Showing results by narrator "Ben Elliot" in All Categories

Suppose your life sucks. A lot. Your husband has done a vanishing act, your teenage stepson is being bullied, and your math-whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you can't afford to pay for. That's Jess' life in a nutshell - until an unexpected knight-in-shining-armor offers to rescue them. Only Jess' knight turns out to be Geeky Ed, the obnoxious tech millionaire whose vacation home she happens to clean. But Ed has big problems of his own, and driving the dysfunctional family to the Math Olympiad feels like his first unselfish act in ages...maybe ever.

Pete Riley answers the door one morning and lets in a parent's worst nightmare. On his doorstep is Miles Lambert, a stranger who breaks the devastating news that Pete's son, Theo, isn't actually his son - he is the Lamberts', switched at birth by an understaffed hospital while their real son was sent home with Miles and his wife, Lucy. For Pete, his partner Maddie, and the little boy they've been raising for the past two years, life will never be the same again.

A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building. None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced an unsettling occurrence within the building's walls. By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.

Being a confident communicator creates success and happiness. Every conversation could be the start of something new: a new career, a new business idea, or a new friendship. When you clam up in public, you close off all of those opportunities as if they never existed. How to Talk to Absolutely Anyone will help you see conversation differently; as an enjoyable, positive activity that might just change your life.

For 13 years, 22 series and 175 shows, Richard Porter was script editor of Top Gear, from the first faltering pilot episode in 2002 until the very last show presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May in 2015. Along the way they destroyed cars, sparked diplomatic incidents, set fire to caravans, almost killed one of the presenters, and somehow transformed Top Gear from a shabby BBC Two motoring show into an Emmy-winning, record-breaking, planet-straddling behemoth.

Return to the world of Rivers of London in this first short-story collection from best-selling author Ben Aaronovitch. Tales from the Folly is a carefully curated collection that gathers together previously published stories and brand-new tales in the same place for the first time. 

No driver has ever made such an instant impact on the sport of F1 racing as Lewis Hamilton. The first black grand prix driver, his astonishing level of success in his rookie season together with his swash-buckling, attacking style has created a sensation. It has also been a central factor in the most exciting and controversial season of F1 in living memory as Hamilton was involved in a three-way fight for the world crown.

Peter Doherty's is the last of the great rock 'n' roll stories—bad boy and public enemy. To his devoted fans, he is a cult hero, a modern-day Rimbaud. Musically, he has defined the past twenty years of indie rock with his sound, lyrics, lifestyle and aesthetic. Since The Libertines rose to international fame, Doherty has proved endlessly fascinating. A whirlwind of controversy and scandal has tailed him ever since the early 2000s, so much so that all too often his talents as a songwriter and performer have been overlooked; for every award and accolade, there is a scathing review.

In the near future, children are tested for the defective gene. Those who possess it are taken from their homes, torn from their families, and sent to the Death House. Standing alone on a remote island, it looks like a 1940s boarding school. But a school prepares children for life, and these children are destined to die. Idling their time away in pointless classes, supervised by cold matrons, their days have no purpose, because neither do their futures. When the sickness hits, death comes quickly. Until a van arrives with a group of new kids, and everything changes.

At the age of twenty-three, Charlie Mason is endowed with good looks, good manners and a cheerful disposition. Following three years at Cambridge and one working in his father's business, he is looking forward to a jaunt in Paris with Simon, his oldest friend.

Maddy, dressed in white, stands at the back of the church. At the end of the aisle is Rob - the man she's about to marry. Next to Rob is Ben - best man and the best friend any two people ever had. And that's the problem. Because if it wasn't Rob waiting for her at the altar, there's a strong chance it would be Ben. Loyal and sensitive Ben has always kept his feelings to himself, but if he turned round and told Maddy she was making a mistake, would she listen? And would he be right?

Dream It, Do It, Live It offers practical, understandable, and doable guidance on achieving any goal in nine easy steps. With case studies of real people who achieved their own dreams, this easy-to-understand guide will help you focus on the dream you want to make real and the constructive and meaningful steps you can take to today to make that dream happen. No matter where you want to go in life, there's always a way to get there. Dream It, Do It, Live It gives you the practical, real-world advice you need to set out on the road to your ultimate success.

Josephine escapes poverty by coming to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, an idealistic only son with literary aspirations. Josephine, with all the wide-eyed naivety of youth, believes she has found true love. But when she becomes pregnant, and with the rumble of war growing ever louder, Rashid bows to family and social pressure and sends her back home with her baby son, Jos.

In Harold Macmillan's Britain of the early 1960s the Bar is dominated by white, privileged, Oxbridge men. Underneath a profession which proudly flaunts its integrity and traditions lies a world of hypocrisy and ruthless self-interest. When scandal threatens, self-preservation is the only goal and no one is indispensable. Ben Schroeder, a talented young man from an East End Jewish family, has been accepted as a pupil into the chambers of Bernard Wesley, QC. But Schroeder is an outsider, not part of this privileged society, where wealth and an Oxbridge education are essentials.

He's posted on your wall. He's following you on Twitter. He knows where you are right now.... When Amy receives an email from her older sister, Becky, announcing that she's off travelling and 'don't try to find me', she is worried. Becky would never do such a thing on a whim. Amy - who is recovering from an abusive relationship that has left her terrified of love - soon finds that Becky had started using online dating sites. Aided by Becky's neighbour, Gary, Amy sets about tracking down the men her sister had dated.

When billions poured into the neglected east London borough hosting the 2012 Olympics, a turf war broke out between crime families for control of a now valuable strip of land. Using violence, guile and corruption, one gangster, the Long Fella, emerged as a true untouchable. A team of local detectives made it their business to take him on until Scotland Yard threw them under the bus and the business of putting on 'the greatest show on earth' won the day. 

Soho 1925. Two young men meet - for one of them this is love at first sight, for the other only lust and guilt.... Paul Harris returns to England from self-imposed exile in Tangiers for an exhibition of his paintings. He leaves behind Patrick, the man he has loved since they met in the trenches in 1918, needing to discover if he has the strength to live without him and wanting to explore the kind of life he might have lived had it not been for the war. In Bohemian Soho, Paul meets Edmund....

Perhaps the most brilliantly successful ghost story ever written, The Turn of the Screw creates a terrifyingly believable impression of innocent children so corrupted by evil that they remain deceptive pictures of innocent beauty. Their governess must struggle alone to confront and exorcise the demons that she believes possess their souls....

In the centre of the freezing Lake Beluarum stands an inescapable asylum, enclosed by the sheer cliffs of Drop Rock island. When Ambrose Grammaticus, famous inventor and master engineer, viciously attacks his own son, Rex, he is hauled to the island and imprisoned.

The story is set in the aftermath of World War One. Paul Harris, still frail after shellshock, returns to his father’s home and to the arms of his secret lover, Adam. He discovers that Margot, the fiancée of his dead brother, is pregnant and marries her through a sense of loyalty. Though Adam he finds work as a schoolteacher; while setting up a home with Margot he continues to see Adam. Pat Morgan who was a sergeant in Paul’s platoon, runs a butcher’s shop in town and cares for his twin brother, Mick who lost both legs in the war. Pat yearns for the closeness he experienced with Paul in the trenches.