Audiobooks narrated by Lucy Briers

Frostquake: The frozen winter of 1962 and how Britain emerged a different country

Brought to you by Penguin. On Boxing Day 1962, when Juliet Nicolson was eight years old, the snow began to fall. It did not stop for ten weeks. The drifts in East Sussex reached twenty-three feet. In London, milkmen made deliveries on skis. On Dartmoor 2,000 ponies were buried in the snow, and starving foxes ate sheep alive. It wasn't just the weather that was bad. The threat of nuclear war had reached its terrifying height with the recent Cuban Missile Crisis. Unemployment was on the rise, de Gaulle was blocking Britain from joining the European Economic Community, Winston Churchill, still the symbol of Great Britishness, was fading. These shadows hung over a country paralysed by frozen heating oil, burst pipes and power cuts. And yet underneath the frozen surface, new life was beginning to stir. A new breed of satirists threatened the complacent decadence of the British establishment. A game-changing band from Liverpool topped the charts, becoming the ultimate symbol of an exuberant youthquake. Scandals such as the Profumo Affair exposed racial and sexual prejudice. When the thaw came, ten weeks of extraordinary weather had acted as a catalyst between two distinct eras. From poets to pop stars, shopkeepers to schoolchildren, and her own family's experiences, Juliet Nicolson traces the hardship of that frozen winter and the emancipation that followed. That spring, new life was unleashed, along with freedoms we take for granted today. 'This book is a must' Peter Hennessy © Juliet Nicolson 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Juliet Nicolson (Author), Lucy Briers (Narrator)

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Crooked Heart: ‘My book of the year’ Jojo Moyes

Brought to you by Penguin. Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, 2015 When Noel Bostock - aged ten, no family - is evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, he winds up in St Albans with Vera Sedge - thiry-six, drowning in debts. Always desperate for money, she's unscrupulous about how she gets it. The war's thrown up all manner of new opportunities but what Vee needs is a cool head and the ability to make a plan. On her own, she's a disaster. With Noel, she's a team. Together they cook up an idea. But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn't actually safe at all . . . © Lissa Evans 2014 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Lissa Evans (Author), Lucy Briers (Narrator)

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V for Victory

Brought to you by Penguin. It's late 1944. Hitler's rockets are slamming down on London with vicious regularity and it's the coldest winter in living memory. Allied victory is on its way, but it's bloody well dragging its feet. In a large house next to Hampstead Heath, Vee Sedge is just about scraping by, with a herd of lodgers to feed, and her young charge Noel ( almost fifteen ) to clothe and educate. When she witnesses a road accident and finds herself in court, the repercussions are both unexpectedly marvellous and potentially disastrous - disastrous because Vee is not actually the person she's pretending to be, and neither is Noel. The end of the war won't just mean peace, but discovery... With caustic wit and artful storytelling, Lissa Evans elegantly summons a time when the world could finally hope to emerge from the chaos of war. As sharply comic as Old Baggage and emotionally poignant as Crooked Heart, V For Victory once again shows Lissa Evans to be one of our most brilliant and subtle writers. Lissa Evans' writing is: Wise and witty - Sarah Hughes, Observer Original and so timely. And it made me weep at the end. - JoJo Moyes Bittersweet and comic. - Guardian Inspiring, moving, warm and wry...wonderful! - Marian Keyes © Lissa Evans 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Lissa Evans (Author), Lucy Briers (Narrator)

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Slack-Tide

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Slack-Tide by Elanor Dymott, read by Lucy Briers. 'By midsummer the thing between us was finished, and it was as if a storm had torn the roof from over me.' It is four years since the loss of a child broke her marriage, and Elizabeth is fiercely protective of her independence. She meets Robert - exuberant, generous, apparently care-free - and they fall in love with breath-taking speed. Slack-tide tracks the ebbs and flows of the affair: passionate, coercive, intensely sexual. When you've known lasting love and lost it, what price will you pay to find it again? 'When two people meet is it need, fantasy or love? Slack-Tide takes us on an urgent journey and kept me reading late into the night.' Esther Freud

Elanor Dymott (Author), Lucy Briers (Narrator)

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A Possible Life

Terrified, a young prisoner in the Second World War closes his eyes and pictures himself going out to bat on a sunlit cricket ground in Hampshire. Across the courtyard in a Victorian workhouse, a father too ashamed to acknowledge his son. A skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar; her voice sends shivers through the skull. Soldiers and lovers, parents and children, scientists and musicians risk their bodies and hearts in search of connection - some key to understanding what makes us the people we become. Provocative and profound, Sebastian Faulks's dazzling novel journeys across continents and time to explore the chaos created by love, separation and missed opportunities. From the pain and drama of these highly particular lives emerges a mysterious consolation: the chance to feel your heart beat in someone else's life.

Sebastian Faulks (Author), Christian Rodska, Lucy Briers, Rupert Degas, Samuel West, Sian Thomas (Narrator)

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We Shall Never Surrender: British Voices 1939-1945

During the six long years of the Second World War the British psyche was changed irrevocably. British men and women on both the war front and at home were forced to take life-altering decisions, independently. What no-one could predict was the consequences on the family and on society of these independent journeys by husbands, wives, children, mothers, fathers, siblings. Nobody would ever be the same. We Shall Never Surrender takes us through key moments in that six- year conflict through a range of distinct voices, professions and geographical locations. Some will be known to readers already, others unfamiliar but all have been selected for their ability to write well and to conjure empathy in the reader. The majority will take us throughout the war, though some by necessity will fade away to be replaced by others. Each of the diarists will be properly introduced, but ultimately they will tell their own, fascinating stories.

Penelope Middelboe (Author), Gina Murray, Glen Mccready, Jane Whittenshaw, Lucy Briers, Paul Panting (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Lucy Briers