Showing results by narrator "Anna Bentinck" in All Categories

Socially critical and emotionally complex, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is Hardy's masterpiece. It tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, forced by her family's poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy d'Urbervilles. Violated by the son, Alec, her hopes of rebuilding her life with the gentle and bookish Angel Clare founder when he learns of her past.

There are some things you can never leave behind… Kate Forrest is invisible…her husband doesn’t seem to know she’s alive and her two children have become stroppy adolescents. With her fortieth birthday approaching, Kate walks out of her life, and gets on a plane to Italy. With no responsibilities, she soon finds herself caught up in the arms of a man half her age. But eventually Kate will be forced to choose between her past and the future.

In January 1987, Helen Honeysett goes on an evening run from her riverside cottage and disappears. Twenty-nine years later, Helen's body has never been found. Her husband has hired a detective to find out what happened all those years ago, but when the five households on that desolate stretch of...

The Phoenix and the Carpet is the sequel to Five Children and It and continues the adventures of Robert, Cyril, Anthea, Jane, and their baby brother, Lamb. They encounter a phoenix wrapped in a magic carpet, and thus begins a series of adventures: Captivating, extraordinary, and fun, even if some of them go horribly wrong.

In 2006, three-year-old Phoebe Piper went missing. Despite massive publicity, no trace of her was ever found. Seven years later, Molly Jackson, aged 10, finds her great uncle Dan dead in his bed. Molly remembers nothing of her early years, but she's been sure for ages that she is Phoebe. Now, finally, she has proof. Dan's death brings his sister Janice back to Norfolk where she's reunited with Molly's mother Suze, the daughter she gave up for adoption decades earlier.

Gateshead, April 1866. The Apprentice of Split Crow Lane takes the forgotten case of a child murder in 1866 as a springboard to delve deeply into the pysche of the Victorians. What Jane Housham finds in this exploration of guilt, sexual deviance and madness is a diagnosis that is still ripe for the challenging and a sentence that provokes even our liberal modern judgment.

NOW A NETFLIX SERIES NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER TWO PEOPLE. ONE DAY. TWENTY YEARS. What starts as a fleeting connection between two strangers soon becomes a deep bond that spans decades. "[An] instant classic. . . . One of the most ...emotionally riveting love stories you’ll...

When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom, their whirlwind relationship leads them to purchase Les Genevriers, an abandoned house in a rural hamlet in the south of France. As the beautiful Provence summer turns to autumn, Eve finds it impossible to ignore the mysteries that haunt both her...

A middle-class woman at her wits' end and a struggling migrant worker with few options for survival. When tensions boil over, who will be the first to snap? Will it be Theodora, finally breaking under the pressure? Or Mona, desperate to find a way out? Two women. Two stories. Who do you believe?

Nadine, a 16-year-old runaway new to the city, is set up in a decaying Georgian house by her Finnish lover, Kai. Slowly she begins to suspect that Kai and his partner, Tony, have plans for her that have nothing to do with love. "Be careful", warns Enid, a sitting tenant in the house, whose own tragic past means that she knows all about survival. When Nadine discovers that she has been groomed for renting out to a government minister with special tastes, Enid's warning takes on a prophetic quality.

Inspired by the lost voices of the Romany Holocaust, this heartbreaking and tender novel will appeal to readers who loved Sophie's Choice, Schindler's Ark, and The Book Thief. "Remarkable - brave, big-hearted and beautifully written" (Andrew Miller, author of the Costa Award-winner PURE) Austria, 1944. Jakob, a gypsy boy - half Roma, halif Yenish - runs, as he has been told to do. With shoes of sackcloth, still stained with another's blood, a stone clutched in one hand, a small wooden box in the other.

There is far more to Switzerland than beautiful scenery, chocolate, watches, faceless bankers, and spotless cities. The real Switzerland is full of surprises and anything but bland. This small, rugged, landlocked country at the heart of Europe has been a confederation since the first three cantons came together in a defensive alliance in 1291. Four national languages are spoken within its borders. Its present 26 cantons are largely autonomous and retain their individual characters.

Joan Seabrook, a fledgling archaeologist, has fulfilled a lifelong dream to visit Arabia by travelling from England to the ancient city of Muscat with her fiancé, Rory. Desperate to escape the pain of a personal tragedy, she longs to explore the desert fort of Jabrin and unearth the treasures it is said to conceal. But Oman is a land lost in time - hard, secretive and in the midst of a violent upheaval - and gaining permission to explore Jabrin could prove impossible.

UAE - Culture Smart! will help you turn your visit - whether it's for business or pleasure - into a memorable and enriching experience. Its contents include: local customs and traditions; the impact of history, religion, and politics; the Emiratis at home, work, and play; eating and drinking, Emirati style; dos, don'ts, and taboos; business practices; communication, spoken and unspoken; and many practical tips for managing the unexpected.

When Lily Bell is sold by her father to a Professor of Ghosts to settle a bad debt, she thinks she is about to hit the London stage as an actress. But little does she know that the professor intends her to be his very own ghost, part of an elaborate illusion for a fascinated audience. Obsessed with perfection, the professor covers all bases to ensure his illusion is realistic and when Lily comes across her own obituary in the paper and then her own headstone in the cemetery, she soon realises that she is trapped, her parents think she is dead and soon her fate is to become even darker.

Set against the rolling backdrop of a century of British history from the First World War to today, this is a family portrait captured in snapshots. First there is William, the factory lad who loses his life in Gallipoli. Then there is his son Billy, a champion cyclist who faces the D-Day Landings on a military bicycle, followed by his crippled son Will, who becomes an Oxford academic in the 1960s. Finally there is his daughter Billie, an artist in contemporary London.

1979. Esme Munroe is now twenty-six years old and finally leaving the wild landscape of the Scottish highlands behind her for the big smoke. Arriving in London, she starts work at prestigious Art Gallery in Mayfair, and meets the gorgeous and worldly Suki, who takes her to the most glamourous bars and clubs in London. But the fast, frenetic pace of the city is easy to become lost in. Will Esme discover a long-hidden secret about herself and who she can really trust, before it's too late?

Eli is an ordinary boy with an extraordinary gift. It will shape the course of his whole life. Cousin Francesca, a charming spinster and a favourite with the children, is harbouring kleptomaniac tendencies. Sarah Palliser, living alone next to a ramshackle graveyard, is more scared of the small box under her stairs than the ghosts outside her window.

Michelle Clark has loved animals all her life, filling her home with a menagerie of stray cats and abandoned dogs. But when her outreach work with London's homeless community leads to a chance meeting with a desperate man, and a quest to find a missing Staffie named Poppy, she has no idea that her life will be transformed forever.

This text centers around the purchase of an ancient amulet that can grant a family's heart's desire - the return of their parents - but which first sets them on a journey through time to ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Atlantis. Anna Bentinck's engaging reading captures the excitement and tension of the text.