Sophie Okonedo
Beckett is a pampered and selfish cat who totally takes for granted the lucky hand he has been dealt. All that is about to change, however, when he carelessly loses his ninth life.
The true story of Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. When anti-Semitic policies inspire violent mobs, she escapes to the safety of the South of France. There she begins to paint again, and finds new love. But her work is interrupted, this time by a family tragedy that reveals an even darker secret. Believing that only an extraordinary act will save her, she embarks on the monumental adventure of painting her life story.
Undercover follows Maya, the first black Director Of Public Prosecutions. Just as she is about to take up the post and her life comes under intense public scrutiny, she learns that that her husband Nick has been lying to her for years. Twenty years ago Nick was a fearless and dedicated undercover officer, infiltrating organisations considered a danger to society because of their political beliefs. Nick built himself a fake past and now with his wife unsuspecting and his conscience killing him – his secret identity may compromise the new Director of Public Prosecutions.
Ella Fitzgerald was a 15-year-old street kid when she won a talent contest in 1934 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Within months she was a star. Over the next six decades, her sublime voice would transform the tragedies of her own life and the troubles of her times into joy. JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS retraces this extraordinary journey.
One thousand years after cataclysmic events forced humanity’s escape from Earth, Nova Prime has become mankind’s new home. Legendary General Cypher Raige returns from an extended tour of duty to his estranged family, ready to be a father to his 13-year-old son, Kitai. When an asteroid storm damages Cypher and Kitai’s craft, they crash-land on a now unfamiliar and dangerous Earth. As his father lies dying in the cockpit, Kitai must trek across the hostile terrain to recover their rescue beacon. His whole life, Kitai has wanted nothing more than to be a soldier like his father. Today, he gets his chance.
Summoned from an ashram in Tibet, Ace finds himself on a perilous journey into the jungles of Africa to find Shikaka, the missing sacred animal of the friendly Wachati tribe. He must accomplish this before the wedding of the Wachati’s Princess to the prince of the warrior Wachootoos. If Ace fails, the result will be a vicious tribal war.
Set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother. To escape her lonely life and troubled relationship with her father, Lily flees with Rosaleen, her caregiver and only friend, to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother’s past.
An urban hotel in London is a gathering and flash point for legal and illegal immigrants attempting to cobble together their lives in a new country. The immigrants include Senay, a Turkish woman, and a Nigerian doctor named Okwe who is working as a night porter at the hotel. The pair discover the hotel is a front for all sorts of clandestine activities. Their only wish is to avoid possible deportation. Okwe becomes more entangled in the goings on when he is called to fix a toilet in one of the rooms. He discovers the plumbing has been clogged by a human heart.
Alex Rider thinks he is a normal school boy, until his uncle is killed. He discovers that his uncle was actually spy on a mission, when he was killed. Alex is recruited by Alan Blunt to continue the mission. He is sent to Cornwall to investigate a new computer system, which Darrius Sayle has created. He plans to give the new computer systems to every school in the country, but Mr. Blunt has other ideas and Alex must find out what it is.
400 years into the future, disease has wiped out the majority of the world’s population, except one walled city, Bregna, ruled by a congress of scientists. When Æon Flux, the top operative in the underground ‘Monican’ rebellion, is sent on a mission to kill a government leader, she uncovers a world of secrets.
Concorde: A Supersonic Story follows the story of the most glamorous aeroplane ever built – told by the people whose lives she touched. We uncover rare footage telling the forgotten row between the French and British governments over the spelling of Concorde which threatened to derail the whole project.
A recently-widowed science fiction writer considers whether to adopt a hyper-imaginative 6-year-old abandoned and socially-rejected boy who says he’s really from Mars.
