when Agatha realises that, in pursuing the bowling green killer, she is putting her own life in danger.

Agatha is going through a man-hating phase and so is unmoved by news of the captivating new curate. But when she meets the golden-haired, blue-eyed Tristan Delon, she is swept off her feet . . . along with every other female in the village. She is positively ecstatic when he invites her to dine with him but the next day Agatha is left with a hangover from hell - and his cold corpse suggests that, once again, she's in the frame for murder!

Agatha Raisin, retired PR supremo, has been spurned at the altar by the man of her dreams, her attractive neighbour James Lacey. So temporarily deserting the sleepy Cotswold village of Carsely, she pursues her fleeing fiancé to north Cyprus where, instead of enjoying a romantic honeymoon, they witness the killing of an obnoxious tourist in a disco. Can the duo forget their differences and resume their strangely successful sleuthing partnership?

After six gruelling months back in London, Agatha Raisin returns to her beloved Cotswold village of Carsely - and to the charms of her neighbour, James Lacey. True, James is less than thrilled to see her, but Agatha is soon distracted by a sensational murder. The victim, hiker Jessica Tartinck, spent her life enraging wealthy landowners by insisting on her walking club's right to hike over their properties. Now she has been found dead....

An unabridged reading of an Agatha Raisin mystery from M. C. Beaton, read by Penelope Keith. There may be trouble ahead...so will Agatha face the music? Can the feisty Agatha cut it as a private investigator? She soon learns that running her own detective agency in the Cotswolds is not quite like starring in a Raymond Chandler movie. But then walks in wealthy divorcee Catherine Laggat-Brown, and Agatha is given her first real case.

Sea, sand ... and the slammer for Agatha! Agatha Raisin thinks she's in for a treat when her ex-husband, James Lacey, invites her on holiday, but - horrors! - his idea of an idyllic break is the small, run-down resort of Burryhill-on-Sea. And from there on, things go from bad to worse. So when a fellow guest in their hotel is found murdered, Agatha herself is chief suspect - and has to solve this case from a locked police cell!

The team of bells at St. Ethelred church is the pride and glory of the idyllic Cotswolds village of Thirk Magna, together with the most dedicated bell ringers in the whole of England: the twins Mavis and Millicent Dupin. As the village gets ready for the Bishop's visit, the twins get overly excited at the prospect of ringing the special peal of bells created for the occasion and start bullying the other bell ringers, forcing them to rehearse and rehearse...so much so that Joseph Kennell, a retired lawyer, yells at the sisters that he 'felt like killing them'!

Abandoned by new husband James, Agatha Raisin hops on a plane to the South Pacific in the hope that an idyllic holiday will bring some consolation. There, she befriends a honeymooning couple, but tragically, the young bride is accidentally drowned. Returning home to the Cotswolds, Agatha finds herself involved in a strangely similar situation: a woman, dressed in a wedding gown, is found floating in the river. The police say suicide, but Agatha, spurred on by bitter reflections on the married state, sets out to prove them wrong.