The three great-nephews of cantankerous Mr Penicuik know better than to ignore his summons, especially when it concerns the bestowal of his fortune. His freakish plan is that his fortune will be his step-daughter's dowry.
Adam Deveril, the new Viscount Lynton and a hero at Salamanca, returns from the Peninsula War to find his family on the brink of ruin and the broad acres of his ancestral home mortgaged to the hilt. It is Lord Oversley, father of Adam's first love, who tactfully introduces him to Mr Jonathan Chaleigh, a City man of...
"Strange as it may seem, the idea of 'God' developed in a market economy in a spirit of aggressive capitalism," Karen Armstrong asserts in her fascinating work A History of God. Armstrong considers herself a "historian of ideas," and with this broad view she gives a compelling account of the correspondences...
A Genius Performance by Philip Franks! Campion returns from three years work for the War Office in Europe to find that Lugg, his manservant, has brought him an unusual gift: the black silk nightdress-clad body of a dead woman, an apparent suicide. Wanting only to get away to a well-deserved rest, Campion...
It was not unusual to find the beautiful bronzed body of the sun-loving Arlena Stuart stretched out on a beach, face down. Only, on this occasion, there was no sun...she had been strangled. Ever since Arlena's arrival at the resort, Hercule Poirot had detected sexual tension in the seaside air. But could ...
This disk features the soundtrack from 2 TV programmes - Mrs Richards featuring Joan Sanderson - The second episode is The Hotel Inspectors featuring Bernard Cribbins.
Morse had solved so many mysteries in his life. Was he now, he wondered, beginning to glimpse the solution to the greatest mystery of them all? How can the discovery of a short story by a beautiful Oxford graduate lead Chief Inspector Morse to her murderer? What awaits Morse and Lewis in Room 231 of the...
Master sleuth Hercule Poirot draws upon his detective skills and insight into the human heart as he investigates various crimes in "The Incredible Theft," "Triangle at Rhodes," and the title story. Read by Nigel Hawthorne and Hugh Fraser.
Six people sit down to dinner at a table laid for seven. In front of the empty place is a sprig of rosemary - in solemn memory of Rosemary Barton who died at the same table exactly one year previously. No one present on that fateful night would ever forget the woman's face, contorted beyond recognition - or ....
The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy features all five complete and unabridged audiobooks of this much-loved 'trilogy' in a CD pack. On 12 October 1979 the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor (and Earth) was made available to humanity. This was ...
The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night, the stone is stolen. Suspicion then falls on a hunchbacked housemaid, on Rachel's cousin Franklin Blake, on a troupe of mysterious Indian jugglers, and on Rachel herself.
When a practical joke played on Gerry Wade involving alarm clocks turns out to be murder the case is taken up by Lady 'Bundle' Brent and Jimmy Thesiger. Trying to work out the significance of the seven clocks found at the murder scene, they come across the Seven Dials Club.
While playing an erratic round of golf, Bobby Jones slices his ball over the edge of a cliff. His ball is lost, but on the rocks below he finds the crumpled body of a dying man. With his final breath the man opens his eyes and says, 'Why didn't they ask Evans?' Haunted by these words, Bobby and his vivacious...
Agatha Christie’s audacious mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. For an instant the two trains ran together, side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth witnessed a murder.
This 10-part history of mathematics reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mathematicians struggling to get their ideas heard. Professor Marcus du Sautoy shows how these masters of abstraction find a role in the real world and proves that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science. He explores the relationship between Newton and...
Venetia Aldridge QC is a distinguished barrister. When she agrees to defend Garry Ashe, accused of the brutal murder of his aunt, it is one more opportunity to triumph in her career as a criminal lawyer.
WARNING: CONTAINS AN UNLIKELY IMMIGRANT, AN UNSUNG COUNTRY, A BUMPY ROMANCE, SEVERAL SHATTERED PRECONCEPTIONS, TRACES OF INSIGHT, A DOZEN NUNS AND A REFERENDUM. Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop. Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament. In 2016, Ben Aitken moved to Poland while he still could. It wasn’t love that took him...
"A Christmas Carol" is the best-known and best-loved of Dickens' 'Christmas Books', and the story of the miser Scrooge's redemption has become as much part of the Christmas tradition as plum pudding and carols themselves. Will Tiny Tim live to see another Christmas? Naxos
Some say that Andy Dalziel wasn't ready for God, others that God wasn't ready for Dalziel. Either way, despite his recent proximity to a terrorist blast, the Superintendent remains firmly of this world. And, while Death may be the cure for all diseases, Dalziel is happy to settle for a few weeks' care under a tender nurse. Convalescing in...
n 1963, Stephen Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Yet he went on to Cambridge to become a brilliant researcher and Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.
Stephen Hawking's worldwide bestseller, A Brief History of Time, has been a landmark publication in scientific books. A Briefer History of Time expands on the great subjects of the original. Purely technical concepts, such as the mathematics of chaotic boundary conditions, are gone.
This set covers 10 x 15 minute series on Radio 4 which was part of a two-week "Brain Season".
It explains in clear terms the latest discoveries in neuroscience. In this unprecedented journey, covering over 2,500 years of development in our understanding of what it is to be human.
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...
In 1913, English physicist Henry Moseley established an elegant method for 'counting' the elements. Soon afterwards, it became clear that there were precisely seven elements missing from the periodic table―those that had yet to be isolated among the 92 naturally occurring elements from hydrogen (#1) to uranium (#92).
Ask a dozen people to name a genius and the odds are that 'Einstein' will spring to their lips. Ask them the meaning of 'relativity' and few of them will be able to tell you what it is.
In this astonishing and startling audiobook, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government ....
We are obsessed with our health, yet we are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory and misleading information. Ben Goldacre dismantles the dodgy science behind some of the great drug trials
Drawing on the lives of five great scientists, this "scholarly, insightful, and beautifully written book" (Martin Rees, author of From Here to Infinity) illuminates the path to scientific discovery.
Cancer is the second biggest killer in the world, but few of us understand how it works or how we treat it. In this illuminating introductory audiobook, Paul Scotting explains the science behind the disease and explores why some of us are more likely to develop it than others.
For most people, thoughtful behaviour and common decency are in short supply, or simply forgotten in hurried lives of emails, mobile phones and multi-tasking.
In CHOOSING CIVILITY, civility expert P M Forni identifies the 25 rules that are most essential in connecting effectively and happily with others.
In the past, we filled our free time with the tools at our disposal. Television became a kind of universal part-time job, and sitcoms and soap operas sponged up our cognitive surplus: the collective surfeit of time, intellect and energy at our disposal.
An expose of the current state of psychiatry that reveals how the pursuit of pharmaceutical riches has compromised the patients' well-being. In an effort to enlighten a new generation about its growing reliance on psychiatry, this illuminating volume investigates why psychiatry has become the ....
Over the past few years, devastating tsunamis off the coast of the Indian Ocean have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Even more alarmingly, scientists predict that these tsunamis, as well as a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, will be striking with even greater frequency and may eventually threaten Hawaii, California, and Oregon.
For decades we have been taught that fat is bad for us, carbohydrates better, and that the key to a healthy weight is eating less and exercising more. Yet despite this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes.
Our gut is as important as our brain or heart, yet we know very little about how it works and many of us are too embarrassed to ask questions. In Gut, Giulia Enders breaks this taboo, revealing the latest science on how much our digestive system has to offer.
The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way.
Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively.
From the New York Times?bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life ..............
This riveting audio explains history's most exciting discoveries. In this series, listeners will travel back in time, experiencing the lives and cultures of some of the world's greatest scientists.
The study of life and its existence in the universe, known as astrobiology, is now one of the hottest areas of both popular science and serious academic research, fusing biology, chemistry, astrophysics, and geology. Lewis Dartnell tours its latest findings, and explores some of the most fascinating ....
One of the nation's most popular presenters examines twenty marvels of the natural world from his extraordinary and pioneering experiences.
What was Sir David's first pet? Which animal would he most like to be? What creature lays 'the biggest egg in the world'? How do you communicate with an ancient nomadic community in Fiji? And what did Sir David do when confronted by a ten-foot-long reptile?
How does your personality shape your life , and what, if anything, can you do about it?Are you hardwired for happiness, or born to brood? Do you think you're in charge of your future, or do you surf the waves of unknowable fate? Would you be happier, or just less socially adept,
In clinical trials, it's called the placebo effect. But patients treated with placebos don't just feel better. It's not just 'in their heads'. They can heal their bodies by healing their thoughts. For years, pioneers in the medical community have been extolling the virtues of the mind's power to heal the body.
Why do many flowers have five or eight petals, but very few six or seven? Why do snowflakes have sixfold symmetry? Why do tigers have stripes but leopards have spots? Mathematics is to nature as Sherlock Holmes is to evidence.
""On the Origin of Species" must be high on any serious list of the most important and influential books ever written. On its first publication in 1859, Thomas Henry Huxley exclaimed 'How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that.'
Who better than Sir Patrick Moore to introduce us to the fascinating world of astronomy? As the presenter for well over 50 years of The Sky at Night, he has become synonymous with this area of science.
In this technology-driven age, it’s tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer argues in this sparkling debut, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first.
Hear a day in the life of the Amazonian rainforest, a continuous sequence of beautiful and exotic sounds. From dawn till dusk the magic of the rainforest unfolds, with rare birds, monkeys, insects, frogs and toads. There is an afternoon equatorial rainstorm, and the evening chorus of birds once ....
A brilliant examination into how the internet is profoundly changing the way we think.
In this groundbreaking book, Wired writer Clive Thompson argues that the internet is boosting our brainpower, encouraging new ways of thinking, and making us more not less intelligent as is so often claimed.
A brilliant examination into how the internet is profoundly changing the way we think.
In this groundbreaking book, Wired writer Clive Thompson argues that the internet is boosting our brainpower, encouraging new ways of thinking, and making us more not less intelligent as is so often claimed.
Dr James Hansen, the world's leading scientist on climate issues, speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: the planet is hurtling to a climatic point of no return. Hansen - whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned US Congress about global warming - is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide.
Jason Padgett was an ordinary, not terribly bright, 41-year-old working in his father's furniture shop when he was the victim of a brutal mugging outside a karaoke bar in 2002.
That same night his stepfather died of cancer, and two weeks later his only brother went missing (his body was discovered three year later).
Why would a casino try and stop you from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if a statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted?
The Ancestor's Tale is a pilgrimage back through time; a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about 6 million years in the past, orangutans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey ...
From a bestselling author and the most-followed psychologist on Twitter, this "intriguing new slant to personal transformation" (Kirkus Reviews) shows you how to take control of your life in an instant. Victorian philosopher William James had a theory about emotion and behavior:
How feminine values can solve our toughest problems and build a more prosperous future Among 64,000 people surveyed in thirteen nations, two thirds feel the world would be a better place if men thought more like women.
Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far and wide.
The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic.
The classic personal account of Watson and Crick s groundbreaking discovery of the structure of DNA, now with an introduction by Sylvia Nasar, author of "A Beautiful Mind."
For two hundred years a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter.
Winner of 2013 Best Book Award from the National Academies. Finalist for 2013 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Winner of the 2013 Reed Environmental Writing Award. Winner of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. Runner-up for 2013 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
The truth about the Ebola Virus. This book looks into the current information about this shocking virus and how the US Government have been involved. Facinating listen!
In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves ...
The Making of the Fittest This history of DNA offers listeners a tour of the massive DNA record of three billion years of evolution to see how the fittest are made. This work argues for evolution as it examines immortal genes, fossil genes, and genes that bear the scars of past battles with horrible diseases.
Is morality universal? Why are men less faithful than women? Why do some businesses succeed while others collapse?
If we have a natural impulse to empathise and care for each other, why are there psychopaths? Neuroscientist and economist Paul Zak has spent 10 years researching to answer these questions and discovering the chemical driver of our behaviour.
The world was shocked when a computer, Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov, arguably the greatest human chess player ever to have lived. This remarkable victory, and other, more day-to-day innovations, beg serious questions: what are the limits of what computers can do Can they think Do they learn
In his new book human paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall argues that a long tradition of "human exceptionalism" in paleoanthropology has distorted the picture of human evolution. Drawing partly on his own career - from young scientist in awe of his elders to crotchety elder statesman -
P.M. Forni is America's civility expert. In his first two books he taught readers the rules of civil behaviour and ways of responding to rudeness.
In "The Thinking Life", he looks at the importance of thinking in our lives: how we do it, why we don't do enough of it and why we need to do more of it because, for Forni, serious thinking leads to the good life.
Unravelling the latest amazing breakthroughs in theoretical physics, Stephen Hawking guides the reader through the evolution of Einsteinian physics to a universe of ten dimensions and a so-called theory of everything.
Stephen Hawking is an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness of his ideas but for the clarity and wit with which he expresses them. His phenomenal multi-million-copy bestseller A Brief History of Time introduced the fascinating landscape of theoretical physics to readers all over the world. Now, in a major new book, Hawking turns to the most important breakthroughs that have occurred in the years since...
With genius, passion and unmatched flair, this one-volume "greatest hits" of the Feynman lectures places you in the classroom of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant teachers.
A dramatic rendering of life aboard a whale-saving pirate ship traces the efforts of a vigilante crew to stop illegal Japanese whaling in the Antarctica seas, in an account that profiles the Sea Shepherd Society of radical environmentalists and the charismatic captain Paul Watson.
After completing work on Visconti's Death in Venice, the celebrated actor seeks a refuge from 20 years of 'continual motion'. This dream of a peaceful retreat materialises itself in the form of a neglected farmhouse in the South of France. However, before he is rewarded with the calm he craves, he is forced to...
Filling the gaps left between his previous memoirs, as well as highlighting new episodes, Backcloth explores the patterns of pleasure and pain that have made up Bogarde's extraordinary life. Based on personal letters, notebooks and diaries and covering many aspects of a celebrated life, we share experiences...
We have spent decades optimizing our waking hours, but what about the precious hours after we doze off (or try to)? As the most active time for our brains and the most important element to a calmer, happier life, sleep has become the topic of our times. Drawing on the success of Calm, the #1 app for sleep...
Mitch is a 25-year-old with commitment issues. Leonard is a five-year-old kid with asthma and vision problems, who captivates everyone he meets. Pearl is Leonard's teenage mother, who's trying to hide a violent secret from her past. Life has given Pearl every reason to mistrust people, but circumstances force...
These six cassettes contain a Radio 4 dramatization of Dickens's darkly comic novel. Jonas and Martin Chuzzlewit are cousins whose characters and destinies form a stark contrast. Jonas descends into a life of unrelenting evil, while Martin, by sheer good fortune, escapes a similar fate.
David Beckham is one of the world's foremost media icons, his popularity transcending sport and cultural divides. This is his own in-depth account of his career to date, for Manchester United and England, and of his childhood, family and personal life.
Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century drama. Described by its author as a chronical play, it presents the memorable story of the Maid of Orleans. This Bernard Shaw at his very best!
When a close colleague is brutally attacked, Inspector John Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body, and a long forgotten night of terror and murder. Pursued by dangerous ghosts and tormented by the coded secrets of his colleague's notebook, Rebus must piece together the most complex and confusing of jigsaws. But not everyone wants the puzzle solved - perhaps not even Rebus himself...
THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. YOU DON'T KNOW HER. BUT SHE KNOWS YOU. Rear Window meets Gone Girl, in this exceptional and startling psychological thriller Gripping, enthralling - a top-notch thriller and a compulsive read' S J WATSON, bestselling author of Before I Go To Sleep.
A house of sin, a house of murder… Lonely, ageing and chronically ill, Ned Jones is found dead on sweltering summer afternoon in his rooms. Everyone assumes he died of natural causes. But after the post-mortem suggests otherwise, Detective Chief Inspector Michael McKenna and his team become involved. In search of Ned's killer, McKenna visits the house of Edith Harris, where Ned lodged. But fragile...
When a childhood friend unexpectedly attempts to murder him in Switzerland, an American investment banker begins to unravel a mystery involving his famous financier father and a mysterious OSS case code-named Sigma.
The story of the Nile, from the Mountains of the Moon to the Mediterranean. The tale starts with Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke setting out to find the sources of the Nile. It continues with Baker of the Nile and his wife struggling with malaria, and of the famous greeting between Stanley and Livingstone. The book examines the results of their discoveries: the building of the Suez canal; the Khedive Ismail's appointment of Gordon as Governor-General of Sudan; and the story of the last days of Khartoum. The book concludes with Kitchener's military success at Omdurman which made Queen Victoria the ruler of the huge area from Alexandria to the highlands of Uganda and which resulted in the Nile being, for the first tiem, an open highway from Central Africa to the sea.
The third gripping novel in the Jessica Daniel series. Someone has left a severed hand in the centre of Manchester and the only clue Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel has to go on is CCTV footage of a woman in a long black robe placing it carefully on the ground. With a lengthy missing persons list and frantic families wondering if the body part could belong to their absent loved ones, she has plenty to deal with...
Roald Dahl - the grand master of the short story - turns his pen to anything, twisting everyday life into powerful, and sometimes terrifying fantasies. Seven superb stories, full of Roald Dahl's usual magic, mystery and suspense: meet the boy who can talk to animals, the man who can see with his eyes closed, and find out about the treasure, buried...
A deadly blizzard has hit a small township in Maine. Power, fuel, water and communications are giving out and the storm has stripped social and moral conventions, down to the basic, selfish instinct of survival. This is a dramatic, page-turning novel from a master story-teller. Allegory or melodrama, this story of fear will not fail to excite
He was a vicar to die for - and he did! Agatha is going through a man-hating phase and so is unmoved by news of the captivating new curate. But when she meets the golden-haired, blue-eyed Tristan Delon, she is swept off her feet . . . along with every other female in the village. She is positively ecstatic when he invites her to dine with him but the next day Agatha is left with a hangover from hell - and his cold...
Whether you're looking to relive those treasured moments of your childhood or hoping to share some of your old favourites with your own little ones, there's no storybook world more pleasant than that of Beatrix Potter. Meet again the famous characters that children love and adore: Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, the Flopsy Bunnies, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Tom Kitten, Jeremy Fisher, Jemima Puddle-Duck and many more.
Walk your Way to Health and Well-Being Regardless of your level of fitness, you can improve your cardiovascular health, weight control, stress management, and overall well-being through a simple walking program. In the American Heart Association's Healthy Heart Walking CD, the leading crusader in the fight...