Showing results for "whole story audiobooks" in Literature & Fiction

Summer, 1585: Sir Francis Drake prepares to embark on an expedition by royal commission to cross the Atlantic and seize major Spanish ports, diverting King Philip of Spain’s treasure to Queen Elizabeth. When a ship captain is brutally murdered, and Drake’s life threatened, it becomes clear that someone plans to destroy the expedition before it begins. Giordano Bruno and Sir Philip Sidney hunt for the killer, but are they being lured into a trap?

The Wayward Bus travelled the back roads through the lush California countryside. Its driver was a man of the land - lusty, hot blooded, and uninhibited. On the bus was a girl who danced at stag parties, a travelling salesman strictly out for fun, a boy coming into manhood, and a college girl pursuing her secret, passionate quest. This is a story of crisis and passion, of love and longing.

Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents' marital troubles, the dog, and his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', Adrian's painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared.

Weekly ballet classes are Harriet Morton's only escape from her intolerably dull life. So when she is chosen to join a corps de ballet that is setting off on a tour of the Amazon, she leaps at the chance to run away for good.

Performing in the grand opera houses is everything Harriet dreamed of, and falling in love with an aristocratic exile makes her new life complete. But swept away by it all, she is unaware that her father and intended fiance have begun to track her down.

Stories for people who've grown up being told time is running out - and don't want it to.... How do you ever know the whole story? How do you ever know even part of the story? How do you find meaning when chance and coincidence could, after all, just be chance and coincidence? In a celebration of connections and missed connections, an inquiry into everything from flies and trees and books to sex, art, drunkenness and love, Smith rewrites the year's cycle into a very modern calendar.

Ethan Hawley has lost the spirit of his wealthy forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery clerk in a store his family once owned. But his wife is restless and his teenage children hungry for the material comforts he cannot provide. Then a series of unusual events reignites Ethan's ambition, and he is pitched on to a bold course, where all scruples are put aside.

Returning to the scene of Cannery Row, Steinbeck brilliantly re-creates its bawdy, high-spirited world of bums, drunks and hookers, telling the story of what happened to everyone after the war. There’s Fauna, the latest madam at the Bear Flag brothel; Doc, still there for everyone else but feeling strangely sad himself; and Suzy, the new hustler in town who might just be the girl to save him.

Lucy Cardwell has recently lost her troubled father, Tom. While sifting through his papers, she finds he'd been researching an uncle she never knew he'd had. Intrigued, she visits her father's childhood home, the once beautiful Carlyon Manor. She meets an old woman named Beatrice who has an extraordinary story to tell. As Lucy listens to the tales of the past, she learns a secret that will change everything she has ever known... As Lucy listens to the tales of the past, she learns a secret that will change everything she has ever known....

At 11 Lalla should be enjoying her childhood in London. But this is not London as we know it. In a collapsed society, Lalla struggles to imagine her future. When a government announcement invites her to enjoy a new life in Regent’s Park, Lalla sees a glimmer of hope. But what is she willing to risk? The Time Being is the short-story prequel to The Ship by Antonia Honeywell, if you enjoyed this, you’ll love the full-length novel sequel.

Newly engaged Natalie will do anything for a quiet life and telling a few white lies never does any harm. It's not like people will ever discover what she's really thinking... Until one night, thanks to a pub hypnotist, Natalie's most private thoughts pop out of her mouth. When she has no way to break the hypnotist's spell, Natalie is forced to face the truths she has been avoiding her whole life...

A is for Affection - between childhood best friends; between their parents; between brothers and sisters. B is for Broken-hearted - Natalie, when the boyfriend who was meant to propose dumps her just before Christmas; her mother, when she realises what her life has come to; and Lucy, as she thinks of ending one relationship and maybe beginning another. C is for Chemistry - Could Natalie and Tom have it? And what does it actually mean, anyway?

Brian has arrived at university with a stronger desire than the acquisition of knowledge: he's going to be a star of TV's hottest quiz, University Challenge. But his progress on 'The Challenge' is somewhat stymied by his growing desire for the beguiling Alice Harbison, struggling to make her mark as an actress. And as obstacles impede their affair, Brian becomes more and more convinced that only overwhelming success on the quiz show will win her.

Posy Montague is approaching her 70th birthday. Still living in her beautiful family home, Admiral House, set in the glorious Suffolk countryside where she spent her own idyllic childhood catching butterflies with her beloved father, and raised her own children, Posy knows she must make an agonising decision. The house is crumbling around her, and Posy knows the time has come to sell it. Then a face appears from the past - Freddie, her first love, who abandoned her and left her heartbroken 50 years ago. 

Maeve Maloney may be nearing 80, but she keeps Sea View Lodge as shipshape as her parents did during Morecambe's heyday. But now only her employees recognise the heartbreak hidden beneath her spikiness. Until, that is, Vincent shows up. He is the only man alive to have known her twin sister, Edie. If only Maeve could confront the secret past she shares with Vincent, she might finally see what it means to love and be loved - a lesson that her twin may have been trying to teach her all along.

Wolf Hadda's life was a fairytale - successful businessman and adored husband. But a knock on the door one morning ends it all. Universally reviled, thrown into prison, Wolf retreats into silence. Seven years later Wolf begins to talk to the prison psychiatrist and receives parole to return home. But there's a mysterious period in Wolf's past when he was known as the Woodcutter. Now the Woodcutter is back, looking for truth and revenge...

Eloise Blake has been fascinated by Prospect House, the shadowy Gothic house opposite, ever since she moved to the village of Hookfield. When its new owner turns out to be crime author Ross Farrell, Eloise is determined not to be distracted by him. Love, she thinks, is only true in fairy tales. But is Ross the Prince Charming she thought didn’t exist - or is he a beast in disguise?

As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all England is heading for Epsom Downs - high life and low life, society beauties and Whitechapel street girls, bookmakers and gypsies, hawkers and acrobats, punters and thieves. Whole families stream along the Surrey back-roads, towards the greatest race of the year. Hopes are high, nerves are taut, hats are tossed in the air - this is Derby Day.

On a clear day, you could see America from Edinburgh's Castle Rock - or so said Alice Munro's great-great-great-grandfather when he had had a drink. Then, in 1818, he left and sailed to the New World with his family. This is the story of those shepherds from the Ettrick Valley and their descendants. They were a Spartan lot: showing off was frowned upon, and fear was commonplace, at least for females. But opportunities present themselves for two strong-minded women in a ship's close quarters.

Chaz Perrone has just found a way to make a fortune out of the Florida Everglades, and he's damned if anyone's going to stop him. So when he suspects that his wife, Joey, is going to get in his way, he takes her on an expensive anniversary cruise and pushes her overboard into the night-dark Atlantic. Unfortunately for Chaz, Joey survives the fall and is plucked from the ocean by a former cop, Mick Stranahan. Joey decides to stay dead and screw with Chaz until he screws himself.

I wasn't the only woman in the world who had been cheated on. I certainly wasn't the only woman who had sworn off men because of it. I was, however, one of the few who was willing to stick to my guns about it. Men would sometimes see that as a challenge, but before too long they would realize I wasn't interested.