Showing results by narrator "Niamh Cusack" in All Categories

Christmas is the perfect time to curl up with a good story, and this cracking collection brings you 30 wonderfully diverse tales inspired by this most special of seasons. From Santa Claus, gift-giving and family gatherings, to an unexpected encounter in a snowstorm and an alternative take on the Nativity, they're sure to get you in the festive mood.

The first thing Vanessa Carvin does when she arrives on the island is change her name. To the locals, she is Willow Hale, a solitary outsider escaping Dublin to live a hermetic existence in a small cottage, not a notorious woman on the run from her past. But scandals follow like hunting dogs. And she has some questions of her own to answer. If her ex-husband is really the monster everyone says he is, then how complicit was she in his crimes? Escaping her old life might seem like a good idea but the choices she has made throughout her marriage have consequences.

A collection of BBC dramatisations and readings of William Boyd's award-winning novels and short stories. One of Britain's foremost contemporary writers, William Boyd is renowned worldwide for his bestselling novels, which have been translated into over 30 languages. He has won numerous awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award (for A Good Man in Africa), the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for An Ice-Cream War) and the Costa Book Award (for Restless).

Set in Ireland in the 1990s, Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of the Devereux family. Dora Devereux, her daughter Lily and her granddaughter Helen have come together after years of strife and reached an uneasy truce. Helen’s adored brother, Declan, is dying. Two friends join him and the women in a crumbling old house by the sea, where the six of them, from different generations and with different beliefs, must listen to and come to terms with one another.

Irish writer Maeve Binchy was one the best-loved and most successful authors of her time. Her bestselling books sold over 40 million copies worldwide, and were translated into 37 languages. This comprehensive anthology of her finest fiction, as heard on BBC Radio, demonstrates all the warmth, wit and compassion that made her so popular.

1960s Ireland. Nora Webster, a widow from a small town, is trying to piece her life back together while caring for her four children after the death of her husband. In a close community where everyone knows your business, Nora is trying to emerge from her own sorrow in private whilst blind to the suffering of her young sons. And yet there are moments when hope might emerge again. Through music and friendship she might find a path to reinvention.

A collection of full-cast dramatisations and readings from the best-selling author. Maeve Binchy was one of Britain's best-loved storytellers, and this compilation of her finest fiction, as heard on BBC Radio, demonstrates all the warmth, wit and compassion that made her so popular.

Rosalind, daughter of the deposed Duke Senior, is exiled from the court by her wicked uncle. Disguising herself as a young man and accompanied by her cousin Celia, she takes refuge in the Forest of Arden. In the forest Rosalind meets Orlando with whom she is in love, but her male disguise complicates matters, especially when Rosalind finds she has unwittingly attracted the shepherdess Phebe. But out of the confusion comes reconciliation and forgiveness, and all ends happily.

A spellbinding magical adventure. Master storyteller Helen Dunmore writes the story of Sapphire and her brother, Conor, and their discovery of Ingo, a powerful and exciting world under the sea.You'll find the mermaid of Zennor inside Zennor church. She fell in love with a human, but she was a Mer creature and so she couldn't come to live with him up in the dry air. She swam up the stream to hear him sing, then one day he swam down it and was never seen again. He became one of the Mer people...

Three BBC radio productions of major works by James Joyce - plus Gordon Bowker’s fascinating biographical account of his life.

Rachel Joyce captured the hearts of millions with her best-selling debut novel, which told the moving tale of an ordinary man, Harold Fry, who embarks on an epic journey to deliver a message and save a life. But Harold’s story began its life on radio, in the award-winning play which opens this collection: To Be a Pilgrim, starring Anton Lesser, Anna Massey and Niamh Cusack.

Rosaleen is still a teenager, in the early '60s, when she meets the famous sculptor Felix Lichtman. Felix is dangerous, bohemian, everything she dreamed of in the cold nights at her Catholic boarding school. And at first their life together is glitteringly romantic but it’s not long before Rosaleen finds herself fearfully, unexpectedly alone. Kate lives in '90s London, stumbling through her unhappy marriage. Aoife sits at her husband’s bedside as he lies dying and tells him the story of their marriage.

In the beautiful town of Dunmore, four women understand what friendship really means. Abby's TV career is taking off, but her marriage to Tom is rocky. Meanwhile, her teenage daughter Jess despairs of ever finding a boyfriend. Lizzie has time for everyone: her grown-up children, her friends, even her ex-husband Myles, but never for herself. And then there's Erin, married and back in Ireland after eight years in Chicago. But can she face up to her past?

Seven stories to span the Christmas holidays: 'A Faraway Smell of Lemon': The school term has ended. It is almost Christmas, but Binny, out last-minute shopping, couldn't feel less like wishing glad tidings to all men. Ducking out of the rain, she finds herself in the sort of shop she would never normally visit. 'The Marriage Manual': Christmas Eve. Two parents endeavour to construct their son's Christmas present from a DIY kit and in the process find themselves deconstructing their marriage.

The classic trilogy about murder, revenge and justice, as heard on BBC Radio 3 – plus a bonus documentary exploring Aeschylus's seminal Greek tragedy. A chilling tale of homecoming, violent death and bloody vengeance, The Oresteia dates back to the fifth century BC, but its themes still resonate today. At once a family saga, morality tale and courtroom drama, it recounts how two generations of the cursed House of Atreus become locked into a deadly cycle of atrocities....

Keep a secret too long and it will creep out when you least expect it... Behind the shining windows and rose-bedecked gardens of Summer Street, there are lots of secrets. There's the one that hard-working single mother, Faye, hides from her teenage daughter, Amber. And there's the one that thirty-year-old Maggie hides from herself.

Chaos and confusion mount to a crescendo in a wild and fast-paced comedy of mistaken identity, one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. Young Antipholus of Syracuse is searching the world for his identical twin brother, separated from him at birth. With him is his servant Dromio, who lost his twin brother at the same time. The pair arrive in Ephesus where, unbeknownst to them, their twins are living.

Laurie Lee was a poet, novelist and screenwriter renowned for his bestselling autobiographical trilogy Cider With Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War. Among the best loved memoirs in the English language, the books chart Lee’s life from his boyhood summers in a remote Cotswold village to joining the Republican International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Included here are dramatisations of the first two volumes, alongside a specially written radio play and four fascinating interview programmes.

Shakespeare's most sophisticated comedy is a riotous tale of hopelessly unrequited passions and mistaken identity. Duke Orsino is in love with the noblewoman Olivia. She, however, has fallen for his servant Cesario, who is actually Viola, a woman disguised as a man, who loves Orsino: Confusion is rife. Meanwhile, Olivia's arrogant steward Malvolio is cruelly tricked by her uncle Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and the maidservant Maria into believing his mistress loves him.

What makes you who you are? Your job? Your kids? Your place in the family? For Carrickwell residents, Mel, Frankie and Cleo, the answer was once clear and their roles were firmly defined. Mel had a career. Frankie was a busy mum with a college-going son. And Cleo was ready to step into the family business once she'd finished her hotel management course. Until the landscape shifted.