Showing results by narrator "Karen Bartke" in All Categories

Jack loves his childhood toy Dur Pig. DP has always been there for him, through good and bad. Until one Christmas Eve something terrible happens - DP is lost. But Christmas Eve is a night for miracles and lost causes, a night when all things can come to life...even toys. And Jack’s newest toy - the Christmas Pig (DP’s annoying replacement) - has a daring plan: Together they’ll embark on a magical journey to seek something lost and to save the best friend Jack has ever known....

Janey Hallahan was born into the criminal life. After the death of her father, she became head of the family business - every day making dark decisions that make her family firm richer, no matter how dangerous. While Janey rules gangland with an iron fist, she always sticks to her own code of honour, and the innocent never get hurt. One of her workers, Danny McInroy runs an exclusive club in Glasgow - the kind of place where the ultra-wealthy can fulfil their darkest desires, for a hefty cost.

Cheryl Davidson was happy with husband Leo, watching her beloved son, Dean, grow into a handsome young man, dreaming of the paths his life would take. Until the day that Dean was murdered, his body dumped in an isolated scrapyard with a bullet in his head, and Cheryl's world exploded. Discovering that Dean had been mixed up in the Glasgow underworld, and worst of all, that Leo had brought him in, means that Cheryl's sanity is hanging by a thread. Overwhelmed by grief and with no one left to trust, Cheryl plans to take deadly retribution on the family that caused her son to be killed.

On the first morning of her new job at Heartfield House, a care home for the elderly, Annie Jackson wakens from a terrifying dream. And when she arrives at the home, she knows that the first old man she meets is going to die. How she knows this is a terrifying mystery, but it is the start of horrifying premonitions...a rekindling of the curse that has trickled through generations of women in her family - a wicked gift known only as 'the murmurs'... With its reappearance comes an old, forgotten fear that is about to grip Annie Jackson.

A collection of radio readings of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction - plus two bonus programmes. Over the years the BBC has broadcast readings of many of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, novellas and short stories. This collection includes some of his most famous works alongside various lesser-known tales, including three 'lost stories' (first published in 2017 and with an introduction written by editor Anne Margaret Daniel).

In this sitcom, Harry Hill stars as the governor of Britain’s remotest prison. In Series 1, he has to contend with the prison inspectors, mysteriously malfunctioning CCTV cameras, escaping prisoners and even the prison being attacked by a pair of mating whales. In Series 2, he and the team pitch a new invention to Dragon’s Den, he tries to get his stomach around a food shortage and a self-destruct button is found in the prison.

Detective Lola is heading back over the river from a rare night out when she spots a crowd of people looking over the parapet. Someone’s gone in. A young man called Cammy witnessed everything. He swears it’s the work of the Clyde Pusher, but is terrified of the police. The Clyde Pusher is the stuff of urban legend. A hooded figure who throws men into the river to drown. Eight victims in five years. But according to the police, the Pusher doesn’t exist. There are no reliable witnesses, nothing to link the victims.

Hiding from the world in her little white cottage on the shores of a loch, Annie Jackson is fighting to come to terms with the world of the murmurs, a curse that has haunted female members of her family for centuries. While she is within the ancient, heavy stone of the old dwelling, the voices merely buzz, but the moment she steps outside the door they clamour to torment her all over again, bringing with them shocking visions of imminent deaths. Into this oasis comes her adoptive mother, Mandy McEvoy, begging for Annie's help. Mandy's nephew Damien has gone missing.

Detective Lola Harris returns from a miserable solo holiday – an effort to get over her useless ex – only to find herself in charge of a high-stakes investigation. She rushes to a crime scene in the historic Gallowgate neighbourhood. The smell in the basement is thick and sweet, even through Lola’s forensic mask. The old wooden chair and the rope hanging from its arms are stained red. The earth below is saturated with blood. Six candleholders, their lights burned out, lend the scene an air of a completed ritual. And yet there is no sign of a body.

Firmly ensconced in the criminal underworld, Carly and Jane Savage, along with girl gang the Unbeatable Bitches, their uncle Eddie and their cousins Dean and Harry, are finally making good money, running dubious errands for the notorious Tallan brothers. Rod and Neil Tallan wield almighty power over their patch, and their reputation for ruthless revenge on traitors is legendary. The Savage sisters feel invincible until trouble arrives in the form of Jack Alexander. Recently released from notorious hellhole prison, nicknamed Monster Mansion, he’s dangerous, ambitious, and broodingly handsome.

When the patriarch of the Savage family dies suddenly, his three daughters, Carly, Jane and Rose are heartbroken. But you can’t keep a Savage sister down for long, and Jane and her gang The Unbeatable Bitches, along with their uncle Eddie, and cousins Dean and Harry are determined to fight to keep the Savage family on top. But Carly isn’t so sure. Perhaps her father’s death is the opportunity she’s been waiting for – to finally get away from the life of crime and violence in Glasgow’s Haghill. Exhausted by the jockeying for power, she pictures a quiet place where no one knows who she is.

Ever since being adopted as babies, twins Sinead and Orla have been the only family they've ever known. Orla’s got the big house in Glasgow, the supportive husband and teenage daughter, Molly Rose, while Sinead's struggles have taken her to some very dark places. But all of that changes when Sinead receives a call. Their mother, Janey, is back in their lives. But she's far from what they expected and when the siblings discover their mum is the head of a dangerous gangland firm, their lives are turned upside down.

Control of Glasgow’s infamous Haghill estate has been fought over for decades. But thanks to an uneasy truce between notorious local families - the Alexanders, the Tallans, and the ruthless Savages - for now the streets are peaceful. For Carly Savage this means she can think the unthinkable, and contemplate a future with her family’s sworn enemy, Jack Alexander, ignoring warnings that he can’t be trusted. But when crime boss, Rod Tallan, takes a romantic interest in her too, Carly feels like a pawn in some very dangerous men’s game.

Jane, Carly and Rose Savage are savage by name, savage by nature. Having lost their mum too young, and with a bedridden father too ill to work, the sisters learnt early to stand on their own two feet. The family's flat in the rough streets of Glasgow's Haghill is their fortress, but when Carly's ex-boyfriend Cole Alexander is released from prison, trouble soon comes knocking at their door. The Alexanders have beef with the Savages, so the girls call for back up in the shape of their uncle Eddie and his two gorgeous but dangerous sons, Harry and Dean.

Detective Lola Harris is turning over a new leaf. She’s determined to get into shape. Her new personal trainer is merciless when it comes to fitness. Thankfully, he’s also charming and exceptionally good-looking, which helps on a cold early morning run. But as they puff round a corner in peaceful Pollok Park, Lola glimpses something that shouldn’t be there: a high-end BMW. Doors gaping. And a man and a woman, roped together. Lola’s early morning run is now a crime scene.

When the body of 17-year-old Jackie Shaw is found in a shallow grave, it sends shockwaves through her small West Yorkshire community. Rumours of murder and systematic sexual abuse are rife, and the town's MP, Samuel Stokes, is adding fuel to the fire with his campaign against a so-called 'Asian grooming gang'. Probation officer Rachel Collier deals with paedophiles on a daily basis: so when she hears that her teenage daughter, Chloe, has become friendly with 24-year-old Tariq, she's concerned where it might lead. But that's not her only worry.

It’s 1964, and 22-year-old Trisha moves into a West Hampstead bedsitter to escape her controlling suburban parents and her boring fiancé, Keith. She’s determined to make it as a swinging, get-ahead girl-about-town, but finds herself struggling with homesickness, loneliness and the challenges of cooking a decent meal on a single gas ring. Then she rescues a grotty wardrobe from her landlady’s attic, and it yields a surprising treasure – a copy of Cooking in a Bedsitter, which becomes her bible.

The Crowdies have worked the same landscape on the Scottish coast for generations. When Bern Crowdie passes away, everyone expects the farm to pass to his youngest daughter Nina who, with her young son Barnaby, has been living and working with her father for the past five years. Her older sister Bette left when she was eighteen, vowing never to return. Now a successful lawyer in London, it’s doubtful she’ll even make the funeral – or the reading of their father’s will.

As the fragile negotiations of the international Peace Conference get underway, typist Stella Rutherford throws herself into her work and the mixture of glamour and devastation the City of Light reveals. Anything to escape the grief coming in waves for her beloved brother Jack. Her sister Corran is about to put her academic career to use among the troops in France, a chance to see what the experience was like for countless men, including her fiancé Rob.

Like half of all the young women living in the Scottish town Clydebankin early 1911, Ellen works at the sewing machine factory. So does her big sister, Bridget, Bridget's fiancé Malcolm, and her new friend Sadie, who has come to work at the factory after the death of her father. For Sadie, the factory is a way to make ends meet, but Ellen has sewing in her veins. She is even making Bridget's wedding dress on her beloved sewing machine. But after the excitement of the wedding dies down, everything changes.