A Genius Performance by David Rintoul! A wonderful collection of fourteen short stories. From an imperial capital in the eighteenth century to Garibaldi’s adventures in the nineteenth, from the vineyards of Italy to the English seaside in our time, he finds the “stages, transitions, arguments” that define us. A newly divorced real estate agent can’t resist invading his reticent girlfriend’s privacy, but the information he finds...

One of Shakespeare's happiest plays, Twelfth Night is both a comedy of misrule and a trenchant attack on puritanism. Disguise and deceit leads to misadventure, madness and mistaken love. Orsino loves Olivia, but she loves Cesario, who really does love Orsino (for Cesario is actually Viola). But Malvolio believes his mistress, Olivia, loves him, as he is a victim of a trick played on him by those who would make him mad.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the original title of a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The work is commonly known today as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll...

A Genius Performance by Martin Shaw and Lindsay Duncan! Etched against the background of a dying rural society, Tess of the d'Urbervilles was Thomas Hardy's 'bestseller,' and Tess Durbeyfield remains his most striking and tragic heroine. Of all the characters he created, she meant the most to him. Hopelessly torn between two men—Alec d'Urberville, a wealthy, dissolute young man who seduces her in a lonely wood...

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.

In the frozen lands of the North gods, men and giants battle in a ceaseless round of adventure. The mighty sagas of the Norsemen are brought vividly to life in another classic recording. In the Beginning; Odin, King and Father; The Walls of Asgard; The Golden Apples; Thor in the Land of the Giants; The Lost Hammer; Loki Learns a Lesson; Fenrir the Wolf.

I'd fallen in love with the idea of living... because we don't do what we want to do, do we? We do what we have to do and pretend that it's what we want to do. Shirley Valentine is the joyous, life-affirming story of the woman who got lost in marriage and motherhood, the woman who wound up talking to the kitchen wall whilst cooking her husband's chips and egg. But Shirley still has a secret dream. And in her bag...

The warm and witty author of "Leaving Home" and "Lake Wobegone Days" discusses various aspects of life in America, from true "hometown" baseball to sitting in an airport and listening to the singing of a mechanical rabbit

Four episodes of the 1950s BBC Radio comedy series starring ventriloquist Peter Brough and his dummy, Archie Andrews. Others personalities on the cassette include Max Bygraves, Dick Emery, Beryl Reid, Hattie Jacques, Bernard Miles, Jimmy Edwards and June Whitfield.

Georgette Heyer's Remarkable First Novel Diana Beauleigh is caught between two men. Seven long years ago, Jack Carstares, the Earl of Wyncham, sacrificed his honour for his brother and has been in exile ever since. Returning to England, Jack pretends to be a gentleman named Sir Anthony Ferndale but makes his living in a most ungentlemanly fashion, as a highwayman and a gambler. When Jack encounters...

20 radio shows from the 1940s and 1950s. They include The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Barry Craig - Confidential Investigator, Boston Blackie, Candy Matson, Casey - Crime Photographer and Jeff Regan Investigator.

The Wild Duck (Vilanden) is a tragedy with comic episodes. Ibsen himself characterized the play as a tragicomedy. It depicts ordinary life realistically instead of romantically and sentimentally, a revolutionary concept in Ibsen's time. The play is now generally acknowledged as one of Ibsen's supreme accomplishments.

Ken Campbell, Windsor Davies, John Bird and John Fortune star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. When Alice's wish to visit the Looking Glass world comes true, she can't resist delving deeper and deeper into a land of caustic characters and twisted logic. So begins a game of chess on a grand scale, where the inhabitants of each square have their own set of rules. In her bid to become Queen of the Chess Board...

With more from his acclaimed 1986 collection, Artificial Horizon is the second audio volume of Poems From The Book of My Enemy, read by the poet himself, Clive James.

After The Book of My Enemy, Clive James emerged as one of the most prominent poets of his generation. Continuing the broad thematic scope and dazzling technical accomplishment of the first volume, this audio performance is a real treasure for fans and newcomers alike.

This title features: "The Greek Interpreter", "The Naval Treaty", "The Second Stain", "The Final Problem". "The Second Stain" is the 13th story in "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" and is included in this volume . Clive Merrison stars as Holmes with Michael Williams as Watson in these adventures, part of the unique fully dramatised BBC canon of Conan Doyle's short stories and novels featuring the world-famous sleuth.

A newborn baby is found wedged in a vanity cabinet in a rundown apartment near Montreal. Dr Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist to the province of Quebec, is brought in to investigate. While there, she discovers the mummified remains of two more babies within the same room. Shocked and distressed, Tempe must use all her skills and inner strength to focus on the facts. But when the autopsies reveal...

Travels With My Donkey recounts Tim Moore's pilgrimage by donkey along the ancient five-hundred-mile route from St Jean Pied-de-Port on the French side of the Pyrenees to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, housing the remains of Spain's patron saint. From the elevation of his donkey, Tim Moore derives bounteous amusement from his peculiar fellow travellers, an assortment of devout...

Once again Arthur Conan Doyle presents a series of cases which baffle the police, but are no match for Sherlock Holmes and his trusty companion, Dr. Watson. In "Black Peter", the peace of rural Sussex is disturbed by the discovery of a seafarer's body pinned to the wall of his hut with a harpoon. In the "Golden Pince-Nez", a young man is found dead clutching a pair of spectacles, yet he had perfect sight.

The first American astronaut to orbit the globe recalls a life testing the limits, from his days as a daredevil test pilot, to his terms in the U.S. Senate, to his most recent flight into space aboard the shuttle Discovery.

The twentieth century was a time of extraordinary change as new technologies and new inventions emerged at a bewildering rate. Our world was transformed beyond recognition, and so were our lives and our aspirations. Throughout JAMES MAY'S 20TH CENTURY James May explores the iconic themes of the century: flight, space travel, television, mechanised war, medicine, video games, electronic music, skyscrapers...

President Bill Clinton gives us his views on the challenges facing the United States today and why government matters presenting his ideas on restoring economic growth, job creation, financial responsibility, resolving the mortgage crisis, and pursuing a strategy to get us "back in the future business. He explains how we got into the current economic crisis, and offers specific recommendations on how we can...

The vivid voices that speak from these pages are not those of historians or scholars. They are the voices of ordinary men and women who experienced--and helped to win--the most devastating war in history, in which between 50 and 60 million lives were lost. Focusing on the citizens of four towns-- Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama;--The War follows more than...

This is the amusing story of a wildly unpredictable career journey... Not every RADA-trained actor with aspirations to the classical stage expects to find himself an international sci-fi icon in DOCTOR WHO at the end of the day. Again, not every actor expects to find fulfilment in a parallel profession as an accredited wine educator alongside his work in the theatre, film and TV….and yet again, not every actor expects to...

Battlefield Earth is an enormous epic of adventure set in the year 3000, when the future survival of what's left of the human race is at stake. When Jonnie Goodboy Tyler decides to venture out of the small and dwindling community of humans barely surviving in their Rocky Mountain retreat, he has no thought of challenging the order that for a thousand years has held the earth prisoner to the oppressive alien race of...

Tim Cranmer, retired secret servant, and Larry Pettifer, bored radical don, philanderer and for twenty years Tim's mercurial double agent against the now vanished Communist threat, have an unresolved rivalry that dates back decades.

They follow each other into the lawless wilds of Moscow and then Southern Russia until a small, unheard-of nation becomes their proving ground in the finale to John le Carré's dazzling novel.

A corporate lawyer from the House of Single & Single is shot dead in cold blood on a Turkish hillside for crimes that he does not understand. A children's entertainer in Devon is hauled to his local bank late at night to explain a monumental influx of cash. A Russian freighter is arrested in the Black Sea. A celebrated London financier has disappeared into thin air. A British customs officer is on a trail of corruption and murder.

In a memoir of staggering power and candour, award-winning journalist Fergal Keane addresses his experience of wars of different kinds, some very public and others acutely personal. During his years of reporting from the world's most savage and turbulent regions, Fergal Keane has witnessed the violence of the South African townships and the terror in Rwanda, the most extreme kinds of human behaviour, the horror...

In Phineas Finn, the second of the Palliser novels, Trollope balances the rival demands of public and private life, entangling political ambitions with the experiences of love. Phineas Finn, an irresistible but penniless young Irish barrister, enters Parliament and comes to London, leaving behind him....

Clive Merrison stars as Holmes, with Michael Williams as Watson, in these four adventures from the unique, fully dramatised BBC canon of Conan Doyle stories: A Study In Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear. A Study in Scarlet introduces the most famous partnership in fiction, as Watson is drawn into Holmes' investigations following the discovery of a...

Narrated by BAFTA-winning actor Will Poulter Kavanagh begins his life patrolling the Wall. If he's lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has two years of this, 729 more nights. The best thing that can happen is that he survives and gets off the Wall and never has to spend another day of his life anywhere near it. He longs for this to be over; longs to be somewhere else. He will soon find out what Defenders do and who the...

Detective Inspector Lynley is approached by business magnate Bernard Fairclough for a confidential review - not a formal investigation - of the circumstances of his nephew's demise. The coroner's verdict is accidental death. Recovering from the murder of his wife, Lynley has personal reasons for welcoming a spell away from London. He heads to the wild beauty of the Lake District, with Deborah and...

Marcus was hoping for a relaxed visit to Britannia. But things turn serious at the scene of a murder. King Togidubnus has been stuffed down a bar-room well - leading to a diplomatic situation which Marcus must resolve.

When spirited, independent Miss Annis Wynchwood embroils herself in the affairs of a runaway heiress, she is destined to see a good deal of Mr Carleton, Lucilla's uncivil and high-handed guardian. And, chafing at the restrictions of Bath society, Annis has to admit that at least Mr Oliver Carleton is never boring.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize For Fiction 2014 Aged 13, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend.

It's seven in the morning. The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing evening dress and heavy make-up, which is now smeared across her cheeks. But who is she? How did she get there? And what is the connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later..

Of poison pens and poisoning: a gripping Miss Marple mystery. Lymstock is a town with more than its share of shameful secrets – a town where even a sudden outbreak of anonymous hate-mail causes only a minor stir. But all that changes when one of the recipients, Mrs Symmington, commits suicide.

A classic Marple mystery, superbly read by Joan Hickson. Available for the first time on audio. Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his ‘counting house’ when he suffered an agonising and sudden death. On later inspection, the pockets of the deceased were found to contain traces of cereals.

The first Miss Marple novel. The first of a new-look series of audio books for the 21st century. Beautifully re-packaged with stunning new cover illustrations and design that rival some of the best jackets and audio collections out there! Story telling at it’s best, that makes them a delight to listen to. ’Anyone who...

Miss Marple senses danger when she visits a friend living in a Victorian mansion which doubles as a rehabilitiation centre for delinquents.

Eight million people improve their mornings by tuning into Terry's words of wisdom on Wake up to Wogan. But is their appetite sated by this daily exposure? Not in the slightest. So it's lucky that Terry has been known to turn his hand to the odd bit of writing.

When the newly qualified vet, James Herriot, arrives in the small Yorkshire village of Darrowby, he has no idea of the new friends he will meet or adventures that lie ahead.

An eccentric old lady moves into a quiet street in Camden Town. There she remains, installed in her van in glorious self-sufficiency, until the council instructs her to move on. A kind homeowner invites her to move her van into his garden. A bizarre tale in itself, but when the homeowner is writer....

One Thursday lunchtime Earth is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has just had his house demolished that morning, this is more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun, and the Galaxy is a very large and startling place indeed.

Victoria Bradshaw fell in love with London playwright Oliver Dobbs when she was just eighteen. But he left her and disappeared from her life. Now, years later, he is a widower standing on her doorstep with his two-year-old son in his arms. And Victoria is foolish enough to want to take him back. Their early spring journey to a castle in Scotland becomes an odyssey of emotional discovery - can they rekindle their love in the tranquil beauty of the countryside, or...

Through thick mist and a cold east wind, Lavinia returns to Scotland. Up at the big house Mrs Farquhar is dying. Seeing Lachlan again,. Lavinia remembers her childhood holidays there: swimming in the loch, the picnics, bottle-feeding the lambs down at the farm and the evenings when they danced reels.

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.

A blessed event becomes a nightmare for pregnant homicide detective Jane Rizzoli when she finds herself on the wrong side of a hostage crisis in this timely and relentless new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Body Double.

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.

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...

A remote English village wakes on the morning after harvest, looking forward to enjoying a hard-earned day of rest and feasting. But two mysterious columns of smoke mar the sky, raising alarm and suspicion. The first column of smoke comes from the edge of the village land, sent as a signal by newcomers to announce their presence as per regional custom. The second smoke column is even more troubling: it comes from...

A double whammy of brand new and classic gold highlights from the nation's best-loved BBC TV news quiz. Since it first took our screens by storm in 1990, "Have I Got News For You" has entertained, embarrassed and downright humiliated the famous and the infamous with a popularity which remains undimmed. This double CD compilation features highlights from the first four series, with Angus Deayton as chairman...

For Ned, 1980 seems a blissful year. Handsome, charming, popular and talented, his life is progressing smoothly, effortlessly, happily. And when he meets the lovely Portia Fendeman his personal jigsaw appears complete. But timing is everything in life, and his life is about to change for ever. Things are going to get very bad indeed for innocent young Ned. A promise made to a dying teacher and a spiteful trick played...

Nothing Like the Sun is a magnificent, bawdy telling of Shakespeare's love life. Starting with the young Will, the novel is a romp that follows Will's maturation into sex and writing. It is at the same time a serious look at the forces that midwife art, the effects of time and place, and the ordinariness that is found side by side with extraordinariness of genius.

Following on from Dissolution and Dark Fire, Sovereign is the third gripping historical novel in C. J. Sansom's number one bestselling Shardlake series, for fans of Hilary Mantel and Philippa Gregory. A parchment-turner, and a regal one at that' - Sunday Times ‘Sansom has the trick of writing an enthralling narrative. Like Hilary Mantel, he produces densely textured historical novels that absorb their readers in another time’...

Long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2017 Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2016 BGE Irish Book of the Year 2016 Marcus Conway has come a long way to stand in the kitchen of his home and remember the rhythms and routines of his life. Considering with his engineer's mind how things are constructed - bridges, banking systems, marriages - and how they may come apart. Mike McCormack captures with tenderness...

In post-revolution Paris, an old man signs a letter in blood, then hides it in a secret compartment in a sailor's chest. A messenger arrives to transport the chest and its hidden contents, but then the plague strikes and an untimely death changes history.Two hundred years later, Hugo Marston is safeguarding an unpredictable but popular senator who is in Paris negotiating a France/U.S. dispute. The talks, held at a...

Crimes are rare in Singapore, but when there's one that has the police baffled, it is Inspector Zhang that they turn to.

From locked-room mysteries to murders disguised as suicide, Inspector Zhang is able to draw on his experience as a detective along with tricks he has learned from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. See if you can solve the crimes before the Inspector - the clues are there!

At Mullion Castle, sumptuous stately home, we meet the Earl and his family, who include his delightful daughters Patty and Boosie, and dotty Great-aunt Camilla. Old school chum, Charles Honeybath, who has been commissioned to paint a portrait of the Earl's wife, finds himself at the helm of a complex investigation involving ancestral works of art and a young under gardener, Swithin, who seems to possess the family features somewhat strikingly...

Timeless Tales for Kids is an enchanting compilation of children's classic stories read by an all-star cast. Olivia Colman reads E. Nesbit's classic novel The Railway Children, a masterpiece in children's fiction wonderfully evoking a bygone age, packed with fun, excitement and adventure. Bill Nighy reads a much-loved children's classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which continues to delight young and old with...

I have never before in my life kept a diary of my thoughts, and here at the start of my ninth decade, having for the moment nothing much else to write, I am having a go at it. Good luck to me.' So begins this extraordinary audiobook, a collection of diary pieces that Jan Morris wrote for the Financial Times over the course of 2017. A former soldier and journalist, and one of the great chroniclers of the world for over...

Because in the darkest days of the Blitz, love is more important than ever. It’s February 1942, and as the Americans finally join Britain and her allies, 23-year-old Francesca Fabrino is doing her bit for the war effort in a factory in East London. But her thoughts are constantly occupied by recently married Charlie Brogan, who is fighting in North Africa with the Eighth Army. When Francesca starts a new job for the...

When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost 20 years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous...

Arrogant, self-willed and egotistical, Emma is Jane Austen's most unusual heroine. Her interfering ways and inveterate matchmaking are at once shocking and comic. She is 'handsome, clever and rich' and has 'a disposition to think too well of herself'. When she decides to introduce the humble...

Can the feisty Agatha cut it as a private investigator? She soon learns that running her own detective agency in the Cotswolds is not quite like starring in a Raymond Chandler movie. But then walks in wealthy divorcee Catherine Laggat - Brown, and Agatha is given her first real case. Death threats, blackmail and physical attack soon follow, and once again Agatha is off scouring the Cotswolds for clues and showing...

Agatha Raisin has never been one for enforced holiday cheer, but her friendly little village of Carsely has always prided itself on its traditional Christmas festivities. However, this year Mr John Sunday, an officer, has chosen Christmas as the time to crack down on what he sees as gross misconduct by everyone.

A Genius performance by Penelope Keith! Cranky but lovable sleuth Agatha Raisin’s detective agency has become so successful that she wants nothing more than to take quality time for rest and relaxation. But as soon as she begins closing the agency on weekends, she remembers that when she has plenty of ....

A Genius performance by Penelope Keith! Winter Parva, a traditional Cotswolds village next door to Carsely, has decided to throw a celebratory hog roast to mark the beginning of the winter holiday festivities and Agatha Raisin has arrived with friend and rival in the sleuthing business, Toni, to enjoy the merriment. But as the spit pig is carried towards the bed of fiery charcoal Agatha - and the...

Adopted into the household of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, Fanny Price grows up a meek outsider among her cousins in the unaccustomed elegance of Mansfield Park. Soon after Sir Thomas absents himself on estate business in Antigua (the family's investment in slavery and sugar is considered in the...

An epistolary novel in 18th-century style, this novel tells the story of the recently-widowed Lady Susan Vernon, intelligent but highly manipulative, who is intent on gaining financially secure relationships for both herself and her wayward daughter Frederica.

Jane Austen's most popular novel, originally published in 1813, some 17 years after it was first written, presents the Bennet family of Longbourn. Against the background of gossipy Mrs Bennet and the detached Mr Bennet, the quest is on for husbands for the five daughters.

A perfect item for Hitchhikers Collectors. This set includes a wonderful couple of hours where Douglas Adams relates a Guide to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. At present I have not found this in any other BBC issued set. The complete original full cast BBC Radio production. This CD box set contains both ...

The reader and I are only interested in the truth. Recklessly generously illustrated. This is the book I've been secretly longing to write. There is so much in my overstuffed life that I've never talked about publicly before. All the things I love and dread are here: objects, photographs, people, letters, ideas, regrets, memories, journeys, being a model in the sixties, a daughter of the regiment...

A mysterious sea monster, theorized by some to be a giant narwhal, is sighted by ships of several nations; an ocean liner is also damaged by the creature. The United States government finally assembles an expedition to track down and destroy the menace. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a noted French marine biologist and narrator of...

Roald Dahl's classic story is performed here by Lionel Jeffries. Boggis, Bunce and Bean are nasty farmers who hate Mr Fox. They lie in wait outside his hole waiting to shoot him, starve him, or dig him out, but clever Mr Fox has other plans!

** INCLUDES AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR ** Luke Mullen, sixteen year old son of a former, high-ranking police officer has disappeared, presumed kidnapped. While no-one quite dares to voice the fear that he could also be presumed dead, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne is brought in to beef up the squad dedicated to locating the...

Enid Blyton's stories about the Faraway Tree have enchanted children for generations. Now these delightful tales featuring Silky, Moon-Face and Saucepan Man can be enjoyed by the whole family in an exclusive audiobook collection read by kate Winslet. Join Joe, Beth and Frannie as they discover new lands at...

In this major BBC Radio 4 series, James Naughtie uncovers the roots of our music and reveals the soundtrack to our own history. The history of classical music is inextricably linked with the places it was written, its purpose and its patrons, as well as with politics, war and social change. From the earliest music of the monasteries, to the court and church music of the Renaissance and Reformation and beyond, composers...

Dark family secrets, a long-lost love affair and a multi-million pound gaming business lie at the heart of Iain Banks' fabulous new novel. The Wopuld family built their fortune on a board game called Empire - now a wildly successful computer game.

Operation Meltwater: FreeFlow, a group of internet activists committed to the freedom of information have video evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and have chosen Iceland as their HQ while they prepare to unleash their greatest coup on the world's media.

The story of a woman's struggle for independence from an abusive husband. Helen 'Graham' has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage and to protect her young son from the influence of his father. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living ...

Having escaped an Irish famine only to become enmeshed in an American war, Eliza Duane Mooney sets out across the country on a mysterious quest. Stunning poetess Lucia-Cruz McLelland denies a host of suitors to cast her fate with James Con O'Keeffe, convict, revolutionary, and Acting Governor of the...

A series of BBC Radio short stories, comprised of classic and period dramas featuring four female sleuths to rival Sherlock Holmes himself. The Redhill Sisterhood' by Catherine Louisa Pirkis Autumn, 1897. Victorian undercover agent Loveday Brooke investigates some suspicious nuns who appear to have forsaken their vows - and turned to burglary.

The stories in this collection are; The stories in this collection are; The Tuesday Night Club, Ingots of Gold, The Blood-Stained Pavement, The Idol House of Astarte, Motive v. Opportunity, The Thumb Mark of St. Peter, The Blue Geranium, The Companion, The Four Suspects, A Christmas Tragedy, The Herb of Death and Death by Drowning.

This wonderful book is read by 2 of the very best audiobook readers bar none! Sean Barrett's Chapter 1 is pure genius! Writing of this quality combined with the reading of Mr Barrett and Teresa Gallagher is an absolute must! This one is a life-long keeper!! Naxos