Swann in Love, a book within a book contained within the first volume, Swann's Way, of Marcel Proust's seven-volume In Search of Lost Time, is an excellent entry point into Marcel Proust's work and a compelling standalone novel. In its pages, the portrait of a stormy love affair between the courtesan Odette de Crécy and upper-class socialite Charles Swann serves as a springboard for meditations on love and jealousy.

The introduction of a highly sensitive and imaginative child; the mother he loved, and from whom to be parted was such agony; and the father who, although loving in his own way, was incapable of understanding the emotional behavior of his delicate child.

Charlotte Brontë's first published novel, Jane Eyre was immediately recognised as a work of genius when it appeared in 1847. Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. How she takes up the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, meets and loves Mr Rochester and discovers...

Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel, by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic. Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth.

The best-selling author of Matterhorn. At the turn of the 20th century, as the oppression of Russia's imperial rule takes its toll on Finland, the three Koski siblings - Ilmari, Matti and the politicized young Aino - are forced to flee. They settle among a community of Finns in Deep River - a town on the western edges of the United States. The brothers face the excitement and danger of pioneering this frontier wilderness.

In the novel, Siddhartha, a young man, leaves his family for a contemplative life, then, restless, discards it for one of the flesh. He conceives a son, but bored and sickened by lust and greed, moves on again. Near despair, Siddhartha comes to a river where he hears a unique sound. This sound signals the true beginning of his life -- the beginning of suffering, rejection, peace, and, finally, wisdom

Sixty-four-year-old Joe has known violence his entire life. For forty years, he's worked as an enforcer for loan shark and close friend Maxie Smith, breaking more than a few bones along the way. When Maxie abruptly fires him, Joe isn't sure where to lay the blame, on Maxie, the man he once considered his brother, or on the early-onset Alzheimer's that made Maxie lose faith in him in the first place.

The truth will test you... For fans of Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games: high fantasy and dystopia meet in this high-stakes tale of a civilization built on lies and the girl who single-handedly brings it down. When Eva’s twin brother, Eamon, falls to his death just a few months before he is due to participate in The Testing, no one expects Eva to take his place. She’s a Maiden, slated for embroidery classes, curtseys...

Shakespeare's most famous play is one of the greatest stories in the literature of the world.Distressed by his father's death and his mother's over-hasty remarriage, Hamlet, prince of Denmark is faced by a specter from beyond the grave bearing a grim message of murder and revenge. The young prince is driven to the edge of madness by his struggle to understand the situation he finds himself in and to do his duty.

"Look sharp!" shouted Edmund. "All catch hands and keep together. This is magic. I can tell by the feeling. Quick!" Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are sitting on a station platform when they sense the magic beginning again. Suddenly they are pulled back to the land of Narnia. Evil King Miraz and his army can only mean trouble for Narnia, and Prince Caspian, his nephew and the rightful heir to the throne, fears for...

Written after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but designed by C.S. Lewis to be read first, this enchanting prequel, with its story of time travel, sorcery, and magic rings, is essential reading for anyone who wants to learn the backstory to the biggest movie release of the year. Hurled back in time to the birth of a new world, two young friends get caught in the epic struggle between Aslan and his nemesis the White Witch.

King Caspian has grown old and sad in the ten years since the disappearance of his only son. With time running out, Jill and Eustace embark on a perilous quest to find the Prince and bring back tranquillity to the magical land of Narnia. Journeying to the wild lands of the North, the friends and their companion Puddleglum go through some hair-raising adventures. There are mighty storms to battle and a terrifying...

When Lucy comes across the old wardrobe standing alone in the spare room, she thinks she has found a good place for hide and seek. But then she tumbles headlong into a magical world of fauns, dwarves and giants, of animals that talk and horses that fly - the land of Narnia. It is so extraordinary that at first her brothers and sister don't believe it can be real. Soon, though, Peter, Edmund and Susan find Narnia too and...

Life in the small fishing village in the south of Calormen is all that young Shasta knows until, one day, he overhears his father planning to sell him into slavery to a stranger and discovers that he is not a fisherman's son after all. Things become even more surprising when the stranger's horse starts to have a conversation with him! Shasta discovers that the horse is called Bree, and that he comes from a magical land in the...

After a ferocious early-springtime storm, young Norwegian sailor Hans Lyngstrand is shipwrecked in the English Channel near the coastal Kent town of Dengate - he is one of few survivors. Soon after, aspiring journalist Martin Bridges takes a job as a reporter at the local newspaper. A loner by nature, he’s a curiosity to the nosy townspeople, the gregarious editor of the paper, and his melodramatic landlady, whose...

Fourth in Cassandra Clare’s internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series about the Shadowhunters. Discover more secrets about the Shadowhunters as they fight to protect the world from demons in the fourth book in the internationally bestselling series. To love is to destroy... The Mortal War is over, and Clary Fray is home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She's training to become...

In Series Three, love is in the air and Satan becomes concerned about his image; the Professor meets Bill Clinton; Satan holds a major football tournament and remakes Casablanca with a mutant alien; Satan and the Professor enter Scumspawn’s brain; and God hears that rules are being broken in Hell. In Series Four, Satan punishes a feng shui expert; Scumspawn tries to deal with a lager lout; there are complaints about...

If you're reading this you probably don't need any introduction to Old Harry's Game. You know all about Andy Hamilton's excellent portrayal of the Devil, cynical and twisted with a voice like Anthony Newly. You know about Scumspawn, his most revolting and fawning demon, played by Robert Duncan. You're familiar with the most damned of damned souls, Thomas Crimp, and the Professor, who would be in heaven...

Welcome to Hell—where nobody can ever quite catch the barman's eye. In this collection, which contains all seven series of Old Harry's Game, get ready for some wicked one-liners and scorching satire. Satan is fed up after a millennia in charge of Hell, especially given the prospect of an eternity still running the damned place. Although he does enjoy playing pranks on the world of the living and devising wry torments for...

A new edition of this incredibly popular reading of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by Sir Michael Hordern with film tie-in cover.

The bewitched kingdom of dwarves, nymphs and giants, where animals talk and horses fly, has been thrillingly recreated in these acclaimed BBC Radio 4 full cast dramatisations.

Stand-up comic and comedy writer Carol Leifer faced a critical dilemma and had only two options: either continue sharing her greatest childhood memory (seeing the Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1966) or lie about her age. But the choice soon became clear: “I see now that when you deny your age, you deny...

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable and quiet life. His contentment is disturbed one day when the wizard, Gandalf, and the dwarves arrive to take him away on an adventure. Smaug certainly looked fast asleep, when Bilbo peeped once more from the entrance. He was just about to step out on to...

It's time to take note of the thoughts of the new President of the United States. In this book we are going to look at the state of the world right now. It's a terrible mess, and that s putting it mildly. There has never been a more dangerous time.

Clive Merrison and Andrew Sachs star in eight original BBC Radio 4 full-cast adventures for Holmes and Watson. How many times did Dr John Watson tantalise us with passing references to a mystery which his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, never wrote about in full?

Clive Merrison and Andrew Sachs star in seven original BBC Radio 4 full-cast adventures for Holmes and Watson. How many times did Dr John Watson tantalise us with passing references to a mystery which his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, never wrote about in full? In these original adventures Bert...

The accomplished Corinthian Sir Richard Wyndham is wealthy, sophisticated, handsome and supremely bored. Tired of his aristocratic family constantly pressuring him to get married, he determines to run away after meeting the delightful, unconventional heroine Penelope Creed.

This volume comprises four classic tales of deduction, sure to leave you amazed by the brilliance of Holmes!
- THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS
- THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP
- THE BLUE CARBUNCLE
- THE SPECKLED BAND

A Genius Performance by Simon Callow! Walk with Ackroyd through sixteenth century London and Stratford as he uncovers the intimate circumstances of Shakespeare's life. Discover the theatrical world in which Shakespeare had his being - not just Shakespeare the actor but the other actors, playwrights, and managers that surrounded him. And journey to Stratford to meet Shakespeare the family man, whose private...

The Yorkshire dales have never seemed more beautiful for James - now he has a lovely wife by his side, a partner's plate on the gate and the usual menagerie of farm animals, pets and owners demanding his constant attention and teaching him a few lessons along the way. All of the old Darrowby friends are on...

6 CD boxed set read by the author Andy Stanton ~ Includes ; You're a Bad Man Mr Gum! ~ Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire ~ Mr Gum and the Goblins ~

Luce is a solitary young woman, caretaker of an old lodge on the edge of a lake in the mountains of North Carolina that's as isolated as she is. Until her beautiful, gentle sister Lily is murdered, and Luce inherits mute, traumatised twins. Luce knows that if the children come to harm under her care she will...

The first message sent to Tom Thorne's mobile phone was just a picture - the blurred image of a man's face, but Thorne had seen too many dead bodies in his time to know that this man was no longer alive. But who was he? Who sent the photograph? And why? While the technical experts attempt to trace the...

It's 1945 and the war is finally over. For the Devlin family in Liverpool, the wartime years have been almost too much to bear. But at long last sisters Grace and Chrissie can return to their normal lives. Level-headed and hard-working, Grace wants nothing more than to meet a nice man and settle down.

This charming piece of social observation throws a gentle spotlight on life in a small village in northern England of the 1850s. The middle-aged ladies, existing in rather impoverished circumstances nevertheless maintain the rules of politeness which they feel they should live by. Read with great sensitivity by Clare Wille.

Artist's daughter Penelope Keeling can look back on a full and varied life: a Bohemian childhood in London and Cornwall, an unhappy wartime marriage, and the one man she truly loved. She has brought up three children - and learned to accept them as they are.

As spring comes to Scotland and the hills burst into life, a dance is planned for September. The invitations summon home the group of people Violet Aird has cared for most in her long life.

Rod Stewart was born the working-class son of a Scottish plumber in North London. Despite some early close shaves with a number of diverse career paths, ranging from gravedigging to professional football, it was music that truly captured his heart – and he never looked back.

Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part.

This is a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring Michael Hordern as Jeeves and Richard Briers as Wooster.

Who would think that an eighteenth-century silver cow-creamer could cause so much trouble?

The Narnia Chronicles, first published in 1950, have been and remain some of the most enduringly popular children’s books ever published. The best known, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, has been translated into 29 languages.

In this luminous prequel to her beloved Cobbled Court Quilts series, New York Times bestselling author Marie Bostwick takes listeners into the heart of a small Texas town and the soul of a woman who discovers her destiny there  Welcome to Too Much where the women are strong-willed and the men are handsome yet shiftless. Ever since Mary Dell Templeton and her twin sister Lydia Dale were children, their...

This wonderful set includes the unabridged performances of THE TWITS, MATILDA, GEORGES MARVELLOUS MEDICINE, DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD, CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR, THE BFG, THE WITCHES, JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, FANTASIC MR FOX AND OTHER ANIMALS

When ""Daily Telegraph"" correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating H M Stanley's famous expedition - but travelling alone. Despite warnings that his plan was 'suicidal', Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vessels including...

In this fast-paced romantic suspense, China Mack will make one final choice. Computer genius China Mack may be the former head of Vigilance, the government’s clandestine spy program, but she can still be knocked off balance. And two back-to-back personal blows have thrown her into a tailspin. While her relationship with tech billionaire Jackson Cooper is on the rocks, China is testing the boundaries of what...

In this unputdownable thriller set in the new future, a detective enters the mind of a killer to find a missing child. To ex-detective John Barnes, the machine is a dangerous and abhorrent addiction. The criminal thoughts it embedded in his brain helped him stop a serial killer, but they left him dazed—with pounding, murderous impulses. Having turned in his badge to salvage what’s left of his psyche, Barnes must return...

Rock climbers can’t afford to make careless mistakes. But Detective Inspector Nick Dixon’s former climbing partner, Jake Fayter, died doing just that. Or so it seems. Dixon suspects foul play, but his only leads are unreliable accounts of something odd happening in Cheddar Gorge seconds before Jake fell. The more Dixon learns about Jake’s life, the more he realises that Jake hadn’t been quite the man he remembered...

One of Dickens' most popular novels, Oliver Twist tells the story of a young workhouse orphan who escapes into the mean backstreets of Victorian London. There, he is thrust into a den of thieves where some of Dickens' most depraved villains preside: the incorrigible Artful Dodger, the barbarous bully Bill Sikes, and the terrible Fagin, whose knavery threatens to send them all to the gallows. A novel with autobiographical...

Ninety-one year old Ira Levinson is in trouble. Struggling to stay conscious after a car crash, with his mind fading, an image of his beloved, and long-dead, wife Ruth appears. Urging him to hang on, she lovingly recounts the joys and sorrows of their life together - how they met, the dark days of WWII, and its unrelenting effect on their families. A few miles away, college student Sophia Danko's life is about to change.

*Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Biography Award* *BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week * Wonderland is part of our cultural heritage – a shortcut for all that is beautiful and confusing; a metaphor used by artists, writers and politicians for 150 years. But beneath the fairy tale lies the complex history of the author and his subject: of Charles Dodgson, the quiet academic, and his second self, Lewis Carroll – storyteller, innovator and...

No. 1 bestselling author Josephine Cox returns with a powerful, dark love story shrouded in shocking secrets and malignant forces. All Jack's life, the nightmares had haunted him, dragging him back to a place where it was always midnight… Molly and Jack are deeply in love but their relationship is being torn apart by Jack's nightmares. Trapped in a place where he is taunted by eyes in the gloom, it is becoming harder...

Written in History - Letters that Changed the World celebrates the letter in world history and personal life. Acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore selects letters that have changed the course of global events or touched a timeless emotion - whether passion, rage, humour - from ancient...

Listen to the long-awaited sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning Thomas Cromwell trilogy. Read by Ben Miles, who played Thomas Cromwell in the Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies and...

A Genius Performance by Edward Petherbridge! Lord Peter has just shared the secrets of that mystery with his wife Harriet Vane. Then the new young Lord Attenbury - grandson of Lord Peter's first client - seeks his help again, this time to prove who owns the gigantic emerald that Wimsey last saw in 1921.

Neil Gaiman was the WINNER of the BBC Audio Drama Award 2015 for Outstanding Contribution to Radio Drama A full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman’s celebrated apocalyptic comic novel, with bonus length episodes and outtakes. According to the Nice and Accurate...

Read by two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks. A collection of 17 wonderful short stories showing that Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to...

The publication of Robinson Crusoe in London in 1719 marked the arrival of a revolutionary art form: the novel. British writers were prominent in shaping the new type of storytelling - one which reflected the experiences of ordinary people, with characters in whom readers could find not only an escape, but a deeper understanding of their own lives.

Mollie and Peter come across a chair that can fly and grant wishes while out looking for their mother's birthday present and it's not long until they are whisked away to faraway lands and meeting pixies and even Santa Claus!

The Narnia Chronicles, first published in 1950, have been and remain some of the most enduringly popular children’s books ever published. The best known, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, has been translated into 29 languages.

An unprecedented account of one of civilization's greatest achievements.The great pyramids of Giza have intrigued humanity for thousands of years. Questions about the construction and the purpose of these majestic monuments have existed since the middle period of ancient Egyptian civilization...

They lied to protect their country. He told the truth to save it. A gripping historical thriller from the bestselling author of FATHERLAND. January 1895. On a freezing morning in the heart of Paris, an army officer, Georges Picquart, witnesses a convicted spy, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, being publicly humiliated in front..

Random House presents the unabridged audiobook edition of Ask an Astronaut by Tim Peake, read by Robin Ince with an introduction by the author. How does it feel to orbit the earth ten times faster than a speeding bullet? What’s it like to eat, sleep and go to the toilet in space? And where to next – the Moon...

Just after midnight, a snowdrift stopped the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train was surprisingly full for the time of the year. But by the morning there was one passenger fewer. An American lay dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside.

The deeds and misdeeds of Uncle Silas, the rural reprobate, were renowned in the short stories H E Bates published in the 1930s.In this collection the stories are presented in full, accompanied by the original drawings by Edward Ardizzone that perfectly capture the little reed-thatched house atop a violet-banked...

George Smiley is one of the most brilliantly realised characters in British fiction. Bespectacled, tubby, eternally middle-aged and deceptively ordinary, he has a mind like a steel trap and is said to possess `the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin’. This dramatisation, set in the early 1960s, sees George Smiley investigating a murder in a...

To begin at the beginning: it is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black...' When Richard Burton breathed the opening words of "Under Milk Wood" into a microphone, broadcasting history was made.

I am the cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me.' Here are the delightful stories which Kipling first told to his own children before setting them down on paper. How the Camel got his Hump, How the Leopard got his Spots, How the Elephant got his Trunk, the Butterfly that Stamped and many others.

Sir Henry Clithering returns to Mary Mead to dine with his friends the Bantrys and suggests inviting Miss Marple. Over dinner they discuss the peculiar case of a superstitious woman who is told that a blue geranium will bring about her death. When she dies, her loyal husband is in the frame for her murder…

Felicity Jones, David Tennant and Benedict Cumberbatch star in BBC Radio 4's full-cast dramatisation of the novel by Jane Austen, one of the great English classics. Seeking a position in society, young Fanny Price goes to live with her rich aunt and uncle. But her life there is not as she might wish. Felicity Jones...

Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals. Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most...

Television and TV viewing are not what they once were - and that's a good thing, according to award-winning author and critic Clive James. Since serving as television columnist for the London Observer from 1972 to 1982, James has witnessed a radical change in content, format, and programming, and in the very manner in which television is watched. Here he examines this unique cultural revolution, providing a...

Winner of the Specsavers Popular Fiction Book of the Year 2018. Costa First Novel Book Award winner 2017. The Sunday Times best seller. AudioFile Magazine Earphones Award Winner. Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon. Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive - but...

Redwall Abbey, the peaceful home of a community of mice, slumbers in the warmth of a summer afternoon. The mice are preparing for a great Jubilee feast. But Cluny the evil, one-eyed rat warlord is advancing....

Resourceful, adventurous and utterly indefatigable, Sophy is hardly the mild-mannered girl that the Rivenhalls expect when they agree to take her in. Kind-hearted Aunt Lizzy is shocked; stern Cousin Charles and his humourless fiancee Eugenia are disapproving.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript...

Brilliant idea! Excellent! Muslim dating? Well, I had no idea you were allowed to date.' Then he leaned towards me and looked at me sympathetically. 'Are your parents quite disappointed?' Unlucky in love once again after her sort-of-boyfriend/possible-marriage-partner-to-be proves a little too close to his parents...

For the kings and queens of England, a trumpet fanfare or crash of cymbals could be as vital a weapon as a cannon. Showcasing a monarch’s power, prestige and taste, music has been the lifeblood of many a royal dynasty. From sacred choral works to soaring symphonies, Music and Monarchy looks at how England’s character was shaped by its music. To David Starkey and Katie Greening, works...

Big, generous-hearted Benny and the elfin Eve Malone have been best friends growing up in sleepy Knockglen. Their one thought is to get to Dublin, to university and to freedom... On their first day at University College, Dublin, the inseparable pair are thrown together with fellow students Nan Mahon, beautiful but selfish, and handsome Jack Foley. But trouble is brewing for Benny and Eve's new circle of friends, and before long, they find passion, tragedy - and the independence they yearned for.

By the school house at Shancarrig stands a copper beech, its bark scarred with the names and dreams of the pupils who have grown up under its branches.

Clive Merrison stars as the enduringly popular sleuth with Michael Williams as Watson in this collection of stories from the unique, fully dramatised BBC Radio 4 canon. In these eight intriguing tales, Holmes and Watson solve cases that range from the suspicious to the downright strange. They encounter mysteries as diverse as vanishing staff, secret...

AD262 - the Imperium is in turmoil after the struggle for the throne. Furthermore, Ephesus, Asia's metropolis, lies in ruins, shattered by a mighty earthquake. Yet an even greater threat to the Empire advances from the North. The barbaric Goth tribes sail towards Ephesus, determined to pillage the city. Only Ballista, Warrior of Rome, knows the...

Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East distills eleven years of expert reporting for the New York Times, Reuters, and the Atlantic into a clarion call for change. Here Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Rohde exposes how a dysfunctional Washington squandered billions on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, neglected its true allies in the war on terror, and failed to employ its most potent...

The first series of a major BBC Radio 4 drama serial tracking the fortunes of a group of characters on the home front. Each episode was broadcast exactly one hundred years after the events it portrays, through which the characters struggle to maintain normality while Britain is involved in the First World War.

Ross presents us with a vision of late Rome that is tense, exhilarating, complex and exotic... When a treacherous act of murder throws the western provinces into turmoil, Aurelius Castus is ordered to take command of the military forces on the Rhine. But he soon discovers that the frontier is a place where the boundaries between civilisation and barbarism, freedom and slavery, honour and treason have little...

Rome is in peril... The old order is changing. Centurion Aurelius Castus has been summoned back from Britain to find himself caught up in a treasonous conspiracy threatening to bring down the Emperor Constantine. Rewarded for saving the emperor's life, Castus is promoted to the elite imperial bodyguard: the swords around the throne. But he soon discovers the court to be as dangerous as the battlefield.

The Roman Empire is on the brink of civil war. Only Maxentius, tyrant of Rome, stands between the emperor Constantine and supreme power in the west. Aurelius Castus, promoted from the ranks for valour, is now a tribune in Constantine's army. But as Constantine becomes increasingly devoted to Christianity, Castus is forced to ask himself whether he is backing the wrong man. The coming war will decide the fate of...

Aurelius Castus is one of the leading military commanders of an empire riven by civil war, but age is telling upon him. Castus discovers that the emperor's son Crispus aims to depose his ruthless father and restore the old ways of Rome. With a sadistic torturer on his trail, Castus must choose between honour and survival, and face a final confrontation with the most powerful man in the Roman world: the...

Once a soldier in an elite legion from the Danube, Aurelius Castus believes his glory days are over, stuck in Britain's provincial backwater. But history is about to take a hand and when the king of the Picts, the savage people beyond Hadrian's Wall, dies in mysterious circumstances, Castus is selected to command the bodyguard of a Roman envoy sent to negotiate with the barbarians. But the diplomatic mission ends...

At the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, lives an embittered old judge who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. But with the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and his cook’s son trying to stay a step ahead of US immigration services, this is far from easy. When a Nepalese insurgency threatens Sai's blossoming romance with her handsome tutor they are forced to consider their colliding interests.

Drugs. Extortion. Slavery. Organized crime is fighting for a hold on John Rebus’s peaceful Scotland. And when Rebus rescues a young Bosnian girl forced into prostitution, he breaks a policeman’s golden rule to never get personally involved in a case. Add to that the hunt for an elderly Nazi accused of slaughtering an entire French village, and Rebus wonders just how evil humans can be—until his own daughter is mortally...

A body is found in the attic of a fabulous Long Island estate.

There is a claw print scorched into the wall, and the stench of sulfur chokes the air.

When FBI Special Agent Pendergast investigates the gruesome crime, he discovers that thirty years ago four men conjured something unspeakable.

Has the devil come to claim his due?

Some thing can't be undone.

After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such best sellers as The Mother Tongue and Made in America, decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland, and partly because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another.

From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, The Neapolitan Novels is an exploration of the friendship between Lila and Lena, two bright young girls who grew up in the tough, rough streets of post-war Naples. This is no normal friendship; it's a friendship that loves, hurts, supports and destroys - and yet it is one that lasts a lifetime. These four full-cast BBC adaptations bring the streets of Naples vividly to life.

By the international number one best-selling author of Tell No One and Fool Me Once, soon to be a major movie starring Julia Roberts. The boy who had been missing for 10 years was right in front of him.... A decade ago kidnappers grabbed two boys from wealthy families and demanded ransom, then went silent. No trace of the boys ever surfaced. For 10 years their families have been left with nothing but painful...

The Gormenghast trilogy was one of the most unusual cult cycles of the 20th-century. In this surreal, darkly comic fantasy telling the story of Titus, 77th Earl of Groan, Mervyn Peake created a vivid world with strong characters enveloped in intrigue and fearful intent. Here are the three novels completed by Peake, and a fourth, a completion of a fragment left at his early death in 1968. Rupert Degas, an astonishingly versatile...

A Genius Performance by Michael Jayston! Commander Dalgliesh is recuperating from a life-threatening illness when he receives a call for advice from an elderly friend who works as a chaplain in a home for the disabled on the Dorset coast. Dalgliesh arrives to discover that Father Baddeley has ....

Children have a knack of asking great, but challenging, questions: Why is the sea salty? How far away is space? Why can't I tickle myself? What makes me me? But how are we supposed to answer them? Imagine if we could turn to a leading expert and ask them to answer on our behalf. This book gathers over 100 real questions from children and...

In September 2014 the wreck of a sailing vessel was discovered at the bottom of the sea in the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic. It was broken at the stern and covered in a woolly coat of underwater vegetation. Its whereabouts had been a mystery for over a century and a half. Its name was HMS Erebus.

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...