General Fiction

Robbie is an ordinary Dublin boy until he hurts his head in an accident on St Patrick's Day. His injury changes everything. When he returns to conciousness, Robbie believes that God has given him the power to perform miracles. At first he contents himself with winning the spot-the-ball competition in the newspaper, but when he sent to hospital for 'observation' he decides to cure the other boys of their various ailments. Then tragedy strikes closer to home and Robbie needs all his powers to keep his world intact.

It is 1875 and Ann Eliza Young, nineteenth wife of the second Prophet of the Mormon Church, battles for freedom from her powerful husband, to lead a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. Richard & Judy Bookclub

Everything is falling to pieces for Francesca Thayer. Her relationship collapses and she can't possibly manage the mortgage alone, so she is forced to do the one thing she never imagined she would: she advertises for lodgers. But soon she finds that her tenants have become the most important people in her life and Francesca discovers that she might be able to open her heart again after all...

The story revolves around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh. Immediately recognisable are the Edinburgh chartered surveyor, stalwart of the Conservative Association, who dreams of membership of Scotland's most exclusive golf club. We have the pushy Stockbridge mother, and her prodigiously talented five-year-old son, who is making good progress with the saxophone and with his Italian. Then there is Domenica Macdonald who is that type of Edinburgh lady who sees herself as a citizen of a broader intellectual world.

In McCall Smith's hands such characters retain charm and novelty, simultaneously arousing both mirth and empathy. 44 Scotland Street is vintage McCall Smith, tackling issues of trust and honesty, snobbery and hypocrisy, love and loss, but all with great lightness of touch. Clever, elegant and funny, this is a novel that provides huge entertainment but which is underpinned by the moral dilemmas of everyday life and the characters' struggles to resolve them.  Book 1 of series.

The complete BBC radio adaptations of Alexander McCall's bestselling series Inspired by Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City 44 Scotland Street started life as a serial in The Scotsman. It was a huge hit and was soon novelised adapted on stage and dramatised for BBC Radio 4.

Collected here are all five radio series in which we follow the interconnected lives of the residents of adjoining flats in a tenement in Edinburgh's Georgian New Town. There's Pat a young tenant who arrives at 44 Scotland Street to flat-share with handsome surveyor Bruce (a man with more of an eye for the ladies than for a sound property); Matthew setting up the Something Special Gallery with little knowledge of art; and child prodigy Bertie Pollock who wants the life of an ordinary little boy but instead has psychotherapy yoga and Italian conversation lessons. And at the local cafA owner Big Lou is looking for love - but seems doomed to romantic disappointment... Their chance day-to-day criss-crossings quirky foibles and comic adventures are all observed by Number 44's longest-term resident anthropologist Domenica MacDonald her painter friend Angus Lordie - and Angus' dog Cyril the only canine in Scotland with a gold tooth.

Full of charm humour and empathy these delightful dramas star Carol Ann Crawford and Crawford Logan with a superb cast including James Mackenzie Samuel Keefe Belle Jones and Anita Vettesse. Also included is an edition of Radio 4's Bookclub in which Alexander McCall Smith talks about his novel 44 Scotland Street with James Naughtie and readers.

When Edie Budd arrives at a shabby West London boarding house in October 1958, carrying nothing except a broken suitcase and an envelope full of cash, it's clear she's hiding a terrible secret. And she's not the only one; the other women of 73 Dove Street have secrets of their own . . . Tommie, who lives on the second floor, waits on the eccentric Mrs Vee by day. After dark, she harbours an addiction to seedy Soho nightlife - and a man she can't quit.

Phyllis, 73 Dove Street's formidable landlady, has set fire to her husband's belongings after discovering a heart-breaking betrayal - yet her fierce bravado hides a past she doesn't want to talk about. At first, the three women keep to themselves. But as Edie's past catches up with her, Tommie becomes caught in her web of lies - forcing her to make a decision that will change everything . . .

Will is single and doesn't want children but when he meets Marcus, aged 12, they both discover they can benefit from their friendship. Strong language.

There's nothing like the contentment and security that money can bring. That's how it is for Lucinda, Elizabeth and Flora, living the risk-free dream in the glittering eighties. Houses, holidays, happiness - everything is there for the taking.

The financial slide comes crashing into their lives with a vengeance, and everything they've built up so carefully dissolves into a pool of hopelessness, taking self-respect and relationships with it.

Now, the secrets will out and within a year, someone will be dead.

Sequel to: 'Mystical Paths' (4076). When Charles Ashworth, the Bishop of Starbridge, is confronted with a catastrophe, which tears his life apart he has to fight a complete breakdown and rebuild his private and professional life.

Page Clarke is a good mother to seven-year-old Andy and fifteen-year-old Allyson. Page's husband Brad is frequently away on business trips, but overall Page feels blessed with her comfortable life in her suburban San Francisco home. Then one Saturday night everything falls apart as, in an instant, the lives of five families are changed forever.

When impulsive, thirty-something Fleur accidentally finds herself training for the London Marathon she hopes it will lend her life some focus. But she suddenly finds herself in prison, as her haphazard life is ripped apart.

For years after the death of Christ, Mary Magdalene lived tranquilly trying to forget the young man she met when she was twenty. The young man from Nazareth who changed her life irrevocably and chose a cruel death rather than life with her.

Sequel to 'An Act of Treachery' (6366). Klaus-Pierre, the love child of a French woman and a German officer, lives with hostility from his French family. When his father's family learn of his existence he goes to live in Germany, where he is loved and happy. Eventually he tries to make his own peace with his French family.

Conflicting loyalties come to the fore when Isabel finds herself attracted to her new boss. As lust turns to love, and love to obsession the question is - can an adulterous wife be a good mother? X rated, contains offensive language and explicit sex.

Set in tranquil Umbria, Italy, a story of betrayal and gain amongst people with their own reasons for settling in the neighbourhood.

In 1964, an Australian girl is eager to find the wreckage of the bomber in which her father died when it crashed in Italy in 1944. She employs Jack Kirby who also served in Italy. He is keen to find Francesca, the Partisan leader he fell in love with. What they uncover is more complex and dangerous than they imagined.

On May 3rd, 1942, Alma Braithwaite and her fellow boarders at Goldwyn's school huddle in an air-raid shelter as bombs rain down on Exeter. When the girls emerge, the school is in ruins. Twenty-one years on, Alma teaches music at her old school. The arrival of a new student takes Alma back to that summer and the long shadow it cast on her life.

Max and Pip are the strongest couple you know. Only now they're facing the most important decision of their lives - and they don't agree.

With the consequences of an impossible choice threatening to devastate them both, nothing will ever be the same again.

But anything can happen after the end...

After the breakdown of a turbulent relationship, Frank moves from Canberra to a shack on the east coast once owned by his grandparents. He wants to put his violent past and bad memories of his father behind him, but he soon finds it is not easy to let go of the past.

Alice boards a train at King's Cross heading home to her family in Scotland. Hours later she steps into traffic on a busy London road. As she lies in a coma we travel through her memories to discover what drove her to this desperate act.

Tessa and Becky, who have been friends since the beginning of their City careers, face many choices in their lives, not least the choice presented by biology - children.

When Lord Lucan walks into psychiatrist Hildegard Wolf's Paris office, there is one problem: she already has a patient who says he's Lucan, the fugitive murderer who bludgeoned his children's nanny in a botched attempt to kill his wife. As Dr Wolf sets about deciding which of her patients, if either, is the real Lucan, she finds herself in a fierce battle of wills and an exciting chase across Europe. For someone is deceiving someone, and it may be the good doctor, who, despite her unorthodox therapeutic method (she talks mainly about her own life), has a sinister past, too.

This is the story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy, who travels to Tangiers and Egypt where he has a fateful encounter with the Alchemist.

When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they must flee the country. But England is not the safe-haven they think it to be and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart...

1946. Three years after a cataclysmic event which tore their lives apart, a mother and daughter flee Poland for Paris, shame, and fear at their heels, not knowing how hard it is to escape your past.

Nearly eighty years later, Gretel Fernsby lives a life that is a far cry from her traumatic childhood. When a couple moves into the flat below her in her London mansion block, it should be nothing more than a momentary inconvenience. However, the appearance of their nine-year-old son Henry brings back memories she would rather forget.

Faced with a choice between her own safety and his, Gretel is taken back to a similar crossroads she encountered long ago. Back then, her complicity dishonoured her life, but to interfere now could risk revealing the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting.

Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a miniature version of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorise it. But when the Nazis invade, they flee with a dangerous secret to St Malo. Werner is a German orphan destined to labour in the mines, until he discovers a knack for engineering. As Europe is engulfed by war their lives collide unpredictably.

A gentle comedy drama about the reunion of three old school friends When unemployed teacher Patrick and his wife, high-flying professional Helen, move back to the town where Patrick grew up, they thought life would be simpler. But Patrick's hazy and fond memories of his schooldays are brought back into sharp relief once he's surrounded by the people and places he'd long stopped thinking about, and he realises things were not always as he'd seen them. As Patrick begins to rebuild bonds and make new discoveries with his old school friends, Helen is making friends of her own, and the couple and their neighbours begin to build the community both Patrick and Helen have been missing.

Based on Jim Sweeney's first play, Danny's Wake, which won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival and a Grand Media Comedy Award, All the Young Dudes is a charming nostalgic comedy about growing up and staying the same. Starring Jim Sweeney (Who's Line is it Anyway?, Just a Minute), Cathryn Harrison (Soldier Soldier, A Handful of Dust), Steve Steen (Spitting Image, Blackadder the Third), Sadie Shimmin (Wallander, Mr Selfridge), Stephen Frost (The Young Ones, Never Mind the Buzzcocks), and Flaminia Cinque (Waking the Dead, Any Human Heart), the gentle wit and musical flashbacks are perfect for fans of It's Not Us, It's Them, Up the Garden Path, and North by Northamptonshire. 

Sookie Poole of Point Clear, Alabama, has just married off the last of her three daughters and is looking forward to relaxing and perhaps travelling with her husband, Earle. Then one day, Sookie discovers a secret about her mother's past that calls into question everything she ever thought she knew about herself, her family, and her future.

John is the adored son of Joan, a beautiful talented single mother. They live in the West Country, but on John's thirteenth birthday Joan takes him to London. Unused to city driving she takes a wrong turn and that small mistake has devastating consequences.

As the Japanese begin their assault on Singapore, Sarah Fuller and her sister are forced to leave their parents behind. They arrive in Cliffehaven, on the south coast of England, and here Sarah must find work to support them both. As time goes on and the news of events in Singapore worsen, Sarah fears she will never see her fiancé, Philip and her parents again.

When PR girl Amanda announces her engagement to Fraser McConnald, Mel and Fran are appalled. Knowing Amanda of old, they decide to rescue Fraser by sabotaging the wedding.

Michael and Pauline seem like the perfect couple - he was smitten the first time he saw her in Baltimore. In the heat of the moment, in World War II, they were hastily wed. But perhaps they should never have married.

Fern Jenkins' life is changed for ever when her brother is killed in action and her father dies in a mining explosion. Turned out of their home, Fern and her mother Wynne are forced to seek a new life in Cardiff.

Flora Chapman is in her fifties when her husband dies in a bizarre accident. She decides to finish his history of Hurcott Ducis, but a reference to Anne of Cleves leads her to do her own research. Meanwhile, in the Louvre, Holbein's portrait of Anne begins to tell the story of how she survived the Tudor marriage.

'This is the story of how we came to Frith. And we're never, ever, ever leaving.'

Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood, growing up on a West Country farm - three families, a couple of lodgers, goats, dogs and an orphaned calf called Gabriella Christmas.
The parents are best friends too. Originally from the city, they're learning about farming: growing their own vegetables, milking the goats, slaughtering chickens and scything the hay -

'Mind your eyes! Don't break your neck! Careful!'

The adults are far too busy to keep an eye on Amy and Lan, and Amy and Lan would never tell them about climbing on the high barn roof, or what happened with the axe that time, any more than their parents would tell them the things they get up to - adult things, like betrayal - that threaten to bring the whole fragile idyll tumbling down.

Abandoned on a bank of snow as a baby, Amy is taken in at nearby Hatville Court. Amy's only friend and ally is the young heiress Aurelia Vennaway. So when Aurelia tragically dies young, she leaves Amy one last gift. A bundle of letters with a coded key. A life-changing discovery awaits...if only she can unlock the secret.