Showing results by narrator "Wren" in All Categories

The story behind Banjo Paterson's iconic Australian song. 'Once a jolly swagman camped by a Billabong Under the shade of a Coolibah tree And he sang as he watched and waited till his Billy boiled You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me...' In 1894, twelve-year-old Matilda flees the city slums to...

It's Chrismastime, and Blair and Serena are best friends again and up to their old tricks: partying hard and breaking hearts from Park Avenue to the Caribbean. Blair's mom and Cyrus are having their honeymoon in Salt Key. And when school lets out for the holiday, Blair, Serena, Aaron, and company head down there to blow off steam after their midterm exams.

Emily was an aspiring literary writer, forced to make a living from editing annual reports, when she met Scott, a screenwriter in similar circumstances. With Scott’s punchy plot and Emily’s luminous prose, they crafted an international hit - and fell in love doing it. Three years later, Scott’s own novel has flopped, Emily’s struggling with her literary manuscript, and their relationship is falling apart. Can they overcome their creative differences to produce another masterpiece?

The uptown girls are headed downtown as Serena and Jenny take on their new fabulous roles as rock-star model girlfriends of New York's hottest band, The Raves. Meanwhile, Dan is too busy drowning his sorrows in empty bottles to notice a mysterious French beauty who has a penchant for dirty, Jim Morrison wannabe lead singers. Blair takes residence at the Plaza to think about her future. Will she become a gun-toting international spy or Manhattan's snobbiest society hostess? Decisions are so difficult!

Welcome to New York City's Upper East Side, where Gossip Girl and her friends are the biggest stars...whether or not the cameras are rolling. Lights, camera, scandal! Hollywood is invading New York and Serena is set for her big screen debut. She's already having an off-screen romance with her onscreen lover, Thaddeus. What will that mean for Hamptons-bound Nate? And if Nate is free, what about Blair? Sure, she's off to London to spend time with her royal boytoy, but Nate will always be Prince Charming in her eyes...

Welcome back to New York City's glamorous Upper East Side, where the uptown girls get everything and everyone they want. Nabbing the latest Marc Jacobs bag or your best friend's boyfriend isn't always pretty, but it's always pretty cool. It's almost graduation and the lives of New York's private high school elite are really heating up. Everyone's got into college and it's clearly time to party, not that they haven't been doing plenty of that already! Blair and Nate's relationship has moved on to a new level, but will the love affair continue? Or will Nate's love affair with his bong get in the way?

Returning from finishing school in France, Louisa Hatton was full of enthusiasm for the life ahead. She was convinced it would be exciting and romantic. But her parents had already planned a very suitable marriage for her to Lord Westbridge, their new neighbour. He was a cold, hard man and he wanted Louisa despite her protests. Her parents would not support her. Her father owed Lord Westbridge money.

An empowering and exhilarating look at the girls who went before us, and the way they shaped the world. Twelve-year-old Ming Qong is convinced that girls must have changed the world, even if they are rarely mentioned in history books. So when Ming gets the chance to go back in time, she imagines...

If you like Downton Abbey you will love Barbara Cartland. Beautiful Jasmina Winfield is a thoroughly modern American girl who likes to make her own decisions. A skilled and daring horsewoman, she is used to taking care of herself and takes orders from no one - especially not a man. Arriving in Yorkshire from Missouri to visit her relations, the Duke and Duchess of Harley, Jasmina is captivated by the sad romantic tale of her near neighbour the reclusive Earl of Somerton.

This is not a collection of poems in the usual sense. Secret code: Madness is a field of perception where logic fractures, language loosens, and the familiar world begins to show its hidden violence. These poems move between the personal and the political, the intimate and the collective, revealing a reality that is often sensed but rarely confronted. Here, madness is not the absence of intelligence —it is its overflow. A voice emerges that questions everything: systems, identities, ambitions, borders, and even the self that tries to hold them together.

Late one evening, en route to visit a relative, an accident leaves Tory - the attractive, twenty-something daughter of a prominent history professor – stranded near a ring of stones in Britain. Tory resolves to spend the night at the stone circle and seek help in the morning... But across the vortex of time and space, she is taken back to the Dark Age.

Enter the world of Gossip Girl - a world where espadrille sandals are flown in from Spain, crisp cotton sundresses are made to order, and jealousy and betrayal are the ultimate summer accessories... Serena and Blair are now co-muses to a super-famous designer, who just happens to live next door to Nate's Hamptons estate... But how neighbourly are these new neighbours going to get? And what's this about Vanessa venturing surfside? Who's next, Dan? Never say never...

On the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic ocean, Napoleon spends his last years in exile. It is a hotbed of gossip and secret liaisons, where a blind eye is turned to relations between colonials and slaves. The disgraced emperor is subjected to vicious and petty treatment by his captors...

Forget the tearful goodbyes, people, let's get on with the fabulous farewell parties! We're almost off to college, and these last days are like a perpetual New Year's Eve ball drop, total kiss-who-you-can-now insanity. So will everyone break down and spill their secrets at the last goodbye? I'll be there to find out, and I certainly keep quiet...'The last of the Gossip Girl series and the final farewell to the glamorous teenagers of the Upper East Side.

"Author Shannon Hale narrates as a full cast enacts the drama of her sixth-grade year in this adaptation of the middle volume of her graphic memoir trilogy. Portraying young Shannon, Mia Jenness evokes excitement, uncertainty, and hurt--painfully and exquisitely--as she picks her way through a...

Hugo, Earl of Ruven, is sailing home after ten years in India, where he served with his regiment. His grandfather, the old Earl, has died and Hugo has inherited the title and estate of Castle Ruven. He has also inherited his late brother's fiancee, Felice de Lisle. No one who sees the handsome man standing at the rail with his face turned toward the approaching coast suspects the truth. During one of the first battles of the Indian Mutiny, Hugo was severely injured. The new Earl of Ruven is returning home blind.

From Australia's best-loved storyteller comes the final book in the bestselling Matilda Saga This is a love song to our nation, told in a single sweeping story Jed Kelly has finally persuaded her great aunt Nancy to tell the story of her grandparents. The tale that unfolds is one of Australia's...

When Rena's father dies she is alone in the world, forced out of the vicarage that has been her home, with nowhere to go and no money. She seeks help at the large wooden cross standing in the nearby grounds of "The Grange". And there in the earth she finds three golden coins, which she hands over to the new young Earl of Lansdale. They form a friendship, the sweetest one of her life. But her new happiness is threatened by Mr. Wyngate, a wealthy man determined to force the Earl to marry his daughter.

"I will not marry a man I do not love!" When Lady Verena's widowed father suddenly remarries, she finds that her stepmother is anxious to make a match of convenience for her new stepdaughter and produces a suitor who repels her. Verena has always sworn that when she marries, it will be for love and for no other reason. Feeling that she has no choice but to run away, Verena makes a daring midnight escape from her home.

When Lord Rupert Brooke and his wife are killed in an accident, their only child, Titania, was forced to live with her uncle, the Duke of Starbrooke, who had Titania is broken-hearted leaving behind her horse which she adores and her Nanny who is the only person who really loves her. When she reaches Velidos, the King, who is the half-brother of Prince Frederick, finds her in tears and does his best to comfort her.