Detective Inspector Alan Banks relationship with Chief Constable Riddle has always been strained. So Banks is more than a little surprised when Riddle summons him late one night and begs for his help. For Riddle, Banks's new case is terrifyingly close to home. Six months ago his sixteen-year-old daughter ran away to London, where she has fallen into a turbulent world of drugs and pornography.

They say that diplomacy is a gentle art. That mastering it is a lifetime's work. But you do need a certain inclination in that direction. It's not something you can just pick up on the job. A few days ago Sam Vimes was a copper - an important copper, true - chief of police - but still, at his core, a policeman. But today he...

"You've heard of Faust ... this is Eric. There's a difference. Eric is fourteen, lives on the famed and magical Discworld, and is the first ever demonology hacker. Fortunately, he doesn't succeed in raising any devils, but he does raise Rincewind (the most incompetent wizard in the universe) and the Luggage...

This box set contains all four titles from the critically acclaimed and extremely popular historical crime fiction series by C. J. Sansom. Matthew Shardlake, lawyer and reformist in London during the reign of Henry VIII. His investigation skills are tested in four cases where both his life and the lives of others are threatened. In Dissolution he travels to...

"Jacob was time out of sync, time more perfect than it had been. He was life the way it was supposed to be all those years ago. That's what all the Returned were." Harold and Lucille Hargrave's lives have been both joyful and sorrowful in the decades since their only son, Jacob, died tragically at his eighth birthday..

Dubbed ' the founder of modern geology' by Stephen Jay Gould, the 17th century Danish scientist Nicolaus Steno was the first man to to suggest that the existence of fossils demanded a much longer history for the earth than the roughly six thousand years suggested by the Bible.

Darkness falls...despair abounds...evil reigns... Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire. Now Eragon must travel to Ellesmera, land of the elves, for further training in the skills of the Dragon Rider: magic and swordsmanship. Soon he is on the journey of a lifetime, his eyes open to...

A Horatio Hornblower Tale of the Sea 1815, the Napoleonic Wars are over. Yet peace continues to elude Horatio Hornblower overseas . . . As an admiral struggling to impose order in the chaotic aftermath of the French wars, Horatio Hornblower, Commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels in the West Indies, must still face savage pirates...

William Shatner gets the joke about William Shatner. In fact, most of the time he's the one telling it. His self-effacing attitude, so perfectly parodied in the bombastic character he now plays on Boston Legal, Denny Crane, is one of the reasons for his huge popularity. While best known for his creation of Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the starship Enterprise on Star Trek, William Shatner has been a working actor for...

A Genius Performance by Simon Callow, Edward Petherbridge and Prunella Scales! These wonderful BBC Radio 4 productions are of exceptional quality. Includes 2 plays - An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. Brilliant work by all of the actors!

Malcolm Fox and his team are back. They've been sent to Fife to investigate whether fellow cops covered up for a corrupt colleague, Detective Paul Carter. Carter has been found guilty of misconduct with his own uncle, also in the force, having proved to be his nemesis. But what should be a simple job is soon...

Malcolm Fox and his team are back. They've been sent to Fife to investigate whether fellow cops covered up for a corrupt colleague, Detective Paul Carter. Carter has been found guilty of misconduct with his own uncle, also in the force, having proved to be his nemesis. But what should be a simple job is soon...

In A Short History of Nearly Everything, beloved author Bill Bryson confronts his greatest challenge yet: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as his territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. The result is a sometimes...

Winter of the World is the second novel in Ken Follett's uniquely ambitious and deeply satisfying The Century Trilogy. On its own or read in sequence with Fall of Giants and Edge of Eternity, this is a magnificent, spellbinding epic of global conflict and personal drama. Berlin in 1933 is in upheaval. Eleven-year-old...

Mole enjoys a quiet life but when spring comes, his longing for adventure takes him to the river. There, he meets Water Rat and his friends Otter, Badger and Toad. With messing about in boats and Toad's love of fast cars, Mole's life is no longer quiet - especially when the friends have to join forces against the animals from the Wild Wood.

When Kay Harker meets a mysterious Punch and Judy man on his way home for Christmas, he little realizes that he is about to be plunged into adventure. The old man entrusts Kay with a strange puzzle box - the Box of Delights - before suddenly disappearing. Kay soon discovers two things: the box can transport him through time and space, and there is a plot to steal it. He must battle heroically against terrifying forces...

10 Tales of the Brigadier. Dry as an Outback outfield, sly as a Barbadian googly, sharp as a full toss on the funny bone, that's the cricket humour of Peter Tinniswood.

A Genius Performance by Robert Powell! Combining the wonderful performance of Robert Powell, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge's the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Song of  Hiawatha plus many more, with this magnificent poetry makes this set a Must Listen!

Leaving behind her forensic pathology practice in South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta takes up an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured patient in a psychiatric ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk - and the story he has to tell turns out to...

A Genius Performance by George Baker! It's impossible to forget the violent bludgeoning to death of an elderly lady in her home. Even more so when it's your first murder case. Wexford believed he'd solved Mrs Primero's murder fifteen years ago. It was no real mystery. Everyone knew Painter, her odd-job man, had done it. There had never been any doubt in anyone's mind. Until now...

A Genius Performance by George Baker! She was a wonderful, lovely lady, according to her niece. But Gwen Robinson had died in a bleak, underground carpark, murdered by someone who knew just how to use a garrotte. But was she the intended victim? Or had Gwen died of mistaken identity? Mike Burden was convinced he knew who the killer was, and all he had to do was break him. Wexford wasn't so sure.

Unconventional, warm and witty, this Georgian romance by Georgette Heyer unusually begins with a marriage rather than ending with one. When Horatia Winwood steps in to marry the Earl of Rule, the disappointed suitor of her elegant sister, it is the luxuries of high society life that she becomes entranced...

This audiobook is an anthology of poems by WH Auden, TS Eliot, Philip Larkin, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Rudyard Kipling, Sylvia Plath and W B Yeats, introduced by Josephine Hart and read by a cast of famous actors: Ralph Fiennes, Edward Fox, Ian McDiarmid, Helen McCrory, Sir Roger Moore, Harold Pinter, Elizabeth McGovern...

Sarah Hussain was not popular in the community of Kingsmarkham. She was born of mixed parents - a white Irishwoman and an immigrant Indian Hindu. She was also the Reverend of St Peter's church. But it came as a profound shock to everyone when she was found strangled in the vicarage. A garrulous...

The first in a stunning new series, The Cousins War, is set amid the tumult and intrigue of The War of the Roses. Internationally bestselling author Philippa Gregory brings this family drama to colourful life through its women, beginning with the story of Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen....

A Genius Performance by Lorelei King! A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why.

One single act of kindness becomes an endless reign of terror... Tom Bryce did what any decent person would do. But within hours of picking up the CD that had been left behind on the train seat next to him, and attempting to return it to its owner, he is the sole witness to a vicious murder.

If you’re a man of a certain age you’ll know there comes a point in life when getting a sports car and over-analysing your contribution to society sounds like a really good idea. With a good job in sales and marketing and a nice house in Manchester that he shared with his wife and kids, John Bishop...

Stumbling headlong into a passionate fling and an impromptu marriage to music star Trey, Maeve's life is about to change beyond recognition. Trey wants to whisk her off to his country house in North Carolina and Maeve follows him without a backward glance. But when she first lays eyes on her new home -- a dilapidated old cabin in...

Madame Bovary (1856) is the French writer Gustave Flaubert's debut novel. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

The narrator's little sister is the naughtiest girl in the world, causing mischief wherever she goes, whether she is digging up the garden or eating all the trifle, and to make matters worse, she doesn't like Father Christmas.

Brian Cox stars as the Edinburgh detective in nine episodes of the BBC Radio 4 series. Inspired by the real-life memoirs of a Victorian Inspector in Scotland, James McLevy prowls the dark streets of 1860s Edinburgh bringing criminals to justice, with the assistance of Constable Mulholland. Pilot Episode: The detective’s first adventure. For Unto Us: McLevy goes on the trail of an ingenious cat-burglar. The Trophy Club: McLevy...

The house guests at Styles seemed perfectly pleasant to Captain Hastings. There was his own daughter, Judith; an inoffensive ornithologist called Norton; dashing Mr Allerton; brittle Miss Cole; Doctor Franklin and his fragile wife, Barbara; Nurse Craven; Colonel Luttrell and his charming wife......

A Genius Performance by Hugh Fraser! A repugnant Amercian widow is killed during a trip to Petra… Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her.

As winter approaches and Souls' Night draws near, the Eagle Owl Mage holds the clans in the grip of terror. To fulfill his destiny, Torak must seek her lair in the Mountain of Ghosts. He must defy demons and tokoroths, and find his way through the Gorge of the Hidden People. Wolf must overcome terrible grief.

The dreadful secret that Torak carries with him at the close of SOUL EATER is revealed and he is cast out from the clans. It's his fourteenth summer. He's alone, cut off even from Wolf and Renn. Hunted and on the run he takes refuge in unknown territory - the haunted reedbeds of Lake Axehead, where he is...

A Genius Performance by Ian McKellen! Thousands of years ago the land is one dark forest. Its people are hunter-gatherers. They know every tree and herb and they know how to survive in a time of enchantment and powerful magic. Until an ambitious and malevolent force conjures a demon: a demon so evil...

When he was outcast, Torak was the hunted one. The following spring, he becomes the hunter when he swears to avenge the killing of one of his closest friends. To fulfil his oath he must brave the hidden valleys of the Deep Forest, where the clans have reverted to the savagery of an earlier time.

Thousands of years ago an orphan boy and his wolf cub companion challenge a demon bear that threatens to destroy their world forever. With the help of the World Spirit, Torak destroys the bear, but his beloved Wolf is lost in the ensuing avalanche. And Torak's quest is far from over. A strange, creeping...