Into the house. Down the stairs. Through the dripping dark of the cellar. Someone is there. Someone that shouldn't be there. As a building awaits demolition, a horrifying discovery is made inside the basement: a cage made of human bones - with a terrified, feral child lurking within. Unbeknownst to Dl Phil Brennan and psychologist Marina Esposito, they have disturbed a killer who has been operating undetected for thirty years. A killer who wants that boy back.
Neil Gaiman was the WINNER of the BBC Audio Drama Award 2015 for Outstanding Contribution to Radio Drama A full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman’s celebrated apocalyptic comic novel, with bonus length episodes and outtakes. According to the Nice and Accurate...
A Genius Performance by George Baker! "We're all racist in this country" said Wexford. "Without exception. People over 40 are the worst and that's about all you can say. " But until he became involved with the Akandes, whose daughter had gone missing, Wexford hadn't applied that reality to himself. Melanie Akande was black, one of only eighteen black people living in Kingsmarkham, and her father Raymond ...
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.
In this digitised age of shared information it is easy to take for granted the power of the printed word. Here Melvyn Bragg presents a vivid reminder of the book as agent of social, political and personal revolution. In the fascinating book accompanying the ITV series, Melvyn Bragg takes a look at the most important British books in history, and their long-lasting effects which can still be felt throughout the world today. Far from being a study of dry texts...
1918 was the critical year of battle as the Great War reached its brutal climax. Warfare of an epic scale was fought on the Western Front, where ordinary British soldiers faced the final test of their training, tactics and determination. That they withstood the storm and began an astonishing counterattack ...
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...
Agatha Christie’s audacious mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. For an instant the two trains ran together, side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth witnessed a murder.
When the miserly Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley, he decides to change his ways - for Christmas and for ever. Marley's ghost sends down three spirits to Scrooge: Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future.
"My dad used to say to me, 'Try to keep a cool head and a warm heart.' At least I think it was my dad. I don't really remember him." Gravy worked in the graveyard - hence the name. He was having a normal day until his friend Benjy turned up in a car Gravy didn't recognise. Benjy had a bullet hole in his chest, but lived just long enough to ask Gravy to hide him and look after his gun. Gravy had looked after things for Benjy before, but never a gun. When Gravy looked in the car...
It is the far future, and the moon has been colonised. Although primarily a research establishment, wealthy space tourists bring in revenue to fund the facilities. One major tourist attraction is a sightseeing cruise across the lunar plains: flat and smooth, they are composed entirely of dust. The 'cruise ships'...
By the writer of the Wexford novels and read by George Baker
Someone must have had good reason to murder Mrs Elizabeth Nightingale on a dark September night. And as Detective Chief Inspector Wexford investigates, he discovers sinister undercurrents and dramatic secrets beneath the placid surface of the Nightingales' lives…
The story of Britain from the earliest settlements in 3000BC to the death of Elizabeth 1 in 1603. To look back at the past is to understand the present. In this vivid account of over 4000 years of British history Simon Schama takes us on an epic journey which encompasses the very beginnings of the nation's identity, when the first settlers landed on Orkney.
A girl missing. A woman searching. A killer planning.... A thrilling new FBI series for fans of Tess Gerritsen and Karin Slaughter. FBI Agent Elsa Myers finds missing people. She knows how it feels to be lost.... Though her father lies dying in a hospital north of New York City, Elsa cannot refuse a call for help.
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.
Magnus Pym, counsellor at the British Embassy in Vienna, has suddenly vanished, believed defected. The chase is on for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a life-time secret agent.
Pym’s life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets. The race is on to find the perfect spy.
All of his life Flinx had lived in the marketplace on Drallar with his foster mother, an ageing shopkeeper. But Flinx did not belong there and although he knew nothing of his true parents he was determined to find out about himself and the strange mental abilities that he had been endowed with. His search was to lead him into the clutches of Challis, one of the most depraved and powerful...
Charles Paris is thrilled – he’s landed a nice juicy part playing Sergeant Collins in the TV detective series, ‘The Stanislaus Braid Mysteries’, and his estranged wife Frances seems to be on the brink of taking him back. But filming turns out to be a tortuous process, with pompous star Russell Bentley demanding...
n 1963, Stephen Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Yet he went on to Cambridge to become a brilliant researcher and Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.
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.
This set covers 10 x 15 minute series on Radio 4 which was part of a two-week "Brain Season".
It explains in clear terms the latest discoveries in neuroscience. In this unprecedented journey, covering over 2,500 years of development in our understanding of what it is to be human.
In A Short History of Nearly Everything, beloved author Bill Bryson confronts his greatest challenge yet: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as his territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. The result is a sometimes...
In 1913, English physicist Henry Moseley established an elegant method for 'counting' the elements. Soon afterwards, it became clear that there were precisely seven elements missing from the periodic table―those that had yet to be isolated among the 92 naturally occurring elements from hydrogen (#1) to uranium (#92).
Ask a dozen people to name a genius and the odds are that 'Einstein' will spring to their lips. Ask them the meaning of 'relativity' and few of them will be able to tell you what it is.
In this astonishing and startling audiobook, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government ....
We are obsessed with our health, yet we are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory and misleading information. Ben Goldacre dismantles the dodgy science behind some of the great drug trials
Drawing on the lives of five great scientists, this "scholarly, insightful, and beautifully written book" (Martin Rees, author of From Here to Infinity) illuminates the path to scientific discovery.
Cancer is the second biggest killer in the world, but few of us understand how it works or how we treat it. In this illuminating introductory audiobook, Paul Scotting explains the science behind the disease and explores why some of us are more likely to develop it than others.
For most people, thoughtful behaviour and common decency are in short supply, or simply forgotten in hurried lives of emails, mobile phones and multi-tasking.
In CHOOSING CIVILITY, civility expert P M Forni identifies the 25 rules that are most essential in connecting effectively and happily with others.
In the past, we filled our free time with the tools at our disposal. Television became a kind of universal part-time job, and sitcoms and soap operas sponged up our cognitive surplus: the collective surfeit of time, intellect and energy at our disposal.
An expose of the current state of psychiatry that reveals how the pursuit of pharmaceutical riches has compromised the patients' well-being. In an effort to enlighten a new generation about its growing reliance on psychiatry, this illuminating volume investigates why psychiatry has become the ....
Over the past few years, devastating tsunamis off the coast of the Indian Ocean have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Even more alarmingly, scientists predict that these tsunamis, as well as a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, will be striking with even greater frequency and may eventually threaten Hawaii, California, and Oregon.
For decades we have been taught that fat is bad for us, carbohydrates better, and that the key to a healthy weight is eating less and exercising more. Yet despite this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes.
Our gut is as important as our brain or heart, yet we know very little about how it works and many of us are too embarrassed to ask questions. In Gut, Giulia Enders breaks this taboo, revealing the latest science on how much our digestive system has to offer.
The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way.
Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively.
From the New York Times?bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life ..............
This riveting audio explains history's most exciting discoveries. In this series, listeners will travel back in time, experiencing the lives and cultures of some of the world's greatest scientists.
The study of life and its existence in the universe, known as astrobiology, is now one of the hottest areas of both popular science and serious academic research, fusing biology, chemistry, astrophysics, and geology. Lewis Dartnell tours its latest findings, and explores some of the most fascinating ....
One of the nation's most popular presenters examines twenty marvels of the natural world from his extraordinary and pioneering experiences.
What was Sir David's first pet? Which animal would he most like to be? What creature lays 'the biggest egg in the world'? How do you communicate with an ancient nomadic community in Fiji? And what did Sir David do when confronted by a ten-foot-long reptile?
How does your personality shape your life , and what, if anything, can you do about it?Are you hardwired for happiness, or born to brood? Do you think you're in charge of your future, or do you surf the waves of unknowable fate? Would you be happier, or just less socially adept,
In clinical trials, it's called the placebo effect. But patients treated with placebos don't just feel better. It's not just 'in their heads'. They can heal their bodies by healing their thoughts. For years, pioneers in the medical community have been extolling the virtues of the mind's power to heal the body.
Why do many flowers have five or eight petals, but very few six or seven? Why do snowflakes have sixfold symmetry? Why do tigers have stripes but leopards have spots? Mathematics is to nature as Sherlock Holmes is to evidence.
""On the Origin of Species" must be high on any serious list of the most important and influential books ever written. On its first publication in 1859, Thomas Henry Huxley exclaimed 'How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that.'
Who better than Sir Patrick Moore to introduce us to the fascinating world of astronomy? As the presenter for well over 50 years of The Sky at Night, he has become synonymous with this area of science.
In this technology-driven age, it’s tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer argues in this sparkling debut, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first.
Hear a day in the life of the Amazonian rainforest, a continuous sequence of beautiful and exotic sounds. From dawn till dusk the magic of the rainforest unfolds, with rare birds, monkeys, insects, frogs and toads. There is an afternoon equatorial rainstorm, and the evening chorus of birds once ....
A brilliant examination into how the internet is profoundly changing the way we think.
In this groundbreaking book, Wired writer Clive Thompson argues that the internet is boosting our brainpower, encouraging new ways of thinking, and making us more not less intelligent as is so often claimed.
A brilliant examination into how the internet is profoundly changing the way we think.
In this groundbreaking book, Wired writer Clive Thompson argues that the internet is boosting our brainpower, encouraging new ways of thinking, and making us more not less intelligent as is so often claimed.
Dr James Hansen, the world's leading scientist on climate issues, speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: the planet is hurtling to a climatic point of no return. Hansen - whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned US Congress about global warming - is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide.
Jason Padgett was an ordinary, not terribly bright, 41-year-old working in his father's furniture shop when he was the victim of a brutal mugging outside a karaoke bar in 2002.
That same night his stepfather died of cancer, and two weeks later his only brother went missing (his body was discovered three year later).
Why would a casino try and stop you from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if a statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted?
The Ancestor's Tale is a pilgrimage back through time; a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about 6 million years in the past, orangutans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey ...
From a bestselling author and the most-followed psychologist on Twitter, this "intriguing new slant to personal transformation" (Kirkus Reviews) shows you how to take control of your life in an instant. Victorian philosopher William James had a theory about emotion and behavior:
How feminine values can solve our toughest problems and build a more prosperous future Among 64,000 people surveyed in thirteen nations, two thirds feel the world would be a better place if men thought more like women.
Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far and wide.
The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic.
The classic personal account of Watson and Crick s groundbreaking discovery of the structure of DNA, now with an introduction by Sylvia Nasar, author of "A Beautiful Mind."
For two hundred years a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter.
Winner of 2013 Best Book Award from the National Academies. Finalist for 2013 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Winner of the 2013 Reed Environmental Writing Award. Winner of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. Runner-up for 2013 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
The truth about the Ebola Virus. This book looks into the current information about this shocking virus and how the US Government have been involved. Facinating listen!
In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves ...
The Making of the Fittest This history of DNA offers listeners a tour of the massive DNA record of three billion years of evolution to see how the fittest are made. This work argues for evolution as it examines immortal genes, fossil genes, and genes that bear the scars of past battles with horrible diseases.
Is morality universal? Why are men less faithful than women? Why do some businesses succeed while others collapse?
If we have a natural impulse to empathise and care for each other, why are there psychopaths? Neuroscientist and economist Paul Zak has spent 10 years researching to answer these questions and discovering the chemical driver of our behaviour.
The world was shocked when a computer, Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov, arguably the greatest human chess player ever to have lived. This remarkable victory, and other, more day-to-day innovations, beg serious questions: what are the limits of what computers can do Can they think Do they learn
In his new book human paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall argues that a long tradition of "human exceptionalism" in paleoanthropology has distorted the picture of human evolution. Drawing partly on his own career - from young scientist in awe of his elders to crotchety elder statesman -
P.M. Forni is America's civility expert. In his first two books he taught readers the rules of civil behaviour and ways of responding to rudeness.
In "The Thinking Life", he looks at the importance of thinking in our lives: how we do it, why we don't do enough of it and why we need to do more of it because, for Forni, serious thinking leads to the good life.
Unravelling the latest amazing breakthroughs in theoretical physics, Stephen Hawking guides the reader through the evolution of Einsteinian physics to a universe of ten dimensions and a so-called theory of everything.
Stephen Hawking is an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness of his ideas but for the clarity and wit with which he expresses them. His phenomenal multi-million-copy bestseller A Brief History of Time introduced the fascinating landscape of theoretical physics to readers all over the world. Now, in a major new book, Hawking turns to the most important breakthroughs that have occurred in the years since...
With genius, passion and unmatched flair, this one-volume "greatest hits" of the Feynman lectures places you in the classroom of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant teachers.
A dramatic rendering of life aboard a whale-saving pirate ship traces the efforts of a vigilante crew to stop illegal Japanese whaling in the Antarctica seas, in an account that profiles the Sea Shepherd Society of radical environmentalists and the charismatic captain Paul Watson.
An inspiring true story of love, hope, and victory—and of one woman who was determined to make a difference in the wake of a crime. On August 6, 1993, twenty-year-old Natasha Alexenko was assaulted at gunpoint. After nearly a decade, her backlogged rape kit was finally tested and her rapist, who roamed free for ten years, was brought to justice. On the day he was sentenced, Alexenko vowed that she would...
All cultures are different, and have different ways of thinking. In How the World Thinks, Julian Baggini travels the globe to provide a hugely wide-ranging map of human thought. He shows us how distinct branches of philosophy flowered simultaneously in China, India and Ancient Greece, growing from local myths and stories - and how contemporary cultural attitudes, with particular attention to the West, East Asia...
Romulus Gaita fled Yugoslavia aged thirteen, and came to Australia with his wife and their son soon after World War II. Tragic events were to overtake the boy’s life, but Raimond Gaita has an extraordinary and moving tale to tell of growing up with his father in country Victoria. Romulus, My Father is the much-loved story of how a compassionate, honest man taught his son the meaning of living a decent life.
Few films have been so keenly awaited or the subject of so much internet debate as the twelfth Star Trek movie -- the first since 2002 -- which is scheduled to be released in May 2009. Directed by J.J. Abrams, creator of cutting-edge cult television shows Lost and Alias, the film is expected to launch the Star Trek franchise into a new stellar era. Going back to the very beginnings of the classic Star Trek, the film tells...
After the death of her former husband, her priority has been to provide for her two young children. But the world of horseracing is often rife with treachery and corruption. Having been betrayed by a family of owners and lost seven horses as a result, Jan is desperate. When Gary West, an Australian billionaire, asks her to find and train eight premium National Hunt horses - it seems too good to be true. But just as...
Their lives are ones of quiet contemplation—and brutal murder. Christmas Eve, 1176. Brother Maurice, monk of Fairmore Abbey, awaits the night prayer bell. But there is only silence. Cursing his fellow brother Cuthbert’s idleness, he seeks him out—and in the darkness, finds him brutally murdered. Summoned from London to the isolated monastery on the Yorkshire Moors, Aelred Barling, clerk to the King’s justices...
The Wind in the Willows is a book for those "who keep the spirit of youth alive in them; of life, sunshine, running water, woodlands, dusty roads, winter firesides." So wrote Kenneth Grahame of his timeless tale of Rat, Mole, Badger, and Toad, in their lyrical world of gurgling rivers and whispering reeds, a world that is both beautiful and benevolently ordered. But it is also a world threatened by dark forces: "the Terror of...
Many think of 1776 as the most defining year of American history, the year we became a nation devoted to the pursuit of happiness through self-government. In Unfamiliar Fishes, Sarah Vowell argues that 1898 might be a year just as crucial to our nation's identity, a year when, in an orgy of imperialism, the United States annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and invaded Cuba and then the Philippines, becoming...
A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Simon Brett's entertaining crime novel, starring Bill Nighy. Charles Paris has been 'resting' for quite a while, so he's relieved when he is cast as the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father and First Gravedigger in a touring production of Hamlet. But rehearsals are a little tense – the lead roles of Hamlet and Ophelia are played by a reality TV contestant and TV talent show winner respectively, and...
On 25 April 1915, Allied forces landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in present-day Turkey to secure the sea route between Britain and France in the west and Russia in the east. After eight months of terrible fighting, they would fail... To this day, Turkey regards the victory as a defining moment in its history, a heroic last stand in the defence of the Ottoman Empire. But, counter-intuitively, it would come to signify...
August in Edinburgh, and thousands of performers of all stripes have flocked to the Fringe Festival. Among them is Charles Paris filling in at the last minute after a student actress breaks a leg and has to drop out. Showcasing an earnest one-man show in a sea of stand-up comics is a bit of a gamble, but at least he's acting, and with a Charles Paris production, what could possibly go wrong? Charles is sharing a venue with...
When Father Henry McGrath hears a confession that sends a cold chill throughout his body, he’s unsure what to do. To divulge the private confession would violate holy canon law. When he refuses to go to the police, people begin to die, and the priest becomes the prime suspect. Elizabeth Monroe, a college professor who teaches forensic psychology, doesn’t believe the elder priest fits the killer’s profile.
Elizabeth discovers a frightening thread woven within each killing - a thread that began 30 years ago. To stop the murders, she has to find where the seed of evil was first planted. Because the roots are penetrating deep within a small Mississippi town and they’re spreading dangerously close to Elizabeth.
The Diary of a Nobody is so unassuming a work that even its author, George Grossmith, seemed unaware that he had produced a masterpiece. For more than a century this wonderfully comic portrayal of suburban life and values has remained in print, a source of delight to generations of readers, and a major literary influence, much imitated but never equalled. If you don’t recognise yourself at some point...
After the death of leading haematologist Professor Anstruther, antiquarian book dealer Anthony Sparrow is tasked with clearing out his mansion of its books and papers. He soon begins to question the real circumstances of the old man's death: was he in fact murdered, and if so, who was responsible? The answer might be found in the personal diaries and letters which Sparrow unearths. But as he closes in on...
Wings From one of Britain's bestselling historians comes a compelling narrative history of the Royal Air Force. Studded with eye-witness accounts of the epic actions of twentieth-century aerial warfare, Wings marks the centenary of this great British institution
From the grit of a frontier man’s dog, from pampered lapdog to wayward mongrel, from faithful guard dog to strong-willed pet, they’re all here in Classic Dog Stories - the perfect audiobook for dog lovers everywhere. In this entertaining collection, dogs of all kinds are brought to life. Working dogs, dogs who are mistreated by humans, dogs who save lives and the ones that make us laugh; they all leap and bound...
One of the most famous of all literary dogs, Flush was the golden cocker spaniel belonging to Elizabeth Barrett. In this charming and heartfelt biography, Virginia Woolf tells his story: his early days as Miss Mitford's puppy running across the fields in wild abandon and fathering another, the years spent in his invalid mistress' bedroom in Wimpole Street, the terror of his kidnap by a Whitechapel gang, the excitement of...
One of the most famous of all literary dogs, Flush was the golden cocker spaniel belonging to Elizabeth Barrett. In this charming and heartfelt biography, Virginia Woolf tells his story: his early days as Miss Mitford's puppy running across the fields in wild abandon and fathering another, the years spent in his invalid mistress' bedroom in Wimpole Street, the terror of his kidnap by a Whitechapel gang, the excitement of...