Showing results by narrator "Adjoa Andoh" in All Categories

Good Morning, Mr Mandela is the journey of an awkward young typist later chosen to become the President's most loyal servant, spending most of her adult life travelling with, and caring for the man she would come to call 'Khulu', or 'grandfather'. Here Zelda pays tribute to Nelson Mandela as she knew him. A man who forgave and respected all, but who was also frank, teasing and direct. Now she shares his inspiring gifts with the world.

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi have always relied on the advice of the classic guide to their trade, The Principles of Private Detection. But who is the eminent author, Mr Clovis Andersen, and what if he was to come to Botswana? That seems a very unlikely possibility, and yet… When Mr Andersen visits Botswana on holiday, he is delighted and intrigued to stumble across a roadside sign that reveals the existence of the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Belinda knows how to follow the rules. As a housegirl, she has learned the right way to polish water glasses, to wash and fold a hundred handkerchiefs, and to keep a tight lid on memories of the village she left behind when she came to Kumasi. Mary is still learning the rules. Eleven-years-old and irrepressible, the young housegirl-in-training is the little sister Belinda never had. Amma has had enough of the rules. A straight-A student at her exclusive London school, she has always been the pride of her Ghanaian parents - until now.

An intensely moving account of George III's doomed attempt to create a happy, harmonious family, written with astonishing emotional force from a stunning new history writer. George III came to the throne in 1760 as a man with a mission. He wanted to be a new kind of king, one whose power was rooted in the affection and approval of his people. And he was determined to revolutionise his private life too - to show that a better man would, inevitably, make a better ruler.

Seeking refuge and anonymity in the cobbled streets of Montmartre, Yanne and her daughters, Rosette and Annie, live peacefully, if not happily, above their little chocolate shop. Nothing unusual marks them out; no red sachets hang by the door. The wind has stopped, at least for a while. Then into their lives blows Zozie de l'Alba, the lady with the lollipop shoes, and everything begins to change.

A gripping new recording of Philip Pullman's nerve-shattering thriller, set in the murky streets and opium dens of Old London. When 16-year-old Sally's father drowns in suspicious circumstances, she is left to fend for herself in Victorian London. Although she doesn't know it, she is already in terrible danger.

Based in the little town of Bridgeford, High-Lites salon boasts the most misanthropic hairdresser in Britain: sharp-tongued, mean-minded Bev. With the help of her soft-hearted (though slightly dim) assistant, Shirley, she tends to the tresses of a motley crew of local characters. As she cuts their hair, she finds out everything that's going on in their lives - and wastes no time in spreading some gossip of her own.

When a seventeen-year-old Moldovan boy is found dead on Hampstead Heath, the case falls to DCI Karen Shields and her overstretched team. Karen knows she needs a result. What she doesn't know is that her new case is tied inextricably to a much larger web of gang warfare and organised crime which infiltrates almost every aspect of London society.

Sixteen years have passed since Sephy Hadley first met Callum McGregor. For Callie Rose, growing up mixed race in a world where bitter prejudice divides Noughts and Crosses has meant she's an outsider wherever she turns. Enter Jude McGregor. Jude teaches Callie about her real family history, and the more she learns the more he persuades her where her loyalties really lie. But soon Callie is caught in a trap she can't get out of - one which will have deadly consequences.

Abie follows the arc of a letter from London back to Africa to a coffee plantation that now could be hers if she wants it. Standing among the ruined groves she strains to hear the sound of the past, but the layers of years are too many. Thus begins the gathering of her family's history through the tales of her aunts - four women born to four different wives of a wealthy plantation owner, her grandfather.

Fanny is married to absent-minded Oxford don Alfred and content with her role as a plain, tweedy housewife. But overnight her life changes when Alfred is appointed English ambassador to Paris. In the blink of an eye, Fanny's mixing with royalty, Rothschilds and Dior-clad wives, throwing cocktail parties and having every indiscreet remark printed in tomorrow's papers.

Raised as a boy in a grand but unhappy family in Nigeria, Otolorin Akinro escapes to boarding school knowing two things: she is truly a girl, and to stay safe, she must hide that truth. Away from the cruelty of her childhood home, Oto blooms even as she strives to be the best boy she can, finding true friendship and working hard to earn a scholarship to an American university, hoping someone out there might help her understand the secrets her body holds.

Bessie Smith was born in Tennessee in 1894. Orphaned by the age of nine, she sang on street corners before becoming a big name in travelling shows. In 1923 she made her first recording for a new start-up called Columbia Records. It sold 780,000 copies and made her a star. Smith's life was notoriously difficult. As a young black girl growing up in Glasgow, Jackie Kay found in Bessie someone with whom she could identify and who she could idolise. In this remarkable book Kay mixes biography, fiction, poetry and prose to create an enthralling account of an extraordinary life.

Edie is struggling. She’s increasingly confused, but she can’t let the women in the village find that out - they’d only talk. But she’s forgetting so much - forgetting to wear matching clothes, forgetting to bake one of her walnut cakes for the church sale...and forgetting to lock the front door...until one day she wakes to find Jonah in her house and herself in her past. Jonah is struggling. The journey to England was illegal and dangerous, and he’s the only one who survived - and he still hasn’t made it to London.

2nd March 1975. In Asmara, Eritrea, Yonas Kelati is born into a world of turmoil. At the same time, on the same day, Jude Munroe takes her first breath in London, England. Thirty years later. Blacklisted in his war-ravaged country, Yonas has no option but to flee his home. After a terrible journey, he arrives on a bleak English coast. By a twist of fate, Yonas' asylum case lands on Jude's desk.

Moving between Ghana and London, Hold is an intimate, moving, powerful coming-of-age novel. It’s a story of friendship and family, shame and forgiveness, of learning what we should cling to and when we need to let go. Belinda knows how to follow the rules. As a housegirl, she has learnt the right way to polish water glasses, to wash and fold a hundred handkerchiefs and to keep a tight lid on memories of the village she left behind when she came to Kumasi.

Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to Nigeria - a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality. Then her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was murdered there, and she didn't return for 10 years. Recently, she decided to rediscover and come to terms with the country her father loved.

A beautifully written story about two children trying to find their way in a world that's grey and cold, and what happens when the sky turns blue. "I've put this story together from the diaries I kept when Zac and I were children. I wrote them because I felt we were almost invisible and I wanted to make sure our story was told, and also in the hope that life would get better for the small unloved girl that was me, and my even smaller unloved brother. And if life didn't get better or at least more interesting I was going to make it up...."

The kidnapping of a 12-year-old diabetic boy has blown the case of some missing children wide apart and the finger is pointing at the heart of the Met. Boss Corrigan sends in the only cop in his team who would care more about the life of a boy than about her own career. Detective Inspector Hanlon. And then he sends someone to spy on her.

Tamia Challey is horrified when her husband, Scott, is accused of something terrible - but when she discovers who his accuser is, everything goes into free fall. Backed into a corner and unsure what to think, Tamia is forced to choose who she instinctively believes. But this choice has dire consequences for all concerned, especially when matters take a tragic turn.