Agatha Christie’s most famous murder mystery, read by director and star of the hugely anticipated 2017 film adaptation, Kenneth Branagh. Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year, but by the morning...
Nick Buckley was an unusual name for a pretty young woman. But then she had led an unusual life. First, on a treacherous Cornish hillside, the brakes on her car failed. Then, on a coastal path, a falling boulder missed her by inches. Later, an oil painting fell and almost crushed her in bed.
Sharpe’s Havoc brings Sharpe to Portugal, and reunites him with Harper. It is 1809 and Lieutenant Sharpe, who belongs to a small British army that has a precarious foothold in Portugal, is sent to look for Kate Savage, the daughter of an English wine shipper.
A Genius Performance by Edward Petherbridge! In this autobiographical work Edward Petherbridge recounts his time at the National Theatre and his life as a jobbing actor. Wonderfully whitty and full of real life insights, this book will take you back to the great days of The Master (Olivier) ....
When Commissario Brunetti is summoned to the hospital bedside of a senior paediatrician whose skull has been fractured, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men, a Carabinieri captain and two privates from out of town, have burst into the doctor's apartment....
Marking the 175 anniversary of Charles Dickens’ immortal classic ‘A Christmas Carol’, celebrated actor Simon Callow and one of the world’s most respected brass bands The Brighouse and Rastrick Band join forces for this very special Christmas album. It combines Simon Callow’s acclaimed adaptation of Charles...
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.
Barchester Towers is Anthony Trollope's comic masterpiece. Ranged either side of the unfathomable Victorian divide between the High Anglican clergy and their modern, evangelical brethren we meet the saintly Septimus Harding and the furious Archdeacon Grantly and, opposing, the fearsome ...
In the run up to the biggest NASCAR raceweek of the year, Dr Temperance Brennan is called to a landfill site backing onto the Charlotte speedway track in north Carolina. Someone has discovered a barrel of hardened asphalt with a human hand poking through the top. With the country's press trained...
Thomas Porteous is in the final stages of dying. His wife Di is both scared for him and for herself. Soon his family will turn up to claim their share's of the loot. The art collection they shared is very valuable.
This set contains unabridged audio versions of the first three Harry Potter books - the perfect gift for young witches and wizards. They might not be on the Hogwarts Express but they can still enjoy the magic of these timeless tales. Narrated by Stephen Fry, they follow the young wizard Harry ......
A new, fully updated edition of David Attenborough’s groundbreaking Life on Earth. David Attenborough’s unforgettable meeting with gorillas became an iconic moment for millions of television viewers. Life on Earth, the series and accompanying book, fundamentally changed the way we view and interact with..
"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain--which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad--old churches, country lanes, people saying 'Mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but,' people apologizing to me when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast ...
Smiley's People is one of John le Carré's classic Cold War novels and George Smiley one of his most acclaimed characters. Into a shadowy, violent and intricate world steeped in moral ambivalence steps George Smiley, sometime acting Chief of the Circus, as the Secret Service is known.
Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series. When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case. Strike is a war veteran -...
Renee Ballard works the midnight shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing few, as each morning she turns everything over to the daytime units. It's a frustrating job for a once up-and-coming detective, but it's no accident. She's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual...
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...
In the second novel in the Pop Larkin series, the Larkin family descends upon Brittany in France. Like fish out of water, they find that things don't quite turn out their way: the weather is less than ideal, the food is awful and the hotel is in a bad state of repair. But things slowly improve as Pop manages to ...
Decades ago, Germans bombed the village at Lamb Lane. But now redevelopment is under way. Rubble of a bombed building is cleared and, during the excavation, a workman finds the skeleton of a pregnant girl with a bullet lodged in her spine. The trail is definitely stone cold when C. D. Sloan takes on the case...
A moving and intelligent comedy about finding love without losing yourself.' Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project Grace Lisa Vandenburg counts. The letters in her name (19). The steps she takes every morning to the local café (920). The number of poppy seeds on her orange cake, which dictates...
Rodney Williams's disappearance seems typical to Chief Inspector Wexford - a simple case of a man running off with a woman other than his wife. But when another woman reports that her husband is missing, the case turns unpleasantly complex.
Book 9 in the Courteney Series. It is 1667 and Sir Francis Courteney and his son Henry Hal Courteney are on patrol in their fighting caravel off the Agulhas Cape of Southern Africa. They have a letter from Charles II sanctioning them to hunt down and capture enemy ships beyond the line.
In the 1960s, the infamous Bible John terrorised Scotland when he murdered three women, taking three souvenirs. Thirty years later, a copycat is at work, dubbed Johnny Bible. DI John Rebus's unconventional methods have got him in trouble before - now he's taken away from the inquiry and sent...
A Saturday evening at a school fundraiser ends abruptly for local solicitor Will Rockne, found in his car by his wife, shot though the head. A baffling and motiveless murder? Knowing Rockne's claims to be more then just a small-time lawyer, Scobie Malone has his suspicions.
When in 1934, Viscount Rothermere discovered that the Germans were steadily building modern passenger aircraft that could easily be converted into bombers he commissioned the Bristol Aeroplane Company to build him a passenger aircraft that would be "the best in the world".
Boobela is a giant - a young, shy and rather lonely giant. Worm is a worm - wise and opinionated, but above all, he's a clever and loyal friend. They live in a world that's a lot like ours, but not quite. When Boobela meets Worm, she has the chance to overcome her fears, pursue her strange and magical powers ...
The Number One bestselling crime series from the award-winning Stuart MacBride. In this third DS Logan McRae thriller, The Granite City’s seedy side is about to be exposed… The Granite City’s seedy side is about to be exposed… A serial rapist is leaving a string of tortured women behind him, but while...
Shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award, 2004. Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet, Lost on the left, Found on the right, and the two never seem to balance.
The year is 1931. The new and luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. Among the first-class passengers on board are two English confidence tricksters, making a discreet exit from a little awkwardness they have left behind them in the United States. A chance meeting...
Stuart MacBride's number one best-selling crime series opens with this award-winning debut. DS Logan McRae and the police in Aberdeen hunt a child killer who stalks the frozen streets. Winter in Aberdeen: murder, mayhem and terrible weather... It's DS Logan McRae's first day back on the job after...
The second in the series set in the Derbyshire Peak District, Dancing with the Virgins is a tense psychological follow-up to Stephen Booth’s acclaimed debut Black Dog. ‘The body of the woman sprawled obscenely among the stones… She looked like a dead woman, dancing.’ The ring of cairns known as the...
Stalking a poisoner at the local zoo, Inspector John Rebus comes across a paedophile taking pictures of children. When the social workers claim he is there for legitimate educational reasons, Rebus is faced with a dilemma - should he be outed to protect local kids or given a chance to start anew?
"A fascinating and thought-provoking story, one that sheds light on the origins of... the current challenging situation in physics." --Wall Street Journal When the fuzzy indeterminacy of quantum mechanics overthrew the orderly world of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger were at the forefront...
Tristram Abberley was an acclaimed English poet of the 1930s whose legendary reputation was sealed when he died fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Nearly 50 years later, his sister Beatrix is brutally murdered in her seaside cottage. Her family are stunned by the crime...
The first book in Bernard Cornwell's bestselling Grail Quest series, in a bright and bold repackage. The year is 1342. The English, led by Edward III, are laying waste to the French countryside. The army may be led by the King, but it is the archers, the common men, who are England's secret weapon.
There is a door at the end of a silent corridor. And it's haunting Harry Potter's dreams. Why else would he be waking in the middle of the night, screaming in terror?
A Genius Performance by Stephen Fry! The 5th book in the series. Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses. "It is time," he said, "for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything."
Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught many harsh lessons - at the kitchen table, at Chapel and around the pit-head. Looking back on the hardships of his early life, where difficult days are faced with courage but the valleys swell with the sound of Welsh voices
Catherine has become a victim in her own home. First a string of nuisance calls, then a vicious attack by a mysterious intruder. Now, as she struggles to come to terms with her injuries, two very different men seem anxious to uncover the truth. There is Terry Devlin, entrepreneur and fixer, the local boy...
Michael Latham, once a leading expert on Soviet affairs, finds himself becalmed at the age of thirty-seven transcribing Russian language broadcasts at the BBC’s monitoring service in Caversham. His wife has left him; he is having an affair with a colleague whom he despises; he visits a therapist twice a week.
After Philip Stenning is involved in a near-fatal plane crash, he feels he owes a debt of gratitude to the man who rescued him. However, his mysterious saviour is an escaped convict, and Stenning's determination to help leads him into a tense and dramatic adventure of intrigue, drug-running and murder.
It is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing... A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city's ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is...
Felicity Grant is a women in control of her own life. As chairman and managing director of Grant Holdings, and with Stallymore Castle as her home, she is very sure of her own decisions. That is until she meets Jake Ashton, the maverick artist, who gets under her skin like no one else has.
A Genius Performance by Anton Lesser! Paradise Lost is the greatest epic poem in the English language. In words remarkable for their richness of rhythm and imagery, Milton tells the story of Man's creation, fall and redemption - to "justify the ways of God to men". Naxos
Why should distinguished Edwardian Cabinet minister Edwin Straford resign at the height of his career? Why does the woman he loves so suddenly reject him? Why, 70 years later, should people go to such lengths to prevent the truth coming out?
Life couldn't be better for Lucinda Purefoy. Granted it's a little embarrassing, her father being the Bishop of Aldershot, but she's got a steady boyfriend, a degree in social sciences from Manchester University and the offer of a job in advertising. With all that, she felt she should 'pay back her debt to society'
The idyllic Scottish home of ex-rock star Nick MacKenzie and his exotic wife Alusha is a haven of peace and security. Until the day a small plane with a deadly chemical cargo flies off course. In the tragic aftermath, Daisy Field, environmental campaigner, picks up the trail. She's determined to fight...
Rebus is off the case - literally. A few days into the murder inquiry of an Edinburgh art dealer, Rebus blows up at a colleague. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - in other words, he's in the Last Chance Saloon. Rebus is assigned to an old, unsolved case, but there are those in his...
When Tom Cutter hires Constantine Shaklin as an engineer in his air-freight business, he little realises the extraordinary gifts of his new recruit. Shaklin possesses a religious power which inspires everyone he meets to a new faith and hope for humanity. As Cutter's business grows across Asia, so...
Alex Crawford, an aid worker, is given an assignment in Bosnia by secret service agents who want information about a massacre in a Muslim village. His target is ruthless killer Milan Pravic, codenamed "The Scorpion". The only witness to the massacre was a little Muslim girl, now in deadly danger.
Colette McVeigh: widow, mother, and terrorist. A woman who has lived the Republican cause for all of her 29 years. A woman whose brothers are both heavily involved in the IRA, whose husband was killed by the British security forces. A woman who is now an informer for MI5. Arrested in an...
Project Skydancer was the brainchild of the Ministry of Defence. Beautiful and terrifying in its simplicity, DS29 had designed new warheads for Polaris missiles, warheads that with consummate ease could evade the new batteries of anti-ballistic missiles the Russians had set up around their prime military targets.
In the heart of the Cold War, they sent him to plot the ultimate assassination.
Now they want him dead... It is 1953. Joseph Stalin, the world's most tyrannical dictator, is teetering on the edge of insanity, and about to plunge the world into nuclear chaos. Only one man and one woman can penetrate the Iron Curtain and stop this madman, before it's too late.
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.
Shortlisted for Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the year, 2008. When the bizarrely mutilated and long-dead body of a young woman is found in a ditch in Manham, an isolated and insular village in the Norfolk marshlands, it isn't just the fact that she had been a friend that disturbs Dr. David Hunter.
Imbued with his love for India, and informed by his experience of India (where he worked for the BBC for over 20 years), Mark Tully has woven together a series of stories set in Uttar Pradesh, which tell of very different lives.
Winner of the Mystery Readers International, Macavity Award for Best Novel, 2004. Shortlisted for Audible's Listen of the Year, 2006. A woman is found strangled on a beach in Sussex. It takes the police 12 days to discover she was a top profiler for the National Crime Faculty. Why was she killed?
MI6 agent Sam Packer watches powerlessly as a trouble-making gunrunner is shot down in front of him on a lonely road in Zambia. As life slips from his grasp the arms smuggler whispers a heart-stopping warning to Sam: a terrorist gang has a horror weapon and means to commit mass murder.
The thrilling launch of David Starkey's new mammoth venture – MONARCHY: three books linked to 18 hours of television on the Kings and Queens of England. Volume 1 The Early Kings covers the retreat of the Romans from Britain in 410 to the fall of the House of Lancaster in the middle...
Based on a true episode, this sharply comic novel and Waugh's own biography are entangled in a richly fascinating way. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold - A Conversation Piece recounts a period of mental confusion and breakdown in the life of Gilbert Pinfold, an established novelist of mature years.
A Genius Performance by Edward Petherbridge! Dorian Gray is a child of his time. A young man who is only interested in appearances and, as the story continues, not so much about reality. He has a picture painted and makes a deal with the "devil" so that all the sins he commits are visited on the..
THE BEST-SELLING AND AWARD WINNING AUTHOR CHRISTOPHER NICOLE, WRITING AS CAROLINE GRAY When their father is murdered in British Guiana, the three teenage Grain children journey back to England with their mother. Drawn into the swinging sixties, Matilda and her brother rapidly succumb...
The Sound of Classical Drama - Anton Chekhov, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith - Chivers Sound Library 6 Cassette Set. Total playing time: 4 hours 33 minutes Sir Michael Redgrave brings us three selections that are the essence of Chekhov (On the Harmfulness of Tobacco; Transgression; ...
Morse is enjoying a rare if unsatisfying holiday in Dorset when the first letter appears in The Times. A year before, a stunning Swedish student disappeared from Oxfordshire, leaving behind a rucksack with her identification. As the lady was dishy, young, and traveling alone, the Thames Valley Police ......
In World War II, 37 women were dropped in occupied France to work as Special Operations Executive agents and "set Europe ablaze". 13 never returned. They were executed in Hitler's concentration camps. This is the story of eight of these female agents, all from civilian life, who were warned...
Starring Dame Hilda Bracket as Aunt Augusta, this is a Radio 4 dramatization of Graham Greene's novel in which a retired bank manager accompanies his aunt to exotic parts of the world. Henry is introduced to the wilder shores of life, and a morality far beyond his own narrow suburban experience.
An imprisoned man is certain that his supposed murder victim is very much alive; a female driver is pursued relentlessly by a menacing figure in another vehicle; a young artist gets the biggest break of her career; a restless beauty manages the perfect birthday celebration; an escaped Iraqi on Saddam...
Edinburgh, 2025. Global warming has led to strict water rationing, but soon people start dying after drinking poisoned whisky. Quintilian Dalrymple is thrown into a nightmare case that threatens the Council's very existence.
A tale of two spies and the old ties that bind them ...Sinister rumours link clandestine Arab arms dealing with the man who led the old anti-Nazi Guernica network. It's time to re-open the master file on yesterday's spy.
Smiley's People is one of John le Carré's classic Cold War novels and George Smiley one of his most acclaimed characters. Into a shadowy, violent and intricate world steeped in moral ambivalence steps George Smiley, sometime acting Chief of the Circus, as the Secret Service is known.
I could see that still no one had been able to get out from the cockpit. It must have been at this moment that I thought I was going to die because I became remarkably calm.' Trapped inside a burning Lancaster bomber, 20,000 feet above Berlin, airman John Martin consigned himself to his fate and turned his...
Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy and the colour-hit of Pop Art - via a bit of skulduggery - Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. Autumn is a take on popular culture and a meditation in a world growing ever more bordered; what constitutes...
Dick Dunster and Philip Progmire have been friends since their days at school. They have also been adversaries. Progmire's thespian longings, nurtured since he was a university actor, are now submerged in his work as an accountant with Megapolis Television. Dunster is also at Megapolis, engaged on an exposé...
No matter what you see, no matter what you’ve heard, assume nothing. Adam and Sophie Warner and their three-year-old daughter are vacationing in Washington State’s Hood Canal for Memorial Day weekend. It’s the perfect getaway to unplug—and to calm an uneasy marriage. But on Adam’s first day out...
So you lot want to be pilots? Bloody hell, Stalin’s had it now!' were the withering words of the corporal as he eyed his young National Service recruits for the first time. This autobiographical account, written 60 years later, tells of 'the most exciting years' of James Stevenson’s life when, aged 18, he learnt to be a jet...
I was anxious to fight. Hitler was the bastard who had started all this and he needed sorting out. We were under threat. Everything we stood for: our country, our families and our way of life was being attacked by this maniac. He could not be allowed to win. So for me and many, many others like me, there was no...
This is the story of Kitty Fane, the adulterous wife of a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. When her husband discovers her deception, he exacts a terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic in China. The Painted Veil was recently made into a feature film starring Edward...
Charles Henstock, vicar of Thrush Green, is living in his new vicarage after the old one burned down. In its place are eight retirement homes, but there's heated debate in the village about the new residents. How to choose who will live there? How will they get on together? And how will they accommodate all...
Doctor Thorne, the third novel in Anthony Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire, steers away from the church politics featured in the first two novels and move towards the scandals and prejudice of the upper tiers of Victorian era aristocracies. Frank Gresham, only son of a bankrupt landowner, falls in love with the...
In the late seventies, an extraordinary document came to light which for fifty years had been held on deposit by the bankers of the deceased John Herbert Watson MD - better known to devotees of Conan Doyle as Dr Watson. A continuous narrative in the doctor's own hand, the story opens in the East End of...
When Beck Holiday lost her father in the North Tower on 9/11, she also lost her memories of him. Eighteen years later, she’s a tough New York City cop burdened with a damaging secret, suspended for misconduct, and struggling to get her life in order. Meanwhile, a mysterious letter arrives informing her...
In Volume II of the Flashman Papers, Flashman tangles with femme fatale Lola Montez and the dastardly Otto Von Bismarck in a battle of wits which will decide the destiny of a continent. In this volume of The Flashman Papers, Flashman, the arch-cad and toady, matches his wits, his talents for deceit and...
When a Japanese-American is charged with the murder of a local fisherman, more than one man’s guilt is at stake. Soon to be a major film starring Ethan Hawke, directed by Scott Hicks (Shine). San Piedro Island in Puget Sound is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies.
In 1966 England won the World Cup at Wembley. Sir Bobby Charlton, England's greatest ever player, was there on the pitch. Now, 50 years on, Sir Bobby looks back on the most glorious moment of his life and England's greatest sporting achievement. In 1966 he takes us through the buildup to the tournament and...
A harrowing debut novel of a tragic disappearance and one sister’s journey through the trauma that has shaped her life. For eleven-year-old Esme, ballet is everything - until her four-year-old sister, Lily, vanishes without a trace and nothing is certain anymore. People Esme has known her whole life suddenly...
Enver Eleven is twenty-five years old and ready for adventure. He’s the Agency’s newest recruit, eager to leap through his first gate into an unfamiliar time. In Enver’s home city of Johannesburg, fair-skinned people are a rarity and have been for centuries. The people of Johannesburg were spared the ravages of...
The second of Richard Hannay's adventures takes him from the trenches of the First World War on a mission of vital importance to the British campaign in the East. In an attempt to manipulate their Turkish allies the Germans have created a religious figurehead, a prophet of a new order to unify the disparate...
John Updike's first collection of new short fiction since the year 2000, My Father's Tears finds the author in a valedictory mood as he mingles narratives of his native Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel. Morocco (Disc 1, Track 1) Personal Archaeology (Disc 1, Track 31)...
The compelling new standalone novel from the Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling author of Unseen and Cop Town. With a missing girl in the news, Claire Scott can’t help but be reminded of her sister, who disappeared twenty years ago in a mystery that was never solved. But when Claire begins to learn the truth...
A natural history of rain, told through a lyrical blend of science, cultural history, and human drama. It is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of all the world's water. Yet this is the first audiobook to tell the story of...