Andrew Taylor
A Plum in Your Mouth

Wherever you come from, whether you like it or not, you have an accent. Now Andrew Taylor digs into pronunciation, a subject which is often highly sensitive, exploring the way in which various accents - including Received Pronunciation - can affect how a speaker is perceived. Along the way he provides fascinating anecdotes, trivia and examples. Our accents speak volumes about us - more than our football shirts or business cards. It's time to discover what we're saying.

Fay Weldon
What Makes Women Happy

Fay Weldon offers wisdom gleaned from a remarkable life, a brilliantly successful career and a fair share of trouble. She explores what makes women happy; how our lives, jobs, families, bodies, desires, morals and resonsibilities affect that happiness, and what we can do to lead more rounded and desirable lives. As she delivers the verdicts, she also delivers short stories, or perhaps parables, to prove her points. To be good, she concludes, is to be happy, to be happy is to be good.

Having delivered a particularly stirring speech at a one-time colleague's funeral, Monsieur Pamplemousse is more than a little disturbed when the coffin explodes. Luckily, his faithful bloodhound Pommes Frites gives out a warning howl just in the nick of time, allowing everyone to escape unharmed. But who is behind this explosion? And was the same person responsible for his late colleague's demise?