Showing results by narrator "Kim Hicks" in All Categories

Legendary stage and movie star Sir Nigel Bellingham arrives on Cape Cod to star in a stage production of The Hound of the Baskervilles put on by the West London Theater Festival. When Sir Nigel, some of the cast, and the director visit the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop at 222 Baker Street, Gemma Doyle realizes that Sir Nigel is not at all suited to the role. He's long past his prime and an old drunk to boot. The cast is not happy, but the show must go on. Before the play opens, Jayne's mother arranges a fundraising afternoon tea to be catered by Mrs. Hudson's Tea Room. The tea is a huge success, but, when it's time to leave, Sir Nigel has gone missing - only to be found at the bottom of the rocky cliff, dead. When the police focus their attention on Jayne's mother despite numerous other suspects, the game is once again afoot, and it's up to Gemma and Jayne to clear Jayne's mother's name.

When a psychic fair arrives in West London, Gemma Doyle, owner of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium, wants nothing to do with it. But somehow, at the urging of Donald Morris, an enthusiastic Sherlockian, she finds herself talked into attending a séance, along with baker and best friend Jayne Wilson, store assistant, Ashleigh, and former pop star Bunny Leigh. But to her surprise, Gemma finds herself banned from the séance and shown the door.

After the West London Museum suffers extensive fire damage, the shop owners on Baker Street come together to hold an afternoon auction tea to raise funds to rebuild it. Cape Cod's cognoscenti file into Mrs. Hudson's Tea Room, but the auction never happens. Before the gavel can fall, museum-board chair Kathy Lamb is found dead in the back room. Wrapped tightly around her neck is a long rope of decorative knotted tea cups. Gemma's boyfriend in blue, Ryan Ashburton, arrives on the scene with Detective Louise Estrada. But the suspect list is long, and the case is far from elementary.

The year is 79 A.D. The place is Ostia, the port of Rome. Flavia Gemina, a Roman sea captain's daughter, is about to embark on a thrilling adventure.

Enjoy the great detectives of the Golden Age of classic mysteries in this unique collection of audio whodunits. Newly recorded for this original anthology, the crimes, criminals, and sleuths depicted here set the standard for decades to come, and remain as entertaining today as they were when first published. Fantastic narrators including Simon Prebble, Kate Fenton, Bill Wallace, and Robert Fass breathe new life into these stories.

The 6th of January is Sherlock Holmes’s birthday, and lucky for Gemma Doyle, January is also the slowest time of the year at both the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium and Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. It’s a good time for Gemma and her friends to travel to England for a Holmes Convention. For Gemma, the trip provides an opportunity to visit her parents. Jayne Wilson is excited about seeing all the sites London has to offer, and Ryan Ashburton just wants to spend some time with Gemma. But the trip is immediately derailed when Gemma’s father Henry recognizes his brother-in-law.

I am not a consulting detective, Gemma Doyle reluctantly tells 10-year-old Lauren Tierney, when the little girl comes to the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium to beg Gemma to find her missing cat, Snowball. Gemma might not be able to follow the clues to find the cat, but her dog, Violet, follows her nose to locate the missing kitten in a neighbor's garden shed. Gemma and Violet proudly return Snowball to her grateful owner, and Gemma basks in praise for a job well done. But a few days later, Lauren is back with $10 in hand, wanting to once again hire a consulting detective.

Lady Audley is universally adored: Beautiful, kind and charming, she enamors all whom she meets. It is not until the strange disappearance of widower George Talboys that her behavior takes an odd turn. George's friend, Robert Audley, Lady Audley's nephew-in-law, is on the case; an upper-class layabout turned detective, he is determined to get to the bottom of things.

Lina is the enchanting but willful daughter of a village lord. She and her childhood companion, Damek, have grown up privileged and spoiled, and they're devoted to each other to the point of obsession. But Lina's violet eyes betray her for a witch, and witches are not tolerated in a brutally patriarchal society. Her rank protects her from persecution, but it cannot protect her from tragedy and heartbreak. An innocent visitor stands witness to the devastation that ensues as destructive longing unleashes Lina's wrath, and with it her forbidden power.

Before the Second World War breaks out, Chevrons, the idyllic country house where the Garlands have lived for centuries, has already been touched by events in Europe. To the horror of her family, Katherine, the eldest daughter, has run off to join the Nazis. On the outbreak of war, Caro, her younger sister, her friend Robyn, and the maids, Trixie and Betty, leave Chevrons to help the war effort, and the old house is left to be managed by men too old to fight.

When Kitty is invited to stay with her friend Partita at Bauders Castle, her mother sees it as an undreamed-of opportunity for her daughter to escape from the dark presence of her notorious father.

It's a crisp early October weekend, and business is slowing down as fall descends at the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium and adjacent Mrs. Hudson's Tea Room. Wealthy philanthropist and prominent Sherlockian David Masterson has rented Suffolk Gardens House, where he plans to entertain his friends in a traditional English country-house weekend. As the chosen caterers, Jayne Watson and Gemma Doyle get to work preparing lavish meals and setting up Sherlockian books and props for entertainment.

Daughters of Eden focuses on the lives and fortunes of four very different young women at the outbreak of the Second World War. Marjorie, left at a boarding school by her emigrating mother; plain Poppy, pushed into marriage with a mean-spirited aristocrat; Kate, despised by her father, but determined to prove herself; and man-mad Lily, who turns out to be the bravest of them all. That all of them are chosen to work undercover for the espionage unit at Eden Park is a surprise, not least to them.

Scarlet House, now a historical re-enactment museum, is the oldest building in West London, Massachusetts. When things start moving around on their own, board members suggest that Gemma Doyle, owner of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium, might be able to get to the bottom of it.

Fractured skulls. Gas masks. Brain buckets. Vats of acid. Pickled body parts. Not the usual tools of trade, but for chief forensic medical scientist Derek and forensic secretary Pauline they were just part of a normal day in the office inside the world-famous Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy's Hospital in London. Derek has played a pivotal role in investigating some of the UKs most high-profile mass disasters and murder cases.

This inspiring anthology collects enduring and entertaining stories that have enthralled young and old, by the cherished authors whose tales have captivated children for generations. Perfect for the family car trip or at-home listening, these recordings sparkle with the wit and wonder of time-tested storytelling.

It's the summer of AD 79, and Flavia Gemina the sea captain's daughter -along with her friends Jonathan the Jewish boy, Nubia the African slave-girl, and Lupus the homeless beggar-boy - set sail for the Bay of Naples, to stay with Flavia's uncle near Pompeii. They are soon absorbing in trying to solve a riddle that may lead to treasure. But then tragedy strikes - Mount Vesuvius erupts and the children are fleeing for their lives from one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded.

Summoned to the riverside by the desperate, scribbled note of an old friend, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain find themselves on board the seamen's floating hospital, an old hulk known only as The Blood, where prejudice, ambition and murder seethe beneath a veneer of medical respectability. Onshore, a young woman, a known prostitute, is found drowned in a derelict boatyard. A man leaps to his death into the Thames, driven mad by poison and fear. The events are linked - but how?

Lady Susan was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed. Less known than Austen's six great later novels, it demonstrates the wit and sharp observations of Jane Austen - and is shown at its best in audiobook form, with different actresses presenting real characters as they read their letters.

In August 2014 Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given 'two or three years' to live. She didn't know how to react. All responses felt scripted, laden with cliché. Being a writer, she decided to write about it (grappling with the unoriginality even of this) and to tell a story she had not yet told: that of being taken in, aged 15, by the author Doris Lessing and the subsequent 50 years of their complex relationship.