Showing results by narrator "Adjoa Andoh" in All Categories

On a hill overlooking a refugee camp in Sudan, a young man strings up bedsheets that, in an act of imaginative resilience, will serve as a screen in his silent cinema. From the cinema he can see all the comings and goings in the camp, especially those of two new arrivals: a girl named Saba and her mute brother, Hagos. For these siblings, adapting to life in the camp is not easy. Saba mourns the future she lost when she was forced to abandon school, while Hagos, scorned for his inability to speak, must live vicariously through his sister. Both resist societal expectations....

Finnish teen eco-blogger, Ulli Earthgirl, wins a competition to join a low-carbon expedition to the North Pole by foot, to measure the melting ice. Blogging her way across the Arctic, she has to navigate deadly cracks in the ice, as well as the treacherous currents of environmental controversy in the blogosphere. Soon she's afloat in both worlds, as all her certainties begin to dissolve.

As the Wrack makes its slow, relentless march southwards, it will humble kings, healers, seers, merchants, priests, and warriors. It leaves behind only screams and suffering, and before it, spreads only fear. Lothain, the birthplace of the Wrack, desperately tries to hold itself together as the plague burns across it and its neighbors circle like vultures. The Moonsworn healers would fight the Wrack, but must navigate distrust and violence from the peoples of Teringia. Proud Galicanta readies itself for war, as the Sunsworn Empire watches and waits for the Wrack to bring its rival low.

The Castor, a vast and seemingly deserted starship, is spinning slowly in the void of deep space. Martha and the Doctor explore the drifting tomb and discover that they may not be alone after all. Who could have survived the disaster that overcame the rest of the crew?

When twins Leo and Trevor, separated as babies, are reunited 27 years later, it's a cause of celebration. That is until Leo accuses his brother of sleeping with his woman. Now they are brothers in arms. Only their newly found mother can stop them from ripping each other to bits. But HER terrible secret from the past means that one of them has to die.

Florida, 1935, and the residents of Heron Key are preparing for the Fourth of July barbecue, little realising how much their world is about to change. Domestic helps Missy and Selma are dismembering the alligator that tried to snatch the baby Missy was watching, before they can get ready for the party. Henry, a returned soldier from WW1, is hoping that his comrades in his construction team will not disgrace themselves in front of an already fiercely judgemental community.

How do you find a missing actress in a city where everyone's playing a role? A mystery, a love story and a darkly beguiling tale of secrets and reinvention set in 1960s London. Soho, 1965. In a tiny two-bed flat above a Turkish café on Neal Street lives Anna Treadway, a young dresser at the Galaxy Theatre. When the American actress Iolanthe Green disappears after an evening's performance at the Galaxy, the newspapers are wild with speculation about her fate.

This is the book that every family needs, containing all the traditional stories that small children should first hear. Every one of them is universally known and loved: "Little Red Riding Hood", "The Elves and the Shoemaker", "The Three Billy Goats Gruff", "The Real Princess", "The Gingerbread Man", "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", "The Three Little Pigs", and "Jack and the Beanstalk".

In Jackie Kay’s first collection of stories, ordinary lives are transformed by secrets. Her world might seem familiar – sex, death and family cast long shadows – but the roles of mothers, daughters and lovers are imagined and revealed in the most surprising of ways. Jackie Kay sees the extraordinary in everyday life, and lights it up with humour and generosity in a way that is uniquely her own.

A hundred years ago, a girl was born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar. Before she was 10 years old, Yetemegnu was married to a man two decades her senior, an ambitious poet-priest. Over the next century her world changed beyond recognition. She witnessed Fascist invasion and occupation, Allied bombardment and exile from her city, the ascent and fall of Emperor Haile Selassie, revolution and civil war. She endured all these things alongside parenthood, widowhood and the death of children.

Eydrth is a Master Songsmith...who has no magic. She will do anything to save her father from the evil that has stolen his mind. But the paths to the magic of the Witch World are many — and to save the ones you love, the truest magic must come from the heart.

The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa ­­- a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past. Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks - alone, except for her fox companion - searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.

Mma Ramotswe reads the foreword she has written to these tales, then goes on to narrate them all herself, passing them on to us verbally as did her father's aunt to her. From animal fables to mysterious forces residing in the landscape, this collection demonstrates the wealth and variety of African folk tales and the particular magic of Africa's spiritual roots.

The year is 1993. The Ku Klux Klan hold a rally provoking violence from an unexpected quarter which leaves authorities with an extraordinary dilemma: how do you handle a 98-year-old perpetrator who will not speak out except to admit her guilt? The year is 1919. Exiled in disgrace from her family, mixed-race Alicia is shocked by the primitive conditions when she arrives in Key West. Unlike anywhere else in Florida, people just get along - whites, blacks, Cubans, Catholics and Jews.

Lockwood is an unwanted guest, forced by a snowstorm to pass the night at the lonely and inhospitable house of Wuthering Heights. A child’s ghost pleads at the window to be let in; a waif who has wandered the moor for 20 years. Lockwood’s screams bring the fierce and brooding master of the house, Heathcliff, who is at first angry, and then, startlingly, sobs and begs for the ghost to return.

The heritage of the Gryphon will choose its own. The time of choice is now. The urge within him is overwhelming, and Kerovan - he of the cloven hooves and amber eyes - is driven toward the mountains - toward the dark. With him goes the Lady Joisan, who carries with her secrets unknown to Kerovan.

Once upon a time, Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories - fantastical yarns of wondrous creatures in faraway places-bewitched children across the world. But times change. Today, Kipling's writing tells us a different tale; of a love of Empire, and the troubling legacy of British colonialism. In Not So Stories, writers of colour from around the world reclaim these stories and remake them into something new. Something different.

One seagull and four pieces of bread decide the course of one person's life. But is the rest just coincidence? A new novel from Costa Award shortlisted author J. W. Ironmonger. Have you ever experienced a coincidence that seems too strange to be true? And is there such a thing as fate? The Coincidence Authority is a novel about love in a random universe, about two lost souls each with a quest to understand the secret patterns of their lives.

Jude lives in a henhouse with no roof, in the bankrupt Republic of Squanderland. Purchased for ten million euro at the height of the credit bubble, his henhouse has been rated the asset in Europe most likely to default. To solve this small but symbolic problem and restore confidence in the markets, Europe's leaders need a plan. Sadly, putting a roof on Jude's henhouse quickly escalates out of control. Soon they are committed to building a roof over the entire country, half a mile above the startled voters...

Cinders and her talking dog Sparks are on the run, in the Deep Dark Forest, after Cinders performed magic at the castle and made everyone think she was a witch. The hapless Hansel is on the run with them, but only because he ate some of an actual witch’s gingerbread house and she got cross. If they can reach Fairyland, maybe they’ll all be safe. In the forest they will find three bears, a multitude of ridiculous adventures and one woman called Rapunzel in a tower. But Rapunzel may not be what she seems. Will Hansel eat the three bears’ porridge?