Showing results by narrator "Sophie Aldred" in All Categories

Claire’s family has gone nuclear. Her precious moppets keep calling Childline when she feeds them broccoli, she’s utterly Ottolenghied out at weekends and her darling husband is having an affair with her best friend. The question isn’t whether she needs a glass of wine, but is there one big enough? Enter the Sauvignon Sisterhood, a new set of friends brought together by a shared love of liquid therapy. Together they might just be able to convince Claire that, like a good bottle of red, life really can get better with age.

Ana Kaminski is pushed through the iron gates of Auschwitz beside her frightened young friend Ester Pasternak. As they reach the front of the line, Ana steps forward and quietly declares herself a midwife--and Ester her assistant. Their arms are tattooed and they’re ordered to the maternity hut. Holding an innocent newborn baby, Ana knows the fate of so many are in her hands and vows to do everything she can to save them. 

After one great battle, the Architects disappeared. Yet humanity’s fragile peace is brief. For, 40 years later, the galaxy’s greatest alien enemy has returned. This time, the artefacts that preserved entire worlds from destruction are ineffective. And no planet is safe. The Human Colony worlds are in turmoil as they face extinction. Some believe alliances with other species can save them. Others insist humanity must fight alone. But no one has the firepower or technology to ensure victory, as the Architects loom ever closer.

How far would you go to find The One? One simple mouth swab is all it takes. A quick DNA test to find your perfect partner - the one you're genetically made for. A decade after scientists discover everyone has a gene they share with just one other person, millions have taken the test, desperate to find true love. Now, five more people meet their Match. But even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking - and deadlier - than others....

The Dragons of Pern are the world's only defence against an ancient threat - Thread, an evil rain that devours everything it touches. Paired with their riders from the moment they hatch, they risk their lives burning the scourge of the Red Star from the sky. But the dragons are in decline. Only one Weyr remains, and the only dragon queen is dying. F'lar knows that the Red Star is rising again and that the ancient threat will return. His only hope is the last queen egg and finding a woman strong enough to be the new queen's rider. But the villainous Lord Fax has other plans.

Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent behind bars. The no-holds-barred memoirs of a GP who went from working at a quiet suburban practice to treating the country’s most dangerous criminals - first in young offenders’ institutions, then at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs and finally at Europe’s largest women-only prison in Europe, Bronzefield.

Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade his mind in the war. And one of humanity’s heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers. Eighty years ago, Earth was destroyed by an alien enemy. Many escaped, but millions more died. So mankind created enhanced humans ­such as Idris - who could communicate mind-to-mind with our aggressors. Then these ‘Architects’ simply disappeared, and Idris and his kind became obsolete.

Danger. Deportation. Death. These are just some of the fates facing the inmates at Huntercombe prison. Some have fled their homeland in fear of their lives. Others are being sent to a country they left decades ago. But Dr Amanda Brown is doing all she can for each patient stuck in no-man’s land. They have little or no idea of what awaits them outside, but she treats them with kindness and respect. Whatever their crime, and whatever their future holds, she is still their doctor.

Spensa's life as a Defiant Defense Force pilot has been far from ordinary. She proved herself one of the best starfighters in the human enclave of Detritus and she saved her people from extermination at the hands of the Krell - the enigmatic alien species that has been holding them captive for decades. What's more, she travelled light-years from home as a spy to infiltrate the Superiority, where she learned of the galaxy beyond her small, desolate planet home. Now, the Superiority - the governing galactic alliance bent on dominating all human life - has started a galaxy-wide war.

Ella's family has a big secret - her mummy is a fairy! But sometimes Mummy Fairy's magic goes wrong, and it's up to Ella to help.... In this third book of spellbinding adventures about Mummy Fairy and Ella, you'll find flying cars, enchanted ballet shoes, a unicorn in the kitchen - and, of course, Ella's very own magical wardrobe.

Once, a girl called Ace travelled the universe with the Doctor - until, in the wake of a terrible tragedy they parted company. Now, decades on, she is known as Dorothy McShane, the reclusive millionaire philanthropist who heads the global organisation A Charitable Earth. But Dorothy is being haunted by terrible nightmares in which she’s abducted to an alien world. Nightmares that begin just as scores of young runaways are vanishing from the dark alleyways of London. 

Random House presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Into the Water by Paula Hawkins, read by Imogen Church, Sophie Aldred, Daniel Weyman, Rachel Bavidge and Laura Aikman. The addictive new psychological thriller from the author of The Girl on the Train, the runaway Sunday Times Number One best seller and global phenomenon. In the last days before her death, Nel called her sister. Jules didn't pick up the phone, ignoring her plea for help.

All her life, Spensa has dreamed of becoming a pilot. Of proving she's a hero like her father. She made it to the sky, but the truths she learned about her father were crushing. The rumours of his cowardice are true - he deserted his flight during battle against the Krell. Worse, though, he turned against his team and attacked them. Spensa is sure there's more to the story. And she's sure that whatever happened to her father in his starship could happen to her. When she made it outside the protective shell of her planet, she heard the stars - and it was terrifying.

Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, examining its role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keefe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. 

Defeated, crushed, and driven almost to extinction, the remnants of the human race is trapped on a planet that is constantly attacked by mysterious alien starfighters. Spensa, a teenage girl living among them, longs to be a pilot. When she discovers the wreckage of an ancient ship, she realizes this dream might be possible - assuming she can repair the ship, navigate flight school, and (perhaps most importantly) persuade the strange machine to help her. Because this ship, uniquely, appears to have a soul.

My mummy looks normal, like any other mummy...but she's not. Because she can turn into a fairy. All she has to do is stamp her feet three times, clap her hands, wiggle her bottom and say, 'Marshmallow'...and POOF! She's Mummy Fairy. Ella's family has a big secret - her mummy is a fairy! But sometimes Mummy Fairy's magic goes wrong, and then it's up to Ella to help. 

Floss's parents are divorced, and she divides up her week, spending five days with her mum, her new step-dad and her baby half-brother. The other two days Floss spends with her dad, helping him to run his greasy spoon cafe. But their simple arrangement is thrown into disarray when Floss's mum decides to move to Australia. Making the difficult decision to stay at home, Floss moves in permanently with her dad and they muddle along happily together, surviving on chip butties and enjoying visits to the local funfair.

Five classic novelisations. In Doctor Who and the Zarbi, the First Doctor and his companions are trapped on the remote planet Vortis. In Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon, the Third Doctor and Jo are mistaken for delegates of the Galactic Federation on a primitive world. In Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah find the living remains of a renegade Time Lord. In Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, the Fourth Doctor and Romana find corruption lurking beneath the surface of the pleasure planet Argolis. In Doctor Who: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the Seventh Doctor and Ace fight for their lives on Segonax.

From the drug addicts who call Amanda ‘the mother I never had’ to the women who’ve pushed back at domestic abuse, to women close to release in their 70s, who just want to stay in the place that they’ve always known, these are stories that are heartbreaking, harrowing and heart-warming. Amanda listens, prescribes and does what she can. After all, she’s their doctor.

Lee and Mal went looking for monsters on Bodmin Moor four years ago, and only Lee came back. She thought she’d lost Mal forever, now miraculously returned. But what happened that day on the moors? And where has Mal been all this time? Mal's reappearance hasn’t gone unnoticed by MI5 either, and their officers also have questions. Julian Sabreur is investigating an attack on top physicist Kay Amal Khan. This leads Julian to clash with agents of an unknown power – and they may or may not be human. His only clue is grainy footage, showing a woman who supposedly died on Bodmin Moor.