Showing results by narrator "Kobna Holdbrook-Smith" in All Categories

A collection of original audio stories for little adventurers and bold travellers. These new stories are especially written for families to listen to in the car, at the airport, on the train or while they are on their way to their next adventure! This edition is filled with creative and engaging sound effects and is the perfect travel companion for little listeners everywhere.

Harold Pierce didn't mean to kill his baby brother all those years ago. He didn't intend to incinerate him in a fire but he did and he has spent most of his adult life in a psychiatric hospital because of that. Upon release he is given a job as a hospital porter but that job involves the burning of aborted foetuses and the memories of what happened to his brother begin to torment Harold. In the small town where he lives the terror is mounting because of the escape from prison of psychopath Paul Harvey.

God lies defeated, his corpse hidden in the catacombs beneath Mordew. On the surface, the streets of this the sea-battered city are slick with the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns - creatures that die and are swept down from the Merchant Quarter by the brooms of the workers and relentless rains, where they rot in the slums. There, a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud - until one day his mother, desperate and starving, sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew.

Inventive, intriguing and atmospheric, this eclectic selection of crime, mystery and psychological dramas immerses us in a series of diverse worlds where nothing is what it appears to be, and nobody is quite what they seem. Wide in scope and disparate in style, the stories range from a police procedural and a dark, dystopian eco-thriller to a shocking tale of modern-day slavery, based on real-life events. Created by a host of writers, including BAFTA Award-winning playwright Neil McKay, they are by turn chilling, surreal, haunting and darkly comic.

In The Journey of Humanity, Oded Galor offers a revelatory explanation of how humanity became, only very recently, the unique species to have escaped a life of subsistence poverty, enjoying previously unthinkable wealth and longevity. He reveals why this process has been so unequal around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today. He shows why so many of our efforts to improve lives have failed and how they might succeed.

Rex Obano has written for the stage, television, radio and film. His plays have twice been shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award and he received the Roland Rees Bursary in 2018. He is part of the writing team for the BBC Radio series Faith, Hope and Glory and his TV credits include Shakespeare & Hathaway. Included here are five of his acclaimed dramas, as well as a fascinating discussion programme, Black Tudors.

Bond may have a license to kill, but “Pistols” Scaramanga has a talent for it. He’s a KGB-trained assassin who’s left a trail of dead British Secret Service agents in his wake. His weapon of choice? A gold-plated Colt .45. In the aftermath of his brainwashing by the Soviets, Bond is given one last chance to win back M’s trust: terminate Scaramanga before he strikes MI6 again.

Haunting, uplifting, beautiful: the final work from Helen Dunmore. Helen Dunmore passed away in June 2017, leaving behind this remarkable collection of short stories. With her trademark imagination and gift for making history human, she explores the fragile ties between passion, love, family, friendship and grief, often through people facing turning points in their lives.

His companions, scattered, are making for Malarkoi—the city of the Mistress, the Master's most powerful enemy. Hoping to find welcome there, or at least safety, they find neither... and instead become embroiled in a life and death struggle against assassins, demi-gods, and the cunning plans of the Mistress.

It is the end of the 19th Century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow. Nothing touches this abandoned wilderness except the Great Trans-Siberian Express: an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents, but which now transports anyone who dares to cross the shadowy Wastelands. On to the platform steps a curious cast of characters. But the old rules are changing, and there are whispers that the train isn't safe.

Perfect bedtime listening, this wonderful anthology features brand new stories and poems from well-loved and exciting new Puffin authors. Plus, rediscover carefully curated extracts from Puffin's classic family favourites! And with quotes and motivational pieces from brilliantly inspiring leaders, scientists and actors on their own big dreams, there is something magical for everyone to enjoy.

Eleven-year-old Kofi Offin has dreams of water, of its urgent whisper that beckons with promises and secrets. He has heard the call on the banks of Upper Kwanta, West Africa, where he lives. He loves these things above all else: his family, the fireside tales of his father’s father, a girl named Ama, and, of course, swimming. But when the unthinkable – a sudden death – occurs during a festival between rival villages, Kofi ends up in a fight for his life. What happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves.

Juliet is consumed with guilt knowing that her half-brother, Brenton, grew up in children's homes while she received all her mother's love. She marries Clayton, a successful banker, to please her mother. But secretly Clayton has always suspected that there is something between Juliet and her half-brother. Meanwhile, Juliet and Brenton try to stay away from what they know is a forbidden love...

We join the action just as our ‘hero’ Tom, (early thirties, reads the ‘news’ on the radio) finds out that his girlfriend has not left him. Tom, I have not left you. But I am gone. Please carry on as normal. Love always, Hayley. Has Hayley gone or hasn’t she? Is she coming back? If she has gone, but is coming back, when is she coming back? And what is he supposed to bloody do in the meantime? And what if she’s never coming back?

K is sent into care before a year marks his birth. He grows up in fields and woods, and he is happy, he thinks. When K is 11, the city reclaims him. He returns to an unknown mother and a part-time father, trading the fields for flats and a community that is alien to him. Slowly, he finds friends. Eventually, he finds love. He learns how to navigate the city. But as he grows, he begins to realise that he needs more than the city can provide. He is a man made of pieces. Pieces that are slowly breaking apart.

What is the experience of black men in Britain? With continued conversation around British identity, racism and diversity, there is no better time to explore this question and give black British men a platform to answer it. Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space is that platform. Including essays from top poets, writers, musicians, actors and journalists, this timely and accessible book brings together a selection of powerful reflections exploring the black British male experience and what it really means to reclaim and hold space in the landscape of our society.

In the darkest months of the Second World War, Churchill approved what seemed to many like a suicide mission. Under orders to attack the St Nazaire U-boat base on the Atlantic seaboard, British commandos undertook 'the greatest raid of all', turning an old destroyer into a live bomb and using it to ram the gates of a Nazi stronghold. Drawing on official documents, interviews, unknown accounts and the astonished reactions of French civilians and German forces, The Greatest Raid recreates in cinematic detail the hours in which the 'Charioteers' fought and died.

Things will never be the same again... Ben is driving on the motorway, on his usual commute to the school where he works. A day like any other, except for Adam, who in a last despairing act jumps in front of Ben's car, and in killing himself, turns the teacher's world upside down. Wracked with guilt and desperate to clear his conscience, Ben develops a friendship with Alice, Adam's widow, and her seven-year-old son, Max. But as he tries to escape the trauma of the wreckage, could Ben go too far in trying to make amends?

David Olusoga's Black and British is a rich and revealing exploration of the extraordinarily long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello.

Meet Elver, who was saved by the Queen of the Serpents when she was just a child, and Artair, who spends his nights shut up in a tower because of the dangerous spirit that overtakes his body when he sleeps. When Artair is sent on a mission to steal a monster cub that is under Elver's protection, he - and Lucian, the other spirit inhabiting his body - are set on a collision course with the monster girl that will challenge everything they think they know about their world.