Alan Bleasdale's hugely acclaimed series echoes the misery and despair of long-term unemployment. Set in Liverpool, these profoundly moving human dramas follow in turn the attempts of five working-class heroes to survive.

Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of the USA only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett just became number five. His body was found in the small basement of a lakeside cabin...

William de Worde is the accidental editor of Discworld's first newspaper. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist's life - people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography, some more people who want him dead in a different way and, worst of...

A short but perfectly formed complete Discworld novel. It stars the legendary Cohen the Barbarian, a legend in his own lifetime. Cohen can remember when a hero didn't have to worry about fences and lawyers and civilisation, and when people didn't tell you off for killing dragons. But he can't always remember...

We have met the intrepid hunter-tracker Allan Quatermain before, in H. Rider Haggards marvellous King Solomons Mines. This time, grieving from the tragic loss of his son, Quatermain longs to return to his beloved Africa. He sets out in search of a lost white tribe, the Zu-Vendis, ruled by two beautiful sister...

Ian Carmichael stars as Lord Peter Wimsey in these definitive BBC radio dramatisations of Dorothy L Sayers' classic crime novels Aristocratic amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey was the master creation of Dorothy L Sayers, widely acknowledged as one of the four original ‘Queens of Crime’. These full-cast...

With a yah boo sucks to you, Fritzy, hot tiddly tumble, it's off to the Western Front in 1917. Captain Blackadder, hero of Mbot Gorge, joined the British Army when it was little more than a travel agency for gentlemen with an abnormally high sex drive. Now he finds himself crammed into a sewer, twenty yards ...

Twelve classic Christie short stories are given a modern spin in these BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations. Agatha Christie is the acknowledged 'Queen of Crime', and these twelve short stories showcase her skilful plotting and talent for producing compelling mysteries. First broadcast in the early 2000s, the...

The fifth novel in Bernard Cornwell’s epic and bestselling series on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. BBC2’s major Autumn 2015 TV show THE LAST KINGDOM is based on the first two books in the series. In the last years of the ninth century, King Alfred of Wessex is in...

Oddly, or perhaps not oddly, come to think of it, the smoking ban came into effect about three days after I got the news - yes, now I do come to think of it, it seems more than odd, it seems eerily consequential, suggesting among other possibilities that I am so innately, organically obedient that my whole physical...

A triple bill of archive BBC radio dramas, believed lost for over half a century and only recently rediscovered. Butter in a Lordly Dish, written specially for radio in 1948, features Richard Williams as Sir Luke Enderby KC, whose infidelities lead him into trouble when he goes to meet his latest flame. Williams also stars...

THE PACIFIC is a gripping piece of historical writing following the extraordinary true stories of four U.S. Marines and a U.S. Navy carrier pilot fighting in the Pacific region during World War II. Between America's retreat from China in late November 1941 and the moment General MacArthur's airplane touched down ....

When Tommy and Tuppence visit an elderly aunt in her gothic nursing home, they think nothing of her mistrust of the doctors; after all, Ada is a very difficult old lady. But when Mrs Lockett mentions a poisoned mushroom stew, and Mrs Lancaster talks about "something behind the fireplace", Tommy and Tuppence find ...

When the Cutter family's next-door neighbours, the Langleys, are gunned down in their house one hot August night, the Cutters' world is turned upside down. That violent death should have come so close to them is shocking enough in suburban Promise Falls, but at least the Cutters can console themselves with the thought that lightning is unlikely to strike twice in the same place. Unless, of course, the killers went to...

From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs' professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs' family members, key colleagues from Apple...

Wexford has retired. When the bodies of two women and a man are discovered in the old coal hole of an attractive house in St John's Wood he is drawn back to work. The man's pockets contain many 1000s of pounds worth of jewels. Wexford is on the case but will he survive?

Dinah and her sister Lisa are growing up in South Africa in the fifties - a time of dreadful changes. Dinah is weedy and doesn't much like eating. Lisa is an angel-face who likes chocolate sprinkles on bread. It is at school that Dinah first learns about racism.

Bruce Chatwin provides a fascinating background to indigenous Australian life. The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines, Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past. In this magical account, Chatwin recalls his travels across the length and breadth...

In this evocative tale of life in India between the wars, friendships will be tested and loyalties torn. But can love win the day? In Scotland in the aftermath of the First World War, nurse Esmie McBride meets handsome Captain Tom Lomax at her best friend Lydia’s home. Esmie is at first concerned for Tom’s shell shock, then captivated by his charm, but it’s effervescent Lydia he marries, and the pair begin a...

Beloved New York Times best-selling author Susanna Kearsley delivers a riveting novel that deftly intertwines the tales of two women, divided by centuries and forever changed by a clash of love and fate. For nearly 300, the cryptic journal of Mary Dundas has kept its secrets. Now, amateur codebreaker Sara Thomas travels to Paris to crack the cipher. Jacobite exile Mary Dundas is filled with longing - for freedom, for...

Harry Pendel is the charismatic proprietor of Pendel and Braithwaite Limitada of Panama, through whose doors everyone who is anyone in Central America passes. Andrew Osnard, mysterious and fleshy, is a spy. His secret mission is two-pronged: to keep a watchful eye on the political manoeuvrings leading up to the American handover of the Panama Canal on 31st December 1999; and to secure for himself the...

Pro bono lawyer Jenny Parker is the only true innocent in her family. The daughter of a New Orleans crime lord, she’s tried for years to make her own way, but family ties always manage to pull her back in line. When her youngest brother gets involved in human trafficking, Jenny wants to believe him innocent and tries to protect him, even though it means covering for his crimes. Matthew Ryder knows Jenny is...

No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is deeply - some would say totally - involved with digital media. Professors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis name today's young people The App Generation, and in this spellbinding book they explore what it means to be "app-dependent" versus "app-enabled" and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era. Gardner and Davis...

Set during a period of revolution and turmoil, Mistress of My Fate is the first book in a trilogy about Henrietta Lightfoot, a young woman who was abandoned as a baby and raised alongside her cousins, noble children of a lord and lady. At just sixteen years old, circumstance and a passionate love affair tear Henrietta away from everything she knows, leading to a new life fending for herself on the streets of...

St Angelus runs like a family: the workers take care of their own - a lesson the mysterious new assistant matron, Miss Van Gilder, is about to learn the hard way. Little Joe has had trouble breathing but the doctors don’t take his sister Lily’s concerns seriously, least of all Miss Van Gilder. The nurses of Lovely Lane have a secret which is dividing their close knit group and when Nurse Pammy Tanner once again breaks...

Maggie vowed to never marry a man who can’t laugh or dance, but when she and the dull new doctor in town, Everett Dulanis, wind up spending the night together in an abandoned dugout house, all that changes. Her father is the best man and his shotgun is the bridesmaid at the wedding where a union has been made, but there’s certainly no unity. Everett was engaged to Carolina Prescott, a southern lady in...

January 1782, Portsmouth. His Britannic Majesty's frigate Phalarope is ordered to the assistance of the hard-pressed squadrons in the Caribbean. Aboard is her new commander - Richard Bolitho. To all appearances the Phalarope is everything a young captain could wish for. But beneath the surface she is a deeply unhappy ship - her wardroom torn by petty greed and ambition, her deckhands driven to...

Martin believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional re-education. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendour at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. How will he survive it?

From the imaginations of best-selling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare comes a heart-stopping plunge into the magical unknown. Think you know magic? Think again. The Magisterium awaits.... Most people would do anything to get into the Magisterium and pass the Iron Trial. Not Callum Hunt. Call has been told his whole life that he should never trust a magician. And so he tries his best to do his worst - but fails...

In The Talent Code, award-winning journalist Daniel Coyle draws on cutting-edge research to reveal that, far from being some abstract mystical power fixed at birth, ability really can be created and nurtured. In the process, he considers talent at work in venues as diverse as a music school in Dallas and a tennis academy near Moscow to demonstrate how the wiring of our brains can be transformed by the way we...

Set in the early twentieth century in a world where the airplane hasn't been invented, a young boy takes to the skies aboard an airship where he plays an important role in fierce battles that are fought high in the sky. Read by David Kelly & full cast.

Mary Queen of Scots passed her childhood in France and married the Dauphin to become Queen of France at the age of sixteen. Widowed less than two years later, she returned to Scotland as Queen after an absence of thirteen years. Her life then entered its best known phase: the early struggles with John Knox, and the unruly Scottish nobility; the fatal marriage to Darnley and his mysterious death; her marriage...

A New York Times best seller and winner of the 2012 Dylan Thomas Prize and 2012 L.A. Times First Novel Prize. The Van Meters have gathered at their family retreat on the New England island of Waskeke to celebrate the marriage of daughter Daphne to an impeccably appropriate young man. The weekend is full of lobster and champagne, salt air and practiced bonhomie, but long-buried discontent and simmering...

"Towers - like flame. A candle in darkness. A black wind." Roland Watson wasn't expecting to see things like that when he kicked a football into a condemned church. But once inside, he is taken from the slums of Manchester to the ruins of a magical kingdom. And only he can bring back the light to Elidor. With his brothers and sister, Roland has to solve ancient riddles and brave dark forces to save the mythical land.

A Furious Love Is Hot on Your Trail! Many believers feel stunted in their Christian growth. We beat ourselves up over our failures and, in the process, pull away from God because we subconsciously believe He tallies our defects and hangs His head in disappointment. In this new edition - now with a foreword by Michael W. Smith, testimony by Rich Mullins and the author's own epilogue, "Ragamuffin Ten Years Later,"...

Harry Pendel is the charismatic proprietor of Pendel and Braithwaite Limitada of Panama, through whose doors everyone who is anyone in Central America passes. Andrew Osnard, mysterious and fleshy, is a spy. His secret mission is two-pronged: to keep a watchful eye on the political .....

HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books.

Stories are  The Friar's Tale, The Summoner's Tale, The Lawyer's Tale, The Seaman's Tale, The Prioress's Tale, The Manciple's Tale and The Physician's Tale. They all paint a vivid picture of fourteenth-century medieval life, society, and values both with whit and wonderful imigery. 

Lost in the chill deeps of space between the galaxies, it sails on forever, a flat, circular world carried on the back of a giant turtle - Discworld - a land where the unexpected can be expected. Where the strangest things happen to the nicest people. Like Brutha, a simple lad who only wants to tend his melon patch.

Right before the wise old wizard Drum Billet died, he passed on his magical staff of power to the newborn eighth son of an eighth son. Unfortunately, Drum Billet never bothered to check the gender of the newborn baby, and it turns out it was a girl. Now his chauvinistic colleagues are forced to deal with a young...

The Colour of Magic Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the Discworld. Tourist, Rincewind decided, meant idiot. Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place which might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks ...

They say that diplomacy is a gentle art. That mastering it is a lifetime's work. But you do need a certain inclination in that direction. It's not something you can just pick up on the job. A few days ago Sam Vimes was a copper - an important copper, true - chief of police - but still, at his core, a policeman. But today he...

It's not easy being a teenage pharaoh. You're not allowed to carry money, inhibited young women peel your grapes for you, everyone thinks you're responsible for making the sun rise and the corn grow, and on top of everything else the Great Pyramid has just exploded because of paracosmic instability.

Mort becomes an apprentice to Death, but when it comes to the rather attractive Princess Keli (due to be assassinated), he fluffs it completely. He kills the assassin instead. But reality isn't changed so easily; history begins to take shape. Can Mort save Keli before she is squeezed out of existence?

If you find yourself ruminating on questions like "Where have all the dragons gone?" then this is the story for you. Explore the crazy, creepy land called Discworld, where you'll discover that the dragons aren't asleep or dead - they're dormant, packed in like huge, scaly sardines. Join in the search for the key...

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. And on the Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like the underwater; how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there's never enough time.

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.

The spirited words of the Romantic poets have inspired countless readers and writers, down to the current day. Their expressiveness is well-suited to the spoken word. Hear on this collection the words of William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William...

A skeleton has been unearthed. Soon the body is identified, and the horrific discovery hits the headlines... Fourteen-year-old Graham Marshall went missing during his paper round in 1965. The police found no trace of him. His disappearance left his family shattered, and his best friend, Alan Banks, full of guilt... That friend has now become Chief Inspector Alan Banks, and he is determined to bring justice for Graham. But he soon realises that in this case, the boundary...

When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is...

Love is in the air when five sisters discover that a wealthy and eligible bachelor is suddenly within reach. But it is his friend, the haughty Mr. Darcy, who becomes smitten. Unfortunately for him, the object of his affection is not so easily swayed. One of the most popular characters in English literature, ...

"Be a man in the City Watch! The City Watch needs men!" But what it's got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lace-constable Cuddy (really a dwarf), Lance-constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-constable Angua (a woman...most of the time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for...

"You've heard of Faust ... this is Eric. There's a difference. Eric is fourteen, lives on the famed and magical Discworld, and is the first ever demonology hacker. Fortunately, he doesn't succeed in raising any devils, but he does raise Rincewind (the most incompetent wizard in the universe) and the Luggage...

The Great A'Tuin, the heroic turtle who supports the weight of the entire Discworld, not to mention four giant elephants, swims through the galaxy day and night with the burden of being the only creature who knows exactly where the universe is going. Philosophers have long debated where this is, and are due to find out in about 2 months. Shall they worry? Well, they are on a collision course with a malevolent red star and only one person can save Discworld.

Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a hard-boiled egg! Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had it all. But now he's back in his own rough, tough past, without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck. Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive; he has a job to do. He must...

THE SHOW MUST GO ON, AS MURDER, MUSIC AND MAYHEM RUN RIOT IN THE NIGHT... The Opera House, Ankh-Morpork... A huge, rambling building, where innocent young sopranos are lured to their destiny by a strangely familiar evil mastermind in a hideously deformed evening dress... At least, he hopes so.

A 'sourcerer' is born in Discworld - a wizard so powerful that he makes all other magicians look like a bunch of fools in pointy hats. Now, suddenly, Discworld is brought to the brink of an all-out thaumaturgical war. The only hope for peace is Rincewind, the failed magician who has a risky plan to save the world.

Reality is all very well in small doses. It's a perfectly conventional and convenient way of neutralising the imagination. But sometimes when there's more than one reality at play, imagination just won't be neutralised, and the walls between realities come tumbling down. Unfortunately there's usually a damned...

The "Old Patagonian Express" was the last train Paul Theroux took in his journey from Boston to Patagonia. Some trains were superb, most were deplorable. It was a journey of contrasts in people, in temperature, in scenery, in altitude, and in attitude. The people were extraordinary, eccentric, replusive and individualistic. There was the appalling Mr Thornberry, the bogus priest in Cali and the blind writer,

This set includes 3 Original Stories performed by the Original Cast

Enterprise: The First Adventure

Final Frontier and

Strangers from the Sky

It has been a decade since Alan Langford's charred remains were discovered in his burnt-out car. His wife, Donna, was found guilty of conspiracy to murder her husband and served 10 years in prison. But just before she is released, Donna receives a nasty shock: an anonymous letter containing a photo of her husband. The man she hates with...

Alison Willetts has survived a stroke, deliberately induced by a psychopathic killer. She can see, hear and feel, but is completely unable to move or communicate. In leaving Alison alive, the police believe the killer's made his first mistake. DI Tom Thorne must find a man whose agenda is terrifyingly unique, and Alison, the one person..

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.

Sixteenth-century classic by brilliant humanist, churchman and scholar envisioned a patriarchal island kingdom that practiced religious tolerance, in which everybody worked, all goods were community-owned, and violence, bloodshed, and vice were nonexistent.

When Sylvester, the Duke of Salford, first meets Phoebe Marlow, he finds her dull and insipid. She thinks he is insufferably arrogant. But when a series of unforeseen events leads them to be stranded together in a lonely country inn, they are both forced to reassess their hastily formed opinions, and they begin to discover a new-found liking...

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

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is an account written by T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia as he became known, regarding the Arab revolt against the Turks and his own part in those events, transcribed from extensive notes which he kept at the time. Like Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, Lawrence is a stunning example of a military man as a literary genius. Insightful and candid, raw and emotive, Seven Pillars of Wisdom is...

For twenty-five years, Julie Goodyear became part of everyone’s family when she played Bet Lynch, the loveable brassy barmaid of the Rovers Return in ‘Coronation Street’. Now, at sixty-four (the age her mother was when she died), Julie feels the time is right to tell her amazing life story. Julie Goodyear 's...

The brilliant and profound second novel from the three-times Costa prizewinner and number one bestseller Kate Atkinson. Vivid, richly imaginative, hilarious and frightening by turns' Observer Once it had been the great forest of Lythe. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor.

Simon Serrailler has just wrapped up an exhausting and difficult case for SIFT – Special Incident Flying Taskforce – and is on a sabbatical on a Scottish island when he is recalled to Lafferton. Two local prostitutes have vanished and are subsequently found strangled. By the time he gets back, another girl has...

Bombs are exploding in the streets of London, but life seems to have planted more subtle booby-traps for Miles Flint. Miles is a spy. His job is to watch and to listen, then to report back to his superiors, nothing more. The job, affording glimpses into the most private lives of his victims, appeals to Miles. He doesn't...

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 almost unthinkable. When the victim turns out to...

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

*** The tape in the Used - Acceptable - Audio Transfer Included copy of this title has snapped. We have created the Audio Transfer that comes with this set from a perfect copy and the audio quality is not effected ***  In Parenthesis was first published in London in 1937. I am proud to share the responsibility for that first publication. On reading the book in typescript I was deeply moved. I then regarded it, and still regard it...

A novel set in Cornwall at the time of Charles II, which tells the story of the relationship between a beautiful and capricious lady and a dangerous but attractive French pirate.

In 1934 Laurie Lee set out from his home in the Cotswolds to walk to London, where he lived by playing the violin and labouring on a building site. Then, armed with one Spanish phrase, he decided to see Spain, and for a year walked through a country on the brink of civil war.

Max Skinner, man about town and successful City slicker, finds himself suddenly redundant and instead of rejoining the rat race he has an opportunity to start a new life when he finds he has inherited an 18th century vineyard in Provence. It sounds ideal but life has a habit of surprising even in paradise. Peter Mayle's delightful novel will enchant the audiences who bought A YEAR IN PROVENCE and TOUJOURS PROVENCE in their millions. Affectionate and witty, his unerring eye...

A Genius Performance by Michael Jayston!

Smiley and his people are facing a remarkable challenge: a mole - a soviet double agent - who has burrowed his way in and up to the highest level of British Intelligence. His treachery has already blown some of their vital operations and their best networks. The mole is one of their own kind. But which one?

Greece is a favourite destination for Seven Sights Travel, a seedy company which provides escorted tours for wealthy travellers. When Marcus Didius Falco and Helena hear that a young girl and a newly-wed woman, both Roman visitors, have been murdered at Olympia, they both step in to investigate.

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 am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness.' Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies...

It was 2.47 a.m. when Chief Inspector Alan Banks arrived at the barn and saw the body of Keith Rothwell for the first time. Only hours earlier two masked men had walked the mild-mannered accountant out of his farmhouse and clinically blasted him with a shotgun.

When Juliet Doyle discovers a gun in her daughter's bedroom, she turns to old friend DCI Alan Banks for advice. But Banks is taking a much-needed holiday, and it's left to DI Annie Cabbot to deal with the removal of the firearm. No one could have foreseen the operation's disastrous consequences, or that the...

In a Dry Season is the 10th novel in Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks series, following on from Dead Right. During a blistering summer, drought has depleted Thornfield Reservoir, uncovering the remains of a small village called Hobb's End - hidden from view for over 40 years.

An entrancing coming of age tale, Cherry Ice captures the end of an era characterised by its elegance and style.

It's the story of Ella, a young girl who travels across the Atlantic in the Queen Mary, the largest, most beautiful ship in the world, during the summer of 1964. Ella is on her way to New York to see the father she barely remembers. She's left behind her beloved mother in London. All three experience a sea change in the four days of Ella's crossing - whether it be love, discovery or plain old sea-sickness ...

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death. Now, in unabridged audio for the first time, we present Norman Mailer's acclaimed in-depth biography of Hollywood s most enduring icon. This extraordinary biography of the legendary screen star Marilyn Monroe was originally published in 1973 by Norman Mailer, one of America's most important writers of the second half of the Twentieth Century.

The third book in Landy's fantastically imaginative and illustrious series about our favourite dead detective, Skulduggery Pleasant and his wonderfully cheeky and inquisitive side kick Valkyrie take us through another journey which promises to be filled with adventure, dark mysterious meetings, and classically funny moments. With all the characters read once again by Rupert Degas 'The Faceless Ones' will...

For Iris, childhood memories are of long hot summers spent playing with her cousin Rosmarie in her grandmother's garden, a place where redcurrants turned to pale tears on the branches of trees and beautiful Aunt Inga shook sparks from the tips of her fingers. But now her grandmother is dead, and along with inheriting the property, Iris finds that she also inherits her family's darkest secrets. Reluctant to keep it...

The body of a woman has been discovered in Castle Farthing Woods, and it appears that although she had been dead for years, nobody had ever reported her missing. DI Harry Falconer of the Market Darley police is perplexed - and not only in his working life. He has recently resumed his relationship with psychologist Dr Honey Dubois - but while visiting a local village in the course of his investigations, unsettling memories...

Who killed Nanna Birk Larsen? Through the dark wood where the dead trees give no shelter, Nanna Birk Larsen runs…. There is a bright monocular eye that follows, like a hunter after a wounded deer. It moves in a slow approaching zigzag, marching through the Pineseskoven wasteland, through the Pentecost Forest. The chill water, the fear, his presence not so far away... There is one torchlight on her now, the single...

The first message sent to Tom Thorne's phone was just a picture - the blurred image of a man's face, but Thorne had seen enough dead bodies to know that the man was no longer alive. But who was he? Who sent the photograph? And why? While the technical experts attempt to trace the sender, Thorne searches the bulletins for a reported death that matches the photograph. Then another picture arrives.

Luke Mullen, son of a former police officer, has disappeared, and DI Tom Thorne is brought in to assist the search. A list quickly emerges of anyone who may have a grudge against Luke's father, but Thorne discovers that ex-DCI Tony Mullen has omitted the name of a man who is now the main suspect in an unsolved murder. Is this a simple oversight, or something more telling?

When a woman's body is found in a North London flat clutching a bloodstained sliver of X-ray, DI Thorne discovers that the victim's mother had herself been murdered fifteen years before by the infamous serial killer Raymond Garvey. When more bodies and more fragments of X-ray are discovered, a horrifying picture emerges: a killer is targeting the children of Garvey's victims...

Someone - a woman, or somebody pretending to be a woman - is writing to convicted rapists in prison, befriending them and then brutally killing them when they are released. DI Tom Thorne must discover the link between these killings and a murder/suicide that took place twenty-five years before; a tragedy to which the only witnesses were two small children, now adults and nowhere to be found...

Jessica Clarke had been set alight 20 years ago. Her attacker, quickly tracked down and eager to confess, is still in jail, his career as a hitman for North London gangs now well behind him. So who is harassing Carol Chamberlain, the arresting officer, and claiming that he is one who burned the girl? Now retired, Carol turns to DI Tom Thorne for help. Thorne is up to his neck investigating a series of killings which appear to...

It was a vicious, calculated murder. The killer selected his victim at Euston station, followed her home and strangled her. At the same time, killed in the same way, a second body is discovered at King's Cross station. It is a coincidence that eerily echoes the murder of two other women, stabbed to death on the same day months earlier... Could DI Tom Thorne be up against two serial killers working together?

Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Pity he's not very good at it. All he wants is his three wishes granted.Nothing fancy - to be immortal, rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him, the usual stuff. But instead of a tractable demon, he calls up Rincewind, probably the most incompetent wizard in the universe, and the extremely intractable and hostile form...

Often referred to but rarely read, The Communist Manifesto is one of the great documents of world history. Written by Marx and Engels and published in London in 1848 (in German originally) it presented a totally different view of social and political organisation, as revolutionary as Darwin's On the Origin of Species. The Manifesto's effect on world politics was incalculable, but though it might seem to have been...

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will...