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Discover our top audiobook for this month, handpicked by our editorial team.
Read by: Simon Lawson
Duration: 9 hrs 42 mins
Seventeen years ago, its inhabitants were hit by tragedy when a school bus veered off the road and everyone on board drowned. Everyone, that is, except Joseph Ashe. His miraculous survival has haunted him and the town ever since.
Now a Detective Sergeant in the local police, Joe is called to the scene of a brutal and apparently inexplicable crime. The whole town is spooked, but Joe's new boss, DI Laurie Bower, more used to inner-city police work, has no time for superstition. She just wants to find the very real killer who has left no trace and apparently had no motive.
Joining forces, Joe and Laurie work to uncover the secrets of Edenscar, both past and present. But when you dig up the dead, expect to get your hands dirty…
Book 1 in the DS Joseph Ashe series.
Read by: David Blair
Duration: 12 hrs 20 mins
Series: Will BowmanBook 3
1191. For Will Bowman, newly restored to the service of King Richard 'Lionheart', the war against Saladin in the Holy Land now reaches its bloody climax.
No sooner is it over than the skulduggery of traitors conspiring against Richard's kingdom threatens the outbreak of yet more conflict.
Torn between his destiny and his allegiance, Will yearns for a life of peace. But when a deadly new danger threatens the king, only one man can save him.
Now, Will and his companions must embark on their most dangerous voyage yet, a covert rescue mission deep into the heartlands of a ruthless foreign power. Is Will's loyalty to Richard strong enough to die for him?
Book 3 in the Will Bowman series.
Read by: Georgia Tennant and Kyle Soller
Duration: 9 hrs 47 mins
Hazel and Fox are an ordinary married couple with a baby. Except for one small thing: they're ex-serial killers.
They had it all. An enviable London lifestyle, five-star travels, and plenty of bad men to kill. Not many power couples know how to get away with murder.
Then Hazel fell pregnant and they gave it all up for life in the suburbs; dinner parties instead of body disposal.
But recently Hazel has started to feel that itch again. When she kills someone behind Fox's back and brings the police to their door, she must do anything she can to protect her family.
This could save their marriage - unless it kills them first.
Read by: Jonathan Keeble
Duration: 10 hrs 10 mins
Series: The SeekerBook 3
Yorkshire, 1655. Seeker has been ordered to the North - a place from which he fled a decade earlier. A routine visit to the village of Faithly turns ugly when the village commissioner's ward is poisoned at a dinner for locals.
Among those invited was the government-appointed enforcer of Puritan morality in the region. Perhaps this symbol of Cromwell's power was the intended victim? Or Seeker himself? Or was it the young woman, who had a magic way with herbs and was rumoured to be a witch?
As he investigates the girl's death, old secrets come to haunt Seeker. A painful meeting will force a reckoning between his past and present. But with a prominent Royalist on the run in Yorkshire, and a murderer still at large, any distractions could prove deadly.
Book 3 in the Damian Seeker series.
Read by: Jonathan Keeble
Duration: 11 hrs 13 mins
Series: Damian SeekerBook 2
London, 1655, and Cromwell's regime is under threat from all sides. Damian Seeker, Captain of Cromwell's Guard, is all too aware of the danger facing Cromwell. Parliament resents his control of the Army while the Army resents his absolute power.
In the east end of London, a group of religious fanatics plots rebellion. In the midst of all this, a stonemason uncovers a perfectly preserved body dressed in the robes of a Dominican friar, bricked up in a wall in the crumbling Black Friars.
Ill-informed rumours and speculation abound, but Seeker instantly recognises the dead man. What he must discover is why he met such a hideous end, and what his connection was to the children who have started to disappear from around the city. Unravelling these mysteries is challenging enough, and made still harder by the activities of dissenters at home, Royalist plotters abroad and individuals who are not what they seem...
Book 2 in the Damian Seeker series.
Read by: Nicholas Camm
Duration: 10 hrs 22 mins
Series: Damian SeekerBook 1
London, 1654. Oliver Cromwell is at the height of his power and has declared himself Lord Protector. Yet he has many enemies, at home and abroad.
London is a complex web of spies and merchants, priests and soldiers, exiles and assassins. One of the web's most fearsome spiders is Damian Seeker, agent of the Lord Protector. No one knows where Seeker comes from, who his family is, or even his real name. All that is known of him for certain is that he is utterly loyal to Cromwell, and that nothing can be long hidden from him.
In the city, coffee houses are springing up, fashionable places where men may meet to plot and gossip. Suddenly they are ringing with news of a murder. John Winter, hero of Cromwell's all-powerful army, is dead, and the lawyer, Elias Ellingworth, found standing over the bleeding body, clutching a knife.
Yet despite the damning evidence, Seeker is not convinced of Ellingworth's guilt. He will stop at nothing to bring the killer to justice: and Seeker knows better than any man where to search.
Book 1 in the Damian Seeker series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 12 hrs 45 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 18
Sister Fidelma originally made her debut as one of crime fiction's most interesting sleuths in short story form. The sharp-witted religieuse captured the hearts of many readers as she successfully tackled the most baffling of crimes in her other role as advocate of the law courts of Ireland, using the ancient Brehon Law system.
This collection contains an astonishing range of crimes and misdemeanours and seamlessly blends historical detail, character and story into mysteries that will confound and surprise.
Whispers of the Dead is the second collection of these stories to be published in the UK. With its breath-taking range of settings and crimes, it is guaranteed to entertain and intrigue - and is an anthology that no lover of Celtic culture or historical crime should be without.
A short story collection linked to the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 24 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 14
A servant has been murdered and the baby in her charge abducted. Fidelma of Cashel has solved even more horrendous crimes in her career as an advocate of the ancient Brehon Courts of Ireland. But this case is different. For both Sister Fidelma and her companion, Brother Eadulf of Saxmund's Ham, the case is unique because of the personal emotions involved. The baby who has been abducted is their own son.
What is the motive for their crime? Could someone seeking vengeance on Fidelma and Eadulf have done the deed? They have made a lot of enemies in their pursuit of justice.
Fidelma and Eadulf, ignoring protests that they are too emotionally involved to undertake the investigation, set out on an increasingly desperate mission to save their son...
Book 14 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 57 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 15
A series of horrific murders has brought terror to the Kingdom of Muman. The victims, all young girls, were slaughtered with unspeakable violence on the nights of three consecutive full moons.
Suspicion falls on three dark strangers from the distant land of Aksum (Ethiopia), who are guests at the Abbey of Finbarr. A panic-stricken mob attacks the abbey, leaving the religious in fear for their lives. Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf are called in to restore order and find the killer, but it soon becomes clear that the three mysterious strangers are hiding a dark secret. And what about the ageing Laig, a hermit-like apothecary, who is known to have instructed all three victims about the magic and power of the moon; what sinister truths are hidden in his dark woodland dwelling?
As Fidelma struggles to repair her faltering relationship with Eadulf, can she uncover the truth before the killer strikes again on the next night of the full moon?
Book 13 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 53 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 12
As they are preparing to return to Ireland, Fidelma and Brother Eadulf receive a mysterious summons. Eadulf's childhood friend, Brother Botulf, has requested their presence at Aldred's Abbey at midnight on the old pagan feast of Yule. Fidelma and Eadulf battle against the harsh winter storms to arrive in time, only to find they are too late. Botulf is dead - killed by an unknown hand. As they struggle to comprehend this staggering news, it soon becomes clear that the murder of this young monk is not the only trouble facing the abbey. The abbey is haunted by the ghost of a young woman - a woman some say bears a startling likeness to the Abbot Cild's dead wife. But can Fidelma and Eadulf discover the truth before they themselves fall victim to the danger which pervades the abbey walls?
Book 12 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 25 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 11
Sister Fidelma and her companion Brother Eadulf are on their way to visit the new Archbishop of Canterbury, when their ship is blown off course and they land on the coast of the Welsh kingdom of Dyfed. They are given hospitality by King Gwlyddien and Abbot Tryffin of the Abbey of Dewi Sant, and are asked if they would help to solve the mystery of how the entire monastic community of the Abbey, including the King's eldest son, could vanish into thin air. It's not long before the trail leads to deaths and treachery in high places and Fidelma and Eadulf are faced with a sinister and baffling puzzle.
Book 11 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 33 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 10
Arriving home from a pilgrim voyage, Sister Fidelma hears that her faithful Saxon companion, Brother Eadulf, is under sentence of death for murder. She hastens to the capital of Laigin, where he is being held, determined to appeal against the sentence. The crime took place at the abbey of Fearna where Fidelma clashes with the sinister Abbess Fainder. The evidence against Eadulf seems overwhelming - can he actually be guilty? Will Fidelma's emotional involvement blind her in her desperate search for the truth?
Book 10 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 16 hrs 39 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 9
Sister Fidelma originally made her debut as one of the decade's most interesting sleuths in short story form. The sharp-witted and astonishingly wise religieuse captured the hearts of many readers as she successfully tackled the most baffling of crimes in her other role as advocate of the law courts of Ireland, using the ancient Brehon Law system.
The overwhelming response to these stories launched Fidelma as the heroine of a bestselling series of Celtic crime novels. But it also created a demand for further short stories.
Hemlock at Vespers is the first collection of these stories ever to be published. With its breathtaking range of settings and crimes, it is guaranteed to entertain and intrigue - and is an anthology that no lover of Celtic culture or historical crime should be without.
A short story collection linked to the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 57 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 8
When Sister Fidelma sets out on a pilgrimage in the autumn of AD 666, her main preoccupation is to reflect on her commitment to the religious life and her relationship with the Saxon monk, Eadulf, whom she has left behind. Complications arise during the first night on the ship when one of the pilgrims is apparently washed overboard. The discovery of a blood-stained robe raises the question of murder and Fidelma finds herself having to focus all her abilities on solving the mystery. Death dogs the tiny band of pilgrims in the close confines of the ship, but is not until the Holy Shrine is almost reached that the amazing truth is uncovered...
Book 8 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 12 hrs 52 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 7
The Abbey of Imleach, in the south-west Irish kingdom of Muman, now rivals Armagh as the centre of the faith in Ireland. For the founder of the abbey was none other than St Ailbe, the man who brought Christianity to Muman, converted its king and baptised him at Cashel in AD448.
But now, calamity has struck the community of the abbey. Not only has an elderly monk suddenly disappeared, but the holy relics of St Ailbe have also vanished. These sacred relics are not just the concern of the abbey's community but are a priceless icon and political symbol of the entire kingdom. So who would have dared to take them?
Sister Fidelma, together with Saxon Brother Eadulf, are asked to investigate. It seems there is more to the disappearances than meets the eye; much more. Fidelma gradually uncovers a sinister conspiracy, in which the participants will stop at nothing - even murder - to achieve their aims...
Book 7 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Paula Masterton
Duration: 11 hrs 9 mins
Spring, 1985. Twelve year old Phoebe MacDonald's world is falling apart.
She has just buried her parents, a fire at their family home claiming both in a freak accident. Now she must leave Scotland, the only place she has ever known, and go to live with her uncle Louis and aunt Maude in their home in the Welsh woods.
As spring turns to summer, Phoebe falls slowly into the rhythm of life with her eccentric guardians in their curious home. But there is no one her age in the nearby village, and she is lonely until she meets a strange girl, Gwyneth, who wanders the surrounding forest barefoot and alone.
Outsiders both, the two girls form a strong bond, though nobody else seems to believe that Gwyneth is real. Phoebe knows better, and soon with her new friend's help, she begins to see the woods for what they truly are - a place of magic and wonder, where the line between life and death is blurred. Where spirits roam and secrets fester.
Something happened here, a lifetime ago. A wrong that yearns to be put right. The answer is within Phoebe's grasp, but will revealing it put her in grave danger?
Read by: Ethan Kelly
Duration: 12 hrs 46 mins
1812. On the eve of the invasion of Russia, half-French, half-English Matthieu Carrey finds himself in the ranks of Napoleon's five hundred thousand strong army. With Tsar Alexander seemingly ill-prepared, a French victory seems certain. The Grande Armée will obliterate everything in its path.
Carrey's purpose is less clear. Blackmailed into becoming a spy in the emperor's army, he hopes to follow his lover, a French actress who has gone to work in the Moscow theatre.
As supplies grow scarce and temperatures plummet, the Grande Armée begins to crumble. Caught up in the maelstrom of war, Carrey embarks on an epic journey, while the Russians circle him like hungry wolves.
Read by: Saul Reichlin
Duration: 14 hrs 47 mins
Series: EmpireBook 8
With Rome no longer safe, Marcus and the Tungrians are ordered east, to the desolate borderlands where Rome and Parthia have vied for supremacy for centuries
Ordered to relieve the siege of an isolated fortress, their task is doomed to bloody failure unless they can turn the disaffected Third Legion into a fighting force capable of resisting the terrifying Parthian cataphracts.
And Marcus must travel to the enemy capital, Ctesiphon, on a desperate mission, the only man who can persuade the King of Kings to halt a war that threatens the humiliation of the empire and the slaughter of his friends.
Book 8 in the Empire series.
Read by: Saul Reichlin
Duration: 15 hrs 19 mins
Series: EmpireBook 7
The seventh novel in Anthony Riches' acclaimed Empire sequence brings Marcus Aquila back to Rome, hunting the men who destroyed his family. But the revenge he craves may cost him and those around him dearly. The young centurion's urge to exact his own brutal justice upon the shadowy cabal of assassins who butchered his family means that he must face them on their own ground, risking his own death at their hands.
A senator, a gang boss, a praetorian officer and, deadliest of all, champion gladiator Mortiferum - the Death Bringer - lie in wait. The knives are unsheathed, and ready for blood...
Book 7 in the Empire series,
Read by: Saul Reichlin
Duration: 14 hrs 5 mins
Series: EmpireBook 6
The Tungrian auxiliary cohorts return to Hadrian's Wall after their successful Dacian campaign, only to find Britannia in chaos. The legions are overstretched, struggling to man the forts of the northern frontier in the face of increasing barbarian resistance.
The Tungrians are the only soldiers who can be sent into the northern wastes, far beyond the long abandoned wall built by Antoninus, where a lost symbol of imperial power of the Sixth Victorious Legion is reputed to await them. Protected by an impassable swamp and hidden in a fortress atop a high mountain, the eagle of the Sixth legion must be recovered if the legion is to survive.
Marcus and his men must penetrate the heart of the enemy's strength, ghosting through a deadly wilderness patrolled by vicious huntresses before breaching the walls of the Fang, an all-but-impregnable fort, if they are to rescue the legion's venerated standard. If successful their escape will be twice as perilous, with the might of a barbarian tribe at their heels.
Book 6 in the Empire series.
Read by: Saul Reichlin
Duration: 14 hrs 8 mins
Series: EmpireBook 10
Fresh from their close escape from imperial betrayal in the German forest, Marcus and the Tungrians are ordered to Gaul, where an outlaw called Maturnus is wreaking havoc. Havoc that may be more than mere banditry, as deserters and freed slaves flock to his cause: rebellion is in the air for the first time in a generation.
And if escape from Rome's memories is a relief for the young centurion, he soon discovers that danger has followed him west to Gaul. The expedition is led by Praetorians whom he has every cause to hate. And to fear, if they should discover who he really is.
Book 10 in the Empire series.
Read by: Saul Reichlin
Duration: 15 hrs 6 mins
Series: EmpireBook 9
The Tungrians have no sooner returned to Rome than they find themselves tasked with a very different mission from their desperate exploits in Parthia. Ordered to cross the river Rhenus into barbarian Germany and capture a tribal priestess who may be the most dangerous person on the empire's northern border, they are soon subject to the machinations of an old enemy who will stop at nothing to sabotage their plans before they have even set foot on the river's eastern bank.
But after their Roman enemy is neutralised, they face a challenge greater still. With two of the Bructeri tribe's greatest treasures in their hands, they must regain Roman territory by crossing the unforgiving wilderness that was the graveyard of Roman imperial strategy 200 years before. And capture by the Bructeri's vengeful chieftain and his warband can end in only one way - a horrific sacrificial death on the tribe's altar of blood.
Book 9 in the Empire series.
Read by: Julia Whelan
Duration: 12 hrs 8 mins
When Margaret Ives, the famously reclusive heiress, invites eternal optimist Alice Scott to the balmy Little Crescent Island, Alice knows this is it: her big break. And even more rare: a chance to impress her family with a Serious Publication.
The catch? Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud, Hayden Anderson, is sure of the same thing.
The proposal? A one-month trial period to unearth the truth behind one of the most scandalous families of the 20th Century, after which she'll choose who'll tell her story.
The problem? Margaret is only giving each of them tantalising pieces. Pieces they can't put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they're in the same room.
And it's becoming abundantly clear that their story - just like the tale Margaret's spinning - could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad... depending on who's telling it.
Read by: Alix Dunmore
Duration: 11 hrs 4 mins
One rainy afternoon in Istanbul a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I want an abortion,' she announces. She is nineteen years old, and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life, and the lives of everyone around her.
Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. A mysterious curse causes all the men to die by the age of 41, so it is a house of women, among them her beautiful, rebellious mother, Zeliha, clairvoyant Auntie Banu and bar-brawl widow, Auntie Cevriye. But when Asya's Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 58 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 6
Sister Fidelma has been sent by her brother, king of Cashel, to Laisre, chieftain of Gleann Geis - the 'forbidden valley' - to negotiate permission to build a Christian church and school in his territory, replacing the pagan Druidic sanctuaries. Laisre is known to be hostile to the new religion, and Fidelma knows her mission will be no easy task.
Entering Gleann Geis with the Saxon Brother Eadulf, she comes across the naked, slain bodies of thirty-three young men, positioned in a sunwise circle. Each body bears the marks of stabbing and garrotting; every skull has been smashed. Who is reponsible for such evil, if not the heathen Laisre?
Book 6 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 12 hrs 2 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 4
A headless female corpse is found in the drinking well of a remote abbey in south-west Ireland. One hand clasps a crucifix; tied to the other arm is a pagan death symbol...
A merchant ship is encountered under full sail on the high seas off the Irish coast. But the crew and cargo have vanished - as if by sorcery...
Whose is the body in the well? Where is the crew of the vessel? Are these bizarre events connected? And if so, who is responsible?
The year is AD 666, and Sister Fidelma of Kildare, advocate of the Brehon law courts, must follow a trail of clues and investigate a host of enigmatic suspects to unravel the puzzle.
Book 4 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 47 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 5
Ebert is not a man to make enemies. He is a chieftain with a reputation for kindliness and generosity. Yet, one night, his household is aroused by a scream from his chamber. The servants burst in to find Móen, a young man to whom Eber had extended his protection, crouched over the bloody body of the chieftain. Móen's clothes are drenched in Eber's blood and he is clutching a bloodstained knife in his hand.
There seems no doubt of culpability, but why did Móen kill the gentle and courteous Eber? The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Móen himself cannot tell them - for he is deaf, dumb and blind...
Sister Fidelma, advocate of the ancient Irish law courts, is compelled to begin an investigation of the killing in order to present an argument on Móen's behalf before he is condemned.
Book 5 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 35 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 3
In the mid-7th Century AD, the Venerable Dacán, a much respected and beloved scholar of the Celtic Church, has been found murdered while on a visit to a remote abbey in the Irish Kingdom of Muman. When Dacán's foul death is used by a neighbouring kingdom to demand reparation from Muman, bloody war seems imminent. Summoned by Muman's dying king to investigate, Sister Fidelma is asked to solve the mystery of the brutal killing and by doing so to prevent the inevitable war breaking out between the two opposing kingdoms. She sets out for the remote abbey with a warrior named Cass - and very little time. But there are more sinister forces at work behind Dacán's death than just political intrigue...
Book 3 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 11 hrs 1 min
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 2
Wighard, archbishop designate of Canterbury, has been discovered garrotted in his chambers in the Lateran Palace in Rome in the autumn of AD 664. The solution to this terrible crime appears simple as the palace guards have arrested Brother Ronan Ragallach, as he fled from Wighard's chamber.
Although the Irish monk denies responsibility, Bishop Gelasius is convinced the crime is political and that Wighard was slain in pique at the triumph of the pro-Roman Anglo-Saxon clergy in their debate with the pro-Columba Irish clergy at Whitby.
Bishop Gelasius realises that Wighard's murder could lead to war between the Saxon and Irish kingdoms if Ronan is accused without independent evidence. So he invites Sister Fidelma of Kildare and Brother Eadulf to investigate.
Book 2 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Caroline Lennon
Duration: 9 hrs 21 mins
Series: Sister FidelmaBook 1
As the leading churchmen and women gather at the Synod of Whitby in 664AD to debate the rival merits of the Celtic and Roman Churches, tempers begin to fray. Conspirators plot an assassination, while mysterious, violent death stalks the shadowy cloisters of the Abbey of St Hilda. When the Abbess Etain, a leading speaker for the Celtic Church, is found murdered suspicion inevitably rests on the Roman faction.
Attending the Synod is Fidelma, of the community of St Brigid of Kildare. As an advocate of the Brehon Court, she is called on to investigate the murder with Brother Eadulf, of the Roman faction. However, the two are so unlike that their partnership is described as that of a wolf and a fox - but which is which?
More gruesome deaths follow and the friction among the clerics could end in civil war. Can the solution to the mysteries avert such a conflict?
Book 1 in the Sister Fidelma series.
Read by: Seth Podowitz
Duration: 2 hrs 46 mins
Series: Marvel Age of ComicsBook 0
What happens when a hero loses everything?
In Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again, the comic’s titular hero has his life destroyed after his most menacing enemy learns his real identity. His attempts to rebuild his life and sanity result in one of the most gripping and impactful super hero storylines of all time.
Released in 1986, the storyline is an extraordinary exploration of what happens when a hero’s identity is revealed, and his personal life completely annihilated. We see Daredevil reduced to the lowest depths in the character’s history, but we also follow his painstaking path toward redemption.
Read by: Phyllida Nash
Duration: 17 hrs 32 mins
When one of the houses in an exclusive cul-de-sac is sold to students, dramas begin to unfold and secrets long hidden come to the surface.
Local battle-axe Sheila Colby is appalled when Ned Short sells his house as student accommodation. The residents of Dartmouth Circle look on themselves as an exclusive little club, where everyone knows each other and privacy is respected.
But now that is about to end and all kinds of things long hidden will come out into the light of day, with dramatic consequences.
Read by: Phyllida Nash
Duration: 18 hrs 39 mins
Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage – not knowing that the papers she has signed will entitle them to do what they like with the children.
And it is not long before the powers that be decide to send a consignment of orphans to their sister institution in Australia. Among them – without their family's consent or knowledge – are Rita and Rosie, the throwaway children.
Read by: Finlay Robertson
Duration: 1 hr 9 mins
Series: DS CrossBook 0
When George is informed that his mother will be joining him and his father for Christmas, he is sent into a tailspin. How on earth is he meant to know what present to get her?
Soon after, one cold winter morning, Cross goes to inspect a dead body found tangled in thick hedgerow. It appears the young man was trying to scramble through the hedge when he died. Perhaps he was running away from something - or someone...
With frost on the ground obscuring evidence and secretive neighbours not giving anything away, finding the killer won’t be easy. But even with the odds stacked against him, DS George Cross is more confident in solving this murder than successfully working out what to get his mother for Christmas…
Part of the DS Cross series.
Read by: Finlay Robertson
Duration: 1 hr 19 mins
Series: DS Cross Book 0
DS George Cross's father, Raymond, always takes an annual holiday in a local care home. He enjoys the company it brings him. He busies himself repairing the residents' wheelchairs and has become their self-appointed tech guru. But this time it's different. A new arrival causes a stir – he's convinced one of the older residents, suffering with dementia, is the man who killed his father decades before.
The staff say it has to be a mistake, but after Cross investigates, he discovers that a similar murder really did take place. With Cross reopening this cold case, can the truth be revealed? Or is it already lost to time and unreliable memory?
Part of the DS Cross series.
Read by: Finlay Robertson
Duration: 1 hr 16 mins
Series: DS CrossBook 0
Detective George Cross receives a very bizarre call from a distressed family after their picnic was horribly interrupted. Just as they were about to tuck into their sandwiches, a human arm landed unceremoniously next to them. Soon, another limb followed.
As they looked up, they were horrified to see a decaying, disarticulating body perched at the top of a very tall tree.
DS George Cross is an exceptional detective but it doesn't take a genius to work out what needs answering first:
How on earth did it get up there?
Part of the DS Cross series.
Read by: Hattie Ladbury
Duration: 10 hrs 49 mins
On 15th June 1994, Travis Green - husband, father, upstanding citizen - walked through the streets of Hartstead and killed eleven of his neighbours. The last victim was little Cassie Colman's father.
As the twenty-fifth anniversary approaches, Cassie tries to forget the past - even as her mother struggles to remember it at all. Then, something hidden in her mother's belongings suggests the murders were not as random as everyone believes.
Cassie can't stop herself digging up the past. But someone will do anything to keep it buried...
Read by: Elaine Caxton
Duration: 11 hrs 9 mins
Maria Weston wants to be friends with me.
Maybe that had been the problem all along: Maria Weston had wanted to be friends with me, but I let her down.
She's been hovering at the edge of my consciousness for all of my adult life, although I've been good at keeping her out, just a blurred shadow in the corner of my eye, almost but not quite out of sight.
Maria Weston wants to be friends.
But Maria Weston has been dead for more than twenty-five years.
Read by: Miscellaneous
Duration: 8 hrs 43 mins
Sasha North has gone missing.
Everyone says she's run away, but I know better. We've been best friends since we were teenagers, since Sasha swept into the neighbourhood and brought colour to my life.
Until a brutal attack changed both our lives forever.
I know what happened that night. I know who wants revenge. And if Sasha has been taken...
I know I'm next.
Read by: James Lailey
Duration: 13 hrs 56 mins
Series: DI LockyerBook 3
1999. A group of archaeologists are excavating a Bronze Age burial site in the grounds of Trusloe Hall, a minor stately home in Wiltshire. Excited that their dig is being filmed for a TV documentary, the group are camping onsite and having the time of their lives.
In the blink of an eye, one of the party disappears: a young woman called Nazma Kirmani. An extensive police investigation fails to find any trace of her, and the case goes cold for over twenty years.
2020. When a chance discovery presents new evidence into Nazma's disappearance, DI Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad are put on the case. Did Nazma intend to disappear, or was she taken? Did she walk out on her life, or was she murdered? Lockyer must see past the upheavals in his own life to find out the truth for her desperate family.
Book 3 in the DI Lockyer series.
Read by: Ellie Gossage and Eric Nolan
Duration: 11 hrs 38 mins
Clementine Clark isn't looking for love. She's a talented singer, but she's set her dreams of stardom - and romance - aside to care for her ailing mother.
And then her best friend calls her with a life-changing opportunity: join Irish megastar Halloran on his first US tour as a backing vocalist. Clementine wants to reject the offer, but the pay would change her and her mom's life. Overnight, Clementine goes from serving enchiladas at the Happy Tortilla to belting high notes before a cheering crowd.
But the whiplash of trading small-town Texas for sold-out stadiums is nothing compared to the rush of performing with the enigmatic Thomas Patrick Halloran. Poet, introvert, and lyrical genius, Halloran quickly gets under Clementine's skin. The two couldn't see the world more differently. And yet, over the course of the next eight weeks on tour, the romantic rockstar might just strike an unforgettable chord in Clementine...
Read by: Hillary Huber
Duration: 13 hrs 54 mins
Series: San DiegoBook 3
When homicide Detective Kit McKittrick and psychologist Sam Reeves discover a mutilated body in the desert outside San Diego, any number of people could be on their suspect list. The murder victim, local Councillor Brooks Munro, was a hated figure.
Following the killer's trail, it becomes clear that those who abducted Brooks - and his prized Ferrari - went to extreme lengths to cover their tracks and wipe out any witnesses.
As Kit and her team delve deeper, they uncover a twisted blackmail scheme worth millions of dollars. Brooks hadn't only been forcing money from his wealthy acquaintances, he'd also kept a secret list of their wrongdoings as protection - to be revealed on his death.
But now he is dead, where's the list? Who was helping with the extortion scheme? And who would kill to stop the blackmail and prevent the list becoming public?
Book 3 in the San Diego series.
Read by: David Blair and Sarah Lambie
Duration: 10 hrs 7 mins
Poland, 1942. After witnessing the destruction of her hometown in Warsaw, Anna Kowalski joins the Polish Resistance. She is tasked with smuggling as many children as possible out of the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewers and relocating them to safety.
Through her work, Anna meets Johnnie Nowak, an RAF pilot who had managed to escape from a prisoner of war camp. He's not safe in Warsaw, so Anna leads him out of the city to protect him...
But suddenly Anna is caught by the SS and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp where she is surrounded by even more horror and despair.
When Anna is relocated to a different camp, she finds herself reunited with Johnnie Nowak, the pilot she had saved. Desperate to escape, the two of them devise a plan, that if caught, could mean a fate far worse than death.
Read by: Aoife McMahon
Duration: 9 hrs 39 mins
Series: Inspector Tom ReynoldsBook 5
In the garden of an abandoned house, Luke Connolly lies broken, dead. The night before, he and his friends partied inside. Nobody fought, everybody else went home safely. And yet, Luke was raped and pushed to his death. His alleged attacker is now in custody.
DCI Tom Reynolds is receiving the biggest promotion of his career when a colleague asks him to look at the Connolly case, believing it's not as cut and dried as local investigators have made out. And as Tom begins to examine the world Connolly and his upper class friends inhabited, the privilege and protection afforded to them, he too realises something.
In this place, people cover up for each other. Even when it comes to murder.
Book 5 in the Inspector Tom Reynolds series.
Read by: Aoife McMahon
Duration: 9 hrs 9 mins
Series: Inspector Tom ReynoldsBook 4
Christmas Day, and DCI Tom Reynolds receives an alarming call. A mass grave has been discovered on Oileán na Caillte, the island which housed the controversial psychiatric institution St. Christina's. The hospital has been closed for decades and onsite graves were tragically common. Reynolds thinks his adversarial boss is handing him a cold case to sideline him.
But then it transpires another body has been discovered amongst the dead - one of the doctors who went missing from the hospital in mysterious circumstances forty years ago. He appears to have been brutally murdered.
As events take a sudden turn, nothing can prepare Reynolds and his team for what they are about to discover once they arrive on the island...
Book 4 in the Inspector Tom Reynolds series.
Read by: Aoife McMahon
Duration: 9 hrs 58 mins
Series: Inspector Tom ReynoldsBook 3
A young woman, Fiona Holland, has gone missing from a small Irish village. A search is mounted, but there are whispers. Fiona had a wild reputation. Was she abducted, or has she run away? A week later a gruesome discovery is made in the woods at Ireland's most scenic beauty spot - the valley of Glendalough.
The bodies are all young women who disappeared in recent years. DI Tom Reynolds and his team are faced with the toughest case of their careers - a serial killer who hunts vulnerable women and holds his victims captive before he ends their lives. Soon the race is on to find Fiona Holland before it's too late.
Book 3 in the Inspector Tom Reynolds series.
Read by: Aoife McMahon
Duration: 12 hrs 50 mins
Series: Inspector Tom ReynoldsBook 1
It's 1975. A baby, minutes old, is forcibly taken from its devastated mother. In 2010, the body of an elderly woman is found in a Dublin public park in the depths of winter.
Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds is working the case. He's convinced the murder is linked to historical events that took place in the notorious Magdalene Laundries. Reynolds and his team follow the trail to an isolated convent in the Irish countryside. But once inside, it becomes disturbingly clear that the killer is amongst them...and is determined to exact further vengeance for the sins of the past.
Book 1 in the Inspector Tom Reynolds series.
Read by: Karen Cass
Duration: 10 hrs 46 mins
The Darke family and their associates are under attack. Ruby's burlesque club has been razed to the ground. Her son Kit's closest associate, Rob Hinton, is dead. And when Ruby's lover, gangland boss Thomas Knox, is blown to pieces by a car bomb, everyone suspects a rival gang. But is that the truth?
As Kit and Ruby trawl the mean streets of London in search of answers, Daisy, Rob's bereaved young widow, cannot control her grief and soon she is attending illegal raves, picking up strangers and attending seances, while Rob's younger brother Daniel is handed the unenviable task of keeping her safe.
DI Romilly Kane is also on the case and her investigations into these horrifying events takes her deep into the underworld, where she crosses swords with mad, bad Fabio Danieri, the London boss of the Naples Camorra.
Read by: Jessie Elland
Duration: 9 hrs 10 mins
Scullery drudge Ann longs to become a lady's maid. Ann can't quite remember how or when she arrived at the grand Ropner Hall, but she loathes spending her days toiling in the dank kitchen.
When a chance meeting with Ropner's Lady Charlotte leads to the opportunity to become her personal maid, Ann is convinced she has finally escaped her own version of hell. But has she? As Ann's new life above stairs takes a sinister twist, will it turn out that the terrors lurking up there are worse than the devils she knows below?
Read by: Ian Hanmore
Duration: 13 hrs 21 mins
Series: Inspector Mclean Book 14
Detective Chief Inspector Tony McLean is called to investigate a break-in at Drake BioTech, a trendsetting Edinburgh start-up. It's well below McLean's pay grade, but given the extensive political connections of its eccentric owner Nathaniel Drake, he doesn't have a choice.
A missing person case turns complicated for DI Janie Harrison when a body is found half-buried in woods outside the city. The missing man shows no signs of trauma, the cause of his death a mystery. But when another man - linked to the break-in - is discovered dead in similarly mysterious circumstances, the police suspect there may be some connection between the two.
Book 14 in the Inspector McLean series.
Read by: Edoardo Ballerini
Duration: 8 hrs 26 mins
Young Elphaba is destined to be a witch, she bears the markings from childhood. But what happened before her powers took hold?
Elphie is a girl like any other and no other. Nothing like her parents - one beautiful, the other pious - nor her saintly sister, Nessarose. Her skin is green, her mind is cunning. One day she will command this strange and wonderful world. For now, her journey is just beginning.
The road ahead is full of lessons and heartbreak, the first bruising attempts at friendship - and tantalising whispers of magic.
It will lead Elphie to the doors of Shiz University, and to the girl who will change her life forever...
Read by: Emma Wilkes
Duration: 10 hrs 25 mins
Series: French Village MysteryBook 1
Zoe Pascal has decided to live her dream: leave England and open up a bookshop in a small village in the south of France. She wants to spend her later years in life eating croissants, reading her beloved books, and getting to know her charming new hometown.
When the body of a tourist is found inside the local church, Zoe begins to discover that something is afoot in the village of Sainte-Catherine. And as the last person to have seen the deceased alive, Zoe suddenly becomes a prime suspect in a murder investigation.
Can she prove her innocence and discover who the real murderer is, or will Zoe have to say au revoir to her French countryside dream?
Book 1 in the French Village Mystery series.
Read by: Hattie Morahan
Duration: 8 hrs 57 mins
Beth was seventeen when she first met Gabriel. Over that heady, intense summer, he made her think and feel and see differently. She thought it was the start of her great love story. When Gabriel left to become the person his mother expected him to be, she was broken.
It was Frank who picked up the pieces and together they built a home very different from the one she'd imagined with Gabriel. Watching her husband and son, she remembered feeling so sure that, after everything, this was the life she was supposed to be leading.
But when Gabriel comes back, all Beth's certainty about who she is and what she wants crumbles. Even after ten years, their connection is instant. She knows it's wrong and she knows people could get hurt. But how can she resist a second chance at first love?
Read by: Ray Porter
Duration: 11 hrs 8 mins
Series: Apollo MurdersBook 2
Israel, late 1973. As the Yom Kippur War flares into life, a state-of-the-art Soviet MIG fighter is racing at breakneck speed over the arid scrublands below... and promptly disappears.
It soon becomes clear to Israeli intelligence that the pilot is a defector, desperate to come over to the US side. Houston Flight Controller and former test pilot Kaz Zemeckis is charged with bringing the pilot and his plane to the highly secret Area 51, in the Nevada desert. But every defection carries with it a risk. It soon becomes clear that 'Grief' has the technical ability, and now the opportunity, to gain access to the treasures of the Nevada Test Range - either a prototype stealth fighter or the NERVA nuclear rocket engine. Or both.
Book 2 in the Apollo Murders series.
Read by: Lucy Doig
Duration: 11 hrs 9 mins
My first term of university: bad grades and worse sex. After losing my sister/best friend Grace and spending my teenage years suffering for it, I thought academia could be my saviour. So, I buried my head in as many books as I could find. But it turns out you can't just turn the page on years of guilt. Still, the university library has become something of a haven away from the darkness.
Until a werewolf bit me in the romance section. And to my surprise, I kinda liked it.
I should have died - but instead, in true me form, I fell in love with the mysterious wolf that nearly tore me to shreds.
Now I feel myself changing, experiencing urges like never before. Maybe I should run for my life, but suddenly a dark bond is pulling me in closer…
Read by: William Hope
Duration: 11 hrs 10 mins
Series: Ben KoenigBook 1
Ben Koenig is a ghost. He doesn't exist any more.
Six years ago it was Koenig who headed up the US Marshal's elite Special Ops group. They were the elite unit who hunted the bad guys - the really bad guys.
Until the day Koenig disappeared. He told no one why and he left no forwarding address. For six years he became a grey man. Invisible. He was untraceable. It was as if he had never been.
But now Koenig's face is on every television screen in the country. Someone from his past is trying to find him and they don't care how they do it. In the burning heat of the Chihuahuan Desert lies a town called Gauntlet, and there are people in there who have a secret they'll do anything to protect. They've killed before and they will kill again.
Book 1 in the Ben Koenig series.
Read by: Lesley Harcourt
Duration: 7 hrs 16 mins
Series: The Connection TrilogyBook 3
When an author seeking solitude in Leaf Cottage vanishes after a village stroll in Eyam, her worrying husband desperately enlists the help of the Connection Agency and a hunt for the missing woman begins.
Soon DI Carl Heaton is on the case and a trail of bodies starts emerging one by one. Meanwhile, another detective grapples with a wrenching missing person case...
Book 3 in the Connection Trilogy.
Read by: Lesley Harcourt
Duration: 6 hrs 46 mins
Series: The Connection TrilogyBook 2
When an intruder ends John and Caroline Coates hopes and dreams, John turns to the Connection Agency seeking justice for what happened five years ago.
In the past, Tessa's pursuit of the truth had been abruptly halted by the cold case division. Reunited with Luke and assisted by DI Eileen Haughton, an old colleague from Tessa's police years, they delve deep into the sinister world of the unseen enemy.
But as the trio inches closer, they unearth revelations that are darker than they anticipated. Will the truth offer the Coateses closure, or will it plunge them further into a nightmare?
Book 2 in The Connection Trilogy.
Read by: Lesley Harcourt
Duration: 7 hrs 16 mins
Series: The Connection TrilogyBook 1
The Connection Investigation Agency is under new management, with partners Tessa, Luke, and Beth at the helm. As they reopen the office, a chilling discovery is made - a body hidden in the outhouse, bones lying undiscovered for twenty-five years.
While Luke faces his first solo case, Tessa, a former DI, must prove herself, unravelling the mystery behind threatening notes sent to two women who later become murder victims.
As the agency digs deeper into the past and a link between the two cases is revealed, will this help or hinder?
Book 1 in the Connection Trilogy.
Read by: Kenneth Wright
Duration: 7 hrs 34 mins
Series: Legion of the DamnedBook 4
A special command from the convict regiment, wearing Russian uniforms, take over four Russian T-34 tanks. Remote reconnaissance far behind the Russian lines in Caucasus. The year is 1942. Hour for hour, the tanks roll eastward. Several times, Russian departments challenge them. We follow the soldiers in their desperate struggle to find their way back to the German lines. The distances are great, the friends are few and death is always right behind them...
Book 4 in the Legion of the Damned series.
Read by: Samy Andersen
Duration: 11 hrs 26 mins
Series: Legion of the DamnedBook 3
We hear the crawlers closing in. A T-34. They must have seen us, Tiny whispers. - Stay low until it is right here, then we run! The horrible clattering of the crawler comes closer and closer. I know this fear, creeping up the spine. It will mean certain death if they run just one second too soon. How we get up, I don't know, the legs move automatically. The tank wiggles over the hole and crushes everything in it. Then it rumbles on...
Book 3 in the Legion of the Damned series.
Read by: Stephen Fry
Duration: 10 hrs 37 mins
Wily Odysseus, King of Ithaca, has won Troy for the Greeks - after a decade of brutal, bloody warfare. But now this warrior remembers he is a husband and father - and his gaze turns longingly towards home.
Setting sail with a small fleet, Odysseus dreams of soon lying in the arms of his beloved wife Penelope, and of teaching his son Telemachus the ways of a warrior. However, the gods laugh at the foolish hopes of mortals. And, angered by this upstart, Poseidon - God of the ocean realms - curses our hero to wander the seas for ten long years.
Encountering one-eyed giants, six-headed monsters, terrible storms, titanic whirlpools, hypnotic sirens, seductive witches and jealous goddesses, Odysseus is tempted and tormented beyond any man's endurance.
Yet he is no mere mortal - and the lure of his wife and son draws him, step by step, stroke by stroke, ever closer to home and his ultimate destiny...
Read by: January LaVoy and Jenna Lamia
Duration: 28 hrs 40 mins
Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Ever since her beloved mother failed to come home last Christmas Eve, she's been one of the "unadoptable" girls at the town's orphanage, where she fights each day to keep her wits sharp and her spirit unbowed.
When she meets Birdie, a young woman who has come to Oxford determined to remind her socialite sister of the impoverished family she left behind, for the first time in a long while it seems someone else might care about Meg's future.
But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie begins to suspect her sister's charmed life may be founded on a tapestry of lies. Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman haunted by loss who has been pushed to the brink with nothing left to lose.
Drawn together by circumstance, they find unexpected kinship among a disreputable, determined band of women. But in a town steeped in hypocrisy, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences…
Read by: Mei Mei MacLeod
Duration: 11 hrs 17 mins
London, 2015. When reclusive art appraiser Eve Shaw shakes the hand of a silver-haired gentleman in her London office, the warmth of his palm sends a spark through her.
His name is Max Everly - curiously, the same name as Eve's favourite composer, born one hundred sixteen years prior. And she can't shake the feeling that she's held his hand before... but where, and when?
The White Octopus Hotel, 1935. Decades earlier, high in the snowy Swiss Alps, Eve and a young Max Everly wander the winding halls of the grand belle epoque White Octopus Hotel, lost in time.
Each of them has been through the trenches - Eve in a family accident and Max on the battlefields of the Great War - but for an impossible moment, love and healing are just a room away... if only they have the courage to step through the door.
Read by: Annie Aldington
Duration: 10 hrs 42 mins
Series: The Newspaper GirlsBook 1
When Jenny Gregory leaves wartime London for the quiet town of Allanby Cross, she feels as though her hopes for the future are slipping away. But an unexpected offer to become the editor for the struggling Allanby Cross Gazette gives her a chance to begin again.
Eager to prove herself, Jenny throws her energy into reviving the paper and finding her place in the community. But when mistakes and mishaps begin to threaten her hard work, she starts to suspect someone wants her to fail.
With the support of new friends, Jenny must hold her nerve and uncover the truth before her chance at a fresh start slips through her fingers...
Book 1 in the Newspaper Girls series.
Read by: Joe Morton and Roxane Gay
Duration: 8 hrs 55 mins
Drawing on James Baldwin's own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were riding on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind.
Read by: Rory Kinnear
Duration: 9 hrs 12 mins
Series: Hawthorne and Horowitz MysteryBook 5
Richmond Upon Thames is one of the most desirable areas to live in London. And Riverview Close - a quiet, gated community - seems to offer its inhabitants the perfect life.
At least it does until Giles Kenworthy moves in with his wife and noisy children, his four gas-guzzling cars, his loud parties and his plans for a new swimming pool in his garden.
His neighbours all have a reason to hate him and are soon up in arms.
When Kenworthy is shot dead with a crossbow bolt through his neck, all of them come under suspicion and his murder opens the door to lies, deception and further death.
The police are baffled. Reluctantly, they call in former Detective Daniel Hawthorne. But even he is faced with a seemingly impossible puzzle.
Book 5 in the Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series.
Read by: Bobby Rainsbury
Duration: 9 hrs 45 mins
Winter, 1900. A little boy washes up on the beach of a small fishing village in Scotland, barely alive. He bears an uncanny resemblance to teacher Dorothy's son, lost to the sea many years before.
When the village is snowed in, Dorothy agrees to look after the child until he can be returned home. But, as the past rises to meet the present, long-buried secrets in this tight-knit community start to come to light. And Dorothy finds herself thrown together again with the reclusive fisherman Joseph, after years of keeping their distance.
Bursting with tension and tenderness, this is an exquisite love story that delves into the griefs and hopes that can lie behind village gossip.
Read by: Rory Kinnear
Duration: 8 hrs 36 mins
Series: Hawthorne and Horowitz MysteryBook 2
These were Richard Pryce's last words, overheard moments before the celeb divorce lawyer was bludgeoned to death with a £3,000 bottle of wine.
Strange circumstances pile up. Pryce was teetotal, so why this bottle? Why those words? Why did the killer paint a number on his wall? And, most importantly, which of the man's many, many enemies did the deed?
Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony, who's really getting rather good at this murder investigation business.
But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. Anthony knows they must be exposed - even at the risk of death…
Book 2 in the Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series.
Read by: Jon Beck
Duration: 6 hrs 13 mins
Series: British Library Tales of the WeirdBook 0
John Travers has been hanged for the murder of his mother-in-law Helga, but to those who knew him something is amiss. Driven by justice and a sense of uncanny forces at work, John’s friend Doctor Toogood recounts a haunting tale of love and jealousy under the fell influence of a shadowy and implacable evil.
First published in 1927, this novel by husband-and-wife writing duo Rosalie and Edward Synton (real surname Corse-Scott) has been lost for nearly a century and returns now from the Library collections to deliver its occult thrills anew.
Read by: Hilary Spiers
Duration: 3 hrs 48 mins
Madeleine St John’s poignant and characteristically witty new novel tells the story of three people locked in an unhappy kaleidoscope of emotions and desires, none able to articulate the precise quality of their longing and dissatisfaction. There’s Alex, miserable in his cold and calmly professional marriage, unable to leave because of his two children. Next comes Andrew, recently home from ten years in America, leaving an ex-wife and a beloved daughter on the other side of the world. And finally, there’s Barbara, the enchanting and lustrous object of their affections, formidably self-possessed but strangely aimless and unfulfilled.
With elegance and acuity, Madeleine St John chronicles their progress through numerous false starts, reversals and apprehensions; the result is a memorable anatomy of desire and its opposite – despair.
Read by: Dion Graham and Isaiah Mustafa
Duration: 7 hrs 22 mins
Series: Alex CrossBook 35
Detectives Alex Cross and John Sampson must divide and conquer when they're sent to investigate two serious crimes.
In Washington DC, John Sampson stands in a crater in the middle of a street and calls in the bomb squad for a suspected terrorist attack.
In North Carolina, Alex Cross searches the apartment of a missing psychology grad student - his own son Damon. Has following in his famous father's footsteps made Damon a target?
From FBI headquarters to police stations, airplanes to murder scenes, the detectives track crimes committed hundreds of miles apart.
It will take more than distance to weaken their unstoppable partnership.
Book 35 in the Alex Cross series.
Read by: Anne Marlow
Duration: 8 hrs 5 mins
Kathryna never knew her father. He died a hero in World War II before she took her first breath. Now, as war returns, Kathryna faces a new generation of grief and discovers a quiet calling.
Determined not to let others suffer in silence, she begins with a simple gesture: a cup of tea, a quiet conversation, and an open door.
Her home becomes a quiet refuge for Yulia, a young nurse and newlywed whose world collapsed in a heartbeat. For Ana, the resilient wife who loved through war. And for Natalia, a mother and partner who returned from Berlin to contribute, only to face destruction.
Within Kathryna’s modest home, sorrow finds a voice, strength is shared in silence, and healing begins. As word spreads, her home becomes a haven for the broken-hearted. Together, they carry invisible wounds and begin to plant hope in barren soil.
Read by: Kristin Atherton
Duration: 10 hrs 57 mins
Berlin, 1940: Hitler's army is on the rise. When he requests Edith Creutzen become his personal fortune teller, she's left no choice but to accept.
Day by day, their work intensifies, and soon Edith realises the extent of her power. Hitler trusts her implicitly, but what if she were to lead him astray? Joining forces with the resistance, she begins to guide Europe's most dangerous man right into the hands of British Intelligence.
But there's one person in the way: Hitler's enigmatic right-hand man, by whom Edith can't help but be intrigued. Is he friend or foe, and would he still care for her if he knew where her loyalties lay?
Armed with courage and conviction, Edith sets out to change the course of history. But the price of success is high, and the closer she gets, the more she stands to lose…
Read by: Emma Powell
Duration: 6 hrs 25 mins
It's Christmas 1937 and an eclectic list of guests and staff have gathered for the grand re-opening of Maybridge castle, a newly renovated yet still crumbling hotel deep in the Cumbrian countryside. They are:
The ex-socialite owner
The Doctor and his new wife
The stylish journalist
The know-all housekeepers
The still-grieving widower and his son
The tarot readers
The passionate academic
The persistent investigative reporter
The elder amateur sleuth, and her cat
An innocent game of murder-in-the-dark will turn into a real game of life and death. And by the time the first sherries have been drunk, one of these people will be dead - and one of them the killer. Someone has changed the rules, but who?
Read by: Anne Marlow
Duration: 6 hrs 10 mins
A dazzling, ambitious debut collection from a young talent, these critically acclaimed stories dip into the shadows and spotlights of life. From the pale waking hours to the darkling places, Clown's Shoes introduces a cast of lost characters trying to find their way, and asking whether everyone really does come salting home in the end?
Since the Devil visited the glove maker, she has found herself in the asylum counting out days instead of stitches. At the dog track, hidden amongst the rowdy punters, a woman bets on underdogs, life, and love. Onstage, a desperate mother performs a nightly striptease, whilst, in a small Welsh town, a young Korean immigrant tells her secrets to the sway of the sea.
The people who populate the exciting and intriguing world of Clown's Shoes have stories that enthral the imagination.
Read by: Maggie Stokes
Duration: 11 hrs 36 mins
Series: The Lett Family sagasBook 3
When Henry Lett dies, he leaves a restaurant that is far from thriving. His nephew, Edwin, is loath to see the once-famous Letts pass out of the family's hands, and he persuades his aunt to sell her shares and give him a chance to get the restaurant back on its feet.
As Edwin prepares to marry Helen, the lovely young daughter of restaurant manager, William Goodridge, it seems everything has fallen into place. But the flame of attraction between Helen and Hugh, Edwin's cousin, simmers in the background. A fearful Will watches over the trio, waiting and wondering when to reveal a secret that will reopen old wounds.
Book 3 in the Lett Family series.
Read by: Ann Stutz
Duration: 10 hrs 5 mins
Flavia was born with a birthmark marring her face in the shape of a bird in flight. A dyer’s daughter, she grows up in a secluded little house in the woods, away from prying eyes.
Ashamed of the mark, her mother forces Flavia to conceal her face behind a veil. But on the night before her younger sister’s wedding, Flavia does something drastic, something that will draw her into a much wider and stranger world than she could have imagined: the convent of Santa Giuliana, just outside the city walls.
There she meets Ghostanza, a courtesan turned widow, whose white-lead painted face entrances Flavia, and whose beauty and cruelty are unmatched. Flavia becomes her ornatrix: her hairdresser and personal maid, drawing her into a world of desire and jealousy that has devastating consequences.
CONTENT WARNING: contains scenes of a sexual nature and scenes of rape
Read by: Yvonne Clemenson
Duration: 9 hrs 50 mins
1935. With little hope of finding a husband, no-nonsense Natalie lives for teaching, until she finds herself out of a job courtesy of her best friend Delphi. But if she can team up with Delphi to bring her rigorous physical fitness programme to the people of St Darlstone, maybe there’s a chance she can start again and help her friend to follow her dreams too?
So Natalie takes on the Lido Girls. But, with Delphi’s handsome brother, Jack, on the scene, and Delphi’s desperate struggle to defy her overbearing parents, Natalie must find the courage to face up to her own fears, and realise what she truly wants in life…
Set against the backdrop of the pioneering keep fit movement; this is a feel-good celebration of friendship and what's possible when you follow your heart.
Read by: Clare Francis
Duration: 8 hrs 30 mins
Kate Heron is a wealthy, charming widow who marries, much to the disapproval of friends and neighbours, a man ten years her junior: the attractive, feckless Dermot. Then comes the return of Kate's old friend Charles - intelligent, kind and now widowed, with his beautiful young daughter. Kate watches happily as their two families are drawn together, finding his presence reassuringly familiar, but slowly she becomes aware of subtle undercurrents that begin to disturb the calm surface of their friendship. Before long, even she cannot ignore the gathering storm...