Showing results by narrator "Indira Varma" in All Categories

Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. Married to three brothers in a single ceremony, she and her now-sisters spend their days hard at work in the family’s “china room,” sequestered from contact with the men - except when their domineering mother-in-law, Mai, summons them to a darkened chamber at night. Curious and strong willed, Mehar tries to piece together what Mai doesn’t want her to know.

Deep in the Chalk, something is stirring. The owls and the foxes can sense it, and Tiffany Aching feels it in her boots. An old enemy is gathering strength. This is a time of endings and beginnings, old friends and new, a blurring of edges and a shifting of power. Now Tiffany stands between the light and the dark, the good and the bad. As the fairy horde prepares for invasion, Tiffany must summon all the witches to stand with her. To protect the land. Her land. There will be a reckoning.

Tiffany Aching is ready to begin her apprenticeship in magic, but life isn't exactly what she thought it would be. She expects spells and magic - not chores and ill-tempered goats! Surely there must be more to witchcraft than this? And Tiffany will find that she needs her magic more than ever, to fight off the insidious, disembodied creature that is pursuing her. This time, neither Mistress Weatherwax (the greatest witch in the world) nor the fierce, six-inch-high Wee Free Men can protect her. In the end, it will take all of Tiffany's inner strength to save herself.

Down market lanes crammed with too many people, dogs, and rickshaws lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows, and considers himself to be smarter than his friends, Pari and Faiz. When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.

Living on the island of Cyprus, Nisha is far from her native Sri Lanka. Though she longs to return home, she knows that working as a nanny and maid for a wealthy widow is the only way to earn enough to support her daughter, left behind to be raised by relatives. Yiannis is a poacher, trapping the tiny protected songbirds that stop in Cyprus as they migrate each year from Africa to Europe and selling them on the illegal market. He dreams of finding a new way of life, and of marrying Nisha.

It's New Year's Eve, 1972, when a boat pulls up to the Maiden Rock lighthouse with relief for the keepers. But no one greets them. When the entrance door, locked from the inside, is battered down, rescuers find an empty tower. A table is laid for a meal not eaten. The Principal Keeper's weather log describes a storm raging round the tower, but the skies have been clear. And the clocks have all stopped at 8:45.

A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side of reality.... Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle - a.k.a. the Wee Free Men - a clan of fierce, sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men. Together they must face headless horsemen, ferocious grimhounds, terrifying dreams come true and ultimately the sinister queen of the Elves herself....

The Rise is a gleaming residential tower, newly constructed from steel and blackened glass, that stands on some of London’s most prestigious real estate. Looming imposingly over Hyde Park, only multi-millionaires need apply for one of its sumptuous apartments. But when the young night concierge is found murdered in the building’s lobby, the elite residents quickly find their gilded lifestyles under unwelcome police scrutiny.

Inspired by the novels of D.H. Lawrence, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love, this ambitious quartet from Booker Prize-winning novelist A.S. Byatt charts the lives of the Potter family between 1953 and 1970. Set against the changing social and political landscape of England in the '50s and '60s, it follows the heroine, Frederica, from precocious teenager to TV talk-show host and from her Yorkshire home to the heart of swinging London.

What happens when your story doesn't end the way you thought it would? When the dream life you have been working towards becomes something you must walk away from? When you swap a Hollywood marriage and a LA mansion with waterside views, for a little attic flat shared only with your daughter, beneath the star-filled sky of deepest North London? When you find yourself not lonely, but elated—elated to be alone with yourself, who you genuinely thought you might never get to see again?

Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. A novelist, poet, playwright, composer, artist and philosopher, he wrote both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems; exchanged ideas with Yeats, Einstein and Gandhi, and was hugely influential in promoting Indian culture to the West. This collection includes some of Tagore's key novels, plays and short stories, as well as his best-known poem and four fascinating biographical programmes.

We follow the fortunes of Mickey Bliss and his fellow signallers from the Lahore Division of the British Indian Army as they experience life - and death - on the front line. Meanwhile, Dr Celestine de Tullio battles to save soldiers suffering from gas gangrene and trench fever - and experiences the fighting firsthand when she enlists in the Serbian Army and commands a dangerous offensive. They are all cogs in an immense machine, one which connects situations across the whole theatre of the war, over four long years.

In this collection comprising of thirteen short stories, Jansson masterfully crafts unsettling narratives that delve into unexpected connections, awkward encounters, and solitary moments. From reconnecting with childhood friends in "Party Games" to exploring the theme of ageing in "Trip to the Riviera", Jansson's short story collection "Letters from Klara" beautifully and intimately depicts the human condition in all its pain and joy. Finnish-Swedish writer and artist Tove Jansson (1914-2001) is globally cherished for creating the Moomin universe.

Nisha has crossed oceans to give her child a future. Now she spends her days caring for someone else's daughter while her own waits for her return, half a world away. For Petra, it is only natural to hire a domestic worker to keep her house clean and her family fed. Their lives have nothing in common, except the love they feel for their daughters. Then one day, Nisha vanishes. No one cares about the disappearance of a foreign domestic worker, except Petra and Nisha's secret lover, Yiannis, the only connection to her daughter back in Sri Lanka.

Cardiff Bay. The government has ordered the excavation of the wreckage of a secret underground base. DCI Tom Cutler is watching from a distance, fascinated by the process. There are people in his dreams. People he feels he should know. The disbanded Torchwood Institute spent a century accumulating non-terrestrial artefacts and catching aliens. Who knows what - or who - might still be intact down there. But by the time they find the first body, Suzie Costello is long gone. Based on the hit series created by Russell T. Davies, Long Time Dead is a prequel....

The way we communicate has changed. Today many of our interactions are digital, but until recently writing letters was the norm. Drawing from over 100 miles of records held at the UK's official government archive, The National Archives at Kew, this collection of letters, postcards and telegrams will shine a spotlight on a range of significant historical moments and occurrences, recapturing a lost world in which correspondence was king.

Katherine Mansfield is remembered as one of the great modernist short-story writers, who managed to pack a huge amount of creative work into her 34 years before she died of TB in 1923. This impressive collection includes brand-new full-cast BBC dramatisations of 'Bliss', 'Something Childish but Very Natural', 'Marriage a la Mode', 'Daughters of the Late Colonel', 'The Garden Party', 'Life of Ma Parker and Her First Ball', plus many more readings brought to life by a wealth of narrators.

Covering the whole of witching, casting spells to setting cheese, from dealing with elves to making deals with demons, from tending flocks to fending off forces from other worlds, this colourful, funny and insightful guide is a must-have for all Terry Pratchett fans.

Late 21st century and Earth has been reduced to an uninhabited wasteland. What was left of humanity was evacuated into overpopulated space stations, or 'Habitats'. A hotbed for crime and strange new religious sects, the Habitat Security Division has no shortage of work. No-nonsense Investigator Bridget Kurtis soon finds herself embroiled in a life or death struggle with a sinister cult, and what she uncovers has disturbing implications for the future of the human race.... 

Cornwall, 1972. Three lighthouse keepers vanish from a remote rock, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The principal keeper's weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week. What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. Black rocks roll beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?