Latest Releases
Explore our latest releases and find your next audiobook.
Loading...
Explore our latest releases and find your next audiobook.
Loading...
Discover our top audiobook for this month, handpicked by our editorial team.
Read by: Julia Whelan and Sean Patrick Hopkins
Duration: 10 hrs 39 mins
Best friends Benny and Joy host a beloved 'comedy survival' podcast, gleefully finding life-affirming humour in near-death experiences.
When Benny arrives at Joy and her husband's home one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house.
With Joy missing and the hours ticking by, not even their most devoted fans could guess the terrible secrets they have hidden from the world - and from each other.
If Benny wants to find Joy in time, and clear his own name, he'll have to solve the highest stakes survival story yet.
Read by: Oliver Dimsdale
Duration: 9 hrs 23 mins
1796. Duval Harlington, recently released from prison in France, is on his way home. Memories of the tranquil family estate kept his spirits high through his worst days in La Force, so it is no small sorrow to return and find Muchmore thrown into chaos. His despicable father, he learns, has died. And while he has left the estate to Duval, there is one small stipulation: he must be married, or else lose everything…
With only two days and seven hours to find a wife, devoted bachelor Duval is prepared to walk away. But then he stumbles upon a wife sale.With women being bought and sold like chattels, Duval is horrified by what he sees. Until he lays eyes on one intriguing figure…
Duval makes an extravagant bid, and he and Edmée are married with minutes to spare. But little does Duval know, this is only the beginning of his troubles. For Edmée is not who she says she is, and her secrets will soon threaten to dismantle everything he holds dear…
Read by: Kristin Atherton
Duration: 11 hrs 46 mins
It’s the turn of the twentieth century and Pamela ‘Pixie’ Colman Smith is a young woman of stark contradictions: plucky yet naïve, artistically gifted despite lacking classical training, fascinated by the esoteric but sceptical of the world around her.
After the deaths of her beloved mother and her troubled but well-intentioned father, Pixie finds herself in the complex, political world of fin-de-siècle art, trying to get her stunning work seen and to forge a name and a path for herself in life. Across Jamaica, Devon, London and Brooklyn, Pixie is a novel of epic proportions, a tale of the twists and turns, séances and secrets, successes and devastation, of one young woman’s talent, grit and determination.
In Pixie, Jill Dawson renders the real-life figure of Pamela ‘Pixie’ Colman Smith, artist, publisher and illustrator of the still-iconic Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck, in arrestingly vivid detail, breathing life into a story that is instantly knowable, but has, until now, eluded popular imagination.
Read by: Nneka Okoye
Duration: 9 hrs 32 mins
Every Thursday at midday Audrey Brooks cleans the Petrov house. Mr Petrov is never home - in fact he seems to use the house purely as storage for his impressive collection of antiques - but that doesn't affect the care with which Audrey mops, polishes, and carefully winds each of the dozens of beautiful clocks that decorate the tall, elegant, empty London mansion.
Until the morning she finds a corpse in the back bedroom, the pristine walls and floor covered in blood, and flees the house in panic.
Fifteen minutes later, the police arrive... and find nothing. No body. No blood. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary is the clock in that back bedroom, which is now running four minutes slow.
With no victim, the police are convinced there was no murder, but Audrey knows better. A man has been killed, and if they won't do anything about it, she - and her annoying friend Lewis - will.
Read by: Miscellaneous
Duration: 9 hrs 29 mins
My name is Rex. I am a good dog.
Rex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, Mexico. A genetically engineered Bioform, he's a deadly weapon in a dirty war. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies.
But who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow Bioforms even have a right to exist?
And what happens when Rex slips his leash?
Book 1 in the Dogs of War series.
Read by: Bea Holland
Duration: 11 hrs 7 mins
Liv has always dreamt of the moment she will hold her own baby. But just at the moment her new life – as a devoted mother to Max, a loving wife to Justin – should be starting, it looks like it may be ending. An undiagnosed heart condition, worsened by her pregnancy, has thrown her whole future into doubt. If she doesn't receive an urgent transplant, she won't live much longer.
As she grows weaker, her determination to raise her baby grows stronger. Without her to protect him, what future does Max face? Slowly Liv begins to ask herself a terrible question: she needs someone's healthy heart to replace her failing one. For that to happen, an accident would have to befall someone else. But what if she could engineer that accident herself? What if she could choose someone to die in order that she could live?
Read by: Lucianne McEvoy
Duration: 1 hr 59 mins
The River Lee has always been a part of life – and death – in Cork. Now the bodies of five young men have been found by divers, locked in their car on the riverbed. A tragic accident? Or something more sinister?
As the volunteer divers begin the macabre task of extracting the bodies, DCI Katie Maguire investigates a crime where all is not as it seems...
A novella in the Katie Maguire series.
Read by: Laurel Lefkow
Duration: 9 hrs 26 mins
'We had a tangled history, Adair and I. He had been my lover and my teacher, master to my slave. We had literally been prisoners to one another. Somewhere along the way he fell in love with me, but I was too afraid to love him in return. Afraid of his unexplainable powers, and his furious temper. Afraid of what I knew he was capable of and what even he himself didn't know he could do. I ran away to follow a safer path with a man I could understand. I always knew, however, that my path would one day lead back to Adair...'
Book 3 in the Immortal Trilogy.
Read by: Miscellaneous
Duration: 8 hrs 14 mins
'Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block?'
For disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp the answer's pretty simple: he has, in his own words, 'pissed his life away'. And on New Year's Eve, he's going to end it all... But not, as it happens, alone. Because first single-mum Maureen, then eighteen-year-old Jess and lastly American rock-god JJ turn up and crash Martin's private party. They've stolen his idea - but brought their own reasons.
Yet it's hard to jump when you've got an audience queuing impatiently behind you. A few heated words and some slices of cold pizza later and these four strangers are suddenly allies. But is their unlikely friendship a good enough reason to carry on living?
Read by: Kevin Kenerly
Duration: 7 hrs 59 mins
'R' is a zombie. He has no name, no memories, and no pulse, but he has dreams. He is a little different from his fellow Dead.
Amongst the ruins of an abandoned city, R meets a girl. Her name is Julie and she is the opposite of everything he knows - warm and bright and very much alive, she is a blast of colour in a dreary grey landscape. For reasons he can't understand, R chooses to save Julie instead of eating her, and a tense yet strangely tender relationship begins.
This has never happened before. It breaks the rules and defies logic, but R is no longer content with life in the grave. He wants to breathe again, he wants to live, and Julie wants to help him. But their grim, rotting world won't be changed without a fight...
Book 1 in the Warm Bodies series.
Read by: Susannah Harker
Duration: 12 hrs 3 mins
In the aftermath of the uprising, the people of Silo 18 are coming to terms with a new order.
Some embrace the change, others fear the unknown; none have control of their fate.
The Silo is still in danger. There are those set on its destruction. Jules knows they must be stopped.
The battle has been won. The war is just beginning.
Book 3 in the Silo trilogy.
Read by: Daniel Weyman and Susannah Harker
Duration: 15 hrs 19 mins
Adelaide Rechnov: Wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, she spends her time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her family in a series of jaded social extravagances and scandals until her twin brother disappears in mysterious circumstances.
Vikram Bai: He lives in the Western Quarter, home to the poor descendants of storm refugees and effectively quarantined from the wealthy elite. His people live with cold and starvation, but the coming brutal winter promises civil unrest, and a return to the riots of previous years.
As tensions rise in the city, can Adelaide and Vikram bridge the divide at the heart of Osiris before conspiracies bring them to the edge of disaster?
Book 1 in the Osiris Project series.
Read by: Roy McMillan
Duration: 9 hrs 26 mins
Dusk is gathering as a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, rides across a silent land.
It's a crime to be out after dark, and Fairfax knows he must arrive at his destination - a remote village in the wilds of Exmoor - before night falls and curfew is imposed.
He's lost and he's becoming anxious as he slowly picks his way across a countryside strewn with the ancient artefacts of a civilisation that seems to have ended in cataclysm.
What Fairfax cannot know is that, in the days and weeks to come, everything he believes in will be tested to destruction, as he uncovers a secret that is as dangerous as it is terrifying...
Read by: Sadao Ueda
Duration: 2 hrs 29 mins
For a generation adjusting painfully to the demands of a modern industrial and commercial society, Asia came to represent an alternative vision of the good life: aesthetically austere, socially aristocratic, and imbued with spirituality. The Book of Tea was originally written in English and sought to address the inchoate yearnings of disaffected Westerners. In a flash of inspiration, Okakura saw that the formal tea party as practiced in New England was a distant cousin of the Japanese tea ceremony, and that East and West had thus "met in the tea-cup."
Read by: David Harewood
Duration: 8 hrs 13 mins
The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naïve locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag - only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear.
Read by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Duration: 8 hrs 7 mins
A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis - an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life - including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door - becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral.
Read by: Catherine Bailey and Tom Ravenscroft
Duration: 16 hrs 9 mins
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings is a collection that displays the full force of Edgar Allen Poe's mastery of both Gothic horror and the short story form.
This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates his intense interest in aesthetic issues, and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is a slow-burning Gothic horror, describing the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In 'The Tell-Tale Heart', a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Raven' and 'The Cask of Amontillado' explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate.
Read by: Daniel Weyman
Duration: 10 hrs 43 mins
The news from the north is grim. An army is massing under the new king of Feal. They head towards Darien - city of the Twelve families - demanding allegiance, or war.
Tellius, Speaker to the Council, knows this divided city will never stand against such a terrible foe.
But Tellius has a plan.
He will assemble a band of heroes. Men and women who once before aided Darien in her time of need.
They will come if he calls.
The army approaches. The trumpets of war sound. A great city holds its breath. And a desperate plan unfolds...
Book 3 in the Empire of Salt series.
Read by: Sam Phillips
Duration: 16 hrs 55 mins
Aldo Cassidy is a cautious man. He has a pleasant family, drives a safe, expensive car and wears luxurious clothes. But his soothing existence is upended when he meets Shamus and Helen - a dazzling, bohemian couple who are everything he is not. As he is drawn into their reckless and unpredictable orbit, all that Cassidy thought he understood about his orderly life begins to unravel.
Told with le Carré's lacerating wit and penetrating observation, The Naive and Sentimental Lover is an acerbic satire of middle-class hypocrisies.
Read by: Tim McInnerny
Duration: 12 hrs 22 mins
Why was an English lawyer shot dead in Turkey by his firm's top client? How can a down-at-heel magician in Devon explain the vast fortune that has mysteriously appeared in his daughter's trust fund? With customs officer Nat Brock on the trail, the answers point to the House of Single - once a respectable finance company, now entangled with a Russian crime syndicate.
West is pitted against East, and the British establishment against a labyrinthine criminal superpower, in le Carré's searing novel of lives built upon lies.
Read by: Simon Paisley Day
Duration: 14 hrs 1 min
Broke and working as a tour guide in Germany, rootless Englishman Ted Mundy catches a glimpse of an old friend hiding in the shadows. A friend he thought was lost to him. A friend who took him from radical 1960s Berlin to life as a double agent. Now, decades later, the Cold War is over and the war on terror has begun. Sasha has another mission for them both, but this time it is impossible to tell the difference between allies - and enemies.
Set in a world of lies and shifting allegiances, Absolute Friends is a savage fable of our times.
Read by: David Rintoul
Duration: 13 hrs 54 mins
Charmer, fabulist and tailor to Panama's rich and powerful, Harry Pendel loves to tell stories. But when the British spy Andrew Osnard - a man of large appetites, for women, information and above all money - walks into his shop, Harry's fantastical inventions take on a life of their own. Soon he finds himself out of his depth in an international game he can never hope to win.
Le Carré's savage satire on the espionage trade is set in a corrupt universe without heroes or honour, where the innocent are collateral damage and treachery plays out as tragic farce.
Read by: Milo Twomey
Duration: 10 hrs 39 mins
An illegal Muslim immigrant arrives in Hamburg with a traumatic past and the key to a fortune held in a private bank. He says his name is Issa. To the idealistic young human rights lawyer Annabel, determined to save him from deportation, he is a worthy cause. To the intelligence services of Britain, Germany and America, however, he is a potential jihadist - and a pawn between them as they seek to make a kill in the war on terror.
A Most Wanted Man is a gripping and disquieting story of paranoia, disillusionment and betrayal in the moral no-man's land of the post-9/11 world.
Read by: Olivia Vinall
Duration:
Marguerite Périgord is locked in the attic of her family home, a towering Chelsea house overlooking the stinking Thames.
For company she has a sewing machine, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and a carrion crow who has come to nest in the rafters. Restless, she spends her waning energies on the fascinations of her own body, memorising Mrs Beeton’s advice and longing for her life outside.
Cécile Périgord has confined her daughter Marguerite for her own good.
Cécile is concerned that Marguerite’s engagement to a much older, near-penniless solicitor, will drag the family name – her husband’s name, that is – into disrepute. And for Cécile, who has worked hard at her own betterment, this simply won’t do.
Of course, both have their secrets, intentions and histories to hide. As Marguerite’s patience turns into rage, the boundaries of her mind and body start to fray.
Read by: David Pittu
Duration: 8 hrs 31 mins
Out in the drought-struck backwaters of rural Florida, The Kingdom of Sand's nameless narrator lives a life of semi-solitude, enjoying the odd, fleeting sexual encounter and the friendship of a few.
His world is ageing, and the memories of another time flash, then fade - visions of parties filled with handsome young men, the parents whom he chose to spend his life besides, the generation he once knew, struck down by AIDS. But, when forced to watch the slow demise of a close neighbour, he is drawn back to the here and now, and his own borrowed time in this kingdom of sand.
Read by: David Pittu
Duration: 9 hrs 2 mins
Young, divinely beautiful and tired of living a lie, Anthony Malone trades life as a seemingly straight, small town lawyer for the disco-lit decadence of New York's 1970's gay scene. Joining an unbridled world of dance parties, saunas, deserted parks and orgies - at its centre Malone befriends the flamboyant queen, Sutherland, who takes this new arrival under his preened wing.
But for Malone, the endless city nights and Fire Island days, are close to burning out. It is love that Malone is longing for, and soon he will have to set himself free.
Read by: Miscellaneous
Duration: 11 hrs 1 min
Six thriller authors. One writing retreat. You’d die to be on the guest list...
The Host: Legendary mystery author J. R. Alastor’s books are sold all over the world, but no one knows his real name. After years hiding in the shadows, he has sent out six invitations to an exclusive murder mystery retreat on his private island.
The Assistant: Mila del Angél has been hired to ensure the week runs smoothly. She has yearned for revenge on a ghost from her past for years – and this could be her chance to get it.
The Players: The six bestselling thriller writers accept their invitations without question – it’s an opportunity any author would kill for.
The Game: What should have been a week of trope-filled games takes a sinister turn when one guest is found dead, and the others find themselves in the midst of a nightmare drawn from Alastor’s dark imagination. They may have written thrillers – but now they and Mila must survive one...
Read by: Lindsay Duncan
Duration: 6 hrs 16 mins
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 called on to try an urgent case: for religious reasons, a beautiful seventeen-year-old boy, Adam, is refusing the medical treatment that could save his life, and his devout parents share his wishes. Time is running out. Should the secular court overrule sincerely held faith? In the course of reaching a decision Fiona visits Adam in hospital - an encounter which stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. Her judgment has momentous consequences for them both.
Read by: Caroline Lee
Duration: 8 hrs 35 mins
Jake Whyte is the sole resident of an old farmhouse on an unnamed British island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. It's just her, her untamed companion, Dog, and a flock of sheep. Which is how she wanted it to be. But something is coming for the sheep - every few nights it picks one off, leaves it in rags.
It could be anything. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumours of an obscure, formidable beast. And there is Jake's unknown past, perhaps breaking into the present, a story hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, in a landscape of different colour and sound, a story held in the scars that stripe her back.
Read by: Eric Michael Summerer
Duration: 11 hrs 35 mins
When eighteen-year-old Ian Bedloe pricks the bubble of his family's optimistic self-deception, his brother Danny drives into a wall, his sister-in-law falls apart, and his parents age before his eyes. Consumed by guilt Ian finds the hope of forgiveness at the Church of the Second Chance, and leaves college to cope with the three children he has inherited and his own embarrassing religion.
Twenty years on, Ian's prospects of a second chance are receding fast when, out of the heart of the domesticity that has engulfed him, strides a new figure who will bring him new life.
Read by: Joe Barrett
Duration: 11 hrs 16 mins
How does a man addicted to routine - a man who flosses his teeth before love-making - cope with the chaos of everyday life? With the loss of his son, the departure of his wife and the arrival of Muriel, a dog trainer from the Meow-Bow dog clinic, Macon's attempts at ordinary life are tragically and comically undone.
Read by: Blair Brown
Duration: 8 hrs 57 mins
One morning, Rebecca wakes up and realises she has turned into the wrong person.
Is she really this joyous and outgoing organiser of parties, the put-upon heart of her dead husband's extended family? What happened to her quiet and serious nineteen-year-old self, and what would have happened if she'd married her college sweetheart? Can someone ever recover the person they've left behind?
Read by: Blair Brown
Duration: 10 hrs 38 mins
Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in the Polish neighbourhood of Baltimore, he was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervour, they were hastily wed. But they never should have married. Pauline, impulsive and impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, and judgemental, proceeds deliberately. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. A 17-year-old daughter disappears, and some years later this fractious pair is forced to rescue her little boy, named Pagan, from drug-infested San Francisco, to take him home and raise him.
From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered apparel of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition.
Read by: Blair Brown
Duration: 8 hrs 32 mins
Friday August 15th, 1997. Two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this. Every year, on the anniversary of 'Arrival Day' their two extended families celebrate together, with more and more elaborately competitive parties, as little Susan and Jin-ho take roots and become American.
Full of achingly hilarious moments and toe-curling misunderstandings, Digging to America is a novel about belonging and otherness, pride and prejudice, young love and unexpected old love, families and the impossibility of ever getting it right...
Read by: Arthur Morey
Duration: 9 hrs 4 mins
Widowed, re-married, divorced and the father of three daughters, Liam is a man who is proud of his recall but has learned to dodge issues and skirt adventure. An unpleasant event occurs, though, to jolt him out of his certainty. Obsessed with a frightening gap in his memory, he sets out to uncover what happened, and finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own thorny problems. His ex-wife (sensible Barbara) and daughters worry about him but Liam blunders on, His teenage daughter Kitty is sent to stay - though it's not clear who is minding whom. His middle daughter, Louise, is a born-again Christian with a son called Jonah, but her certainties leave Liam still more perplexed.
Noah's Compass is about memory and its loss, about incidents and relationships which open up sight lines into a painful past long dead for a man who becomes aware that merely trying to stay afloat may not be enough.
Read by: Lorelei King and Penelope Rawlins
Duration: 13 hrs 24 mins
When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer, disarms a gunman chasing two frightened homeless men, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind and, within hours, Lucy is a media hero. The solitary eye-witness is the depressed and overweight Lena Sorensen, who becomes obsessed with Lucy and signs up as her client - though she seems more interested in the trainer's body than her own. When the two women find themselves more closely aligned, and can't stop thinking about the sex lives of Siamese twins, the real problems start...
CONTENT WARNING: contains explicit content
Read by: Christopher Ragland
Duration: 10 hrs 1 min
The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes. Here in this land of howling wind and infernal sand, four siblings find themselves scattered and lost.
Palmer has never been the same since his father walked out twelve years ago. His elder sister, Vic, is trying to run away from the past; his younger brothers, Connor and Rob, are risking their lives to embrace it. His mother, left with nothing but anger, is just trying to forget.
Palmer wants to prove his worth, not only to his family, but to himself. And in the barren, dune-covered landscape of his home, there is only one way to earn respect: sand-diving. Plunging deep below the desert floor in search of relics and scraps of the old world. He is about to embark on the most dangerous dive of his young life, aiming to become the first to discover the rumoured city below.
Book 2 in the Silo Trilogy.
Read by: Ben Elliot and Kate Rawson
Duration: 9 hrs 28 mins
Maddy, dressed in white, stands at the back of the church. At the end of the aisle is Rob - the man she's about to marry. Next to Rob is Ben - best man and the best friend any two people ever had.
And that's the problem.
Because if it wasn't Rob waiting for her at the altar, there's a strong chance it would be Ben. Loyal and sensitive Ben has always kept his feelings to himself, but if he turned round and told Maddy she was making a mistake, would she listen? And would he be right?
Best friends since childhood, Maddy, Ben and Rob thought their bond was unbreakable. But love changes everything. Maddy has a choice to make but will she choose wisely? Her heart, and the hearts of the two best men she knows, depend on it...
Read by: Kate Rawson
Duration: 9 hrs 58 mins
Sophie May has a secret.
One that she's successfully kept for years. It's meant that she's had to give up her dreams of going to university and travelling the world to stay in her little village, living with her mum and working in the local teashop.
But then Sophie unexpectedly meets the gorgeous Billy Buskin - a famous actor with ambitions to make it to the top. As they begin to grow closer, Sophie finds herself whisked away from the comfort of her life into Billy's glamorous - but ruthless - world.
After years of shying away from attention, can Sophie handle the constant scrutiny that comes with being with Billy? How much is she prepared to give up along the way? And is their love strong enough to keep them together against the odds?
Read by: Joe Knezevich
Duration: 13 hrs 43 mins
The stories in The Vanishing Point are both exotic and domestic, their settings ranging from Hawaii to Africa and New England. Each focuses on life's vanishing points - a moment when seemingly all lines running through one's life converge, and one can see no farther, yet must deal with the implications. With the insight, subtlety, and empathy that has long characterized his work, Theroux has written deeply moving stories about memory, longing, and the passing of time, reclaiming his status, once again, as a master of the form.
Read by: Máiréad Tyers
Duration: 9 hrs 44 mins
From a storm-tossed sea, she arrives on the shores of Ireland. Red-haired, wrathful, shifting from bird to beast to woman.
The Morrigan, goddess of war and fate, endures centuries as invaders come and kings go, rulers shifting like the tide.
She seeks vengeance on Conchobhar and Cuchulainn, legends bent on destroying all that she loves. She watches queens fall, women silenced, and power stolen by men who carve history in their image.
But she is fury incarnate. And she will tear down their rule, shatter their chains, and set the women of Ireland free.
Read by: Michael Jayston
Duration: 13 hrs 11 mins
West Germany in the 1960s is a simmering cauldron of radical protests. Amid the turmoil Leo Harting, a Second Secretary in the British Embassy, has gone missing - along with more than forty Confidential embassy files. Alan Turner of the Foreign Office must travel to Bonn to recover them. As he gets closer to the truth of Harting's disappearance, he will discover that the face of Cold War Europe - and the attentions of the British Ministry itself - are far uglier that he could possibly have imagined.
Le Carré's searing Cold War novel creates a world where the lines between right and wrong, good and evil, are horribly blurred.
Read by: Michael Jayston
Duration: 12 hrs 42 mins
The Cold War is over and retired secret servant Tim Cranmer has been put out to pasture, spending his days making wine on his Somerset estate. But then he discovers that his former double agent Larry -- dreamer, dissolute, philanderer and disloyal friend - has vanished, along with Tim's mistress. As their trail takes him to the lawless wilds of Russia and the North Caucasus, he is forced to question everything he stood for.
Set in a fragmented, uncertain post-Soviet world, le Carré's brutal story of falsehoods and betrayal shows men playing dangerous games beyond their control.
Read by: Clare Higgins
Duration: 8 hrs 43 mins
According to her own complex moral calculations, Katie Carr has earned her affair. She's a doctor, after all, and doctors are decent people, and on top of that, her husband David is the self-styled Angriest Man in Holloway. But when David suddenly becomes good - properly, maddeningly, give-away-all-his-money good - Katie's sums no longer add up, and she is forced to ask herself some very hard questions. Nick Hornby's brilliant new novel, a No. 1 bestseller in the UK and Ireland, offers a painfully funny account of modern marriage and parenthood, and asks that most difficult of questions: what does it mean to be good?
Read by: Janine Cooper-Marshall
Duration: 12 hrs 20 mins
Lark has been wandering the country for many years, with no real place to call home. Until she meets Matthew Williams, a Canadian who has inherited a run-down hill farm in North Wales. Young and enthusiastic, Matthew has no knowledge of farming and no experience of living in the countryside.
Entranced by the beauty and wildness of the place, Lark agrees to help, and together they throw themselves into getting the farm back onto its feet.
Until a terrible accident brings Matthew's father over from Canada, and suddenly none of their lives will be the same.
Read by: Anne Marlow
Duration: 21 hrs 7 mins
Fifty-two weeks. That's all the time Mona has left to learn about beauty before she loses her eyesight forever.
Fifty-two works of art. Every Wednesday, Mona's grandfather picks her up after school and takes her to see a great work of art.
Fifty-two chapters. Together, on their visit to Paris' museums, Mona and her grandfather will experience enchantment and sadness.
Above all, they will grow ever closer and learn to lean on each other. From Botticelli to Basquiat, Mona will discover not only the power of art, but also the meaning of generosity, doubt, melancholy, and loss.
Read by: Ann Stutz
Duration: 9 hrs 3 mins
When Jane – smart, funny, fortyish – says she's a school counsellor, people assume it's all about exam stress. If only.
Her teenage clients include Vaishali, who hates the perfect curves that draw the attention of adult men; Fraser, who cares devotedly for his mother but hurts his girlfriend by confusing real life with porn; and George, a trans boy who suffers from acute anxiety.
Harbouring terrible secrets from her own youth, Jane struggles to contain the anger these stories arouse in her. It's only when she starts counselling her colleague Kass, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse whose trauma is resurfacing, that her thoughts turn to revenge…
Read by: Anne Dover
Duration: 10 hrs 47 mins
Lancashire, 1934. When Tam Crawford is unexpectedly bequeathed some money, he can finally realise his dream of settling down in the beautiful village of Ellindale.
Tam knows he can be impulsive but this time he is determined not to be ruled by his big heart and hot head. Yet somehow, within just one day, he has taken on a fiancée and two children to keep them out of the poorhouse - or worse.
Tam and his makeshift family are not the only ones facing difficulties. Local benefactor Finn Carlisle's attempts to help the unemployed are being sabotaged by an unscrupulous local councillor, and Tam's cousin-by-marriage Hilda Kerkham has been widowed and is struggling even to feed her son. Will the people of Ellindale be able to help one another in these hard times?
Book 4 in the Ellindale series.
Read by: Anne Dover
Duration: 10 hrs 34 mins
Lancashire, 1932. Widower Harry Makepeace lives in Manchester with his sickly daughter, Cathie. But after she suffers a violent asthma attack, the doctors say she must move to the clean, fresh air of the countryside to have any hope of survival. When Harry chances upon a patch of land for sale in Ellindale and an advert for a disused railway carriage that can be made into a home, he snaps both up quickly.
Harry swiftly becomes part of the community in Ellindale, making friends with the locals, and soon finds himself attracted to Nina, another newcomer to the village.
But times are hard in Ellindale - Harry is not the only one struggling to find work. Then there's his old boss, who will stop at nothing to punish him for daring to leave. And Harry's already made an enemy in Ellindale…
Book 3 in the Ellindale series.
Read by: Anne Dover
Duration: 11 hrs 1 min
Lancashire, 1930: After the death of their mother and father, it falls to Leah Turner to become sole provider for her little sister. But women's wages are half those of men, and pawning the few belongings she has left will keep their vicious rent collector at bay for only a few weeks.
Out of the blue, Charlie Willcox, the local pawnbroker, offers her a deal. His brother Jonah, an invalid since being gassed in the Great War, needs a wife.
The idea of a marriage of convenience doesn't please Leah, but she finds Jonah agreeable enough, and moving with him to the pretty hamlet of Ellindale may be the only chance of a better life for her sister. But other people have plans for the remote Pennine valley, and the two sisters find themselves facing danger in their new life with Jonah.
Book 1 in the Ellindale series.
Read by: Kristin Atherton
Duration: 13 hrs 42 mins
Ariadne, Princess of Crete and daughter of the fearsome King Minos, grows up hearing stories of gods and heroes. But beneath the golden palace something else stirs, the hoofbeats and bellows echoing from the Labyrinth below. Every year its captive, the Minotaur - Ariadne's brother - demands blood.
When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives as a sacrifice to the beast, Ariadne sees in him her chance to escape. But helping Theseus kill the monster means betraying her family and country, and Ariadne knows only too well that drawing the attention of the mercurial gods may cost her everything...
Read by: Joel Froomkin
Duration: 23 hrs 28 mins
Mercy Callahan never thought she'd be able to talk about her past. When she arrives in Sacramento to make peace with her brother, Gideon, and to help find the brutal cult that took away her childhood, she is finally ready to talk. But when Ephraim Burton - the man who made her life a living hell - follows her there, she realises she might never be safe.
But when it becomes apparent that Ephraim is more determined than ever to get Mercy back, even Rafe might not be able to stop the trail of destruction he leaves in his wake. As Ephraim draws near, it's clear it's not just Mercy who is in danger; those closest to her are firmly in his sights.
Will Mercy sacrifice herself to help bring Ephraim down? Or will he finally get what he's always wanted?
Book 2 in the Sacramento series.
Read by: Joel Froomkin
Duration: 20 hrs 18 mins
FBI Agent Tom Hunter has been chasing down leads to find the brutal cult that damaged some of his closest friends. They managed to escape to tell their stories, but Eden's location has always remained a mystery.
Liza Barkley is struggling with her feelings for Tom and wonders if their friendship can survive the secrets they've kept from one another. But they may be forced to confront the truth when a chance to help the investigation puts Liza directly in the line of fire.
When the perpetrator of an attempted sniper attack on Liza and her friends is discovered to be one of the cult's leaders, DJ Belmont, it becomes clear that he is out to get revenge on the victims who escaped Eden's clutches.
Book 3 in the Sacramento series.
Read by: Len Cariou
Duration: 10 hrs 31 mins
In 1993 Harry Bosch was assigned the case of a missing person, Marie Gesto. The young woman was never found - dead or alive - and the case has haunted Bosch ever since.
Thirteen years later Bosch is in the Open Unsolved Unit when he gets a call from the DA's office. A man accused of two killings is willing to confess to several other murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. One of his victims, he says, is Marie Gesto. Bosch begins to crack when he realises he and his partner missed a clue back in 1993 which could have prevented the nine murders that followed the killing of Marie Gesto.
Book 12 in the Harry Bosch series.
Read by: Len Cariou
Duration: 12 hrs
Harry Bosch has been put on the DROP - Deferred Retirement Option Plan - and given three years before his retirement is enforced. Seeing the end of the mission coming, he's anxious for cases. He doesn't have to wait long.
First a cold case gets a DNA hit for a rape and murder which points the finger at a 29-year-old convicted rapist who was only eight at the time of the murder. Then a city councilman's son is found dead - fallen or pushed from a hotel window - and he insists on Bosch taking the case despite the two men's history of enmity. The cases are unrelated, but they twist around each other like the double helix of a DNA strand...
Book 15 in the Harry Bosch series.
Read by: Len Cariou
Duration: 11 hrs
The shooting of a Chinese liquor store owner in LA brings Harry Bosch back to the Rodney King riots and the moment a stranger gave a young cop sanctuary. Now the debt must be repaid, and Harry soon discovers the old man's death was no ordinary holdup.
Homing in on clues disregarded by the cops, Harry builds a picture of corruption and intimidation, with the local Triads at the heart of it. But as he tries to build a case and breach the impenetrable wall of silence in the local community, he finds he is taking a dragon by the tail - a dragon whose talons reach well beyond LA, and even the States.
Book 14 in the Harry Bosch series.
Read by: Jilly Bond
Duration: 11 hrs 7 mins
Ex child star Posy Starling is finally filming her dream role - Dahlia Lively in The Lady Detective movie. But things take a nightmare turn when a prop weapon is replaced with the real thing - with almost fatal consequences for her fellow Dahlia, Rosalind King. There's something very wrong on the set of The Lady Detective - which means it's time to call in Caro Hooper, so the three Dahlias can investigate.
In between filming scenes, signing autographs for locals, photoshoots on set and jetting off to France for an impromptu party, the three Dahlias do what they do best - surreptitiously sleuth. And very soon the evidence starts to point towards one particular co-star...
Book 2 in the Three Dahlias series.
Read by: Mark Billingham
Duration: 10 hrs 43 mins
Police officer Helen Weeks walks into her local newsagents on her way to work. It's the last place she expects to be met with violence, but she is about to come face to face with a gunman.
The hostage-taker is desperate to know what happened to his beloved son, who died a year before in youth custody. By holding Helen at gunpoint, he will force a re-investigation into his son's death. And one man knows the case better than any other - DI Tom Thorne.
As the body count rises, Thorne must race against time to bring a killer to justice and save a young mother's life.
Book 10 in the Tom Thorne series.
Read by: Peter Kenny
Duration: 17 hrs 4 mins
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, to actually find it - and with it their own destruction.
Book 1 in the Culture series.
Read by: Miscellaneous
Duration: 10 hrs 37 mins
Lila Metcalfe is a trainee journalist in Derby and she's very used to being given the stories that no one else wants. So, when her editor tells her that the city's Cossington Park development is being held up by a solitary resident on Hope Street who is refusing to leave, she knows she is going to be the one sent to find out more. And that's how she meets Connor.
Twenty-something Connor is the sole resident of Hope Street and he is not at all what Lila is expecting. And he has a very clear reason not to move: he is waiting for his mum to come home.
Read by: Miscellaneous
Duration: 13 hrs 3 mins
Berkely Mather (real name John Evan Weston-Davies) was a British author who wrote sixteen novels ranging from historical adventures to espionage fiction. A prolific writer for television and radio, he contributed scripts to TV series including Z Cars and The Avengers, and his film credits include Dr. No.
Included here are some of his best radio thrillers, beginning with The Sand Leopard, charting the exploits of Geth Straker, captain of the Peregrine. The trouble-hunting mariner is commissioned to sail to the Red Sea in search of sunken Second World War bullion - but are his two new crew members what they seem? Neil McCallum stars as Straker in this action-packed drama.
Read by: Miscellaneous
Duration: 40 hrs
BBC Audio is proud to present this collection containing all surviving Dick Barton pieces: ten exciting full adventures, the 100th episode ever recorded of Dick Barton as well as a 2013 live performance of Dick Barton's final story. This is accompanied by bonus documentaries and interviews with the stars.
Set in an exciting world of criminal masterminds and espionage, the adventures of special agent Dick Barton and his friends Jock and Snowey were essential listening for an entire generation. Originally running on the BBC Light Programme between 1946 and 1951, few of the BBC's original recordings still survive. In this stellar line-up you'll hear Noel Johnson and Douglas Kelly as Dick Barton, with John Mann as Snowey White, and Alex McCrindle as Jock Anderson. And in a 2013 live performance Tim Bentick and Terry Molloy revisit these iconic roles.
Read by: Maggie Stokes
Duration: 13 hrs 1 min
When Clarice Beech finds her friend Peter Ramsey dead in his kitchen, she believes he's succumbed to a fatal heart attack.
Peter, who lived in one of the five cottages on Magpie Row in the Lincolnshire Wolds, was a keen supporter of stray cats - which made him very unpopular with the neighbours. And after Chris Morris, an alcoholic neighbour, disrupts Peter's funeral, insisting Peter was murdered - and he knows who the murderer is - Clarice discovers there's no shortage of possible suspects among the Magpie Row inhabitants.
Who, behind Magpie Row's idyllic façade, might have had murder in mind? And, after his outburst at Peter's funeral, where is Chris? And is Clarice, with her mission to tend to Peter's strays, as well as uncover the truth about her friend's death, putting herself in danger's way?
Book 4 in the Clarice Beech series.
Read by: Florence Howard
Duration: 10 hrs 45 mins
When Anne Boleyn wakes up after her execution she finds she is not yet ready for death. She has unfinished business with the king who had her murdered and is determined to secure the future of her daughter, Elizabeth. Discarded by Henry for failing to produce a male heir, reviled by the court for being too smart for her own good and beheaded on trumped-up charges, Anne has one last chance to turn her fate around. She escapes the tower, sews her head back on, and sets out on a quest for vengeance.
But Anne's path to justice will not run smoothly as she encounters the dangers of London and the countryside, and rumours start to swirl about sightings of her ghost. Luckily for her, she will find help from a chance meeting with fenlander Alice, who offers her the possibility of a different future.
Read by: Lindsey Dorcus and Will Thorne
Duration: 15 hrs 12 mins
Lyra Bien never expected to leave the royal house at Stonegate in one piece after her rare melder magic was revealed. Once she discovered the truth behind the need for her magic and the brutality of her kingdom, Lyra vowed to put an end to the corruption of the crown.
But is the enemy of her enemy her friend? Lyra must put her trust in the man who stole her heart... then deceived her.
Roark Ashwood rose through the ranks to become Sentry of Stonegate and personal guard to the prince, despite being born of the enemy clan, the Dravens. But in a single heartbeat he destroyed his ruthless reputation all to save Lyra. With his true identity unveiled, Roark revealed years of plotting and betrayal to everyone he loves.
As Roark's two lives collide, he must fight to protect the woman he loves and outsmart those throughout the kingdoms who want his power for themselves.
Book 2 in the Broken Souls and Bones series.
Read by: Laurence Bouvard
Duration: 9 hrs 6 mins
In the seaside haven of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Willa Keane's marriage is in a rut. As a retired interior-designer-turned-influencer, she's sure life begins at fifty-five, whereas her husband, Marty, is more interested in watching his beloved birds.
So when Willa is invited to the opening of the chicest new cocktail bar in town, she hopes the evening will rekindle their flame. But arriving at the party, Willa is shaken to discover it's being hosted by her charming ex-husband, Paul.
The night is thrown into even deeper chaos when the bar's enigmatic owner is found dead on the rocks below. A suicide message suggests there's no foul play, but Willa's heightened senses aren't so sure. Now she must solve the mystery together with her husband… and her ex-husband.
Read by: Leonie Elliott
Duration: 11 hrs 20 mins
Things for Renee Landis are finally looking up. She just quit her dead-end job at a chicken shop after landing the coveted role of junior chef at London's pristine NOVA restaurant.
But it's not the restaurant that draws Renee in - it's the executive chef. Gracie Fitzgerald is as legendary as she is secretive, known for her succulent, signature dishes and the notorious methods in which she runs her kitchen. No one can touch her workspace with bare hands. No other chef can taste her signature dishes. And no one, under any circumstances, is allowed to enter her personal freezer…