検索キーワード： 制作 "Penguin Audio" 女性文学

Amber Alton knows that the hours pass differently at Black Rabbit Hall, her London family's country estate, where no two clocks read the same. Summers there are perfect, timeless. Not much ever happens. Until, of course, it does. More than three decades later, Lorna is determined to be married within the grand, ivy-covered walls of Pencraw Hall, known as Black Rabbit Hall among the locals.

Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro grow up as the best of friends despite their differences. Elisabetta is a feisty beauty who dreams of becoming a novelist; Marco the brash and athletic son in a family of professional cyclists; and Sandro a Jewish mathematics prodigy, kind-hearted and thoughtful, the son of a lawyer and a doctor. Their friendship blossoms to love, with both Sandro and Marco hoping to win Elisabetta's heart.

1988. Beth Soames is 14 years old when her aunt takes her to stay at Raven Hall, a rambling manor on the Norfolk coast. The Averells, the family who lives there, are warm and welcoming, and Beth becomes fast friends with their daughter, Nina. At times, Beth even feels like she's truly part of the family...until they ask her to help them with a harmless game - and nothing is ever the same.

Grace is about to turn ninety. She doesn't want parties or presents or fuss. She just wants to heal the family rift that's been breaking her heart for decades. But to do that she must find her daughter Alys—the only person who can help to put things right. And when she finds her—if she does—she risks betraying granddaughter Elin. Who is far less forgiving of the past, with its hurts and secrets and lies. Meanwhile Grace's great-grand-daughter Beca is oblivious to all these worries, too busy navigating the highs and lows of teenage life and keeping secrets of her own.

When their grandfather dies, Fliss and her sisters are astonished to inherit a French château! Travelling to Normandy to visit the beautiful if faded house, they excitedly make plans over delicious crêpes and local cider in the town nearby. But they soon discover the château needs major work, a huge tax bill is due...and there's a sitting tenant, Madame Charlotte Cadieux, to whom they owe a monthly allowance! Unable to sell but strapped for cash, Fliss determines to spruce up the elegant old rooms and open a B&B.

The Salpêtrière asylum, 1885. All of Paris is in thrall to Doctor Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical, outcasts from society. But the truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. Once a year, a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope.

Young and confident, with a swagger in her step, Sugar arrives in the small Southern town of Bigelow with the hope of starting over. Soon Bigelow is alight with gossip and suspicion, and Sugar fears she can't hide from her past. Until, that is, she meets Pearl, her next door neighbour. Over sweet-potato pie, an unlikely friendship begins, transforming both women's lives - and the life of an entire town.

It's autumn 2018, and a young woman moves into a rented room in university accommodation, ready to begin a job as a research assistant at Oxford. Here, living and working in the spaces that have birthed the country's leaders, she is both outsider and insider, and she can't shake the feeling that real life is happening elsewhere. Incisive, original and brilliantly observed, Three Rooms is the story of a search for a home and for a self. Driven by despair and optimism in equal measure, the novel poignantly explores politics, race and belonging.

Anne Marie is adrift San Padua, living a precarious life of shift-work and shared apartments. Her husband, Cal, left her on their first anniversary, and two years later, she can't move on. When he shows up suddenly on her doorstep, clearly in some kind of trouble, she reluctantly agrees to a drink. But later that night, a gun goes off in an alley near the shore, and the young couple flee together, crammed into a beat-up car with their broken past.

Lucia has worked hard as a lawyer in Wales, aiming for a big promotion she hopes will shortly come her way. Finally taking a well-earned break at her grandparents' house in southern Italy, the sunshine, lemon trees and her nonna's mouth-watering cooking make her instantly feel at home. But she's shocked to learn that her grandfather is retiring from the beloved family pizzeria and will need to sell. Lucia can't bear the thought of the place changing hands - especially when she discovers her not-quite-ex-husband, Giacomo, wants to take it over!

On a kibbutz in Israel in 2008, Gili is celebrating the 90th birthday of her grandmother Vera, the adored matriarch of a sprawling and tight-knit family. But festivities are interrupted by the arrival of Nina: the iron-willed daughter who rejected Vera's care; and the absent mother who abandoned Gili when she was still a baby. Nina's return to the family after years of silence precipitates an epic journey from Israel to the desolate island of Goli Otok, formerly part of Yugoslavia.

After the sudden death of her estranged husband, Clare is shocked to discover she has inherited a dog and a small fortune. Convinced by her adult children to finally do something for herself, Clare embarks on a coast-to-coast adventure - until she stumbles upon an unmarked location on the fringes of South Devon. When Clare finds herself driving down a narrow road to the tiny village of Little Sorrell, she is met with distant, cold and rude locals. But as she falls in love with a cottage she wishes to call home, can Little Sorrell truly be the place of second chances?

1620s Lancashire. Away from the village lies a small hamlet, abandoned since the Plague, where only one family dwells amongst its ruins. Young Sarah Haworth, her mother, brother and little sister, Annie, are a family of outcasts by day and the recipients of visitors by night. They are cunning folk: the villagers will always need them, quick with a healing balm or more, should the need arise. They can keep secrets, too, because no one would believe them anyway.

Charlotte had a plan. The perfect country wedding, followed by a month-long honeymoon in Japan - but when her fiancé starts having second thoughts, she knows there's no choice but to call off the wedding. Charlotte isn't sure she knows how to be single, but she is going to try, starting with taking that trip of a lifetime - alone. Will she find herself in the hills of Mount Fuji, or in the karaoke bars of Tokyo? And will she be ready for romance by the time the cherry blossom flowers?

For Rich, life is golden. He fizzes with happiness and love. But Rich has an incurable brain tumour. After Rich dies, his wife, Ruth, can't see how to how to keep living and their young son, Ollie, is intent on working out the meaning of life. Because everything happens for a reason. Doesn't it? Rich leaves behind a family without a father, a husband, a son and a best friend. And he also leaves behind a present for each of them. But while Ollie tries to understand the message within each present, Ruth finds herself adrift.

Dot Watson has lost her way. Twelve years ago, her life veered off course and the guilt over what happened still haunts her. Before then she was living in Paris, forging an exciting career, now her time is spent visiting her mother's care home, fielding interfering calls from her sister and working at the London Transport Lost Property office, diligently cataloguing items as misplaced as herself. But when elderly Mr Appleby arrives in search of his late wife's purse, his grief stirs something in Dot. Determined to help, she sets off on a mission.

No one's life is as perfect as it looks. Least of all Laura Morrison's. When Laura gets the chance to trial Cupid - a high-tech new dating service which will draw on everything she's ever done online to find her perfect match - she figures it's got to be worth a try. She can't believe her luck when good-looking, kind considerate Adam turns up for their first date. On paper he's...well...perfect. But when Laura develops feelings for the person who led her to Adam in the first place, familiar doubt creeps in.

Even now, even after all that took place between us, I can still feel how moved I am by him. Ciaran was that downy, darkening blond of a baby just leaving its infancy. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. None of it mattered in the end; what he looked like, who he was, the things he would do to me. To make a beautiful man love and live with me had seemed - obviously, intuitively - the entire point of life. My need was greater than reality, stronger than the truth, more savage than either of us would eventually bear.

Best friends Agnes and Bea decide to embark on one last adventure before their adult lives begin. For Agnes's mother Florence, a fresh chapter is starting as her youngest flies the nest and her marriage settles into a new routine. But she can't help feeling that something is missing. As Agnes travels to London and Florence follows her heart to Europe, both will discover a world of possibilities they never could have dreamed of.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day, she sees a slip containing the word bondmaid flutter to the floor unclaimed. Esme seizes the word and hides it in an old wooden trunk that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house.