When a woman is discovered in the basement of a psychotherapy clinic with a chisel through her heart, Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh investigates. What are the secrets hidden by the facade of the Georgian terrace? Is the killer a patient or healer? Dalgliesh uncovers a labyrinth of intrigue.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness" starts this novel and, after many wonderful hours, our hero declares, "It is a far, far better thing that I do now than I have ever done; It is a far, far better rest that I go to now than I have ever known".
In 1995, the Japanese city of Kobe suffered a massive earthquake. Nearly 6,000 people died. after the quake was the imaginative response from Japan's leading novelist, Haruki Murakami: six stories, each dealing not directly with the catastrophe but the wider seismic effect it had on the emotional lives of people many miles away.
A fascinating collection of archive radio programmes focusing on the life and work of crime fiction's grande dame and featuring Agatha Christie in her own words. Dame Agatha Christie published 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections in her lifetime, but to the public she remained an enigmatic figure.
A Genius performance by Penelope Keith! This set includes the BBC productions of AGATHA RAISIN AND THE QUICHE OF DEATH & THE VICIOUS VET ; AGATHA RAISIN AND THE POTTED GARDENER & THE WALKERS OF DEMBLEY ; AGATHA RAISIN AND THE CURIOUS CURATE & THE BURIED TREASURE ; AGATHA RAISIN...
Without warning, a final-year Cambridge student leaves and takes a job as a gardener. Eighteen days later he's found hanging by the neck in his cottage. Cordelia Gray, sole proprietor of the Pryde Detective Agency, uncovers long-suppressed family secrets.
A Genius Performance by Hugh Fraser! A repugnant Amercian widow is killed during a trip to Petra… Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her.
The long, drawn-out case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce provides the background to this novel which takes us into a world of impoverished street-dwellers, lovers fallen on hard times and the grand riches of the upper classes. A generous abridgement spanning 9 CDs
Trollope inextricably binds together the issues of parliamentary election and marriage, of politics and privacy. The values and aspirations of the governing stratum of Victorian society are ruthlessly examined, and none remains unscathed. But it is above all on the predicament of women that Trollope focuses.
Voltaire's razor-sharp satire on philosophical optimism, Candide, is coupled here with another of the author's most celebrated works, Zadig. Both challenge the moral and philosophical orthodoxies of the day with humour and sly wit, whilst parodying the clichéd formulas of so many contemporary novels.
Our biology is set up to work in partnership with the sun. Little wonder then that humans have long worshipped and revered our nearest star: life itself arose on earth because its relationship with the sun was a special one, and that relationship still affects us well into the era of electric lighting, indoor workdays...
In December, 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who, or what, is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future, and our own....
Cotillion, one of the most popular historical novels by Regency romance expert Georgette Heyer, is presented in Naxos AudioBooks style, with classical music enhancing the production. Kitty Charing comes to London from the country to find a husband and secure her fortune.
With World War II at an end, Charles Hayward is finally free to marry the woman he loves, Sophia Leonides. However, she refuses - the unexplained death of her grandfather, wealthy businessman Aristide Leonides, draws her back to the suffocating environment of her family home.
Ariadne Oliver, Queen of Crime Fiction, has been asked to devise a Murder Hunt for a fête at Nasse House, the home of Sir George Stubbs. But she begins to suspect that someone is manipulating the scenario of her game and fears that something very sinister is being planned. She sends for her old friend...
A Genius Performance by Hugh Fraser! A Poirot story taken from Murder in the Mews Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore suspects he is the victim of fraud and contacts Hercule Poirot. The host’s failure to answer to the dinner gong leads to the discovery of his body in the study.
When a number of leading scientists disappear without a trace, concern grows within the international intelligence community. Are they being kidnapped? Blackmailed? Brainwashed? One woman appears to have the key to the mystery. Unfortunately, Olive Betteron now lies in a hospital bed, dying from injuries..
Alan Bennett reads his own diaries from two of his bestselling memoirs, "Writing Home" and "Untold Stories". Available for the first time in one collection are these two volumes: "Diaries 1980-1990" and "Untold Stories: The Diaries". "Diaries 1980-1990": the eighties were a busy time for Alan Bennett, playwright...
In this classic tale, author Anthony Trollope dares to question: can it be right to persist in a bigamous marriage? Mr. Peacocke, a classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her first husband a reprobate....
In the fourth audiobook in Anthony Trollope's series known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, the values of a Victorian gentleman, the young clergyman Mark Robarts, are put to the test. Though he lives a comfortable life, has a doting wife, children and a patroness in Lady Lufton, his ambitions stretch beyond...
Beautifully re-packaged with stunning new cover illustrations and design that rival some of the best jackets and audio collections out there! The group as a whole stands with an assortment of colours and gorgeous text on every spine. This is true story telling at it's absolute best! An outbreak of kleptomania at a...
First published in 1939. The author captures the song of his nation of singers and made it into the story of the childhood and youth of Huw Morgan, a miner's son, in a South Wales valley.
Previously uncollected nonfiction pieces by Hollywood's ultimate It Girl about everything from fashion to tango to Jim Morrison and Nicholas Cage. With Eve’s Hollywood Eve Babitz lit up the scene in 1974. The books that followed, among them Slow Days, Fast Company and Sex and Rage, have seduced...
Amanda Hale and Tom Burke star in a brand new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Charlotte Brontë's most beloved novel, adapted by Rachel Joyce. Orphan Jane learns at an early age that self-control is the surest means of retaining self-respect in adversity. It is a lesson that serves her well in the years...
Kenneth Williams, Clement Freud, Derek Nimmo, Peter Jones and Paul Merton are the ‘Famous Five’ of Just a Minute: sparkling raconteurs whose sharp wits and skill made them consistently a pleasure to listen to. Each brings their own unique quality to the show, and this box set showcases their highlights - the...
Recorded in front of a live audience at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, Jarvis gives his popular reading of two full-length "Just William" stories: "Sweet Little Girl in White" and "William and the Princess Goldilocks".
Acclaimed British Hollywood actor Ralph Fiennes reads Rudyard Kipling's poems and excerpts from the Jungle Book, Kim, and the Just So Stories. Classic short stories and children's favourites (including 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi') recorded in the study at Bateman's, Kipling's Jacobean house where he wrote many of his books.
Monsieur Poirot, somehow or other I've just got to get rid of my husband!' No sooner had she uttered these words than Lady Edgware's husband was dead, brutally stabbed in the neck. The evidence against her is overwhelming, the case cut and dried. But what is the truth behind it all? What enemies lurked in...
The novel Carlos Ruiz Zafón wrote just before THE SHADOW OF THE WIND. Fifteen years on, the remembrance of that day has returned to me. I have seen that boy wandering through the mist of the railway station, and the name of Marina has flared up again like a fresh wound. We all have a secret buried ...
Perhaps the most notorious war criminal of all time, Josef Mengele was the embodiment of bloodless efficiency and passionate devotion to a grotesque worldview. Aided by the role he has assumed in works of popular culture, Mengele has come to symbolize the Holocaust itself as well as the failure of justice..
The gaudy years of the Restoration are long gone. Robert Merivel, physician and courtier to Charles II, loved for his gift to turn sorrow into laughter, now faces the agitations and anxieties of middle age. Questions crowd his mind: has he been a good father? Is he a fair master? Is he the King’s friend or the King’s slave?
June Whitfield returns as the deceptively mild spinster sleuth in three full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisations. Specially broadcast to mark the 125th anniversary of Agatha Christie's birth, these brand new dramas are based on three of her best short stories. Tape-Measure Murder: When Mrs Spenlow is murdered in...
Luke Fitzwilliam could not believe Miss Pinkerton's wild allegation that a multiple murderer was at work in the quiet English village of Wychwood, or her speculation that the local doctor was next in line. But, within hours, Miss Pinkerton had been killed in a hit-and-run car accident.
The story of Kenny Dalglish is filled with many unexplained episodes. In his autobiography, Dalglish reveals some of the personal and professional reasons behind decisions he has taken that seemed puzzling to his fans. Dalglish has experienced triumph and tragedy, and here he discusses them.
The superlatively analytical Inspector Hemingway is confronted by a murder that seems impossible - no one was near the murder weapon at the time the shot was fired. Everyone on the scene seems to have a motive, not to mention the wherewithal to commit murder, and alibis that simply don't hold up.
Jane Austen's first novel - published posthumously in 1818 - tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen's fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger...
Before One for Sorrow, Two for Joy could even land on bookshelves, it was optioned by the Walt Disney Co. for a major motion picture. A sweeping epic of good versus evil, this rousing fable has been compared to Watership Down and The Lord of the Rings. In the land of Birddom, a terrible danger is spreading.
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.
THE HUNT BEGINS… Two men are responsible for the death of Hector Cross’ wife and only one is left alive: Johnny Congo – psychopath, extortionist, murderer, and the bane of Cross’s life. He caught him before and let him go. Now, Hector wants him dead. So does the US government. Congo is locked up ...
On a trip to the South of France, the shy heroine of Rebecca falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him. But as they arrive at her husband's home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim, and the young bride...
When Kate Herrick's grandmother asks her to travel down from Scotland to her childhood home in Todhall to retrieve some papers and family mementoes before Rose Cottage is sold, Kate is happy enough to go, but curious as to the changes she may find there.
I was born, as my friends told me, at the city of Poitiers, in the province or county of Poitou, in France, from whence I was brought to England by my parents, who fled for their religion about the year 1683, when the Protestants were banished from France by the cruelty of their persecutors. I, who knew little or...
This is a selection of readings from "Saki", the pseudonym for Hector Hugh Munro, who was known for his eccentric wit and his short stories, both humorous and macabre. The readers are Dirk Bogarde, Tim Pigott-Smith, Zoe Wanamaker and Barbara Leigh Hunt.
THE PROVEN MODEL FOR DRIVING POSITIVE ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE Cleveland Clinic has long been recognized for driving some of the best clinical outcomes in the nation, but it was not always a leader in patient experience. There was atime when this revered organization ranked among the lowest in...
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 ....
Can Lord Peter Wimsey prove that Harriet Vane is not guilty of murder--or find the real poisoner in time to save her from the gallows? Impossible, it seems. The Crown's case is watertight. The police are adamant that the right person is on trial.
There are a lot of things Jamie hates about her life: her dark hair, her dad's Stone Age Charter of Curfew Rights, her real name - Jamilah Towfeek. For the past three years Jamie has hidden her Lebanese background from everyone at school. It's only with her email friend John that she can really be herself. But now...
Ever since he made his first appearance in A Study In Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes has enthralled and delighted millions of fans throughout the world. Now Arthur Conan Doyle's complete works – four novels and five collections of short stories – has been brought to life by Stephen Fry, a lifelong fan of Doyle's...
Sherlock Holmes is the eternally likeable detective figure and never fails to be wise to the machinations of the criminal mind. Accompanied by his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson, the pair will delight a listener with their inimitable sleuthing style and ever-charismatic idiosyncrasies. This first volume contains six...
An inspiring, informative, and practical guide to navigating end-of-life issues, by a groundbreaking expert in the field and the New York Times best-selling author of Knocking on Heaven's Door. In the mid-1400s, an unnamed Catholic monk composed a self-help book called Ars Moriendi or The Art of Dying.
1942: Boldly advancing through Asia, the Japanese need a train route from Burma going north. In a prison camp, British POWs are forced into labor. The bridge they build will become a symbol of service and survival to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Pitted against the warden, Colonel...
Two recently-rediscovered Hercule Poirot short stories by Agatha Christie, read by David Suchet. In 2004, a remarkable archive was unearthed at Agatha Christie’s family home, Greenway - 73 of her private notebooks, filled with pencilled jottings and ideas. Hidden within this literary treasure trove were two...
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...
When the most eligible Earl of Rule offers for the hand of the beauty of the Winwood family, he has no notion of the distress he causes his intended. For Miss Lizzie Winwood is promised to the excellent, but impoverished, Mr Edward Heron. Disaster can only be averted by the delightful impetuosity of her ...
Before Sir Florian Eustace dies, he gives his beloved wife Lizzie a beautiful and expensive diamond necklace valued over £10,000. Dispute soon rages between the Eustace family and the manipulative and conniving Lizzie: it's claimed that the diamonds are a precious family heirloom, but Lizzie argues they were a gift.
New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith's critically acclaimed No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series continues in this engaging book that won the first ever Saga Award for Wit, given to the wittiest British book of the year. Mma Ramotswe has been engaged to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni for quite some...
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Haunting, moving, evocative, The Go-Between is L. P. Hartley's heartbreaking novel about social constraints and childhood innocence. During the long, hot summer of 1900, young Leo Colston is invited to stay for a month at a lordly, aristocratic manor in Norfolk.
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...
The story of Merlin and the boyhood of Arthur, from his birth to his accession to the throne. It is a picture of an ancestral hero coming to manhood, painfully distinguishing friends from enemies, but never failing to follow his destiny, and all around him the strange figure of Merlin.
One of the most extraordinary achievements in world literary history. An immensely influential and compelling epic poem of the Trojan War, with characters whose names have become legendary. Too good to be relegated to the dustbin of high-school required reading, the first of Homer's epic poems tells of the...
The setting is Berlin. Into this divided city, wrenched between East and West, between past and present, comes 25-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team. Though only a pawn in an international plot that is never fully revealed to him, Leonard uses his secret work to escape...
A comfortable chair and a Mary Stewart: total heaven. I'd rather read her than most other authors.' Harriet Evans Whitescar is a beautiful old house and farm situated in Roman Wall country. It will make a rich inheritance for its heirs, but in order to secure it, they enlist the help of a young ...
When Reverend Josiah Crawley, the impoverished curate of Hogglestock, is accused of theft it causes a public scandal, sending shockwaves through the world of Barsetshire. The Crawleys desperately try to remain dignified while they are shunned by society, but the scandal threatens to tear them, and the community, apart.
But he was not always such a roaring success. The Life of Lee is an utterly hilarious and very moving autobiography charting his ups and downs on the way to the top. Lee takes us on a darkly humorous journey through his childhood spent running wild on a Bristol housing estate and his unconventional .......
After participating in the Jacobite Rising of 1745, Robin and Prudence, brother and sister, become engaged in a swashbuckling, romantic adventure. Our hero and heroine must cross-dress and switch genders if they are to escape prosecution a humorous move that allows Heyer to explore the manners...
Emma Forrest has waited three long years to welcome home the man she loves from the horror of the trenches, but now her father's bitter feud with Jamie Metcalfe's family threatens everything she has dreamed of. Knowing that her father, Harry Forrest, will go to his grave wishing she were a boy, and now...
Bruno Salvador has worked on clandestine missions before. A highly skilled interpreter, he is not stranger to the Official Secrts Act. But this is the first time he has been asked to change his identity - and, worse still, his clothes - in service of his country.
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...
It is 1916. Captain Hastings has been invalided out of the Great War and goes to convalesce at Styles Court, the family home of his great friend, John Cavendish. By an extraordinary coincidence, billeted in the village is a brilliant little retired detective with an egg-shaped head, who made a considerable...
The Prime Minister is the fifth in Trollope's six-volume Palliser series. Despite his mysterious antecedents, an unscrupulous financial speculator, Ferdinand Lopez, aspires to marry into respectability and wealth and join the ranks of British society. One of the nineteenth century's most memorable....
A unique collection of brand new crime stories from some of the masters of crimewriting, and only available in this audio collection. Welcome to the Sounds of Crime, an exclusive collection of five brand new short stories by some of the best crimewriters around. Using the theme of 'audio', this unique collection...
In the years after the Second World War the BBC invited some of the leading British and Irish writers of short stories to read selected works of their own on the radio. For the first time this unrivalled archive of recordings is now being made available for wider distribution. This 3-CD set includes a wide range of...
The four Gospels are the source material for this sympathetic account of the life of Jesus, from the traditional account of his birth to his death and resurrection. All the principal episodes are told his baptism, the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the Last Supper, the Betrayal, the Trial, the Crucifixion ...
Written by the Buddhist meditation master and popular international speaker Soygal Rinpoche, this highly acclaimed book clarifies the majestic vision of life and death that underlies the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It includes not only a lucid, inspiring and complete introduction to the practice of meditation but...
The first of six in Trollope's series of the Chronicles of Barsetshire introducing the fictional cathedral town of Barchester and the characters of Septimus Harding, the Warden, and his son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly. The Warden concerns the moral dilemma of the conscientious Reverend Septimus Harding...
There is a dangerous atmosphere at Stoneygates, a centre for young criminals. When Miss Marple visits her friend there, she can sense the danger, too. One evening during her stay someone shoots at the administrator of the centre.
Here are more than 60 eyewitness accounts of notable historical events beginning with the Spartans at Thermopylae in 480 BC through to and including the Bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Hear of the Black Death of the 1340s, the 1666 Great Fire of London, the Boston Tea Party in 1773, the 1793 Execution of...
Mark Oliver Everett's upbringing was 'ridiculous, sometimes tragic and always unsteady'. His father - a quantum mechanic who worked for the Pentagon - was a genius who had corresponded with Einstein aged 13. He rarely spoke, and following his own miserable childhood had eccentric ideas of how children...
Three single girls shared the same London flat. The first worked as a secretary; the second was an artist; the third, who came to Poirot for help, disappeared, convinced she was a murderer. Now there were rumours of revolvers, flick-knives, and blood stains. But, without hard evidence, it would take all Poirot's...
Tells the stories of those families powerful enough to have shaped British history during the past millennium. The Churchills, the Cavendishes and the Norfolks are represented, as well as several Scots and Irish clans, through to the "media barons" of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Tells the stories of those families powerful enough to have shaped British history during the past millennium. The Churchills, the Cavendishes and the Norfolks are represented, as well as several Scots and Irish clans, through to the "media barons" of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Relates how the loyalties of this elite, many of whom are older than the monarchy itself, were tested and rewarded: it also uncovers a multitude of murderous plots, bloody battles, adulteries, intrigues and shocking executions. This first volume looks at the houses of the Godwines, the Despensers and the Percys.
Tells the stories of those families powerful enough to have shaped British history during the past millennium. The Churchills, the Cavendishes and the Norfolks are represented, as well as several Scots and Irish clans, through to the "media barons" of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Relates how the loyalties of this privileged elite, many of whom are older than the monarchy itself, were tested and rewarded; it also uncovers a multitude of murderous plots, bloody battles, adulteries, intrigues and shocking executions. This second volume looks at the houses of the Mortimers, the Berkeleys and...
Three Agatha Christie short story full-cast dramatisations: The Hound of Death/Witness for the Prosecution/The Gate of Baghdad. Agatha Christie is the acknowledged 'Queen of Detective Fiction'.
Delderfield offers us one of the best stories about life between the wars. David Powlett Jones, miners son and scholarship boy, is invalided out of the trenches and sent to convalesce as a teacher at a minor public school. From this fairly mundane start we are then catapulted into a journey of discovery. The many ...
Volume 1 of To Serve Them All My Days has been another popular success from the writer R.F. Delderfield, whose novels also include the trilogies A Horseman Riding By and the Swann Saga (God is an Englishman, Theirs Was the Day and Give Us This Day), Diana and Come Home.
What is the connection between a failed suicide attempt, a wrongful accusation of theft against a schoolgirl, and the romantic life of a famous tennis player? To the casual observer, apparently nothing. But when a houseparty gathers at Gull's Point, the seaside home of an elderly widow, earlier events come to a...
Graham Park is in love. But Sarah Ffitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery. Steven Grout is paranoid – and with justice. He knows that they are out to get him. They are. Quiss, insecure in his fabulous if ramshackle caste, is forced to play interminable, impossible games. The solution to...
The Columbia space shuttle and its contents rain down on the people of Kiser, Texas, in Kathryn Schwille’s imaginative debut novel set six weeks before the invasion of Iraq. What Luck, This Life begins in the aftermath of the space shuttle’s break-up, as the people of Piney Woods watch their pastures swarm with...
"With When Death Becomes Life, Joshua Mezrich has performed the perfect core biopsy of transplantation—a clear and compelling account of the grueling daily work, the spell-binding history and the unsettling ethical issues that haunt this miraculous lifesaving treatment. Mezrich's compassionate and...
On the day after Halloween, in the year 1327, four children slip away from the cathedral city of Kingsbridge. They are a thief, a bully, a boy genius and a girl who wants to be a doctor. In the forest they see two men killed. As adults, their lives will be braided together by ambition, love, greed and revenge.
Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father.