Showing results by narrator "Olivia Dowd" in All Categories

Westminster in the 2020s, where the business of governing is the last thing on the agenda for anyone worth their salt. In the SW1 bubble, politics moves fast, schemes are hatched and foiled - through both accident and conspiracy - within hours, and sex and power preside. When Bobby Cliveden decides to campaign against the closure of her local mental health unit, she scarcely thought it would take her straight to the heart of the UK's bustling political centre.

Maggie is trapped. Dumped on her wedding day, rejected by her family and hounded by a man determined to make her suffer. Charlotte is desperate. Double-crossed by her only friend and facing total ruin, she will go to any lengths to save what matters. Two women, one night. A decision that will change everything.

Thirteen-year-old Ava Bonney is unlike other children. Exceptionally bright, she has an obsessive interest in the rate at which dead animals decompose. The motorway she lives by regularly offers up roadkill, and in the dead of night Ava likes nothing better than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den so she can study it. But one day when she arrives she stumbles across the body of fellow pupil, Mickey Grant. DI Seth Delahaye is given the case, one of the most challenging of his career.

Boldly original, dramatic story of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots – three queens exercising power in a world dominated by men – Young Queens weaves the personal stories of these three queens into one, revealing their hopes, dreams, desires and regrets in a time when even the most powerful women lived at the mercy of the state.

One day, NICK and BEE cross paths over a misdirected email. The connection is instant, electric, they feel like they’ve known each other forever. Nick buys a new suit, gets on a train. Bee steadies her nerves, gets a pep talk from her best friend Leila. This is it. Except it isn’t. Because as they prepare to meet under the clock at Euston station, the universe throws in a twist you’d never see coming . . .

In December 2003, Luke Ryder was found dead in the garden of the family home in London, leaving behind a wealthy older widow and three stepchildren. Nobody saw anything. Now, secrets will be revealed – live on camera. Years later a group of experts re-examine the evidence on Infamous, a true-crime show – with shocking results. Does the team know more than they’ve been letting on? Or does the truth lie closer to home?

In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books, she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller, ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of 20 reviews, essays and pieces of memoir from the next three decades tells the story of what happened next.

Twenty-one years ago, Dr Richard Carter and his wife, Pamela, were killed in what has become the most infamous double murder of the modern age. Their 10-year-old daughter - nicknamed the Angel of Death - spent eight years in a children’s secure unit and is living quietly under an assumed name with a family of her own. Now, on the anniversary of the trial, a documentary team has tracked down her older sister, compelling her to break two decades of silence.

As Mara and Tom navigate their break-up/non-break-up, Mara becomes fixated on the perfect couple living in the flat above her. While her best friend accuses her of being self-involved and her already overfamiliar boss keeps getting her drunker and drunker, the Happy Couple become a symbol for everything Mara and Tom could have been – but, crucially, are not.

Platform Seven at 4am: Peterborough Railway Station is deserted. The man crossing the covered walkway on this freezing November morning is confident he's alone. As he sits on the metal bench at the far end of the platform it is clear his choice is strategic - he's as far away from the night staff as he can get. What the man doesn't realise is that he has company. Lisa Evans knows what he has decided. She knows what he is about to do as she tries and fails to stop him walking to the platform edge. Two deaths on Platform Seven. Two fatalities in 18 months - surely they're connected?

The river can take you home. The river can take you under.... In their ramshackle Somerset home, its gardens running down to the river, the Sorrells have gathered for a last-minute wedding. Lucy is desperate to reunite her fractured family. Eve is fighting to keep her perfect life together. Their father hovers at the edge of events with his second wife. Their mother, Kit, a famous author whose stories have run dry, still seethes with resentment towards her youngest child. And Margot, who left home eight years ago under a black cloud, is forced to come face to face with her darkness.

The sudden withdrawal of British and American troops from Afghanistan in 2021, ended the 20 year war on terror, yet it also left Afghanistan to be reconquered by the Taliban. As violence and religious fundamentalism once again overwhelmed the region, thousands of Afghans who loyally served the British and American armies were left behind.

An old house, a secret heartbreak, a second chance at love. Lizzie Greene is about to lose everything when her husband suddenly dies and his debts come to light. To make ends meet she opens up her quirky old house to be used as a set for a film based on a bestselling romance novel. Her life and household are turned upside down when a whole cast of colourful characters enters her family's lives: from an enigmatic author, a handsome location scout, a brooding director, to a heart-throb leading man, never mind her now ex-mother-in-law camped out in her drive.

When 18-year-old Ben Renshaw is found dead in city woodland, DCI Robin Lyons is plunged into one of Birmingham's most controversial cases. Months earlier, Ben and his best friend gave testimony that sent a former classmate, Alistair Heywood, to prison for a vicious sexual assault. Before the trial, the boys and their families endured months of brutal witness intimidation, for which the Heywoods, a privileged and influential local family, faced no legal repercussions. Instead, they vowed revenge.

Dismissed for misconduct from the Met’s Homicide Command after refusing to follow orders, unable to pay her bills (or hold down a relationship), Detective Inspector Robin Lyons has no choice but to take her teenage daughter Lennie and move back in with her parents in the city she thought she’d escaped forever at 18. In Birmingham, sharing a bunkbed with Lennie and navigating the stormy relationship with her mother, Robin works as a benefit-fraud investigator - to the delight of those wanting to see her cut down to size.

From getting the best out of others, to thinking more creatively about financial problems (even without maths skills), Jo Owen tackles 50 of the most common 'thinking' challenges that can derail the best-laid plans and intentions. Be more decisive in the face of uncertainty, make better decisions for you and your colleagues, and tackle any of the unexpected problems that our busy work lives can throw at us, with Smart Thinking.

Written by a recognized trainer for both LinkedIn and Meta, Smart Social Media is grounded in the insights gained from hands-on consultancy work, plus hours of personal research, observations, and in-depth reviews of the platforms themselves. Both practical and informative, Smart Social Media is full of actionable insights and valuable guidance that will emphasize the importance of using social media strategically, to enhance brand awareness, boost engagement, build relationships with your customers, and keep up with ever-changing consumer behaviour.

Best friends forever. That's the pact you made. You'd do anything for her. And you have. She's always had it all. If you could take it for yourself...would you?

Having access to natural, green spaces is vital to our physical and mental wellbeing. But, as urban development spreads, grey has become the new green. Already, concrete outweighs every tree, bush and shrub on Earth. Nature deprivation is a fast-growing epidemic, harming the health and happiness of hundreds of millions of people worldwide - especially vulnerable and marginalized groups. To combat this, Nature Is a Human Right, founded by Ellen Miles in 2020, is working to make access to green space a recognised right for all, not a privilege.

Julia has landed a fresh start—at a 'pan-European' restaurant. 'Imagine that,' says her mother. 'I'm imagining.' Nick is flirting with sobriety, and nobody else. Did you know: adults his age are now more likely to live with their parents than a romantic partner? Life should have started to take shape by now—but instead, we're trying on new versions of ourselves, swiping left and right, and searching for a convincing answer to that question: 'what do you do?'