While playing an erratic round of golf, Bobby Jones slices his ball over the edge of a cliff. His ball is lost, but on the rocks below he finds the crumpled body of a dying man. With his final breath the man opens his eyes and says, 'Why didn't they ask Evans?' Haunted by these words, Bobby and his vivacious...
Adam Deveril, the new Viscount Lynton and a hero at Salamanca, returns from the Peninsula War to find his family on the brink of ruin and the broad acres of his ancestral home mortgaged to the hilt. It is Lord Oversley, father of Adam's first love, who tactfully introduces him to Mr Jonathan Chaleigh, a City man of...
"Strange as it may seem, the idea of 'God' developed in a market economy in a spirit of aggressive capitalism," Karen Armstrong asserts in her fascinating work A History of God. Armstrong considers herself a "historian of ideas," and with this broad view she gives a compelling account of the correspondences...
A Genius Performance by Philip Franks! Campion returns from three years work for the War Office in Europe to find that Lugg, his manservant, has brought him an unusual gift: the black silk nightdress-clad body of a dead woman, an apparent suicide. Wanting only to get away to a well-deserved rest, Campion...
It was not unusual to find the beautiful bronzed body of the sun-loving Arlena Stuart stretched out on a beach, face down. Only, on this occasion, there was no sun...she had been strangled. Ever since Arlena's arrival at the resort, Hercule Poirot had detected sexual tension in the seaside air. But could ...
This disk features the soundtrack from 2 TV programmes - Mrs Richards featuring Joan Sanderson - The second episode is The Hotel Inspectors featuring Bernard Cribbins.
Morse had solved so many mysteries in his life. Was he now, he wondered, beginning to glimpse the solution to the greatest mystery of them all? How can the discovery of a short story by a beautiful Oxford graduate lead Chief Inspector Morse to her murderer? What awaits Morse and Lewis in Room 231 of the...
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 ....
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 ...
The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night, the stone is stolen. Suspicion then falls on a hunchbacked housemaid, on Rachel's cousin Franklin Blake, on a troupe of mysterious Indian jugglers, and on Rachel herself.
When a practical joke played on Gerry Wade involving alarm clocks turns out to be murder the case is taken up by Lady 'Bundle' Brent and Jimmy Thesiger. Trying to work out the significance of the seven clocks found at the murder scene, they come across the Seven Dials Club.
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.
A disturbed killer targets San Francisco's most innocent and vulnerable... Sarah Wells is a normal, suburban woman. She has a husband, a job as an English teacher at the local high-school, but she also has a secret ... she is an expert jewel thief. While her rich victims throw parties, Sarah breaks into their homes and steals from right under their very...
This 10-part history of mathematics reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mathematicians struggling to get their ideas heard. Professor Marcus du Sautoy shows how these masters of abstraction find a role in the real world and proves that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science. He explores the relationship between Newton and...
Venetia Aldridge QC is a distinguished barrister. When she agrees to defend Garry Ashe, accused of the brutal murder of his aunt, it is one more opportunity to triumph in her career as a criminal lawyer.
WARNING: CONTAINS AN UNLIKELY IMMIGRANT, AN UNSUNG COUNTRY, A BUMPY ROMANCE, SEVERAL SHATTERED PRECONCEPTIONS, TRACES OF INSIGHT, A DOZEN NUNS AND A REFERENDUM. Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop. Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament. In 2016, Ben Aitken moved to Poland while he still could. It wasn’t love that took him...
"A Christmas Carol" is the best-known and best-loved of Dickens' 'Christmas Books', and the story of the miser Scrooge's redemption has become as much part of the Christmas tradition as plum pudding and carols themselves. Will Tiny Tim live to see another Christmas? Naxos
Some say that Andy Dalziel wasn't ready for God, others that God wasn't ready for Dalziel. Either way, despite his recent proximity to a terrorist blast, the Superintendent remains firmly of this world. And, while Death may be the cure for all diseases, Dalziel is happy to settle for a few weeks' care under a tender nurse. Convalescing in...
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.
Fresh from Los Angeles, Mrs Pearl Collingwood and her daughter Rona arrive in the frenzied no-man's-land of Heathrow airport: from the nearby village of Bedmansworth, Edward Richardson jets in and out of it faster than his marriage can tolerate. Yet precisely where village and airport overlap, there exists a world bubbling with intrigues and assignations, with wit, pathos and excitement, that all readers of...
A master of characterisation, Charles Dickens introduces us to yet another memorable creation in the form of David Copperfield, the undisputed favourite of all his fictional children.
When David Copperfield escapes from the cruelty of his childhood home, he embarks on a journey to adulthood which leads him through comedy and tragedy, love and heartbreak, and friendship and betrayal.
This tragicomedy of missed connections and people too well-mannered to speak about what is in their hearts revolves around the upper-middle class Nettleship family
It's the trial of the decade Dominick Cavallo, the modern-day Godfather, has finally been put in the dock, and there's enough evidence to make it certain he'll be convicted. Heavy security surrounds the courtroom, and Nick Pellisante, the FBI agent who helped to nail Cavallo, keeps a close eye on proceedings. But things quickly start to go wrong. Faced with anonymous threats, the jury is sequestered.
New Year's Eve, 1856. As Captain Rodney Savage of the 13th Rifles, Bengal Native Infantry, celebrates the start of 1857 with his wife and friends in the isolated cantonment of Bhowani, news comes of a crisis that will have terrifying and widespread repercussions: the Rajah of the neighbouring native state of Kishanpur has been assassinated, and the Rani has had thirty-five of the culprits garrotted. With unrest...
Melvyn Bragg's highly acclaimed, bestselling historical novel, the story behind one of the 19th century's greatest scandals. This is the story of an impostor and bigamist, a self-styled Colonel Hope, who travels to the North, where eventually he marries "The Maid of Buttermere", a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of various early nineteenth-century writers . . . It is a fine...
At a derelict port in Stockholm, two brutally murdered men are found by a security guard. In the same area a young woman, Aida, is on the run from a deranged gunman. Meanwhile, journalist Annika Bengtzon is approached by a woman wanting her story published in the Evening Post. She claims to have founded an organization to erase people's pasts - giving vulnerable individuals a completely new identity.
Patricia Routledge and Prunella Scales star in Ladies of Letters and Ladies of More Letters, the two popular BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour series. Patricia Routledge is Vera Small and Prunella Scales is her friend (or maybe enemy), Irene Spencer. The two pass their time in regular correspondence and not an event goes by that is left unrecorded by the ladies of letters. Firstly there are the usual family problems to...
In the winter of 1873, a small band of prospectors lost their way in the frozen wilderness of the Colorado Rockies. Months later, when the snow finally melted, only one of them emerged. His name was Alfred G. Packer, though he would soon become infamous throughout the country under a different name: 'the Man-Eater.' After the butchered remains of his five traveling companions were discovered in a secluded...
From Snuff: 'Vimes looked at the cover. The title was The World of Poo. When his wife was out of eyeshot he carefully leafed through it. Well, okay, you had to accept that the world had moved on and these days fairy stories were probably not going to be about twinkly little things with wings. As he turned page after page, it dawned on him that whoever had written this book, they certainly knew what would make kids...
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...
Winner of the Booker Prize, 1982. During the Holocaust at the German concentration camp near Plaszow, thousands of Jews lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis. More than a thousand others were spared thanks to a womanizing, heavy-drinking, German-Catholic industrialist and Nazi Party member named Oskar Schindler. One of the most remarkable narratives of the Holocaust, Schindler's List masterfully...
Read by the inimitable Christopher Lee, this audio-book contains four short stories from the great detective’s case book. Four demanding, even life-threatening, adventures for the much-loved amateur detective, who, with the faithful Watson by his side, has earned his place in our national life and social history. This collection of short stories, taken from The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, sees Baker Street’s most...
The Battle of Britain paints a stirring picture of an extraordinary summer when the fate of the world hung by a thread. Historian James Holland has now written the definitive account of those months based on extensive new research from around the world, including thousands of new interviews with people on both sides of the battle.If Britain's defenses collapsed, Hitler would have dominated all of Europe.
When Jules Bright hears a knock on the door, the last person she expects to find is a detective bringing her the news she's feared for the last three years. Amelia Quentin is being released from prison. Jules' life is very different now from the one she'd known before Amelia shattered it completely. Knowing the girl is coming back, she needs to decide what to do. Friends and family gather round, fearing for Jules' safety.
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper.
Shipwrecked on a remote island in the Dutch East Indies, Captain Aubrey, surgeon and secret intelligence agent Stephen Maturin, and the crew of the Diane fashion a schooner from the wreck. A vicious attack by Malay pirates is repulsed, but the makeshift vessel burns, and they are truly marooned. Their escape from this predicament is one that only the whimsy and ingenuity of Patrick O Brian or Stephen Maturin...
It was the most renowned and respected shrine in the Roman Empire, the object of veneration by Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Octavian, and a host of other luminaries. It stood for centuries within a sacred precinct the size of a large town at the heart of the greatest Greek city in the world. Yet it disappeared without a trace, creating the greatest archaeological enigma of the ancient world. What became of the tomb of...