Audiobooks Narrated by Ilona Otto

LoveReading Top 10

1. The Silence of Scheherazade

   Set in the ancient city of Smyrna, this powerful novel follows the intertwining fates of four families as their peaceful city is ripped apart by the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna. At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore, and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, seventeen years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames. But let us not rush, for much will happen between then and now. Birth, death, romance and grief are all to come as these peaceful, cosmopolitan streets are used as bargaining chips in the wake of the First World War. Told through the intertwining fates of a Levantine, a Greek, a Turkish and an Armenian family, this unforgettable novel reveals a city, and a culture, now lost to time. 2021 Head of Zeus

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2. Think Big: Take Small Steps and Build the Future You Want

   Brought to you by Penguin. What are you doing today to make your dream future come true? We all have big ambitions for the future but those dreams only become reality if we do something towards them regularly. To achieve audacious goals, we need to take action and make small changes every day. We need to think big and act small. Drawing on cutting-edge research from behavioural science, Dr Grace Lordan offers immediate actionable solutions and tips that will help you get closer to your dream future, every day. Focusing on six key areas - your time, goal planning, self-narratives, other people, your environment, and resilience - Dr Lordan reveals practical, science-backed hacks that will help you get ahead. Each chapter introduces us to behavioural science concepts like the 'halo effect', 'confirmation bias', 'affect heuristic' and the 'ostrich effect', to help you better understand yourself and others, so that you can get the most out of your career. Whether you fantasise about changing industry, landing that big promotion, writing a screenplay or setting up your own company, Think Big creates a clear pathway to the future you want now. Some of the things you'll learn include how to: · Overcome a fear of failure and throw yourself at opportunity · Craft the optimum environment for work and give yourself ample time for tasks · Rewrite self-narratives and tackle imposter syndrome · Watch out for other people's biases and stop them from holding you back Think Big provides a practical framework to keep you moving in the right direction towards any goal. It will help you get out of your own way and propel you on the path to success, transforming you from dreamer to doer! © Dr Grace Lordan 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

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3. Appetite: A Memoir in Recipes of Family and Food

   'Delightfully different' - Delia Smith   Ed Balls was just three weeks old when he tried his first meal: pureed roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. While perhaps ill-advised by modern weaning standards, it worked for him in 1967, and from that moment on he was hooked on food.   Appetite is a memoir with a twist: part autobiography, part cookbook, each chapter is a recipe that tells a story. Ed was taught to cook by his mother, and now he's passing these recipes on to his own children as they start to fly the nest. Sitting round the table year after year, the world around us may change, but great recipes last a lifetime.   Appetite is a celebration of love, family, and really good food.  

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4. A Line to Kill: from the global bestselling author of Moonflower Murders

   Brought to you by Penguin. Featuring an exclusive Q&A between Anthony Horowitz and Adam Hamdy. 'Witty, wry, clever, a fabulous detective story and perfect summer reading' KATE MOSSE 'Funny, intriguing, thrilling and thought-provoking: a marvellous mystery' ADAM HAMDY 'Horowitz ... playing Watson to Hawthorne's Sherlock, serves up a pretty kettle of fish, full of red herrings' THE TIMES 'A golden-age whodunnit on steroids' KIRKUS REVIEWS 'I couldn't see the sea from my bedroom but I could hear the waves breaking in the distance. They reminded me that I was on a tiny island. And I was trapped.' There has never been a murder on Alderney. It's a tiny island, just three miles long and a mile and a half wide. The perfect location for a brand-new literary festival. Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne has been invited to talk about his new book. The writer, Anthony Horowitz, travels with him. Very soon they discover that all is not as it should be. Alderney is in turmoil over a planned power line that will cut through it, desecrating a war cemetery and turning neighbour against neighbour. The visiting authors - including a blind medium, a French performance poet and a celebrity chef - seem to be harbouring any number of unpleasant secrets. When the festival's wealthy sponsor is found brutally killed, Alderney goes into lockdown and Hawthorne knows that he doesn't have to look too far for suspects. There's no escape. The killer is still on the island. And there's about to be a second death... © Anthony Horowitz 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

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5. Such a Quiet Place

   From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last House Guest, a Reese's Book Club pick. There was no warning that she would come back. Welcome to Hollow's Edge - a picture-perfect neighbourhood where everyone has each other's backs. At least, that's how it used to be, until the night Brandon and Fiona Truett were found dead... Two years ago, branded a grifter, thief and sociopath by her friends and neighbours, Ruby Fletcher was convicted of murdering the Truetts. Now, freed by mistrial, Ruby has returned to Hollow's Edge. But why would she come back? No one wants her there, least of all her old housemate, Harper Nash. As Ruby's return sends shockwaves through the community, terrified residents turn on each other, and it soon becomes clear that not everyone was honest about the night the Truetts died. When Harper begins to receive threatening, anonymous notes, she realizes she has to uncover the truth before someone else gets hurt... Someone like her. Praise for the author: "An unnerving and extremely classy thriller" OBSERVER on The Girl from Widow Hills "Are you paying attention? You'll need to be; this thriller will test your brain with its reverse chronological structure, and it's a page-turner to boot." ELLE MAGAZINE on All The Missing Girls "Fast-paced and gripping" PEOPLE on The Last House Guest

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6. 1979

   The unmissable first thriller in an electrifying, brand-new series from the Queen of Crime. The shadows hide a deadly story . . . 1979. It is the winter of discontent, and reporter Allie Burns is chasing her first big scoop. There are few women in the newsroom and she needs something explosive for the boys' club to take her seriously. Soon Allie and fellow journalist Danny Sullivan are exposing the criminal underbelly of respectable Scotland. They risk making powerful enemies - and Allie won't stop there. When she discovers a home-grown terrorist threat, Allie comes up with a plan to infiltrate the group and make her name. But she's a woman in a man's world . . . and putting a foot wrong could be fatal. Praise for Val McDermid: 'Brilliant . . . Sensational . . . Unforgettable' Guardian 'No one can plot or tell a story like she can' Daily Express 'One of today's most accomplished crime writers' Literary Review 'As good a psychological thriller as it is possible to get' Sunday Express

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7. The Reckoning: America's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal

   AMERICA IS SUFFERING FROM PTSD. THE RECKONING DIAGNOSES ITS CORE CAUSES AND HELPS BEGIN THE HEALING PROCESS. For four years, Donald J Trump inflicted an onslaught of overlapping and interconnected traumas upon the American people, targeting anyone he perceived as being an 'other' or an enemy. Women were discounted and derided, the sick were dismissed as weak and unworthy of help, immigrants and minorities were demonised and discriminated against and money was elevated above all else. In short, he transformed America into a macro version of his malignantly dysfunctional family. How can Americans make sense of the degree to which their institutions and leaders have let them down? How can they negotiate a world in which all sense of safety and justice seems to have been destroyed? How can they - as individuals and as a nation - confront, process and overcome this loss of trust and the ways they have been forever altered by chaos, division and cruelty? And when the dust finally settles, how can they begin to heal, in the midst of ongoing health and economic crises and the greatest political divide since the Civil War? Mary L Trump is uniquely positioned to answer these difficult questions. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology specialising in trauma, has herself been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and happens to be Donald J Trump's only niece. In The Reckoning, she applies her unique expertise to the task of helping Americans confront an all-encompassing trauma, one that has taken an immense toll on their nation's health and well-being. A new leader alone cannot fix the situation. Donald J Trump is only the latest symptom of a disease that has existed within the body politic since America's inception - from the original sin of slavery through its population's unceasing, organised commitment to inequality. An enormous amount of healing must be done to rebuild the lives of Americans, their faith in leadership and their hope for their nation. It starts with The Reckoning. Praise for Too Much and Never Enough: "Insights that no biographer can match." SUNDAY TIMES "A scathing takedown." GUARDIAN

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8. Land of Big Numbers

   A dazzling debut collection which, deftly and urgently, tells the stories of those living in the biggest and most complicated country on earth.  A BARACK OBAMA READING LIST SELECTION FOR SUMMER 2021   'In this magnificent collection of stories, the author vividly captures the desires and losses of a richly drawn cast while drawing on the realities of contemporary China'? Cosmopolitan A brother competes for gaming glory while his twin sister exposes the dark side of the Communist government on her underground blog; a worker at a government call centre is alarmed one day to find herself speaking to a former lover; a delicious new fruit arrives at the neighbourhood market and the locals find it starts to affect their lives in ways they could never have imagined; and a young woman's dreams of making it big in Shanghai are stalled when she finds herself working as a florist. These are just some of the myriad lives to be evoked in The Land of Big Numbers, a collection of stories which - sometimes playfully, sometimes darkly - draws back the curtain on the realities of modern China and unveils a cast of characters as rich and complicated as any in world literature. With virtuosic brilliance, Te-ping Chen sheds light on a country much talked about but little understood and announces the birth of a bright new star in the literary firmament.    Praise for Land of Big Numbers 'A spectacular work, comic, timely, profound. Te-Ping Chen has a superb eye for detail in a China where transformation occurs simultaneously too fast and too slow for lives in pursuit of meaning in a brave new world. Her characters are achingly alive. It's rare to read a collection so satisfying, where every story adds to a gripping and intricate world.' Madeleine Thien, author of the Booker-shortlisted Do Not Say We Have Nothing   'Te-Ping Chen's Land of Big Numbers contains 10 illuminating, sharp stories set in China, penned by a former investigative reporter who worked in Beijing for several years' The Independent 'China's borders have remained closed to foreign travellers since the first few months of the Covid pandemic, and look set to remain so in the immediate future. For those who want a peek inside the country, this very readable collection of short stories is a great place to start.' Financial Times 'Te-Ping Chen shows us how much life, loss, and quiet pleasure exists in the world, just out of view.' Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine   

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9. Gene Keys: Embracing Your Higher Purpose

   Is our destiny written inside our very DNA? Richard Rudd suggests that humanity is on the verge of a major shift in consciousness rooted in a new understanding of how our genes operate. He introduces this fantastic possibility, showing how the "gene keys" are an inner language designed to transform our core beliefs about ourselves and raise us to a higher level of awareness. The book works alongside state-of-the-art online profiling software that provides instantaneous free "Hologenetic Profiles," based on astrological data and revealing the underlying genetic patterns governing relationships, finances, and health.

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10. What We Find

    Under extreme pressure, neurosurgeon Maggie Sullivan knows she needs to slow down, and the best place she can do that is Sullivan's Crossing, the land and store at the crossroads of the Colorado and Continental Divide Trails. She relishes the opportunity to indulge in a simple way of life. But Maggie's world is rocked and she must take responsibility for the Crossing. When Cal Jones offers to help, Maggie is suspicious. Though Cal and Maggie each struggle with loss and loneliness, their time together gives Maggie hope for something brighter on the horizon.

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