A 20th anniversary edition of this million copy bestseller, with a new introduction by John Niven: a classic story of paradise found-and lost. Richard lands in East Asia in search of an earthly utopia. In Thailand, he is given a map promising an unknown island, a secluded beach-and a new way of life. What Richard finds when he gets there is breatht...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The House by Simon Lelic, read by Adam Newington and Gemma Whelan. THE PERFECT COUPLE. THE PERFECT HOUSE. THE PERFECT CRIME. Londoners Jack and Syd moved into the house a year ago. It seemed like their dream home: tons of space, the perfect location, and a friendly owner who wanted a young couple to have it...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audibook edition of My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, read by Kimberly Farr. A mother comes to visit her daughter in hospital after having not seen her in many years. Her unexpected visit forces Lucy to confront her past, uncovering long-buried memories of a profoundly impoverished childhood;...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Some Kind of Wonderful by Giovanna Fletcher, read by Emily Atack. When the love of your life says you're not The One, who are you? Lizzy and Ian have been a couple since the first week of university. Now, after celebrating a decade together, everyone thinks they're about to get engaged. Instead, a romantic...

Edinburgh, 1888. A virtuoso violinist is brutally killed in his home. But with no way in or out of the locked practice room, the murder makes no sense. Fearing a national panic over a copycat Ripper, Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Frey to investigate under the cover of a fake department specializing in the occult. However, Frey's new boss, Detec...

One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock hears urgent knocking on his front door. One of his captains is waiting eagerly on the step. He has sold Jonah's ship for what appears to be a mermaid. As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr Hancock's marvel. Its arrival spins him...

Here is the beginning of a legend. Long before Camelot rose, a hundred years before the myth of King Arthur was half-formed, at the start of the Red Century, the world was slipping into a Dark Age...It is AD 367. In a frozen forest beyond Hadrian's Wall, six scouts of the Roman army are found murdered. For Lucanus, known as the Wolf and leader of e...

Arthur C Clarke is without question the world's best-known and most celebrated science fiction writer. His career, spanning more than sixty years, is one of unequalled success. Clarke has always been celebrated for his clear prophetic vision, which is fully on display in this audiobook, but there are also many stories which show his imagination in...

Who says youth is wasted on the young? Jasper wants to get on in the world, but life is distracting. He's got his A-levels to contend with, his mother pushing him to overachieve, weekly visits to his psychologist, come-downs, YouTube suicides and pregnant one-night-stands. And then there's his step-dad-the murderer. Hilarious and heartbreaking by t...

International bestseller Harlan Coben returns with a thriller that explores the depth and passion of a lost love, and the secrets and lies at its heart Six years have passed since Jake Fisher watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. But six years haven't extinguished his feelings, and when Jake comes across her husband's obituary,...

Adrian Mole is an adult. At least that's what it says on his passport. But living at home, clinging to his threadbare cuddly rabbit 'Pinky', working as a paper pusher for the DoE and pining for the love of his life, Pandora, has proved to him that adulthood isn't quite what he expected. Still, without the dilemmas of modern life what would an intel...

After Jennifer's marriage to Roger Travers-Macy ran into trouble, she returned to Ambridge to await divorce proceedings to run their course. During this period she met Brian Aldridge, new owner of Home Farm, and when the divorce finally came through they were able to make wedding plans.

A BBC Radio 4 science-fiction mystery by Martin Jameson, originally broadcast as the Afternoon Play on 14 May 2010. A week after the election, Liz de Souza, a psychiatrist, examines a patient at a secure government research facility who's convinced that Tony Blair is still Prime Minister. Starring Amita Dhiri as Liz de Souza and Suzanna Hamilton as...

The American Senator By Anthony Trollope. Dramatised by Martyn Wade. Part Two Lord Rufford has kissed Arabella twice but she realises that much more needs to be done to win him and his estate. It is now time to tell John Morton she no longer wants to marry him? Starring Robert Glenister, Anna Maxwell Martin, Barbara Flynn, Blake Ritson, Stuart Mill...

All six episodes of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom written by and starring Ben Willbond and Justin Edwards about two incompetent science teachers who work at a college that specialises in drama, and whose world is turned upside down by the arrival of a new boss. Forresters Sixth Form College has a highly successful drama department run by the odious Danny...

The BBC Radio comedy set in an 18th century Cornish village - written by Tom Jamieson and Nev Fountain and produced by Jan Ravens. Starring Sheridan Smith. From April to May 2004. In the complete second series, smuggler Tamsyn Trelawny wants to win 'Peasants Personality of the Year', her head is turned by hunky new band of outlaws 'Boyz 2 Rob' and...

The Festival of Maltodextrin. Corner shop owner Ramesh concocts a fake religious festival to shift unsold fireworks.

Two sisters, Edith and Maud, are both in love with Saumarez. They have "a strong likeness between them in look and voice", and it is only a matter of time before they are mistaken for each other by the unlucky man. This was one of Rudyard Kipling's earlier tales, and made its first appearance in 'Plain Tales From the Hills', one of his celebrated c...

Toby Stephens stars in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Raymond Chandler's second Philip Marlowe mystery. Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the '40s and '50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must strug...

The Kipling story Kidnapped was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on March 21st 1887, in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.

This BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Elizabeth Gaskell's tale of Manchester life is set in the 19th century when a series of bad harvests placed a heavy tax burden on workers. Gaskell's powerful drama, adapted here for Woman's Hour, is regarded as one of the most important novels of its time.