Showing results by narrator "Dawn Murphy" in All Categories

The Thomas Hardy Collection: Six Novels is a collection of Thomas Hardy most well-renowned works, read by an esteemed cast of narrators. The titles included in this collection are: Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D'Urbevilles, The Return of the Native, Jude the Obscure, The Woodlanders, The Mayor of Casterbridge. This audiobook is fully indexed. Once downloaded, each book and chapter will be listed so you can easily navigate to the individual section.

>"Lily?" My stomach dropped as a tall, dark-haired man stepped into view. Had he been hiding between the trees? "No. Sorry." Gulping, I took a step back. "I'm not Lily." He shook his head, a satisfied grin on his face. "No. You are Lily." "I'm Summer. You have the wrong person." For months, Summer is trapped in a cellar with the man who took her - and three other girls: Rose, Poppy, and Violet. His perfect, pure flowers. His family. But flowers can't survive long cut off from the sun, and time is running out....

Olivia Brodie is a devoted parlour maid serving the Broadbent family at Hawthorn Manor and spending precious time with her father and brothers at the family forge. But everything changes the day Spencer Middleton, the Broadbents' charming and enigmatic grandson, arrives. Sparks fly between Olivia and the army officer. Their connection is undeniable - but so too are the rigid boundaries of class and propriety. When Spencer departs, promising to return, Olivia dares to dream of a future that defies society's expectations. However, tragedy strikes Olivia's family, devastating her.

Struggling to overcome their marital problems, Alec and Peggy hoped their new life at Chamber cottage would be the retreat they both needed to recover. Both damaged by issues from their childhoods, they are trying to get on with their lives as best they can, but they can’t help feeling that they are being watched…. Peggy, already paranoid because of the terrible scars that mark her face, becomes even more agoraphobic and retreat further into the stone walls of the cottage, hoping it will keep her safe.

An eccentric letter arrives at the police station from a man threatening to kill his aunts. Detective Kate and her colleagues don’t take it seriously. But an elderly woman is found strangled in her home. 'RIP Auntie' is written on the floor in red lipstick. Then another older woman is murdered. With a major police manhunt underway, it becomes clear that they are up against a very dangerous serial killer, who is engaged in some kind of personal vendetta. An adversary who will not stop until he has achieved what he set out to do.

Detective Kate believes that her own number is up when she finds herself staring at the wrong end of a double-barrelled shotgun on a sodden stretch of Somerset marshland. She’s on the trail of villain Lenny Stallard, who has just broken out of prison. He was serving time for the murder of the elderly wife of a colonel during a robbery at their country residence near Bridgwater. Revenge appears to be the motive, and for DS Lewis’s superior, it is a cut-and-dried case as the bodies of trial witnesses begins to mount up. But it’s all a bit too convenient.

Missing journalist Ellie Landy is found in the River Parrett by a news crew covering the worst floods the Somerset Levels have suffered in living memory. A paperback is found by the woman’s bed with a mysterious inscription mentioning 'Sandman' and a time of day. Police assume it is an accidental drowning. Kate disobeys orders from the top and probes the death, as she suspects this was no accident. When another woman dies in suspicious circumstances, Kate finds herself drawn ever deeper into a nightmare of murder, treachery and perversion.

Two years ago, psychotic undertaker Larry 'Twister' Wadman disappeared after blasting two police detectives to death with an incendiary device and embarking on a murderous rampage across the Somerset Levels. For most, memories have dulled, but the sole survivor of the carnage, Detective Kate Hamblin, cannot forget. Then a prostitute’s body is found dumped in a coffin in Twister’s now derelict funeral parlour, dressed in a police uniform. Kate realises that her old enemy is back and out to get her.

Kate returns from a disastrous honeymoon, only to be plunged into a macabre murder investigation. A teenage girl last seen leaving a party at the height of a local scarecrow festival is found strangled and partially stripped in her own barn. The gruesome crime is an exact copy of the 150-year-old murder of peasant girl, Martha Tinney, alleged by superstitious locals to have been committed by a spectral scarecrow, nicknamed Strawfoot.

Detective Kate Hamblin is doing surveillance on the Somerset Levels, trying to catch a crazed arsonist. She leaves the van for a moment. Then it goes up in flames, killing her two colleagues. Kate is accused of abandoning them and is excluded from the murder hunt and effectively suspended from duty. She is desperate to nail the killer herself and clear her name. She risks all by entering into an unholy alliance with the murder team's chief suspect. Kate finds herself not only targeted in a personal vendetta by her own DCI, but stalked by the very killer she is pursuing.

Where would you rather be? Lonely and fog-bound in an ancient English castle... or sitting under the stars with friends on a magical Mediterranean island? Magdalena Mountjoy, furious with her impossible husband, the rakish Valdemar, doesn't hesitate when she has the chance to run away to Aeolus, a jewel of an island off the coast of Sicily. Yet every Eden has its serpent.

What if... Dionysus appeared in an English village? Justinia Fitz Odo: musician, dreamer, and would-be-dutiful wife. A wild and wicked autumn wind howls off the Eyotshire fells, bringing a mysterious stranger to the ancient town of Unthrang where she lives; a stranger who intervenes in the lives of the inhabitants in the most unpredictable and shocking ways. Meanwhile in nearby Eyot, unholy machinations in the dignified precincts of the cathedral threaten to destroy centuries of musical tradition.

Unwanted visitors come in all shapes and sizes, from three selfish brothers to a crusader from the past. Mimi Mountjoy's life is suddenly filled with problems. Her business as a purveyor of fountains is threatened and her husband Edmund, who desperately needs to finish his book on the Templars, is afflicted with writer's block. Then Mimi's mother decamps abroad to escape her three unmarried sons - who promptly descend on their sister in Eyot, with extremely disruptive results.

Struck down by shingles, Cleo Byng postpones her wedding and heads north to recuperate at her infuriating Cousin Henry's house in the wintry Eyotshire village of Hazard. She's not sure what to expect, and Haphazard House turns out to be a dilapidated Elizabethan pile with few amenities and a doom-laden housekeeper, not to mention a strange pair who have been in residence for rather more than the usual life span and have a keen interest in modern technology.

Who needs love? Not Quinta, who's made a good life for herself, bringing up her difficult young daughter, absorbed in her work as a violin maker. And she certainly doesn't need anybody to tell her how to live her life: She has it all sorted out, down to the last dot and comma. If it isn't on a list, it doesn't exist. When her old friend Lydia appears, jilted and angry, Quinta's orderly life is shaken and her past begins to catch up with her.

Groom, best man, guests, even a bishop - but where is the bride? An orphan fresh out of convent school, Prue Pagan has no home and nowhere to go. Then a chance meeting with her worldly-wise friend Cleo lands her a summer job in the north of England at Mountjoy Castle, where generations of the Mountjoy family have loved, lusted, and scandalised their neighbours. Prue's innocence is no protection against the wickedness of the English upper classes.

Judith Tarr returns to the always fascinating character of Alexander the Great in this fantasy novel that springs from the legend that the Queen of the Amazons came to meet him in Persia, and became his friend.

How was it that the novelist who created some of the most memorable and modern female characters in literature had such troubled relationships with real women? In this highly innovative book, acclaimed biographer Paula Byrne re-examines novelist Thomas Hardy’s life through the eyes of the women who made him—mother, sisters, girlfriends, wives, muses. The story veers from shocking scenes such as his obsession with the sight of a woman hanged, to poignant vignettes of unfulfilled passion, to fascinating details of working women’s lives in the nineteenth century.

Lincolnshire, 1854. After much reflection, Caroline Lawson has accepted Max Cavendish's marriage proposal. Yet their peaceful life on the farm is soon threatened by a series of mishaps and the strange deaths of livestock. As pressure mounts for Max to make the farm a success, the weight of responsibility becomes overwhelming. Meanwhile, Caroline's closest friend Trixie struggles with a deep conflict between friendship and love. Can she balance both, or will fate decide for her?

The Comfort Food Cafe is perched on a windswept clifftop at what feels like the edge of the world, serving up the most delicious cream teas, beautifully baked breads and carefully crafted cupcakes. For tourists and locals alike, the ramshackle cafe overlooking the beach is a beacon of laughter, companionship and security - a place like no other, a place that offers friendship as a daily special and where a hearty welcome is always on the menu.