Showing results by narrator "Clare Corbett" in All Categories

These two great poems date from Shakespeare’s early years and are full of passion and invention. In Venus and Adonis, the goddess of love pleads with the beautiful boy to submit to her advances and become her love - but he only wants to hunt boar. In the more serious Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare draws on the Roman tale of the Emperor Tarquin’s desire for Lucrece and its tragic consequencies. These poems give prominent parts to the two heroines, and Clare Corbett and Eve Best shine.

Jenny has just given birth to the baby she’s always wanted. She’s never been this happy. Her husband, Leo, knows this baby girl can’t be his. He’s never felt so betrayed. The same night, a vulnerable young woman, Hannah, wakes to find her newborn lifeless beside her. She’s crazed with grief. When chance throws Hannah into Leo’s path, they make a plan that will have shattering consequences for all of them. Years later, a 16-year-old girl reads an article in a newspaper and embarks on a journey to uncover the truth about herself.

A woman stands on a bridge, the water rushing below. In a few seconds she will jump, plunging more than 200 feet to her death. Who is she? And why is she desperate to take her own life? Nina Kennedy, a wife and mother, is afraid. A man is following her, threatening her family, toying with her sanity. What does he want? And how long will it be before he strikes? Eight-year-old Ava sits waiting for her daddy. But, like the others in the children's home, she knows her father will never come. The home is a place of whispers and shadows. But no one dare tell the truth. Until now....

Caitlyn thinks her marriage to Patrick is a success. For one thing, he is one of the few people not to fall head over heels for her beautiful friend, Sara. Life is lived on his terms, but they are happy. Aren't they? When a devastating accident turns her existence upside down, Caitlyn is forced to reassess everything she thought about her marriage, what she truly knows about Patrick, and his real feelings for her best friend. In the refuge of an old manor house, she begins to discover the truth.

Single mother Callie has come to rely heavily on her best friend Suzy. But Callie suspects Suzy's life isn't as simple as it seems. It's time she pulled away - going back to work is just the first step towards rediscovering her old confidence. So why does she keep putting off telling Suzy about her new job? And who will care for her rather frail daughter, Rae, while she is gone?

‘The Dead are not alone. There is something in the mist and it talks to them.' In a remote clinic in 18th-century Italy, a lonely girl writes to her mother. She tells of pale English aristocrats and mysterious Russian nobles. She tells of intrigues and secrets, and strange faceless figures that rise from the sea. And she tells about the enigmatic Mrs Pond, who arrives with her husband and her physician. What she doesn’t tell her mother is the truth that everyone knows and no one says: that the only people who come here do so to die.

BBC Radio adaptations of Nick Payne's finest works, brought together on audio for the first time—plus bonus features. Nick Payne is a world-renowned playwright and screenwriter. He won the George Devine Award for his first major play If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, and Constellations won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play. This collection contains Constellations and Elegy, his two acclaimed plays exploring science, time and love, with new introductions by Nick Payne himself. Also included are three dramas specially written for BBC Radio.

A Christmas fling, or has Janie found the real thing? Thirty-something hairdresser Janie Johnson's single status is a constant source of gossip for her friends and clients. So after too many nights in with her cat, a blind date disaster and news that her ex is getting married, Janie realises it's time to do something dramatic with her life. It's time for an adventure! Leaving winter behind, Janie takes the plunge and books an exotic trip to Africa.

The relationship between sleep and storytelling is an ancient one. For centuries sleep has provided writers with a magical ingredient, a passage of time during which great changes miraculously occur, an Orpheus-like voyage through the subconscious daubed with the fantastic. But over the last 10 years, our scientific understanding of sleep has been revolutionised. No longer is sleep viewed as a time of simple rest and recuperation. Instead it is proving to be an intensely dynamic period of brain activity.

Carmen and Brax are searching for the Nameless one: a wizard who can bring people back from the dead. But he is not at all who or what they were expecting, and he has goals and plans of his own. Time is short because the emperor is at the gates of Avenus. The final battle will be epic. Includes two episodes in the Dragon Assassin series: Hidden Powers and Burning Empire.

For a century Bram Stoker's Dracula has reigned supreme as the undisputed masterpiece of horror writing. We have all grown up under the shadow of the elegant Count, at once an attractive, brutal, and erotic creature of the night.

Budapest, 1963. Special Investigator Bertalan Lázár and his wife, spymaster Franciska Lázár, face formidable challenges as they try to navigate a path through the dangerous underworld of Cold War-era Hungary. Catching the criminals is difficult enough, but there are other more threatening battles raging in higher places.

After years of IVF, Olivia and Dan are blissfully happy at the arrival of their long dreamed-of twins. At the same time, they make the move to Renniston Hall, a huge, Elizabethan house that belongs to absent friends. Living rent-free in a small part of the unmodernised house, once a boarding school, they can begin to enjoy the family life they've always wanted. But there is a secret at the heart of their family — one that Olivia does not yet know. And the house, too, holds darkness deep within it.

Mindful Living is a new series of short mindfulness books dedicated to enhancing three important areas of our lives: relationships, parenting and work. Best-selling author and mindfulness guru Oli Doyle shows that all the key domains of life provide great opportunities to practice mindfulness and discover peace of mind. In Mindful Relationships, Oli guides the listener through a six-week guide to show that relationships are fertile ground for growth, learning and development.

Scarlett's aunt lived—and was brutally murdered—in the flat upstairs. But Scarlett is determined that life return to some kind of normal, even if that means living with just a ceiling between her and the scene of this devastating crime. After all, this is her home. She's safe here. Isn't she? Dee is busy balancing her job as a funeral director with organising an event to mark the disappearance of her best friend, 10 years ago. So she's got enough on her plate without worrying about the threatening messages that are appearing on her company's Facebook page.

Sometimes something happens in your life that changes everything. When Sasha was six, her dad died suddenly, and the world changed forever. Now she’s 12, it feels like things are changing all the time: her twin brother hardly talks to her any more, her mum’s dating a teacher from school, her best friend Lily keeps going on about boys...and Sasha doesn’t feel ready for any of it. The one place she can escape to is Blossom House, her secret place - an old, echoey, overgrown, beautiful, empty mansion.

1915. Margaret and Philip Tallis are happily married, have a thriving business and three children, Daisy, John and Lily. At 20, Daisy is an impassioned, headstrong girl, determined to follow her parents’ footsteps in Birmingham’s jewellery trade. While studying at the college for silversmiths she meets an old rival of her father’s. James Carson is married, but Daisy finds herself dangerously drawn to him.... As war tightens its grip on the country, the Jewellery Quarter is thrown into anguish as the men are forced to decide who will enlist.

When Charlie falls off a stepping stone in the woods, her whole world suddenly changes. She stumbles in the 21st century, and picks herself up in the middle of the 20th. She's a pupil at a weird outdoor school. Can she get back to her own time?

Often compared to Catherine the Great or Elizabeth I, Caroline of Ansbach is the great queen Britain forgot it had - a thinker, politician, schemer, patroness and matriarch. This book offers a remarkable portrait of a woman of great political astuteness and ambition, a radical icon of female power. The intellectual superior of her husband, George II, Caroline is credited with bringing the Enlightenment to Britain through her sponsorship of red-hot debates about science, religion, philosophy and the nature of the universe.

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone...so she ventured out from the safety of the enchanted forest on a quest for others of her kind. Joined along the way by the bumbling magician Schmendrick and the indomitable Molly Grue, the unicorn learns all about the joys and sorrows of life and love before meeting her destiny in the castle of a despondent monarch-and confronting the creature that would drive her kind to extinction.