Brothers Tony, Sean, and Ned had the perfect upbringing, but now that they are grown-up, real life is starting to get in the way. Tony’s dealing with divorce and a weight problem, novelist Sean is up against a serious case of writer’s block and a shock announcement from his “perfect” new girlfriend, and their parents have a new lodger, Gervase.

At a prayer meeting on a cold Rotterdam night, the young clerk Aart Anthonij van der Lingen - a pale, sickly, hunchbacked 'fish from the North' - is held in the charismatic Reverend Johannes Kicherer's thrall. Lured by Kicherer's passion, he leaves his grey and loveless life to land at the Cape of Good Hope as a lay missionary in 1800.

This explosively entertaining memoir abounds in gossip, satire, historical apercus, and trenchant observations. Vidal&;s compelling narrative weaves back and forth in time, providing a whole view of the author&;s celebrated life, from his birth in 1925 to today, and features a cast of memorable characters&;including the Kennedy family...

In the early 20th century, few women in China were to prove so important to the rise of Chinese nationalism and liberation from tradition as the three extraordinary Soong sisters: Eling, Chingling, and Mayling. As told with wit and verve by Emily Hahn, a remarkable woman in her own right, the biography of the Soong sisters tells the story of...

A never-before-heard collection of archive recordings of the wit and wisdom of Linda Smith - a "national treasure" of Radio 4 and BBC TV. (Links are narrated by Hattie Hayridge.) In this brilliant anthology Linda's fans can now hear original recordings of her live performances, never before heard by the public, compiled and edited by her partner of...

Here are four more dramatised stories starring everyone’s favourite bear, introduced by Michael Hordern, who narrated the original BBC TV series. Included are 'Paddington: a Day at the Seaside', 'Pantomime Time', 'A Picnic on the River', and 'Paddington’s Christmas.' Whether he’s playing in the sand, going to the theatre, picnicking on the river, or...

Four dramatised stories starring everyone's favourite bear, introduced by Michael Hordern, who narrated the original BBC TV series Paddington. Included here are 'Please Look After This Bear', 'A Bear in Hot Water', 'A Disappearing Trick Paddington', and 'The Amateur Dramatics'. Please look after this bear', said the label around Paddington's neck, so...

This audiobook includes 27 classic and contemporary poems that make a statement, covering physical abuse; corporate greed; abortion; motorcycle helmets; poverty; change; human rights; oppression and discrimination; and religion.

Children have a knack of asking great, but challenging, questions: Why is the sea salty? How far away is space? Why can't I tickle myself? What makes me me? But how are we supposed to answer them? Imagine if we could turn to a leading expert and ask them to answer on our behalf. This book gathers over 100 real questions from children and...

Long before the phrase 'climate change' was a universal catchphrase, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was studying the impact of industrialization on the environment. Now, in this fascinating cross-disciplinary work, the Prince of Wales calls upon his years of research and explores the way in which mankind must work to restore the delicate...

This is the first BBC Radio 4 series of "The consultants". Written and performed by Neil Edmond, Justin Edwards and James Rawlings, the series is produced by Will Saunders.

Inspired by the film that delighted parents and children alike, this audiobook version of How To Train Your Dragon is a whole new experience that will have you falling in love all over again. The story of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III's rise to fame, through his dragon-training exploits, told in Hiccup's own words by David Tennant. Hiccup was a truly...

Fiona Maye is a leading High Court judge, presiding over cases in the family court. She is renowned for her fierce intelligence, exactitude and sensitivity. But her professional success belies private sorrow and domestic strife. There is the lingering regret of her childlessness, and now, her marriage of thirty years is in crisis. At the same time, she is...

Featured in this collection from the BBC TV series are Mavis Cruet, the Fat Fairy; Arthur, the Cockney Caterpillar; Evil Edna, the Wicked Witch; Carwash, the Prissy Pussy; and The Moog, the Droopy Dog. Of course, we mustn't forget 'the Beast', who is really Prince Humbert the Handsome, changed into various shapes and sizes by Evil Edna's spells.

An only child, 15-year-old Angeline Stewart is heartbroken when her beloved parents are killed in a coaching accident and she is given into the care of her uncle. Naïve and innocent, Angeline is easy prey for the handsome and ruthless Oswald Golding who is looking for a rich heiress to solve the money troubles his gambling and womanizing has...

In September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared - two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers. Did the same storm upend the fortunes of those...

From Edith Pargeter, who also wrote as Ellis Peters, A BLOODY FIELD BY SHREWSBURY is a vivid medieval tale of Henry IV's kingdom in crisis. 'Chivalry, treachery, conflict of loyalties... The clash of wills is as stirring as the clash of steel' Observer England, 1399. A treacherous plot has been hatched to depose King Richard and install Henry...

** There are a few short audio defects in this set which last a few seconds, mainly during the first 10 mins of Side 1 ** Arthur Ransome, born in 1884, became famous as the author of the much loved 'Swallows and Amazons' children's book. He worked for the 'Manchester Guardian' as a foreign correspondent, travelling to Russia and reporting at...

You do not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed.

A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony, Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer.

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.

Three Men in a Boat is one of the most amusing and durable books in the English language. Semi-autobiographical, it recounts the adventures and mishaps of George, Harris, J. (the author) and his remarkable dog Montmorency during a boat trip along the River Thames in England from London to Oxford.

Alan Cumming's father Alex was a man who held his family hostage, who meted out violence with a frightening ease. Alex was the dark, enigmatic heart of Cumming family life. But he was not the only mystery. Alan's maternal grandfather, Tommy Darling, had disappeared to the Far East after the Second World War. Curious to explore this...

Oscar Finley: street cop turned street lawyer. Wally Figg: expert hustler and ambulance-chaser. David Zinc: Harvard Law School graduate. Together, this unlikely trio make up Finley & Figg: specialists in injury claims, quickie divorces and DUIs. None of them has ever faced a jury in federal court. But they are about to take on one of the biggest...

Winner of the Booker of Booker Prize 2008 as best novel ever to win the Booker Prize, this is Rushdie's most loved book available for the first time in audio. Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India s independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic...

Born to parents who were enthusiastic naturalists, and linked through his wider family to a clutch of accomplished scientists, Richard Dawkins was bound to have biology in his genes. But what were the influences that shaped his life and intellectual development? And who inspired him to become the pioneering...

A reissue of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 dramatization of Len Deighton's story, recounting the horror unleashed by RAF bombers on a town in Germany in the summer of 1943. This edition is part of the BBC's range of modern classics.

A Genius Performance by Derek Jacobi!
In the year of our Lord 1141, August comes in golden as a lion, and two monks ride into the Benedictine abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul bringing with them disturbing news of war- and a mystery.

The Third Man is one of the truly great post-war films, starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton. A thrilling story of black-marketeering, it is set against a backdrop of Vienna in the immediate post-war era, when the city was divided into four zones amongst the major powers, Russia, Britain, France and America.

It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation.

David Attenborough is one of the most influential, admired and best-liked figures in television. When, aged 26, he applied for a job in the BBC - which then meant radio - he was promptly turned down. But someone saw his rejected application letter and asked, would he like to try television?

Penguin Audiobooks presents a brand new recording of Someone Like You, Roald Dahl's first collection of his world famous dark and sinister adult stories, brought to life by an all-star cast including Julian Rhind-Tutt, Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig, Derek Jacobi, Richard Griffiths, Will Self, Jessica Hynes ....

Imagine a wonderfully rude, children's version of "It's a Wonderful Life." At the beginning of the tale we have a good man, a caring man, heading for his job as a cookie-taster…but also heading for a terrible fate (he's about to step in something smelly.) Is this an accident (no!) Who's responsible? (the Gigglers, that's who! Elfen creatures whose pranks punish wayward adults.) What did he do to...

Follow lawyer Matthew Shardlake as he battles through mystery, murder and court intrigue in Tudor England. The C. J. Sansom Five Audiobook CD Boxset contains the first five titles in the Shardlake series: Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation and Heartstone.

The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy features all five complete and unabridged audiobooks of this much-loved 'trilogy' in a CD pack. On 12 October 1979 the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor (and Earth) was made available to humanity. This was ...

To begin at the beginning: it is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black...' When Richard Burton breathed the opening words of "Under Milk Wood" into a microphone, broadcasting history was made.

In the last thirty years of his life Albert Einstein searched for a unified theory - a theory which could describe all the forces of nature in a single framework. But the time was not right for such a discovery in Einstein's day. Neither was the time right when, in 1988, Professor Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History...

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. Mere coincidence? Luke was..

In the heyday of the Roman Empire, a small accounting error has left Marcus Didius Falco sharing a cell with a large rat. But, the Empire's most hard-done-by investigator is finally bailed out, and promptly accepts a commission to help a family of freed slaves fend off a professional bribe...This is a third instalment of the Marcus Didius...

Little did Anthony Cade suspect that a simple errand on behalf of a friend would make him the centrepiece of a murderous international conspiracy. Someone would stop at nothing to prevent the monarchy being restored in faraway Herzoslovakia. The combined forces of Scotland Yard and the French...

Carla Lemarchant was a child of five when her mother was accused and convicted of poisoning her father, the famous painter Amyas Crale. After Caroline Crale dies in prison, Carla is sent to live with her uncle and aunt in Canada. Only on her twenty-first birthday does Carla learn of her family history when she...

Just as Amy Leatheran is about to return to England, she is hired by celebrated archaeologist Dr Leidner to work as a nurse/companion for his wife, who is subject to fits of nervous terrors. As they travel to an ancient site in the Iraqi desert, Amy finds herself in a situation stranger than she could ever have imagined, whilst Mrs Leidner proves to...

In this delightful tale, an Eastern Prince arrives in England with some family jewels which he's having reset as a gift for his fianceé. However, the Prince also has a mistress. She asks to wear one particularly enchanting piece that features a huge ruby, and then promptly disappears with it. Poirot discovers a...

A classic Marple title now available in CD for the first time. First, the mystery man in the church with a bullet-wound… then, the riddle of a dead man’s buried treasure… the curious conduct of a caretaker after a fatal riding accident… the corpse and a tape-measure… the girl framed for theft… and the suspect accused of stabbing his wife with a dagger. Six gripping cases with one thing in common...

The Unexpected Guest begins on a foggy night at a lonely country house, where a woman with a gun in her hand is quietly surveying the dead body of her husband. It looks like a straightforward case of murder. Or is it? As the ghosts of an old wrong begin to emerge from the past, the case begins to look...

The story concerns Paul Dombey, the wealthy owner of the shipping company of the book's title, whose dream is to have a son to continue his business. The book begins when his son is born and Dombey's wife dies shortly after giving birth. Following the advice of Mrs Louisa Chick, his sister, Dombey employs a wet nurse named Mrs Richards (Toodle).

Stephen Hawking's worldwide bestseller, A Brief History of Time, has been a landmark publication in scientific books. A Briefer History of Time expands on the great subjects of the original. Purely technical concepts, such as the mathematics of chaotic boundary conditions, are gone.

Vis in magia, in vita vi. In magic there is power, and in power, life.

For fifteen years, Lark Ainsley waited for the day when her Resource would be harvested and she would finally be an adult. After the harvest she expected a small role in the regular, orderly operation of the City within the Wall.

During his life, Geoffrey Chaucer (born c.1340) was courtier, diplomat, revenue collector, administrator, negotiator, overseer of building projects, landowner and knight of the shire. He was servant, retainer, husband, friend and father, but is now mainly known as a ....

Seventeenth-century Amsterdam – a city in the grip of tulip fever.

Sophia’s husband Cornelis is one of the lucky ones grown rich from this exotic new flower. To celebrate, he commissions a talented young artist to paint him with his beautiful young bride.

Michael McIntyre has become Britain's biggest comedy star. His debut stand-up DVD was the fastest selling of all time, only to be eclipsed by his second that sold over 1.4 million copies and was the 2009 Christmas number one. He hosts his own BAFTA nominated BBC1 series, Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow, and won the British Comedy...

** These stories involve adult themes ** The stories in this set include The Visitor, The Great Switcheroo, The Last Act and Bitch.

Anton Lesser and Anna Madeley star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the fourth novel in Lindsey Davis' bestselling series featuring Roman private eye Falco. The Iron Hand of Mars sees Falco being dispatched to one of the most hostile parts of the Empire to deliver a new standard - an iron hand - to one of the legions. Germania is cold...

Returning to Rome after his mission to Germania, Falco finds that his mother is being harassed by a centurion named Censorinus, who says he is chasing a debt owed to him by Falco's brother Festus. Censorinus claims that Festus was involved in a syndicate, shipping valuable statues from Greece - and that even when his ship sunk, Festus had...

Join Professor John Lloyd and Curator Bill Bailey as they plunge down the badger hole of ignorance in a search for the universe's most mind-boggling oddnesses. "The Museum of Curiosity" is BBC Radio 4's monumental comedy edifice, and the only one with gargoyles in the foyer. It allows nothing inside unless it makes you scratch your head, stroke...

Rumi's Spiritual Verses is the greatest mystical poem in Islamic culture and of all time. Rumi tells of our human separation from reality, love and truth. He shows how love - neither erotic nor sentimental but divine, by which the universe is held together - enlightens ignorance and dissolves suffering. The first book of the Masnavi is the key to the...

It's chocks away and tally-ho, chaps - Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, is back! First published in classic British comic The Eagle, these are the original adventures of one of the best known and loved of British comic characters, presented in a new series of gorgeous library editions from Titan. In the first part of this rip-snorting story, Dan and his crew...

This compilation of Ten Sanskrit Mantras was recorded in July 2006 at 'Kasteel de Berckt' in the Netherlands and professionally mastered. The package includes a 16-page full colour booklet. The CD has 67 minutes of playing time. Chanting has been used by religions and cultures in all ages; for it has the power to put us in a meditative state, in a...

Discover how to thrive and live better for longer. By the time we turn 60 most of us will still have one-third of our lives to live. How well we live these years will depend on our health: are we agile and disease-free? Or dependent on medication and physical assistance? In Staying Alive, you'll discover the science on how you can avoid or manage...

This is the fifth in a sequence of novels set in the fictional English village of Round Ringford, chronicling the lives of a number of ongoing characters, and bringing new people into the story.

Originally published in 1980, this is Dirk Bogarde's first novel. In the uneasy aftermath of WWII, a group of ordinary British soldiers and their families find themselves stationed as peacekeepers at an outpost in the Java Sea. Whilst attempting to return the island to Dutch control, they are subject to violent attacks by the locals who want their freedom.

A desperate escape from Romania after the fall of the Ceausescus... a violent introduction to the new rules of warfare on the borders of Afghanistan... then an icy struggle for survival among the world’s highest mountains... Death follows those who seek beyond the ‘Delta Connection’ searching for something closely guarded in the most...

A lifetime of restraint and placid affection erupts when a retired bank manager falls for a young girl, as far removed from him in background and experience as in age. Set in Cumbria, this is an intensely moving evocation of an overwhelming passion and its destructive kernel of jealousy.

In this collection of ten short stories, each with a surprising twist, Simon Brett covers all seven of the deadly sins, with supremely entertaining results. In THE MAN WHO GOT THE DIRT, two Angry Young Men have become Angry Old Men - and one of them is angry enough to kill. In POLITICAL CORRECTIONS, a recently-discovered manuscript by a...

It is summer, 1981. At a wedding party being given by the Napier family in the grounds of what had once been their house in Cornwall, Chris Napier, the bride's uncle, is shocked to recognize a drunken intruder. It is his childhood friend, Nicky Lanyon, whom Christ has not seen since his father....

A novel of overwhelming emotional power, Birdsong is a story of love, death, sex and survival. Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman, arrives in Amiens in northern France in 1910 to stay with the Azaire family, and falls in love with unhappily married Isabelle.

Where does this all leave us, sir?' Things are moving fast.' We're getting near the end, you mean?' We were always near the end.' The murder of Yvonne Harrison had left Thames Valley CID baffled. A year after the dreadful crime they are still no nearer to making an arrest. But one man has yet to tackle the case - and it is just the sort of puzzle...

Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn't know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered.But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary's life in a way she could never have imagined.

Winner of the Booker Prize 1996 Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea at Margate. For reasons best known to herself, Jack’s widow, Amy, declines to join them..... On the surface a simple tale of an increasingly bizarre day’s outing, this Booker...

Michael was in a hurry. He was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with 800 lawyers. The money was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star with no time to waste, no time to stop, no time to toss a few coins into the cups of panhandlers. No time for a conscience. But a violent...

While in Moscow, historian Fluke Kelso is approached by someone claiming to have been present when Stalin died, but a simple check into the old man's story turns into a murderous chase into the dark forests of northern Russia near the White Sea port of Archangel.

They watched Danilo Silva for days before they finally grabbed him. He was living alone, a quiet life on a shady street in Brazil; a simple life in a modest home, certainly not one of luxury. Certainly no evidence of the fortune they thought he had stolen. He was much thinner and his face had been altered. He spoke a different language, and spoke it...

Another day. Another death. Death du Jour. My God, how many such days would there be? On a bitterly cold march night in Montreal, forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan is exhuming the remains of a nun proposed for sainthood in the grounds of an old church. Just hours later, Tempe is called to the scene of a horrific arson.

One of Clarke's most famous and acclaimed novels, winner of both the HUGO AWARD and the NEBULA AWARD In the 22nd century visionary scientist Vannevar Morgan conceives the most grandiose engineering project of all time, and one which will revolutionize the future of humankind of space: a Space Elevator...

No sign of foul play,' says Dr Carr after the post-mortem on Agatha Dawson. The case is closed. But Lord Peter Wimsey is not satisfied . . .

A new American classic from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gilead and Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder. Lila, homeless and alone after...

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...

Resourceful, adventurous and utterly indefatigable, Sophy is hardly the mild-mannered girl that the Rivenhalls expect when they agree to take her in. Kind-hearted Aunt Lizzy is shocked; stern Cousin Charles and his humourless fiancee Eugenia are disapproving.

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.

Over the years Julie Andrews has been much interviewed in the press and on television, but she has never before revealed the true story of her childhood and upbringing. In HOME she vividly recreates the years before the movies.

The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language, the Oxford English Dictionary. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project: a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books.

An anthology of England's favourite poems chosen and read by Margaret Howard with Bernard Palmer and David Bellan. The programme includes poems from WB Yeats, Manley Hopkins and Dylan Thomas.

Anne Elliot has grieved for seven years over the loss of her first and only love, Captain Frederick Wentworth. When their paths finally cross again, Anne finds herself slighted and all traces of their former intimacy gone. As the pair continue to share the same social circle, dramatic events in Lyme Regis, and later in...

Tolstoy's story of one woman's fate is brought powerfully to life in this BBC Radio full-cast dramatisation starring Teresa Gallagher and Toby Stephens. Anna Karenina enjoys a privileged and aristrocratic lifestyle as the wife of influential government official Alexy Karenin. Yet their ten-year marriage...

Doling out advice in his column, Dr. Robert Heller, a leading New York City veterinarian who understands animals better than people, believes that he has finally figured out what it takes to thrive in the human world until tragedy strikes.

Inspired by the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener and his California-born wife, this tender portrait of a marriage asks: what do you do when someone you love wants to change? It starts with a question, a simple favor asked of a husband by his wife on an afternoon chilled by the Baltic wind...

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.