Sign In Join Now
User Accessibility
  • Increase Font

  • Invert Colours

Search for a Book Browse Books Menu
Without Warning and Only Sometimes Cover Play Sample

Sample may contain unsuitable content.

Stream / Download

Audiobook streaming provided by:

OverDrive Logo

Share this book:

Without Warning and Only Sometimes

AuthorKit de Waal

NarratorThe Author

Duration8h 6m

CategoriesAdult Non-Fiction, Biography and Autobiography

PublisherHodder Headline

VersionUnabridged

  Save to Wish List
  Add to Favourites List

From the award-winning author of My Name Is Leon comes a childhood memoir set to become a classic: stinging, warm-hearted and true. Kit de Waal grew up in a household of opposites and extremes. Her haphazard mother rarely cooked, forbade Christmas and birthdays and believed the world would end in 1975. Meanwhile, her father stuffed barrels full of goodies for his relatives in the Caribbean, cooked elaborate meals on a whim and splurged money they didn't have. Both of her parents were waiting for paradise. It never came. Caught between three worlds—Irish, Caribbean and British in 1960s Birmingham—Kit and her brothers and sisters knew all the words to the best songs, caught sticklebacks in jam jars and braved hunger and hellfire until they could all escape. Without Warning and Only Sometimes is a story of an extraordinary childhood and how a girl who grew up in house where the Bible was the only book on offer went on to discover a love of reading that inspires her to this day.

0 (0 Reviews)
0
0
0
0
0

Related Titles

My Name Is Leon Cover

My Name Is Leon

Author: Kit de Waal

My Name Is Leon

Author Kit de Waal

Narrator Lenny Henry

Duration 7h 51m

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of My Name Is Leon by Kit De Waal, read by Lenny Henry. A brother chosen. A brother left behind. And a family where you'd least expect to find one. Leon is nine, and has a perfect baby brother called Jake. They have gone to live with Maureen, who has fuzzy red hair like a halo, and a...

View Book
Supporting Cast Cover

Supporting Cast

Author: Kit de Waal

Supporting Cast

Author Kit de Waal

Narrator Various

Duration 3h 34m

Brought to you by Penguin. As she walks out of her marriage, a woman remembers the day her husband rescued a boy from drowning. A blind man on his wedding day celebrates the pursuit of love. And a young man leaves prison with only one desire - to see his son again. Kit de Waal's characters light up the page in vivid stories of thwarted desire, love...

View Book
Admissions Cover

Admissions

Author: Henry Marsh

Admissions

Author Henry Marsh

Narrator Henry Marsh

Duration 7h 47m

Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical front line. Prompted by his retirement from his full-time job in the NHS, and through his continuing work in Nepal and Ukraine, Henry has been forced to reflect more deeply about what 40 years spent handling the human brain has taught him. Moving between encounters with patients in his Lond...

View Book
Step By Step Cover

Step By Step

Author: Simon Reeve

Step By Step

Author Simon Reeve

Narrator Simon Reeve

Duration 10h 29m

TV documentary maker Simon Reeve has dodged bullets on frontlines, hunted with the Bushmen of the Kalahari, dived with manta rays, seals and sharks, survived malaria, walked through minefields, tracked lions on foot, been taught to fish by the President of Moldova, and detained for spying by the KGB. After a decade spent making more than 80 program...

View Book
Wham! George and Me Cover

Wham! George and Me

Author: Andrew Ridgeley

Wham! George and Me

Author Andrew Ridgeley

Narrator Andrew Ridgeley

Duration 5h 59m

For the first time, Andrew Ridgeley - one half of one of the most famous bands in the world - tells the inside story of Wham! and his life-long friendship with George Michael. It is 1975, Watford, and two teenagers, George and Andrew, meet for the first time. Bonding over their love for singing, song writing and pop music, together they set out to...

View Book
For the Record Cover

For the Record

Author: David Cameron

For the Record

Author David Cameron

Narrator David Cameron

Duration 30h

David Cameron was Conservative Party leader during the largest financial crash in living memory. The Arab Spring and the Eurozone crisis both started during his first year as prime minister. The backdrop to his time in office included the advent of ISIS, surging migration and a rapidly changing EU. He sets out how he helped turn around Britain's ec...

View Book
The Prison Doctor Cover

The Prison Doctor

Author: Amanda Brown

The Prison Doctor

Author Amanda Brown

Narrator Sophie Aldred

Duration 6h 3m

Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent behind bars. The no-holds-barred memoirs of a GP who went from working at a quiet suburban practice to treating the country's most dangerous criminals - first in young offenders' institutions, then at the notorious Wor...

View Book
Becoming Dinah Cover

Becoming Dinah

Author: Kit de Waal

Becoming Dinah

Author Kit de Waal

Narrator Saffron Coomber

Duration 6h 27m

In her first YA novel, Costa short-listed Kit de Waal responds to classic Moby Dick by tearing the power away from obsessive Captain Ahab and giving it to a teenage girl. Dinah's whole world is upside down, dead things and angry men and cuts all over her head that are beginning to sting....Seventeen-year-old Dinah needs to leave her home, the weird...

View Book
Face It Cover

Face It

Author: Debbie Harry

Face It

Author Debbie Harry

Narrator Clem Burke

Duration 8h 53m

Debbie Harry is a musician, actor, activist and the iconic face of New York City cool. As the front-woman of Blondie, she and the band forged a new sound that brought together the worlds of rock, punk, disco, reggae and hip-hop to create some of the most beloved pop songs of all time. With all the grit, grime, and glory recounted in intimate detail...

View Book
Kraftwerk Cover

Kraftwerk

Author: Uwe Schutte

Kraftwerk

Author Uwe Schutte

Narrator Sam Peter Jackson

Duration 6h 14m

Brought to you by Penguin. The story of the phenomenon that is Kraftwerk, and how they revolutionised our cultural landscape 'We are not artists nor musicians. We are workers.' Ignoring nearly all rock traditions, experimenting in near-total secrecy in their Dsseldorf studio, Kraftwerk fused sound and technology, graphic design and performance, mo...

View Book