Audiobooks narrated by David Sibley

Brought to you by Penguin. Once again, Commissario Guido Brunetti is willing to bend police rules for an acquaintance, even though Elisabetta Foscarini, the woman who asks the favour, is not really a friend. But her mother was good to Brunetti's, so he feels he has no choice but to repay the debt and agrees to look into the matter 'privately', rather than as a police official. Her son-in-law has alarmed his wife by telling her they might be in danger because of something he's involved with. Because Enrico Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti suspects that the likely reason must be the finances of one of his clients. Brunetti takes a look and finds little: one client is an optician, another Fenzo`s father-in-law, whom he helped establish a charity, another the owner of a restaurant. He is about to tell his friend that he can find no reason for preoccupation when her daughter's place of work is vandalised, forcing Brunetti to turn his attention - still 'private' - to Elisabetta's own family. What he discovers shows the Janus-faced nature of yet another Italian institution as well as the wobbly line that attempts to differentiate between the criminal and the non-criminal. © Donna Leon 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Donna Leon (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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Village Christmas: And Other Notes on the English Year

Brought to you by Penguin. From the author of Cider With Rosie, Village Christmas is a moving, lyrical portrait of England through the changing years and seasons. Laurie Lee left his childhood home in the Cotswolds when he was nineteen, but it remained with him throughout his life until, many years later, he returned for good. This collection brings to life the sights, sounds, landscapes and traditions of his home - from centuries-old May Day rituals to his own patch of garden, from carol singing in crunching snow to pub conversations and songs. Here too he writes about the mysteries of love, living in wartime Chelsea, Winston Churchill's wintry funeral and his battle, in old age, to save his beloved Slad Valley from developers. Told with a warm sense of humour and a powerful sense of history, Village Christmas brings us a picture of a vanished world. 'Magical' Daily Mail 'I finished it with an ache in my heart and a tear in my eye' Spectator 'Brings to life the landscapes and traditions of Lee's home in Gloucestershire, from centuries-old May Day rituals and carol-singing on Christmas Eve, to his battle in old age to save his beloved Slad valley from developers' Guardian 'Simply written, observant and shot through with Lee's characteristic humility ... Against his whitewashed prose are touches of beauty' The Times Literary Supplement © Laurie Lee 2015 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Laurie Lee (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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A Moment of War

Brought to you by Penguin. A Moment of War is the powerful and harrowing final book in Laurie Lee's acclaimed trilogy that began with Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee was still a young man when he decided to fight for the Republican cause in Spain's civil war. But though he braved icy, storm-swept mountains alone to contact Republican sympathisers, he was immediately suspected of being a Nationalist spy. Imprisoned and almost executed by his own side, he eventually joined the International Brigade. This is the story of his experiences as a Republican soldier, fighting for the losing side in a doomed war. 'A great, heart-stopping narrative of one young Englishman's part in the war in Spain . . . crafted by a poet, stamping an indelible image of the boredom, random cruelty and stupidity of war' - Literary Review 'This story aches with unforgotten cold and trembles with unforgotten terror' -Guardian Laurie Lee has written some of the best-loved travel books in the English language. Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in 1914, he was educated at Slad village school and Stroud Central School. At the age of nineteen he walked to London and then travelled on foot through Spain, where he was trapped by the outbreak of the Civil War. He later returned by crossing the Pyrenees, as he recounted in A Moment of War. In 1950 he married Catherine Polge and they had one daughter. Laurie Lee published four collections of poems: The Sun My Monument (1944), The Bloom of Candles (1947), My Many-Coated Man (1955) and Pocket Poems (1960). His other works include The Voyage of Magellan (1948), A Rose for Winter (1955), The Firstborn (1964), I Can't Stay Long (1975) and Two Women (1983). He also wrote three bestselling volumes of autobiography: Cider with Rosie (1959), which has sold over six million copies worldwide, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). He died in May 1997. © Laurie Lee 1992 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Laurie Lee (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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Transient Desires

Brought to you by Penguin. In his many years as a Commissario, Guido Brunetti has seen all manner of crime and known intuitively how to navigate the various pathways in his native Venice to discover the person responsible. Now, in the thirtieth novel in Donna Leon's masterful series, he faces a heinous crime committed outside his jurisdiction. He is drawn in innocently enough: two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Brunetti's curiosity is aroused by the behaviour of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. If the injuries were the result of an accident, why did they want to avoid association with it? As Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, investigate the incident, they discover that one of the young men works for a man rumoured to be involved in more sinister night-time activities in the Laguna. To get to the bottom of what proves to be a gut-wrenching case, Brunetti needs to enlist the help of both the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Costiera. Determining how much trust he and Griffoni can put in these unfamiliar colleagues adds to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime whose perpetrators are technologically brilliant and ruthlessly organised. Donna Leon's thirtieth Brunetti novel is as powerful as any she has written, testing Brunetti to his limits, forcing him to listen very carefully for the truth. © Donna Leon 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Donna Leon (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Warfare and Praise in an Enchanted Britain

Brought to you by Penguin. Taliesin's is one of the most important names in all Welsh literature - and one of its greatest mysteries. He has fascinated and inspired some of our greatest poets, including Tennyson and Robert Graves. He is a poet; a shapeshifter; a seer; a chronicler of battles fought, by sword and with magic, between the ancient kingdoms of the fifth- and sixth-century British Isles; a bridge between old Welsh mythologies and the new Christian theology; and a figure whose literary legend culminated with the compilation in thirteenth-century North Wales of The Book of Taliesin, an anthology gathering the work of some 700 years of anonymous hands. In the first volume since 1915 to gather the The Book of Taliesin in its entirety, Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams's artfully accessible translation makes these outrageous, swaggering and joyful poems available to a new generation of readers. © Gwyneth Lewis, Rowan Williams 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Gwyneth Lewis, Rowan Williams (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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The Old Devils

Brought to you by Penguin. Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon. © Kingsley Amis 1986 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Kingsley Amis (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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The Autumn of the Ace

Brought to you by Penguin. Louis de Bernières is the master of historical fiction which makes you both laugh and cry. This book follows an unforgettable family after the Second World War. Daniel Pitt was an RAF fighter in the First World War and an espionage agent for the SOE in the Second. Now the conflicts he faces are closer to home. Daniel's marriage has fractured beyond repair and Daniel's relationship with his son, Bertie, has been a failure since Bertie was a small boy. But after his brother Archie's death, Daniel is keen for new perspectives. He first travels to Peshawar to bury Archie in the place he loved best, and then finds himself in Canada, avoiding his family and friends back in England. But some bonds are hard to break. Daniel and Bertie's different experiences of war, although devastating, also bring with them the opportunity for the two to reconnect. If only they can find a way to move on from the past. Louis de Bernieres' new novel is a moving account of an extraordinary life in extraordinary times. Daniel is a flawed but captivating hero, and this coming-of-old-age story illuminates both the effect of two World Wars on a generation and the irrepressible spirit and love that can connect people despite great obstacles. © Louis de Bernières 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Louis De Bernières (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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Trace Elements

Brought to you by Penguin. A woman’s cryptic dying words in a Venetian hospice lead Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire region in Donna Leon’s haunting twenty-ninth Brunetti novel. When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding. ‘They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no’, Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently-deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him Brunetti softly promises he and Griffoni will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. They discover that Fadalto worked in the field collecting samples of contamination for a company that measures the cleanliness of Venice’s water supply and that he had died in a mysterious motorcycle accident. Distracted briefly by Vice Questore Patta’s obsession with youth crime in Venice, Brunetti is bolstered once more by the remarkable research skills of Patta’s secretary, Signora Elettra Zorzi. Piecing together the tangled threads, in time Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region. But justice in this case proves to be ambiguous, as Brunetti is reminded it can be when, seeking solace, he reads Aeschylus’s classic play The Eumenides. As she has done so often through her memorable characters and storytelling skill, Donna Leon once again engages our sensibilities as to the differences between guilt and responsibility. © Donna Leon 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Donna Leon (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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Down in the Valley: A Writer's Landscape

Brought to you by Penguin. An enhanced audio edition containing original audio interviews with the author, Laurie Lee. A moving, never-before-published portrait of the landscape that shaped the life of Laurie Lee, the beloved author of Cider With Rosie 'Before I left the valley I thought everywhere was like this. Then I went away for 40 years and when I came back I realized that nowhere was like this.' Laurie Lee walked out of his childhood village one summer morning to travel the world, but he was always drawn back to his beloved Slad Valley, eventually returning to make it his home. In this portrait of his Cotswold home, Laurie Lee guides us through its landscapes, and shares memories of his village youth - from his favourite pub, The Woolpack, to winter skating on the pond, the church through the seasons, local legends, learning the violin and playing jazz records in the privy on a wind-up gramophone. Filled with wry humour and a love of place, Down in the Valley is a writer's tribute to the landscape that shaped him, and where he found peace. © Laurie Lee 2019. Original interviews and afterword © David Parker 2019

Laurie Lee (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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Live a Little

Penguin presents the audio edition of Live a Little written by Howard Jacobson, read by David Sibley. A wickedly observed novel about falling in love at the end of your life, by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question. At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything - including her own children. She spends her days stitching morbid samplers and tormenting her two long-suffering carers, Nastya and Euphoria, with tangled stories of her husbands and love affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walks without the aid of a frame and speaks without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he's whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. Unlike Beryl, he forgets nothing - especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has hung over him like an oppressive cloud ever since. There's very little life remaining for either of them, but perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way, and find new meaning in what's left. Told with Jacobson's trademark wit and style, Live a Little is in equal parts funny, irreverent and tender - a novel to make you consider all the paths not taken, and whether you could still change course.

Howard Jacobson (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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Unto Us a Son Is Given

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Unto Us a Son Is Given written by Donna Leon, read by David Sibley. The latest of Donna Leon's bestselling Venice crime novels As a favour to his wealthy father-in-law, the Count Falier, Commissario Guido Brunetti agrees to investigate the seemingly innocent wish of the Count's best friend, the elderly and childless Gonzalo, to adopt a younger man as his son. Under Italian inheritance laws, this man would become the sole heir to Gonzalo's substantial fortune, something which Gonzalo's friends, including the Count, find appalling. For his part, Brunetti wonders why they're so intent on meddling in the old man's business. Not long after Brunetti meets with Gonzalo, the elderly man unexpectedly passes away from natural causes. Old and frail, Gonzalo's death goes unquestioned, and a few of his oldest friends gather in Venice to plan the memorial service. But when Berta, a striking woman and one of Gonzalo's closest confidantes, is strangled in her hotel room, Brunetti is drawn into long-buried secrets from Gonzalo's past. What did Berta know? And who would go to such lengths to ensure it would remain hidden? Once again, Donna Leon brilliantly follows the twists and turns of the human condition, set against the ebb and flow of Venetian life.

Donna Leon (Author), David Sibley (Narrator)

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So Much Life Left Over: A Novel

A POWERFULLY EVOCATIVE AND EMOTIONALLY CHARGED NOVEL FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF CORELLI'S MANDOLIN They were an inseparable tribe of childhood friends. Some were lost to the battles of the First World War, and those who survived have had their lives unimaginably upended. Now, at the dawn of the 1920s, they've scattered: to Ceylon and India, France and Germany, and, inevitably, back to Britain, each of them trying to answer the question that fuels this sweeping novel: If you have been embroiled in a war in which you confidently expected to die, what are you supposed to do with so much life unexpectedly left over? The narrative unfolds in brief, dramatic chapters, and we follow these old friends over the decades as their paths re-cross or their ties fray, as they test loyalties and love, face survivor's grief and guilt, and adjust in profound and quotidian ways to this newest modern world. At the center are Daniel, an RAF flying ace, and Rosie, a wartime nurse. As their marriage is slowly revealed to be built on lies, Daniel finds solace-and, sometimes, family-with other women, and Rosie draws her religion around herself like a carapace. Here too are Rosie's sisters-a bohemian, a minister's wife, and a spinster, each seeking purpose and happiness in her own unconventional way; Daniel's military brother, unable to find his footing in a peaceful world; and Rosie's "increasingly peculiar" mother and her genial, shockingly secretive father. The tenuous interwar peace begins to shatter, and we watch as war once again reshapes the days and the lives of these beautifully drawn women and men.

Louis De Bernieres (Author), Avita Jay, David Sibley (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by David Sibley