Audiobooks narrated by Abigail Thaw

Noel Streatfeild: Ballet Shoes & more: A BBC Radio 4 Children’s Drama Collection

"Full-cast dramatisations of three of Noel Streatfeild's classic children's books Rising to fame with her 1936 novel Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild soon became one of the most popular authors of her day. She was one of the first winners of the Carnegie Medal and was awarded an OBE in 1983. She died in 1986, but her stories continue to captivate children today. Included here are three of her very best - Ballet Shoes, The Growing Summer and When the Siren Wailed. Ballet Shoes - Adopted by Great Uncle Matthew on his archaeological expeditions, Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil grow up as sisters, and vow to make their name famous. When they enrol at the Children's Academy of Dancing, the Fossil girls share a future of a dazzling life onstage, where their dreams and fears will soon come true.... Rosemary Leach, Alexandra Mathie, Victoria Shalet and Lucy Curtis star in this delightful dramatisation. The Growing Summer - It is 1965, and the young Gareth children's lives are about to change for ever. When their father falls dangerously ill, they are sent to Ireland to stay with their eccentric Great-Aunt Dymphna for the summer. There, in her crumbling mansion on the west coast, they face dangers and adventures they could never have imagined... Starring Ann Rye, Holly Grainger, Will Haigh, Emily Fleeshman and Paul Herriott. When the Siren Wailed - When World War Two breaks out, Laura, Andy and Tim Clark are evacuated to the countryside. Brought up in poverty, they find a happy, comfortable home with the Colonel - but then tragedy occurs, and the children decide to run away back to London. Caught up in an air raid, can they make their way through the blackouts and bombed-out streets to find their mother? Narrated by Wendy Richard, this gripping, moving adventure story stars Norman Bird, John Church, Nicholas Courtney and Keeley Hawes. Text copyright © Noel Streatfield 1936 (Ballet Shoes), 1966 (The Growing Summer), 1974 (When the Siren Wailed) Copyright © Beneficiaries of Noel Streatfeild 1986 Cast and credits Written by Noel Streatfeild Ballet Shoes With Rosemary Leach, John Ringham, Alexandra Mathie, Victoria Shalet, Lucy Curtis, Lia Williams, Charles Edwards, Abigail Thaw, Alison Skilbeck, Olivia Breeze, Max Digby, Jonathan Dryden Taylor and Miriam Berry Adapted by Ellen Dryden Directed by Don Taylor First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 27-31 Dec 1999 The Growing Summer With Ann Rye, Holly Grainger, Will Haigh, Emily Fleeshman, Paul Herriott, James Caplin, Catherine Keane, Vincent Patrick Dramatised by Julie Wilkinson Directed by Sue Sutton Mayo First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 9 Aug 2000 When the Siren Wailed Narrated by Wendy Richard With Norman Bird, John Church, Nicholas Gatt, David Goudge, Keeley Hawes, Joan Matheson, Marc Murphy, Judy Parkin, Christopher Scott, Joan Walker, Melinda Walker, Howard Ward, Nicholas Courtney, Malcolm Hebden and Eva Stuart Dramatised by Richard Pinner Produced by Mary Kalemkarian Researcher: Lis Roberts First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 15 Jan-19 Mar 1989 © 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd"

Noel Streatfeild (Author), Abigail Thaw, Ann Rye, Charles Edwards, Emily Fleeshman, Full Cast, Holliday Grainger, Joan Matheson, Keeley Hawes, Lia Williams, Malcolm Hebden, Nicholas Courtney, Norman Bird, Rosemary Leach, Victoria Shalet, Wendy Richard (Narrator)

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After the Funeral

"Brought to you by Penguin. From the incomparable Tessa Hadley, a masterful collection of stories that plumb the depths of everyday life to reveal the shifting tides and hidden undercurrents of ordinary relationships In each of the twelve stories in After the Funeral, small events have huge consequences. Heloise's father died in a car crash when she was a little girl; at a dinner party in her forties, she meets someone connected to that long-ago tragedy. Two estranged sisters cross paths at a posh hotel and pretend not to recognize each other. Janie's bohemian mother plans to marry a man close to Janie's own age - everything changes when an accident interrupts the wedding party. A daughter caring for her elderly mother during the pandemic becomes obsessed with the woman next door; in the wake of his best friend's death, a man must reassess his affair with the friend's wife. Teenager Cecilia wakes one morning on vacation with her parents in Florence and sees them for the first time through disenchanted eyes. As psychologically astute as they are emotionally dense, these stories illuminate the enduring conflicts between responsibility and freedom, power and desire, convention and subversion, reality and dreams. A vital addition to Tessa Hadley's celebrated body of work, After the Funeral bears out Claire Messud's observation that 'Like Alice Munro, to whom she has more than once been compared, Hadley has the gift of making small canvases inexhaustibly new.... Compassionate and luminous, Hadley sees them all - or should I say, she sees us all: our travails, our fantasies and our small joys.' ©2023 Tessa Hadley (P)2023 Penguin Audio"

Tessa Hadley (Author), Abigail Thaw (Narrator)

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Free Love: The exhilarating new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Late in the Day

"Brought to you by Penguin. From Tessa Hadley, bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past, comes a compulsive new novel about one woman's sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London 1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit one hot summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family's upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them. With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters' inner worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. Daring and sensual, Free Love is a compulsive, irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our lives. 'She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today.' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 'Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts.' Hilary Mantel © Tessa Hadley 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022"

Tessa Hadley (Author), Abigail Thaw (Narrator)

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The Blazing World and Other Writings: Penguin Classics

"Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Abigail Thaw, best known for her role as Dorothea Frazil in Endeavour. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Kate Lilley, also read by Abigail Thaw. Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventeenth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work harmoniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man. (P) Penguin Audio 2020"

Margaret Cavendish (Author), Abigail Thaw (Narrator)

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The Snakes

"Brought to you by Penguin. READ THE TENSE TWIST-FILLED RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK FOR SPRING 2020 FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE OUTCAST ‘Superbly written, each sentence punctuated by a drumbeat of menace ... A thrillingly good read’ Elizabeth Day Family secrets can be deadly… Newly-weds Dan and Bea decide to escape London. Driving through France in their beaten-up car they anticipate a long lazy summer, worlds away from their ordinary lives. But their idyll cannot last. Stopping off to see Bea’s brother at his crumbling hotel, the trio are joined unexpectedly by Bea’s ultra-wealthy parents. Dan has never understood Bea’s deep discomfort around them but living together in such close proximity he begins to sense something is very wrong. Just as tensions reach breaking point, brutal tragedy strikes, exposing decades of secrets and silence that threaten to destroy them all. ‘A twisty delight of a novel, a cracking page-turner that has much to say about modern life and our attempts to find a way to navigate it, no matter where we come from’ Cathy Rentzenbrink © Sadie Jones 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2019"

Sadie Jones (Author), Abigail Thaw (Narrator)

Audiobook

Late in the Day: The classic Sunday Times bestselling novel from the author of Free Love

"Brought to you by Penguin. Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been close friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach was the sanest and kindest of them all, the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness. Late in the Day explores the tangled webs at the centre of our most intimate relationships, to expose how beneath the seemingly dependable arrangements we make for our lives lie infinite alternate configurations. Ingeniously moving between past and present and through the intricacies of her characters’ thoughts and interactions, Tessa Hadley once again shows that she has ‘become one of this country’s great contemporary novelists. She is equipped with an armoury of techniques and skills that may yet secure her a position as the greatest of them.’ (Anthony Quinn Guardian) (c) 2019, Tessa Hadley (P) 2019 Penguin Audio"

Tessa Hadley (Author), Abigail Thaw (Narrator)

Audiobook

My Husband's Wife: the Sunday Times bestseller

"Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of My Husband's Wife by Jane Corry, read by Lily Bevan and Abigail Thaw. FIRST COMES LOVE. THEN COMES MARRIAGE. THEN COMES MURDER. The addictive psychological thriller everyone's talking about! 'My head's still spinning from all the twists!' Mark Edwards What if your life was built on a lie? When lawyer Lily marries Ed, she's determined to make a fresh start. To leave the secrets of the past behind. But when she takes on her first criminal case, she starts to find herself strangely drawn to her client. A man who's accused of murder. A man she will soon be willing to risk everything for. But is he really innocent? And who is she to judge? MY HUSBAND'S WIFE is a thriller with so many twists you won't be able to put it down, perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty, Clare Mackintosh and C. L. Taylor. 'A rollercoaster of dramatic twists...chilling and suspenseful' Elizabeth Haynes 'Twisty, feverish and utterly gripping, My Husband's Wife is the perfect summer read' Eva Dolan 'This thrilling page-turner kept me guessing till the very end' Katerina Diamond 'A fantastic and powerful novel of heart-pounding suspense, expertly written to draw the reader in and never let go!' Kathryn Croft 'I have been thoroughly immersed in this novel...full of unexpected twists I didn't see coming! ' Luana Lewis 'My Husband's Wife had me gripped from the first page to the last. A fascinating cast of characters, each concealing a dark secret...' Ava Marsh 'Gripping and compelling, My Husband's Wife is a fascinating tale that you will think about long after turning the final page' Rowan Coleman 'My Husband's Wife is a thrilling page-turner that chronicles the nightmarish dynamics within a marriage.' Sarah Ward 'Corry has written a very impressive debut. I couldn't put it down!' LJ Ross 'A dark and gripping thriller that vibrates with tension. Jane Corry has created an exciting and complex tale that sank its teeth into me on the first page and never let go...A must-read for thriller lovers' Kate Furnivall '[A] roller coaster of suspense and intrigue... A cleverly constructed novel in which we have no idea who we can trust' Rosanna Ley 'The two strong women characters and the twists and turns of the plot will keep you on the edge of your seat right through to the surprising and shocking ending' Mavis Cheek 'Pick up this book and you won't be able to put it down. A fast-moving story of drama, suspense and emotional entanglement with a good sprinkling of evil threaded through' Sandra Howard 'A compelling thriller! I thoroughly enjoyed every fast turning page' Vanessa Ronan, author of The Last Days of Summer 'A gripping page turner that twists and turns right until the very end' Catherine Alliott"

Jane Corry (Author), Abigail Thaw, Lily Bevan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Abigail Thaw

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