Showing results by narrator "Sarah Lambie" in All Categories

The beautiful bastide at Beaulieu-sur-Mer has always been an idyllic retreat for the Challant family, but the summer of 1928 changes everything. One humid, stormy night, a young local boy suffers a fatal accident in the bastide’s grounds – and the suspicious circumstances around his death sets off a chain of whispers in the town on the Riviera. For the Challant children, they have no choice but to move on and leave those terrible events in the past. But through the years of loves and losses, marriages and betrayals, the Challants’ lives will always be tainted by that night.

For students of Middle English, Andrew and Waldron's The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript has been the key edition of the four Pearl poems for over 30 years. With the changing needs of today's students in mind, the editors produced a complete prose translation of the four poems - the best known of which is "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". The near-literal translations are intended to facilitate understanding of the four poems - to lead readers to, rather than away from, the original texts.

Susan and Sarah. Sisters. Best friends. Together...forever? Nothing could break them apart. Until they meet him. And he can only choose one.... Now Susan is back. Determined to reclaim everything Sarah has taken from her. Her home, her husband...her life?

Daisy Turner has worked at Buchanan’s Family Jewellers since the day she finally escaped her troubled home. With a unique talent for matching the perfect piece of jewellery to any romantic milestone, she painstakingly polishes each stunning creation every morning and safely locks them away each night, longing for the day she’ll have a love story to call her own... But everything changes one day in December when the owner announces she is retiring. She will leave the shop to whichever of her three sons creates the perfect piece of Christmas jewellery for Daisy.

Thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright is tasked with the evacuation and safekeeping of the natural history museum’s collection of mammals. Once she and her exhibits arrive at Lockwood Manor, however, where they are to stay for the duration of the war, Hetty soon realises that she’s taken on more than she’d bargained for.Protecting her charges from the irascible Lord Lockwood and resentful servants is work enough, but when some of the animals go missing, and worse, Hetty begins to suspect someone - or something - is stalking her through the darkened corridors of the house.

Tessa Keswick first travelled to China in 1982 and immediately fell in love with its history, culture and landscape. Over the next 30 years, she travelled extensively in China, visiting its temples and landmarks, the sites of its most famous battles and the birthplaces of its best-known poets and philosophers. She also witnessed China's transformation, as hundreds of millions were lifted out of poverty and the country emerged as an economic superpower in waiting.

When Leila Jones loses her precious charm bracelet and a stranger finds it, she has to tell the story of how she got the charms to prove she’s the owner. Each and every one is a precious memory of her life with Jake. So Leila starts at the beginning, recounting the charms and experiences that have led her to the present. A present she never could have expected when she met Jake nearly 20 years ago.

It was meant to be a fun reunion, a chance for six friends to reconnect and relive the adventures that brought them together in the first place. But from the moment they arrive on their island home for the weekend, Lyndsey, Sonia, Bobbie, Amanda, Juliet and Val realise that their paradise is filled with peril and there are consequences when you try to outrun the ghosts of your past. As everything starts to fall apart and the friends begin to turn against one another, deep, dark secrets are revealed and an unimaginable horror is unleashed.

Nine years ago, Zoe Taylor returned from London to the quiet hamlet of Westholme with her tail between her legs and a bun in the oven. Where once her job as a journalist saw her tearing off to Paris at a moment’s notice after a lead, now the single mum covers the local news desk. At least, she did until she’s unceremoniously let go. When Zoe invites her friends over to commiserate, wine and whining soon turns into something more and before the night is out she’s plotted her next step: The Good News Gazette.

When her beloved London theatre closes for renovations, costume maker Guinevere is excited to start a job at Cornisea castle, a centuries-old keep on a small tidal island off the coast of Cornwall. Imagine a whole summer full of stories of hidden treasures, fab food and long walks with her perky dachshund Dolly. But when a reenactment of a medieval trial in the castle dungeons ends in real-life murder, and accusations threaten the castle's future, Guinevere and Dolly dig deep into the island community's best-kept secrets to unmask the killer and save their Cornish summer.

Pearl is the first of the four poems of the Pearl manuscript, a 14th century work contemporaneous with Chaucer, Langland and Gower. It is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of medieval English literature. In the poem the grief-stricken protagonist describes the loss of a precious pearl in a garden. He falls asleep and in his dream sees a vision of a beautiful Maiden, who through complex imagery is gradually revealed as the pearl, a lost loved one, often interpreted as the Dreamer's young daughter, though never explicitly identified.

Begun in 1797, when William was at the height of his poetic powers, The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals provide invaluable insight into the daily lives of Dorothy and William Wordsworth, William’s friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the incidents that inspired some of his greatest poems. Richly immersive and intimately domestic, the Journals transport the listener to life in the Lake District 200 years ago as Dorothy describes the Lake District countryside, her garden and neighbours, keeping house, going on walks, and the people she meets along the way

Daydreamer and book-lover, Zosina, the eldest daughter of the Archduke Ferdinand of Blitzstein, is reluctantly obedient when her father announces that she must marry King Gorgy of neighbouring Dorsa to create an alliance between the two nations. On her first visit to Dorsa, Zosina is greeted by the beguiling and handsome Prince Regent. By contrast, her betrothed, the King, is wild and disagreeable. For the sake of her people, Zosina must go ahead with the marriage with a hope that someone warmer hides beneath the King's hard exterior.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is perhaps the best-known Arthurian romance in the English language. Its story is well-known: New Year celebrations at Camelot are disrupted by the fearsome and strange appearance of the Green Knight who challenges Arthur's court to a game consisting of an exchange of blows; the Green Knight's survival of the beheading that ensues locks Sir Gawain into a commitment to receive a return blow a year later, bound by his honor to fulfill the terms of the game.

Imperious, handsome and gallant in battle, the Duke of Kingswood has stolen the hearts of many society belles but he is determined never to marry. To continue the family line, he is counting on his cousin and heir presumptive, Richard, to marry well and produce a son. To the Duke’s horror, Richard falls for society siren and acclaimed beauty Lady Delyth Maulden and disaster turns to tragedy when Richard finds his beloved in the arms of another, shoots him and turns his gun on himself.

Despite the arranged marriages of her two sisters ending in misery, the Duke of Cumberworth insists that his beautiful daughter, Lady "Ila" Lavinia marries the rich and aristocratic Marquis of Rakemoore, his most serious rival at Race Meetings. Ila is appalled. Not only is she determined to marry for love, but she hears that the Marquis is only asking for her hand to avoid an arranged marriage to a German Princess. She decides to run away. Fleeing through the woods near her home, Ila witnesses a young boy being dragged away by his spooked pony and heading towards a cliff edge.

Love, laughter, and lots of matchmaking mishaps. Sophie Johnson's life seems picture-perfect with her dream job at The Jane Austen Dating Agency and a relationship with the irresistible Darcy Drummond. But all is not as it seems. Darcy's awful mother is wrecking havoc, the agency is struggling, and then there's the amusing and disturbingly cute Henry Baxter who is making it hard for Sophie to focus. As the pressure mounts and her love life falters, Sophie must ask herself: Can she juggle it all and find her own happy ever after? Or is business and romance an impossible combination?

Scotland, 1750, just four years after Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Rising of the Clans, it’s hard to know who’s loyal to the English and who is faithful to the Stuarts. And it’s beautiful seventeen-year-old Iona’s perilous mission to ascertain whether the Duke of Arkrae, head of Scotland’s most powerful clan, is a traitor or is he in cahoots with the English. Iona’s mission is to gain the trust of the Duke and his clan by claiming to be the sister he thought to have died as a child. As all around her doubt her claim and call her a "pretender", Iona struggles to hold her nerve.

Guinevere Evans has a dream summer job: cataloguing books at a castle on a tidal island off the coast of Cornwall. With her perky dachshund Dolly by her side, she explores the island’s colourful history, tries fabulous local food and sees the gorgeous sunsets. But when an old friend of her employer drops in, claiming a rare bejewelled wedding goblet is hidden in the castle gardens, strange events start to take place: several people turn up claiming they have a right to the elusive goblet, and a dead body is found on the beach.

Cleanness is the second of the four poems of the Pearl manuscript, a 14th century work contemporaneous with Chaucer, Langland and Gower. Cleanness tells several stories, all related by theme “ the disastrous consequences of uncleanness, and the good fortune to be had by being clean. The poet carefully constructs a complex accumulation of stories and examples, whose main source is the Old Testament. The three major stories are the Flood, then Sodom and Gomorrah, followed by Belshazzar's Feast.