Showing results by narrator "Ben Onwukwe" in All Categories

Paddington Bear tries to buy a birthday present, the animals of Brambly Hedge set off to the seaside. A greedy queen insists on having the biggest tree in the world, but will Cinderella get to go to the ball?

Deep within the archives of time-and-motion pioneer Lillian Gilbreth lies a secret. Famous for producing solid light-tracks that captured the path of workers' movements, Gilbreth helped birth the era of mass observation and big data. Did she also, as her broken correspondence with a young Soviet physicist suggests, discover in her final days a 'perfect' movement, one that would 'change everything'?

‘A Wicked Voice’ reuses the theme of music from beyond the grave from Vernon Lee’s first ghost story, ‘Winthrop’s Adventure’. Here, young composer Magnus is writing an opera, determined to go against the conventions of his predecessors, but he soon finds himself haunted by a voice beyond the grave which overpowers him and stops him writing.

A group of old friends gather in a peaceful suburban street for a dinner party. They are expecting a fun evening of wine, food and pleasant company. But then they start to play the game… It’s about trust and dark secrets – it tests marriage to its limits – and none of them can begin to imagine its consequences. Because the next day, two guests are dead and the others are trapped in a nightmare.

Alex and Morven have a pretty perfect marriage. Still madly in love after ten years, they have no secrets from each other and their life in London with daughter Poppy is...happy. Until one day it changes. Morven disappears, her car found abandoned. The police come around to Alex's house to tell him things about his wife he never knew: her real name, her past life, the secrets she kept from him. And Alex realises he's been loving a lie.

In the 1980s, London is a melting pot of cultures, but race and class create sharp divisions. Black British journalist Sam Dean looks for stories, not missing persons. When and old friend asks for help tracking down a White Conservative MP’s daughter, he feels he can’t say no. Virginia’s disappearance is tangled with the fate of Roy, a young mixed-race boy who reminds Sam of his own son, and Sam becomes determined to find the truth.

Share looks at how new business models are being created based on the disruptive idea of ‘sharing’. Uber, Airbnb, Skype, Alibaba, Google, Netflix and WeChat (China’s answer to Whatsapp) are all based on the sharing of information, assets and human capital, and a new and dynamic economy is already emerging. Traditional consumer and industrial models of Western capitalism are having to adapt to the ‘sharing’ concept, but few traditional organisations seem to understand the implications of the ‘share’ mindset for how they operate and compete.

Abdul is just seven years old when his parents are killed before his eyes. As a brutal war sweeps Sudan, Abdul and his three-year-old brother are forced to flee. Their gruelling journey across the Sahara to a refugee camp in Chad is fraught with danger, and every day is a struggle against hunger and disease. Until one day Abdul is offered a chance to escape. A chance that could save him, but will force him to make the most heartbreaking decision of his life. Abdul's death-defying flight leaves deep scars.

On the Caribbean island of Camaho, forensics expert Michael 'Digger' Digson is in deep trouble. His fellow CID detective Miss Stanislaus kills a man in self-defence - their superiors believe it was murder, and Digger is given just six weeks to prove his friend is innocent. While the authorities bear down on them, Digger and Miss Stanislaus investigate a shocking roadside murder, the first tremors of a storm of crime and corruption that will break over Camaho at any moment.

Zambawi, a banana republic in sub-Saharan Africa, is on the verge of revolution. President Adini clings to power whilst his soldiers switch sides so often they don't know which uniform to wear. It is here that student teacher Jim Tulloh arrives to indulge in a spot of character building. Then Jim is kidnapped from his bush school by the rebel Black Boot Gang and his fate takes a very unexpected turn...

Bristol in the early 1960s: Joseph Tremaine Ellington is a Barbadian ex-policeman who, like many of his generation in the West Indies, has come to the UK to make a new life in the mother country. But the land of opportunity is not all it is cut out to be. It is not just the weather that is cold: so is the welcome. Facing hostility and prejudice at every turn, Ellington struggles to make ends meet.

Kevin Maxwell was a dream candidate for the police force: he had a long-held desire to serve his community, a strong moral compass and a clear aptitude for both the strategic and practical aspects of policing. And, as a gay black man from a working-class family, he could easily have been a poster boy for the force's stated commitment to equal opportunities. Joining just after the 9/11 attacks, Kevin entered policing determined to keep communities safe in the face of a changing world. But instead he came up against entrenched prejudice, open racism and homophobia.

Samuel has lived alone for a long time. One morning, he finds the sea has brought someone to offer companionship and to threaten his solitude. An intense and powerful audiobook about guilt and fear, friendship and rejection; about the meaning of home.

Daisy is the night security guard at the Manchester Museum of Social History. She takes her job very seriously, protecting the museum from teenage troublemakers. Nate works the day shift, though he'd be more suited as a museum guide the way he chats with the visitors. Daisy doesn't approve: how does he find it so easy to talk to strangers? For five minutes each day their shifts overlap at handover. He passes the torch over to Daisy - always with a smile on his face and she asks him for a full report of the day, which he gives reluctantly.

April 20th, 1968: Enoch Powell, MP for Wolverhampton South West, gives a speech that shakes a community and Britain to its very core. Words that provoke, that divide...that profoundly affect the lives of those they touch. Mrs. Georgina Verington-Delaunay is an administrator working in the Conservative riding office of Enoch Powell. Frank and Christine are art students inadvertently caught in an undercurrent of intolerance. Nelson and his aunt Irene are Jamaican immigrants striving to make a life for themselves in a turbulent atmosphere.

Many millennia after the fall of Eden, Adam, the first man in creation, still walks the Earth - exhausted by the endless death and destruction, he is a shadow of his former hope and glory. And he is not the only one. The Garden was deconstructed, its pieces scattered across the world and its inhabitants condemned to live out immortal lives, hiding in plain sight from generations of mankind.

Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault, a charge that lands him in the notorious Rikers Island prison. A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid by someone in the NYPD to frame him all those years ago, King realises that he has no choice but to take his own case....

A new translation of the timeless family fables by Hryhorii Skovoroda, about animals that are cunning, lazy, afraid and even pick their noses, just like real people. The heroes of the stories teach us how important it is to look beyond the surface to see the true essence of things, to do our best with what it within our power, and how to value the time that we have.

Nnamdi's father was a good chief of police, perhaps the best Kalaria had ever had. He was determined to root out the criminals that had invaded the town. But then he was murdered, and most people believed the Chief of Chiefs, most powerful of the criminals, was responsible. Nnamdi has vowed to avenge his father, but he wonders what a 12-year-old boy can do. Until a mysterious nighttime meeting, the gift of a magical object that enables super powers, and a charge to use those powers for good changes his life forever.

In explaining how economic thinking is indispensable to tackling these huge problems, this book is a sure-footed guide, spanning Aristotle’s ideas about restraining consumption, Adam Smith’s thinking about the importance of moral character for sustained economic development, and Esther Duflo’s ongoing work to help the world’s poorest communities lift themselves out of poverty.