Showing results by narrator "Patience Tomlinson" in All Categories

Sir Godfrey Tallboys had come home from the Crusades. Home to Knight’s Acre. But the years had brought many changes – and not only to his estate. His wife Sybilla, exhausted with struggling to keep poverty at bay, had grown old before her time. And with Sir Godfrey’s return, there was further change. With him was the Moorish slave girl who had saved his life in Spain.

Born in Prague to a Jewish family in 1929, Dita Kraus has lived through the most turbulent decades of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Here, Dita writes with startling clarity on the horrors and joys of a life delayed by the Holocaust. From her earliest memories and childhood friendships in Prague before the war, to the Nazi occupation that saw her and her family sent to the Jewish ghetto at Terezín, to the unimaginable fear and bravery of her imprisonment in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and life after liberation.

Jane Fortune causes a stir when she arrives in the small community of Dingleford. She has bought an old cottage and plans to open a tearoom. Old friends Charles Weatherby and Harold Prestcott both fall for the newcomer, but her behaviour seems to vary wildly – she encourages first one then the other and at other times barely recognises them. Is there more to the fair Miss Fortune than meets the eye?

Homeless Bodies and Other Stories is an original fiction podcast featuring audio-exclusive short stories from award-winning authors and Sunday Times best-sellers, inspired by objects & artefacts from Wellcome Collection's permanent exhibition, 'Medicine Man', in London.

Ellie and her new husband Thomas are called to deal with Ursula, a young student who has staged a sit-in at church. Ursula challenges Ellie to solve three mysteries: a broken engagement, her friend Mia's disappearance, and a murder. As she investigates, Ellie begins to suspect that there is more to these events. Soon she finds her own friends and family targeted as a powerful group hunts her down.

Norfolk, 1940. As war rages on, sisters Prue and Thea, along with the wider community of Great Plumstead, are doing all they can to help the war effort, from running the mobile canteen for the Women's Voluntary Service to organising clothing drives and collecting salvage. When, Anna, a young German girl who fled her country, seeks refuge at the local hall, Thea opens up her home, Rookery House, and invites Anna into their growing family. But while many in the village welcome Anna with open arms, others are suspicious of the new arrival.

Norfolk, 1944. Phylly is a Land Girl on Catchetts Farm. She and her friend Gracie are doing their bit to support the war effort. But times are changing at Catchetts—there's an evacuee and two P.O.Ws on their way.... And then Phylly meets an American airman from the base up the road. As the war rages on the continent, Phylly and Gracie's world will be changed forever.

When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth, irony and brilliant social observation which link the relationships and the inevitable conflicts as profound change comes to rural England.

When Barbara realizes time is running out, she writes letters to her four daughters, aware they'll be facing the trials and triumphs of life without her at their side. But how can she leave them when they still have so much growing up to do?

On the ancient marshlands of Somerset - a place of mists and magic - a girl grows up in the shadow of the English Civil War, knowing that one day she will inherit the rich estate which belonged to her late mother. Her father, a stern but loving Puritan, once a distinguished soldier in Cromwell's army, fears for his daughter in the poisonous aftermath of the war, and for her vulnerability as an heiress. But above all he fears and misunderstands her scientific passion for butterflies.

From the summer of 1938, British women from all walks of life joined the Women's Voluntary Services (WVS). This disparate band of women came together for the common good - to help serve and protect their communities. By 1941 a million women had enrolled. These brave and dutiful women played a vital role in Britain's victory. The positive impact of the WVS on wartime society was universally acknowledged. They were instrumental in implementing the large-scale evacuation of children from bomb-targeted cities, in the care of the wounded, and in keeping those in war service fed.

The Dhammapada, a collection of 423 verses in 26 chapters, is perhaps the most famous of all Buddhist texts. It presents the Buddha’s teachings in a clear and highly accessible form and has been used for personal instruction and teaching for centuries throughout the Buddhist world. It comes from the Khuddaka Nikaya section of the Pali Canon and is here collected with two other key texts from the same source.

Colin Hardcastle has arranged for two men to meet and discuss the sale of a house. But when Nick Nash - the owner of the property - doesn't show, Colin cannot begin to imagine the events he has set in motion. Perplexed, Colin tells his friends in Steeple Martin, piquing the interest of Libby Sarjeant - and the Reverend Patti Pearson, who finds Nash's name strangely familiar....

Martha Packer is much loved by everyone in the village of Hillsbridge. As the landlady of The Three Feathers, she runs a respectable establishment and is known for her generosity and care for her family and others around her - she even took in two orphan girls to save them from a life of cruelty in the workhouse. So when Martha announces that she has killed her son, Garth, the community is shocked. Martha refuses to give a reason, but her other children cannot believe their mother is capable of murder and they begin to believe that she is protecting someone - maybe even one of them.

Isabella of Spain was a great woman, a great Queen. Crown of Aloes is presented as a personal chronicle. Within the framework of known fact and detail drawn from hitherto unexploited contemporary Spanish sources, a novelist’s imagination and understanding have provided motives, thoughts, and private conversations, helping to build up the fascinating character Isabella must have been. Her fortunes were varied indeed: she knew acute poverty, faced anxiety and danger with high courage, gave much, suffered much, lived to the full.

Barbara Bosgrove is looking forward to the annual Harvest Ball. Her widowed father will be her escort, but it is not long before George Kennett seeks her out for a dance. George vows to win Barbara’s hand in marriage and begins a slow and steady courtship. Little by little, Barbara is won over. Worn down by several years of marriage to the unfaithful George, Barbara feels she has lost all the vitality of her youth. But her old friend Simon is not prepared to let Barbara lose sight of the woman she really is.

Bea Abbott runs a domestic agency which does not “do” murder. But the disappearance of Tomi, the star of an award-winning short film, is a different matter, especially when the charming Chris bribes Bea with a bouquet of flowers. Can Bea find time to help him, when some well-meant advice she’s given to her daughter-in-law has led to a breakdown in family relationships? Bea discovers that Tomi’s circle contains a secret so deadly that they are dying one by one, even though none of them will go to the police.

The Wars of the Roses were over, but for Henry Tallboys the battle for survival went on. Scratchign a livign from the meagre soil of Knight’s Acre was no easy task, but that wasn’t Henry’s only worry – there was also Joann’s future to settle. Even at the age of eleven Joanna seemed destined to fetch a handsome price in the marriage market; yet a mysterious bond seemed to unite her with Henry, a bond more close than either of them could have known.

Bea Abbot's friend, Leon Holland, has asked for her help in establishing an alibi. But why would he need one? First, he tells her, he had a narrow escape from being run down in the road, and then he was lured to a car park to meet someone who didn't turn up. Matters escalate when two bodies are found in the car park stabbed to death. Then everything is thrown into chaos as a devastating virus infects the agency's systems. A hidden camera. Hate mail. A nasty practical joke.

P. D. James'sextraordinary memoir of her early life and time starting out as a novelist as well as diaries recording her in old age. In this intriguing and very personal book, part diary, part memoir, P. D. James considers the twelve months of her life between her seventy-seventh and seventy-eighth birthdays and looks back on her earlier life.