Last Bus to Woodstock is a crime novel by Colin Dexter, the first of thirteen novels in his Inspector Morse series.Morse and Lewis investigate the murder of a young woman, Sylvia Kane, found dead in a pub car park. She was last seen at a bus stop asking for the times of the bus to Woodstock and was to meet as friend at the same pub where she was found. She had accepted a lift from someone in a red car and the police find an envelope on the dead girl addressed to Jennifer Coleby, a co-worker. This leads Morse to uncover a complex set of social inter-relationships and eventually, the girl's killer.

This title is a modern twist on "Cinderella". Radio Wales DJ Jack Valentine finds a lost trainer on a station platform. With echoes of Cinderella, he appeals on his show for its owner, Hope Shepherd, to come forward. Hope handles publicity for a Cardiff based charity, Heartbeat. Encouraged by colleagues to secure Jack Valentine to raise the profile of an upcoming fun run, she reluctantly heads for the studios. The attraction between Hope and Jack is immediate but, bruised and battered by their recent divorces, they are reluctant to risk romance again.

That is, it usually means those things. But when you're Princess Mia, nothing happens the way it's supposed to. For one thing, Grandmиre seems determined to prove that boy (or Michael, as he is commonly known) isn't the right one for the crown princess of Genovia. And Mia isn't having much luck proving otherwise, since Michael has a history of being decidedly against any kind of exploitative commercialization (Valentine's Day, as it is commonly known).
Boris can declare his love openly to Lilly, and even Kenny comes through with a paltry Whitman's Sampler. So why can't Michael give in to Cupid and tell Mia he loves her—preferably with something wrapped in red or pink and accompanied by roses—in time to prove he's Mia's true prince?

 

Happy Valentine To All EnglishTipsers

Great story which can be listened in order to improve listening skills and test your or your students' comprehension skills by means of a bunch of exercises.

Complete, unabridged.
It’s a short story about a man, “born under unusual circumstances,” aging backwards, through a life that is as unusual as could be.
"As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anaesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one. So young Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were fifty years ahead of style when they decided, one day in the summer of 1860, that their first baby should be born in a hospital. Whether this anachronism had any bearing upon the astonishing history I am about to set down will never be known.
I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for yourself."