Two months before Adolf Hitler's rise to power, a young woman is found half naked and near death in the woods outside Berlin. The only clue to her identity is a handbill advertising a lecture by Albert Einstein. Psychiatrist Martin Kirsch little knows this will be his last case. Searching for the truth about his celebrated patient, he finds profess...

Hiram Granville, a modern Leonardo, secured more than a thousand patents during his lifetime, often just ahead of others who had already been working the same ideas. His son John, an economics genius, never lost a cent in the stock market-or any other financial deal-and was investigated for insider trading on more than one occasion. Now Cat, a docu...

The nine children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968. Tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations, this is a novel about lov...

A one-time aspiring author has seen his life take a tumble down the ladder of literary aspirations: after prose came verse, then drama, then the ignominious wasteland of sitcom, and then, because failure's always ready to step in with another bottom rung, a badly paid job as a reader of other people's sitcoms. Then suddenly there's new hope. Hollyw...

St Petersburg, 1911: Inna Feldman has fled the pogroms to take refuge with relatives in Russia's capital city. Welcomed into the flamboyant Leman family, she is apprenticed into their violin-making workshop. But revolution is in the air and, as society begins to fracture, she is forced to choose between her heart and her head. She loves her broodin...

In 1913 an orphan girl is delivered to The Hall of Eternal Splendour, seemingly destined to live out her life as a prostitute in its smoky backrooms. Yet one day hope appears in the unlikely form of a customs inspector, a modest man who will take Pan Yuliang as his concubine and introduce her to a glamorous new life in 1920s' Shanghai: a life of lo...

An international bestseller and the novel of the year, 'Freedom' is an epic of contemporary love and marriage. This is the story of the Berglunds, their son Joey, their daughter Jessica and their friend Richard Katz. It is about how we use and abuse our freedom; about the beginning and ending of love; teenage lust; the unexpectedness of adult life;...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring June Whitfield as Miss Marple, the sharp-witted spinster sleuth. In the sleepy little English country village of St Mary Mead, all is not as it seems. Under a seemingly peaceful exterior lurks intrigue, guilt, deception - and murder. Colonel Protheroe, local magistrate and overbearing landowner, is the...

Summer, 1942. For the people of Malta, suffering daily bombing raids, the British are the last line of defence against the Nazis. And it is Max Chadwick's job as the information officer to ensure the news the islanders receive maintains morale. So when Max is given proof suggesting a British officer is murdering local women, he knows the consequenc...

When award-winning film maker Justine Nolan returns to her beautiful childhood home, she is intrigued by an envelope she finds in her absent mother's post. If genuine it will change everything she believes about her family's recent history, her mother and her adored grandmother, Gabriele. Resolving to uncover the truth, she must travel to Istanbul...

Barbara Taylor Bradford introduced the illustrious Harte family in her blockbuster A Woman of Substance. Now she has created an unforgettable new dynasty: the Deravenels. On a bitterly cold day in 1904, the Deravenel family's future changes forever. When Cecily Deravenel tells her eighteen-year-old son Edward of the death of his father, brother, un...

Abi, a recently-ordained priest of the Church of England, is appointed to the parish of the charismatic but fundamentalist Kier. He objects to her mysticism, her practice of healing in particular. When she sees a vision, Kier accuses her of witchcraft, but Abi soon sees more visions; an entire Roman family history, dark with betrayal and a promise...

Bereft of the three people she has held most dear - her mother, her husband and her daughter - Celia is on the verge of suicide. Then one night on an exotic island she meets Larraby, a successful portrait painter, and through a long night of talk reveals how she is afraid to commit herself to a second chance of happiness with another person, yet is...

A poignantly funny retrospective of the genteel wit of broadcaster, comedienne, poet and entertainer, Joyce Grenfell, superbly performed by Maureen Lipman and heard on BBC Radio 3. Together with the creative team that produced the stage show, ReJoyce, Maureen perfectly recreates the much-loved material of the late, great Joyce Grenfell. Featuring m...

Compo, Foggy and Clegg wreak havoc in four vintage episodes from the world's longest-running comedy series. Only a man with a ferret down his trousers could love Nora Batty. So lock up your ferrets (and Nora Batty!), here come Yorkshire's hilarious adventurers - three pensioners in four classic capers from the BBC television series which kept the n...

Ron Donachie stars in this two-part dramatisation of Ian Rankin's crime thriller set in Edinburgh and the Highlands in 1992. Inspector Rebus is investigating the death of an MP's wife when an Edinburgh man confesses to the murder of two women. Rebus, however, is not convinced. Much to his superior's dismay, Rebus ignores the confession and disappea...

Materialising in a forest, the Doctor and friends find themselves 12 kilometres from Paris. It is the 18th century, and France is the scene of an ongoing battle between royalists and revolutionaries. Following a blaze at a farmhouse, Ian, Barbara and Susan are separated from the Doctor and arrested as traitors. Ian receives information about James...

What do you do when your wife takes your child and leaves you alone in a city of ghosts? Dutch banker Hans ver den Broek chooses cricket. But New York cricket is a long way from the tranquil sport he grew up with. It's a rough, almost secret game, played in scrubby marginal urban parks by people the city does not see - people like Chuck Ramkissoon....

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master's Son follows a young man's journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world's most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea. Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother--a singer "stolen" to Pyongyang--and an influential father who runs Long Tomorro...

When Eva's film star sister Katrina dies, she returns to Cornwall to scatter Katrina's ashes. But the house where she stayed as a child is home not only to her friends the Halletts, but also to the people who lived there in the 18th century. When Eva accepts that she can slip between centuries, she begins to question her place in the present and co...

The unforgiving New England weather has taken a turn for the worse on the day Doyle drags his reluctant sons to a speech by Jesse Jackson. Fired by Jackson's rhetoric, he is perplexed by the boys' indifference. Tiff and Teddy are adopted. Teddy - open, affectionate, the gentle dreamer - thinks he has found his calling in the Catholic church. Tip is...