Showing results by narrator "Rachel Bavidge" in All Categories

Beth Reynolds loved growing up close to Eleanor's Emporium – a bric-a-brac shop full of wonders on Lavender Bay. Devastated to learn that Eleanor has died, she returns home from London immediately and is shocked to discover that the elderly lady has left the shop to her! Vowing to restore it to its former glory, she only intends to stay until the end of the season. Although the longer she spends in the colourful seaside town, the more she falls back in love with everything she left behind... and quite possibly, with her best friend Eliza's older brother, local chef Sam Barnes!

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Sisters of Treason by Elizabeth Fremantle. Lady Jane Grey has just been executed by her cousin Mary Tudor and her two younger sisters, Mary and Catherine, live in the shadow of their sister's tragic demise. Lady Catherine's fatal flaw is her compulsive desire for love, while clever Lady Mary is burdened with a crooked spine and tiny stature - and both have inherited the curse of royal blood.

Romy and Michael have it all. Over 30 years of marriage, two grown-up sons, a beautiful London home, as well as a weekend bolthole by the sea. If Romy's had to sacrifice some of her dreams along the way to support Michael's high-flying legal career, then it's been a price worth paying. Until the arrival of a letter changes everything. At first Romy can't believe what it is saying. That Michael, an upholder of the law, with an unwavering sense of right and wrong, could do something so terrible. But then other lies start to emerge, and she starts to wonder who the man really is.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Virginia Nicholson's Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in the Second World War. A special multi-voice recording featuring five actresses that bring to life the hundreds of personal testimonies, diary entries and books that make up this superb study. Read by Patience Tomlinson, Annie Aldington, Rachel Bavidge, Julie Maisey and Georgina Sutton.

1985: A man runs for his life - exhausted, wounded, hunted remorselessly by a woman assassin known only as The Head Hunter. At the end, he has just enough energy to spit in her face. 2001: Sixteen-year-old Kerry Lumsdon runs across the same terrain. She runs to win and she runs to forget. When a headless body is found in the wastelands of the Seahills Estate, Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt is called in to investigate. Kerry and Lorraine, different ages and from different worlds, come together when Claire Lumsdon, Kerry's sister, is violently kidnapped.

Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of Britain’s greatest and most popular poets. Even during his lifetime, he was considered a national institution: Queen Victoria appointed him Poet Laureate in 1850, a position he held for 42 years, and in 1884 he became the first writer to be granted a baronetcy. In a long and fruitful career, he penned numerous classic works, and this BBC Radio collection showcases some of the very best. We begin with two of his masterpieces, dramatised by award-winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Also Human by Caroline Elton, read by Rachel Bavidge. Doctors are the people we turn to when we fall ill. They are the people we trust with our lives and with the lives of those we love. Yet who can doctors turn to at moments of stress or when their own working lives break down?

Ladybird Classics are sensitively retold versions of the most-loved children's classic stories and are specially designed to appeal to a younger audience. Told in a warm and accessible style and accompanied by fun and vibrant music, this digital download is a perfect introduction to the classics for young children.

When Eliza Barnes said ‘I do’ to her husband all those years ago, she thought that they’d be together forever. Instead, he’s flown to Abu Dhabi to start a new life, and she’s returning to the little seaside town of Lavender Bay. It’s finally time to chase the dreams she’s put on hold for so long, whipping up luxury bath products and organic soaps using local ingredients. Of course, she didn’t expect to meet local farmer, Jack Gilbert, or for him to be quite so gorgeous!

From its opening sentences Agnes Grey introduces a heroine who is honest, perceptive and charming. Unfortunately, the Bloomfields, who engage her as a governess, are rather less appealing, and the incarnation of the suppressed cruelties and hypocrisies of the Victorian age. When Agnes moves to a marginally less alarming family, one of her charges sets out to disrupt her only romantic hope. Critical, satirical, direct, and honest, Agnes Grey is a fine reflection of its author.

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Inside the walls of their old cottage, they make music, and in the garden they grow (and sometimes kill, everything they need for sustenance. But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. Jeanie and Julius would do anything to preserve their small sanctuary against the perils of the outside world.

History is rarely kind to women of power, but few have had their reputations quite so brutally shredded as Catherine de’ Medici, Italian-born queen of France and influential mother of three successive French kings during that country’s long sequence of sectarian wars in the second half of the sixteenth century.

From genetic engineering to the eternal complications of family, from fear of the future to the cruel world of the English boarding school, Haddon showcases masterfully how we are subject to the same elemental forces that obsessed the Greeks. Whether describing Laika the Soviet space-dog on her fateful orbit, or St Anthony wrestling with loneliness in the desert, his astonishing powers of observation are at their height when illuminating the thin line between human and animal.

When Andrée joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andrée is small for her age, but walks with the confidence of an adult. Under her red coat, she hides terrible burn scars, and when she imagines beautiful things, she gets goosebumps. Secretly Sylvie believes that Andrée is a prodigy about whom books will be written. The girls become close. They talk for hours about equality, justice, war and religion; they lose respect for their teachers; they build a world of their own. But they can't stay like this forever.

From the attic of a dilapidated English country house, she sees them - Cara first: dark and beautiful, clinging to a marble fountain of Cupid, and Peter, an Apollo. It is 1969, and they are spending the summer in the rooms below hers while Frances writes a report on the follies in the garden for the absent American owner. But she is distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she discovers a peephole which gives her access to her neighbours' private lives.

Libby Stone has lived in Lavender Bay all her life. She loves the little seaside town and has big dreams to turn her father’s greasy old chippy into a dainty teashop - not that she’s told him yet! Finding love isn’t easy amongst the cluster of coastal houses, but it’s not every day that someone quite as handsome and mysterious as Owen Coburn walks into the local pub. And as the snowflakes begin to swirl on the promenade, Libby realises she’s falling for him. But Owen has been keeping a secret that could destroy everything....

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu longs for adventure, freedom and love, believing that only by truly living can she ever escape the stalking crow of Death. An aristocratic woman in 18th century England is expected to act in certain ways. But Mary has never let society's expectations stifle her: she writes celebrated poetry and articles advocating for equality, as well as endless, often scandalous, letters to her many powerful friends. However, Mary wants more from the world. Using her charm and connections, she engineers a job offer for her husband as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

Random House presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Into the Water by Paula Hawkins, read by Imogen Church, Sophie Aldred, Daniel Weyman, Rachel Bavidge and Laura Aikman. The addictive new psychological thriller from the author of The Girl on the Train, the runaway Sunday Times Number One best seller and global phenomenon. In the last days before her death, Nel called her sister. Jules didn't pick up the phone, ignoring her plea for help.

Self-Portrait reveals a life truly lived through art. In this intimate short smemoir, Celia Paul moves effortlessly through time in words and images, folding in her past and present selves. From her move to the Slade School of Fine Art at 16, through a profound and intense affair with the older and better-known artist Lucian Freud, to the practises of her present-day studio, she meticulously assembles the surprising, beautiful, haunting scenes of a life. Paul brings to her prose the same qualities that she brings to her art.

A complete collection of 'Goodnight' stories for your little one. Includes brand-new readings of 'Goodnight Santa', 'Goodnight Digger', 'Goodnight Pirate', 'Goodnight Princess' and 'Goodnight Tractor'. Also includes a special recording of 'Goodnight Spaceman' by astronaut Tim Peake - recorded live from the International Space Station!