A dying wish. A devastating secret. Should the truth really stay buried? The four Bliss siblings have a loving but complicated bond, but when their mother, Dorothy, dies seemingly without a will, this relationship is put to the test. As the mourning siblings try to make sense of the situation, one of them is caught...

A Genius Performance by Edward Petherbridge! Marion Sharpe and her mother are on the wrong side of the law. The Franchise, there life and home in the country is very ordinary but when the police turn up with a young woman who accuses them of kidnap. She can back up her claim with a detailed description of the attic room in which she was kept. But as the story continues Inspector Alan Grant sees that there...

The cloistered walls of Shrewsbury Abbey have always protected Brother Cadfael from the raging Civil War. But when fighting escalates between Empress Maud and King Stephen, the war takes a deadly step closer to him. Taken prisoner in the battle for Maud's land is Olivier de Bretagne, Brother Cadfael's own son- born as a result ...

Anton Lesser and Anna Madeley star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the fourth novel in Lindsey Davis' bestselling series featuring Roman private eye Falco. The Iron Hand of Mars sees Falco being dispatched to one of the most hostile parts of the Empire to deliver a new standard - an iron hand - to one of the legions. Germania is cold...

Returning to Rome after his mission to Germania, Falco finds that his mother is being harassed by a centurion named Censorinus, who says he is chasing a debt owed to him by Falco's brother Festus. Censorinus claims that Festus was involved in a syndicate, shipping valuable statues from Greece - and that even when his ship sunk, Festus had...

On its first appearance, The Screwtape Letters was immediately recognized as a milestone in the history of popular theology. Now 60 years old, it is stunningly repackaged and both cassette and CD. A masterpiece of satire, this classic has entertained and enlightened readers the world overwith its sly...

Anton Lesser and Anna Madeley star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Lindsey Davis's second best-selling Falco novel featuring the Roman detective. Rome, AD 71. Against his better judgement, Marcus Didius Falco secretly disposes of a decayed corpse for the Emperor Vespasian, then heads for...

A thirty-five strong cast including Leo McKern as Kutuzov, Simon Russell Beale as Pierre Bezuhov, Emily Mortimer as Natasha Rostov and Gerard Murphy as Andrei Bolkonsky, bring all the passion and turbulence of Tolstoy's epic masterpiece to the airwaves in this unique BBC Radio 4 dramatisation.

Belinda and Harriet Bede live together in a small English village. Shy, sensible Belinda has been secretly in love with Henry Hoccleve - the poetry-spouting, married archdeacon of their church - for 30 years. Belinda's much more confident, forthright younger sister Harriet, meanwhile, is ardently pursued by...

Greg and Tess MacAvoy are one of four prominent Nantucket couples who count each other as best friends. As pillars of their close-knit community, the MacAvoys, Kapenashes, Drakes, and Wheelers are important to their friends and neighbors, and especially to each other. But just before the beginning of...

From Queen of Tarts to the nation's heart, Mary Berry shares her Recipe for Life. Read by the actress Patricia Hodge. In the words of my father, my birth caused no end of trouble...' From the moment she came into the world - two weeks early, throwing her parents' lives into disarray - Mary has gracefully but...

Charles Paris is thrilled – he’s landed a nice juicy part playing Sergeant Collins in the TV detective series, ‘The Stanislaus Braid Mysteries’, and his estranged wife Frances seems to be on the brink of taking him back. But filming turns out to be a tortuous process, with pompous star Russell Bentley demanding...

The nonfiction debut from beloved international sensation and New York Times best-selling author Tatiana de Rosnay: her best-selling biography of novelist Daphne du Maurier. "It's impressive how Tatiana was able to recreate the personality of my mother, including her sense of humor. It is very well written and...

Eager to escape the confines of his lower-class upbringing, Jude Fawley dreams of pursuing higher education, graduating from university and becoming a scholar. Slowly, we witness the resistance Jude is met with and, in keeping with Hardy's other works, the consequences of having dared...

Anthony TROLLOPE (1815-1882), was born in London. His father, a fellow of New College, Oxford, failed both as a lawyer and as a farmer. The family´s poverty made Trollope miserable at school, and when financial difficulties became acute, the family moved to Belgium, where Trollope´s father died.

A Genius Performance by Ian Carmichael! They plan to have a quiet country honeymoon. Then Lord Peter Wimsey and his bride Harriet Vane find the previous owner's body in the cellar. Set in a country village seething with secrets and snobbery, this is Dorothy L. Sayers' last full-length detective novel.

Julie Walters stars on this classic comedy CD, alongside the wonderful Victoria Wood. And if that wasn't talent enough, the sketches, monologues, and songs were written by Alan Bennett, Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale and of course Ms Wood.

Socrates the lover. Socrates the warrior. An innovative and insightful exploration of the passionate early life of Socrates and the influences that led him to become the first and greatest of philosophers. Socrates - the man whose logic and questioning gave birth to the ideas of Western thought, and whose execution heralded the end of the Athenian Golden Age. Despite his preeminence among the great thinkers of the...

One of the great fears many of us face is that despite all our effort and striving, we will discover at the end that we have wasted our life. In A Guide to the Good Life, William B. Irvine plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives. In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine...

Jean M. Auel’s enthralling Earth’s Children series has become a literary phenomenon, beloved by readers around the world. In a brilliant novel as vividly authentic and entertaining as those that came before, Jean M. Auel returns us to the earliest days of humankind and to the captivating adventures of the courageous woman called Ayla. With her companion, Jondalar, Ayla sets out on her most dangerous and daring...

With a roar like a train in a tunnel, the war enters its final days. Ellie has to be on that train. There's no more sitting around, no more waiting. There's only fast decisions, fast action, fast thinking. And she'd better get it right. With all their being, Ellie and her friends want to stay alive. But there's a war out there. And it has to be won.

An unforgettable World War II memoir set in Nazi-occupied France and filled with romance and adventure: a former Eastern European Jew remembers his flight from the Holocaust and his extraordinary four years in the French underground. Justus Rosenberg, now 98, has taught literature at Bard College for the past fifty years. In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a...

The funny and heartwarming story of a young lady whose zeal, snobbishness, and self-satisfaction lead to several errors in judgment Emma takes Harriet Smith, a young woman previously unknown to good society, under her wing, scheming for her advancement through an advantageous marriage. Her efforts to find Harriet a suitor occupy all of Emma's time. However, in the midst of her often fumbled attempts...

Goethe's masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, Faust has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental Faust, an audacious man boldly wagering with the devil, Mephistopheles, that no magic, sensuality, experience or knowledge can lead him to a moment he would wish to last forever.

Sunny Los Angeles can be a dark place indeed in Cassandra Clare's Lord of Shadows, the sequel to the number-one New York Times and USA Today best-selling Lady Midnight. Lord of Shadows is a Shadowhunters novel. Emma Carstairs has finally avenged her parents. She thought she'd be at peace. But she is anything but calm. Torn between her desire for her parabatai Julian and her desire to protect him from the brutal...

#1 New York Times bestseller Philip Pullman retells the world’s best-loved fairy tales on their 200th anniversary Two centuries ago, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the first volume of Children’s and Household Tales. Now Philip Pullman, one of the most accomplished authors of our time, makes us fall in love all over again with the immortal tales of the Brothers Grimm. Pullman retells his fifty favorites, from much-loved...

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott, first published in 1884 by Seeley & Co. of London. Written pseudonymously by "A Square", the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian culture, but the novella's more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions.

The Mansion completes Faulkner's great trilogy of the Snopes family in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston, and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of this indomitable post-bellum family, who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation.

A historical novel about smugglers set on Mersea Island in the 17th century inspired by a series of seances held by the Allingham family while on holiday on Mersea. Margery Allingham was born in Ealing, London in 1904 to a family immersed in literature. Her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, was published in 1923 when she was 19. Her first work of detective fiction was a serialized story published by the Daily Express in 1927.

How far will you go to protect your child? A superb Sunday Times number one best seller from the author of Six Years. Tia and Mike Baye never imagined they'd become the type of overprotective parents who spy on their kids. But their 16-year-old son Adam has been unusually distant lately, and after the suicide of his classmate Spencer, they can't help but worry. They install a sophisticated spy program on...

No one had ever looked at her and seen perfection - until now. Delicate, titian-haired Theresa Noble has met her father’s associates in the past, but the gorgeous, Italian-born Sandro De Lucci leaves her speechless. Eighteen months into their marriage, however, Sandro has turned to ice. Desperate to escape a relationship that has proven to be as stubbornly passionate as it is cold and hateful, Theresa summons up the...

When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote "Don't Eat Before You Read This" in The New Yorker, he spared no one's appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door. In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded the appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet that lays out his twenty-five years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine. From his first oyster in Gironda to the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop...

Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and...

Historian Mark Noll has written that historic Pietism "breathed a badly needed vitality" into post-Reformation Europe. Now the time has come for Pietism to revitalize Christianity in post-Christendom America. In The Pietist Option, Christopher Gehrz, a historian of Pietism, and Mark Pattie, a pastor in the Pietist tradition, show how Pietism holds great promise for the church―and the world―today. Modeled after...

Perth, 1954: Thirteen-year-old Frank, a refugee from wartime Hungary, is learning to walk again after contracting polio. At The Golden Age Children's Convalescent Home he meets Elsa and the two patients form a forbidden, passionate bond. The Golden Age becomes the little world that reflects the larger one, where everything occurs: love, desire, music, death and poetry. Subtle, moving and remarkably lovely,

Wayward Son, the sequel to Carry On, is the stunning YA novel by the best-selling author of Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell. With all of her signature wit and heart, this is Rainbow at her absolute best. The story is supposed to be over. Simon Snow did everything he was supposed to do. He beat the villain. He won the war. He even fell in love. Now comes the good part, right? Now comes the happily ever after.... So why...

After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the manmade explosion at the vampire summit, everyone-human and otherwise-is stressed, including Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who is trying to cope with the fact that her boyfriend, Quinn, has gone missing. It's clear that things are changing-whether the weres and vamps of her corner of Louisiana like it or not. And Sookie-Friend to the Pack and...

This sweet, honest account of the life and loves of 20-something Joel Miller will keep listeners engaged with its quirky characters and insights into human relationships. It's a Saturday morning in Brooklyn. Joel Miller, age 28, stands outside his locked bathroom door. Behind it are his girlfriend Lisa, a Dixie cup, and a pregnancy test. While she stalls for time, Miller is left in his hallway to wonder and wait: for the results of...

Once thought lost to the world, this collection contains all the sinister and intriguing elements that fans have come to expect from the acclaimed British author. About the Book The Doll and Other Stories is a collection of five lost tales and eight early stories from Daphne du Maurier. Previously unknown even to du Maurier’s son, these rediscovered works, unearthed in 2011, continue the dark, macabre themes which...

From the co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society comes a wise, witty, and exuberant novel, perfect for fans of Lee Smith, that illuminates the power of loyalty and forgiveness, memory and truth, and the courage it takes to do what’s right. Annie Barrows once again evokes the charm and eccentricity of a small town filled with extraordinary characters. Her new novel, The Truth According to Us, brings...

It is nearing the end of the Year of Our Lord 1145. A monk vows to abandon all earthly ties, but how can Brother Cadfael obey when his son is captured in battle? Olivier de Bretagne is one of many young knights taken prisoner in the current power dispute in Britain, but he is also Cadfael's son, and the monk cannot be objective. A council is planned at Coventry to try to appease the warring factions, and Brother Cadfael...

The thought-provoking new audiobook by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Blake A lifetime of secrets. A history untold. No. It is a simple word, uttered on a summer porch in 1936. And it will haunt Kitty Milton for the rest of her life. Kitty and her husband, Ogden, are both from families considered the backbone of the country. But this refusal will come to be Kitty’s defining moment, and its consequences will...

Flavia de Luce, the twelve-year-old chemist and amateur detective is eager to turn professional. She and her father's valet, Dogger, have founded a detective agency, Arthur Dogger & Associates, and unexpectedly cut into their first case during the revelry at her sister Ophelia's wedding reception. After an eventful ceremony with a missing best man and spontaneous ventriloquist act, spirits are high as Feely and her new...

Funny, feisty and fabulous, Em Ruscianos insights into her world of mayhem, marriage and motherhood are a laugh-out-loud, cry-out-loud balm for the soul.From her exploits at the Miss Sheila Fancypants School of Dance and her efforts to secure a solo at her end-of-year performance, to embracing the spotlight as an Australian Idol contestant and her deep and abiding love for John Farnham, Em Rusciano is...

An Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller. A novel of love, courage, and danger unfolds as World War II’s brightest heroines—the best of friends—take on the front lines. 1944: Fiona Denning has her entire future planned out. She’ll work in city hall, marry her fiancé when he returns from the war, and settle down in the Boston suburbs. But when her fiancé is reported missing after being shot down in Germany...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Retold by William Shakespeare and James Anthony, with a foreword by Stephen Fry. Read by Stephen Fry and Paapa Essiedu. Rediscover the greatest love poetry ever written. Shall I compare you to a summer’s day? You’re more delightful, always shining strong; High winds blow hard on flowering buds in May, And summer never seems to last that...

Robert Webb and Olivia Colman co-star in the first series of the BBC Radio 4 sketch show. Welcome to the surreal, silly and ingenious comedy sketch show that features one half of Mitchell & Webb and Olivia Colman from Peep Show, with Sally Hawkins, Steven Kynman and Chris Pavlo. Highlights include Narnia being vandalised by two kids from Peckham, Mr Punch's parole board, Thomas Hardy's agent, temping for...

I am Rizla and this is my story. It is the day before yesterday and I am dead. The day of my death was 14th February 1960, Valentine's Day, in Brighton. 'I'm floating 200 yards off the coastline in the icy waters of the English Channel. My final glimpse of life is through the top of the water. It is a pier. A beautiful woman is looking down. She's laughing at me. There's a man. He's also laughing. His arm is around her shoulder.

This title presents the Sony award-winning radio series starring Marcus Brigstocke, with David Mitchell and Stephen Moore. Unthinkable Solutions are the hapless management consultants who inflict their unique brand of help on unsuspecting companies. This first series of the BBC Radio 4 comedy won a Silver Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards, and stars Marcus Brigstocke as team leader Ryan ('Imagine you are...

An approved textbook at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry since publication, Newt Scamander's masterpiece has entertained wizarding families through the generations. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is an indispensable introduction to the magical beasts of the Wizarding World. Scamander's years of travel and research have created a tome of unparalleled importance. Some of the beasts will be...

William Butler Yeats remains one of the most popular poets of the 20th century. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," "Down by the Salley Gardens," "The Secret Rose": these are just a few of the poems that made William Butler Yeats an international figure. Born in Dublin in 1865, Yeats drew strength from the Irish tradition, as can be seen in this special audiobook, which presents the most...

"The Sunday Times bestselling biography of one of the towering figures in British history who became Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four, written by the youngest-ever leader of the Tory Party. The younger William Pitt – known as the ‘schoolboy’ – began his days as Prime Minister in 1783 deeply underestimated and completely beleaguered. Yet he annihilated his opponents in the General Election the following year...

The acclaimed author of Emperor: The Gates of Rome returns to the extraordinary life of Julius Caesar in a new novel that takes us further down the path to glory…as Caesar comes into his own as a man, warrior, senator, husband, leader. In a sparsely settled region of North Africa, a band of disheveled soldiers turn their eyes toward one man among them: their leader, Julius Caesar. The soldiers are Roman legionaries.

Two BBC radio dramatisations based on Graham Greene stories. "The Third Man" is a thriller set in Vienna after World War II, and "The Fallen Idol" a psychological drama of personal relationships and a boy's tragic initiation into the world of adult emotions.

For anyone who loves sailing and adventure, Arthur Ransome's classic Swallows and Amazons series stands alone. Originally published over a half-century ago, the twelve books are still eagerly read by children and adults alike – by all those captivated by the world of adventure and imagination. Such longevity is not only due to Ransome’s unparalleled gift of storytelling, but also his championing of qualities such...

A Radio 4 dramatization of the story of what happens to Tom when, as he lies in bed unable to sleep, the old grandfather clock in the hallway strikes 13. Creeping downstairs to investigate, he throws open the back door and crosses the threshold into a beautiful, magical garden.

When his brother catches measles, Tom is sent away for the summer to stay with his uncle and aunt and is thoroughly fed up about it. What a boring summer it's going to be. But then, lying in bed one night, he hears the old grandfather clock in the hall strike the very strange hour of 13 o'clock. What can it mean? As Tom creeps downstairs and opens the door, he finds out...a magical garden, a new playmate, and...

Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe Award-winning actor John Lithgow (The Crown, Dexter, 3rd Rock from the Sun) brings his latest critically acclaimed Broadway performance to Audible. Stories by Heart celebrates the transcendent power of great literature and serves as a touching tribute to Lithgow's late father...

As the acknowledged 'Queen of Crime' P.D. James was frequently commissioned by newspapers and magazines to write a special short story for Christmas. Four of the very best of these have been rescued from the archives and are published together in a beautiful hardback edition. P.D. James's sparkling prose illuminates each of these perfectly formed stories, making them ideal reading for...

'He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN 'A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. In this eighth volume, Nick Jenkins has been posted to Divisional Headquarters as the assistant to his old friend, the rapidly rising Major Widmerpool. Having to work alongside the rather obnoxious Captain Biggs, Nick is...

He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. In the eleventh volume in the series, Nick Jenkins, persuaded by his old friend Mark Members, attends a literary conference in Venice. Meanwhile, old school pal Widmerpool continues to climb the ranks, this time as a...

He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. In this ninth volume, Nick Jenkins, now a captain, is working in military liaison. When he receives the tragic news of the death of an old friend, it is an ever-present reminder of the way things used to be, especially when...

He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. In this seventh volume, Britain is at war again and Nick Jenkins must leave his pregnant wife, Isobel, and his life in London, to take up his position as a Second Lieutenant in a Welsh infantry. As Nick grapples with endless...

He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. In this sixth volume, with Britain on the brink of war yet again, Nick Jenkins reflects back on his childhood growing up in the shadow of World War I. Wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps, Nick sets his sights on...

He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. In this fifth volume, Nick Jenkins finally seems to be settling down and enjoying the life he has made for himself in London. However, the same cannot be said of his friends, who are each dealing with their own drama...

He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. In this third volume, determined to make a name for himself, Nick Jenkins starts working for a publisher, establishing connections across the London literary scene. But whilst Nick is ready to move forwards with his new...

He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. In this first volume, Nick Jenkins is introduced to the ebbs and flows of life at boarding school in the 1920s, spent in the company of his friends: Peter Templer, Charles Stringham, and Kenneth Widmerpool. Though their...

When copywriter Victor Dean falls to his death on the stairs of Pym's Advertising Agency, everyone assumes it was an unfortunate accident. His replacement doesn't think so and begins asking a lot of questions. The new man is something of a mystery to his colleagues, and he certainly dresses well considering his meagre writer's salary.

A literary crime thriller with “a clever plot that always surprises, told with dark humor and dry wit” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice), this brilliant debut follows a famous author whose wife—the brains behind his success—meets an untimely death, leaving him to deal with the consequences.

A Genius Performance by Samuel West!

Human Traces explores the question of what kind of beings men and women really are.
Jacques Rebière and Thomas Midwinter, both sixteen when the story starts in 1876, come from different countries and contrasting families. They are united by an ambition to understand how the mind works and whether madness is the price we pay for being human.

A new audio edition of the Agatha Christie thriller. Baghdad is the chosen location for a secret summit of superpowers, concerned but not convinced, about the development of an, as yet, unidentified and undescribed secret weapon. Only one man has the proof that can confirm the nature of this fantastic secret...

Brian Cox stars as McLevy with Siobhan Redmond as Jean Brash and Michael Perceval-Maxwell as Mulholland, in these two BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations. Inspired by the real-life memoirs of a Victorian Inspector in Scotland ...

Fethering's favorite sleuths are at it again. Jude and Carole Seddon find themselves in the midst of some horseplay after stumbling upon the body of ex-equestrian Walter Fleet at Long Bamber Stables. The police attribute the stabbing death to the mysterious "Horse Ripper," who's been mutilating mares across West Sussex and who Walter obviously caught in the act. But considering Walter's reputation out of the saddle...

*** There is a small audio glitch in the first 2/3 mins of disk 1 - As this is the only copy of this title I can see as currently available I have added it to the website. All the other disks play perfectly *** It is March 1943 and the War hangs in the balance.... At Bletchley Park, Tom Jericho, a brilliant young codebreaker, is facing a double nightmare. The Germans have unaccountably changed their U-boat Enigma code, threatening...

Charles Paris returns again, in a fringe show at the Edinburgh Festival, with another nubile girl to provoke him, his accommodating wife to console him and a gory murder to challenge him. Edinburgh and the Festival are both background and foreground with Charles flitting between a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a ‘mixed-media’ satire, a late-night revue and his own one-man show on Thomas Hood.

Of the 200,000 years homo sapiens has been wandering this planet, this has to be the most absurd and challenging time to be a man… How can you hunt and gather in an open-plan office? Is monogamy fighting a losing battle against testes size? Why do men make up 95% of FTSE CEOs yet 95% of the prison population? Trapped in bodies barely changed since caveman days, males are now contending with corporate...

When Henry V and his 'band of brothers' defeated the assembled might of French chivalry on a rainy October day in 1415 it was a defining moment in English history. Against all the odds, 9,000 exhausted English men claimed victory from an army of 20,000 and for six centuries the battle of Agincourt has informed the nation's self-image and been celebrated as a triumph of the underdog. But what is the truth behind the...

A striking novel of truth and soul-searching. Returning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks. Looking back over the years, Joan painfully re-examines her attitudes, relationships and actions and becomes increasingly uneasy about the person who is revealed to her… Famous for her ingenious crime books...

Romance, intrigue, legend and adventure meet in this Lebanon-set classic Gothic romance by beloved author Mary Stewart. Legend has it that when the Gabriel Hounds run howling over the crumbling palace of Dar Ibrahim, high in the Adonis Valley of Lebanon, death will follow on their heels. When rich, spoilt Christie Mansel arrives at the decaying palace to look after her eccentric Aunt Harriet, she arrives to the sound...

The original writer of romantic suspense, Mary Stewart leads her readers on a thrilling journey across mid-century Europe in this tale of adventure and deception, sure to be loved by fans of Agatha Christie and Barbara Pym. Vanessa March's husband, Lewis, is meant to be on a business trip in Stockholm - so why does he briefly appear in newsreel footage of a fire at a circus in Vienna, with his arm around another...

This collection combines three volumes of the Best of Women's Short Stories. Acclaimed for an unusual mix spanning the sexes, amongst these twenty-six stories are A Young Girl's Confession by Marcel Proust, The Legacy by Virginia Woolf, The Parvenue by Mary Shelley, and The Watsons, an early novella by Jane Austen.

It only takes a couple of visits to convince Dr Elizabeth Bancroft that Adam Hunter is not just having bad dreams. He's a child possessed.His father is desperate: adamant that his son's affliction is the result of a curse he incurred in the depths of the Amazon, where a badly misguided ...

The thrilling follow-up to Treasure Island, as told by one of England's greatest contemporary writers. July, 1802. In the marshy eastern reaches of the Thames lies the Hispaniola, an inn kept by Jim Hawkins and his son. Late one night, a mysterious girl named Natty arrives with a request from her father, Long John Silver. Aged and weak, but still...

This title contains four Maeve Binchy short stories, specially commissioned for BBC Radio 4. Maeve Binchy is one of Britain's most popular and bestselling authors, and this collection of four stories from the BBC Radio 4 archive shows her at her most insightful and imaginative.

Anthony Trollope once said, "A novel should give a picture of common life enlivened by humour and sweetened by pathos." Trollope admirably fulfills his own criteria in this charming third novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire. Doctor Thorne adopts his niece Mary, keeping secret her illegitimate birth as he...

Winstone and Clementine Churchill wrote to each other constantly throughout the fifty-seven years of their life together , and this comprehensive collection of personal correspondence has been authoritatively edited by their daughter Mary Soames. Spontaneous and unselfconscious, the letters serve not only as a revealing portrait of their characters but as a unique political and social history.

War and Peace is one of the greatest monuments in world literature. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, it examines the relationship between the individual and the relentless march of history. Here are the universal themes of love and hate, ambition and despair, youth and age, expressed with a vitality which makes the book as accessible today as it was when it was published in 1869.

Rome’s great hero Julius Caesar has been brutally murdered by his most trusted allies. While these self-appointed Liberatores seek refuge in the senate, they have underestimated one man: Caesar’s adopted son Octavian, a man whose name will echo through history as Augustus Caesar. Uniting with his great rival Mark Antony, Octavian will stop at nothing to seek retribution from the traitors and avenge his father’s death.

A woman vanishes in the fog up on "the Hill", an area locally known for its tranquillity and peace. The police are not alarmed; people usually disappear for their own reasons. But when a young girl, an old man, and even a dog disappear, no one can deny that something untoward is happening in this quiet...

Ackroyd portrays London from the time of the druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century, noting magnificence in both epochs, but this is not a simple chronological record. It is a comprehensive account, animated by Ackroyd's concern for the close relationship between the present and the past as well as by what he describes as the peculiar "echoic" quality of London whereby its texture and history actively affect...

Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here, as a culmination, is his definitive account of the city. It has been abridged for audio into five broad areas of interest and is also available as a box set. For Ackroyd London is a living organism, with its own laws of growth and change, thus London is a biography rather than a history. It differs from other histories, too, in the range and...

Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here, as a culmination, is his definitive account of the city. It has been abridged for audio into five broad areas of interest and is also available as a box set. For Ackroyd London is a living organism, with its own laws of growth and change, thus London is a biography rather than a history. It differs from other histories, too, in the range...

A masterpiece: London: The Biography is the culmination and distillation of Peter Ackroyd's lifelong obsession with the history and topography of London. Vividly anecdotal and brilliantly original. Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here, as a culmination, is his definitive account of the city. It has been abridged for audio into five broad areas of interest and is also...

Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here, as a culmination, is his definitive account of the city. It has been abridged for audio into five broad areas of interest and is also available as a box set. For Ackroyd London is a living organism, with its own laws of growth and change, thus London is a biography rather than a history. It differs from other histories, too, in the range and...

The Pure in Heart is the second of Susan Hill's novels set in the English Cathedral town of Lafferton and featuring the enigmatic policeman, Detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler. A little boy is kidnapped as he stands with his satchel at the gate of his home, waiting for his lift to school. An ex-con finds it impossible to stay straight. A severely handicapped young woman dies in the night-has someone who loves her...

A beautiful June day in the Yorkshire Dales, and a group of children are spending the last of their half-term freedom swimming in the river near Hindswell Woods. But the idyll is shattered by their discovery of a man's body, hanging from a tree. DI Annie Cabott soon discovers he is Mark Hardcastle, the well-liked and successful set designer for the Eastvale Theatre's current production of Othello. Everything points...

North and South follows our widely-praised recording of Cranford (2008), transporting the listener to the heart of Victorian England by vividly delineating the social landscape and an unlikely romance which flourishes within it. Saddened to be leaving behind the sophistication of the South, Margaret Hale...