Why the Whales Came; Waiting for Anya

Michael Morpurgo is an excellent reader of his own work - dramatic and sympathetic - and these two stories illustrate the range of his writing. Why the Whales Came is set in the Scilly Isles during World War I. Adventure moves into mystery, tense danger and almost into the realms of myth with the supposedly mad birdman of Bryher and young Gracie's father returning from the dead from Gallipoli. Wartime tensions are conveyed equally convincingly in Waiting for Anya where Jo, the shepherd boy, on the Franco-Spanish border has to keep a dangerous secret to safeguard the lives of himself and those escaping across the border.

The stories are driven forward, packed with incident and detail. These unabridged readings do full justice to the author's economical and skilful storytelling.