When the beautiful daughter of Sir Basil Moidore is stabbed to death in her bed, Inspector Monk and Nurse Latterly uncover a tale of shame and scandal that threatens to destroy a powerful London dynasty.

A tragic accident leaves Inspector Monk with amnesia just moments after he solves the murder of a popular Crimean war hero. Forced to redo his entire investigation, a frustrated Monk faces a desperate murderer who will do anything to keep the inspector from discovering the truth twice.

The fairy lights are up and shoppers are flooding the snowy seaside promenade. It's going to be a busy month at Forget-Me-Not Vintage, a magical shop with a warm heart where every item has a story to be told. With bright red hair and an infectious smile, Dodie is a hopeless romantic and absolutely one of a kind, just like the pieces in her shop. Wh...

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist comes one of the funniest, warmest, most delightful Christmas stories ever.

Christmas in Cornwall is just around the corner... But after last Christmas revealed a shocking family secret, Scarlett's hardly feeling merry and bright. All she wants this Christmas is to know who her real father is. So Scarlett heads to the little Cornish town of Porthmellow, where she believes the truth of her birth is hidden. She just didn't b...

Barbara Pym's early novel takes us into 1950s England, as seen through the funny, engaging, yearning eyes of a restless housewife Wilmet Forsyth is bored. Bored with the everyday routine of her life. Bored with teatimes filled with local gossip. Bored with her husband, Rodney, a civil servant who dotes on her. But on her thirty-third birthday, Wilm...

Full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of the first five Falco novels by Lindsey Davis, starring Anton Lesser as Marcus Didius Falco. The Silver Pigs:One fine day, A.D. 70, Sosia Camillina quite literally runs into Marcus Didius Falco on the steps of the Forum. It seems Sosia is on the run from a couple of street toughs, and after a quick and dirty...

The first book in the dramatic new saga from the Sunday Times bestselling author. The village of Little Creek, the long winter of 1867. The first flakes of snow are falling when Daisy Marshall, secretly engaged to her master's son, finds herself jilted at the altar. Heartbroken, Daisy flees to the small village of Little Creek, nestled on the coast...

Charles Dickens is one of the most famous and influential writers in English literature and Heather Redmond's delightful series asks what if Dickens had also solved crimes...? Now, the third book in the acclaimed A Dickens of a Crime series reimagines Dickens' most famous story, A Christmas Carol, as a murder mystery with Dickens himself as the sle...

As snowflakes fall, romance blossoms across open fires, ice skating rinks and a tiki bar... Harriet Cookson knows exactly what she wants from life. She has a plan, she has ambition and she knows she has to keep busy. But when her beloved Nana Lorna passes away, Harriet has to put everything on hold as she flies out to the Hamptons to say goodbye an...

A Christmas short story from bestselling author Lucy Diamond, revisiting her Beach Cafe characters. After a hectic summer running her beach cafe in Cornwall, Evie Flynn is looking forward to her first Christmas with new boyfriend Ed - she's determined that it's going to be the most perfectly romantic one ever. Cosy nights in front of the fire, spic...

Christmas may be the season of goodwill and festive cheer, but not for the poor of 1950s Liverpool. And for St Angelus Hospital in Lovely Lane, it is frantically busy. There are the old, the dying, the children and the emergencies. The nurses, known locally as the Angels of Lovely Lane, are run off their feet. Dana, Beth, Pammy and Victoria hardly...

The Trial is one of the great works of the twentieth century: an extraordinary vision of one man put on trial by an anonymous authority on an unspecified charge. Josef K, 30, lives in a large town in an unspecified country. He is summonsed to answer a charge and appears in the court room for his trial. Franz Kafka evokes all the reality of tri...

This hugely engaging story of murder, superstition, religious politics and drama in a medieval monastery was one of the most striking novels to appear in the 1980s. The Name of the Rose is a thrilling story enriched with period detail and laced with tongue-in-cheek allusions to fictional characters, the most striking of which is the Franciscan fria...

An old man, enchanted by tales of knightly courage, puts on his rusty armour and sets out on a quest of his own. For him, the world is filled with giants, knights and a peerless mistress. Others, such as his earthy squire Sancho Panza, see windmills, sheep and vulgar serving girls. But such prosaic interpretations do not satisfy the greatest figure...

  Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize. The richly exotic story of the childhood the twins Esthappen and Rahel craft for themselves amongst India's vats of banana jam and mountains of peppercorns. Here, perhaps, is the greatest Indian novel by a woman. Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things' is an astonishingly rich, fertile novel,...

After her adventure in the mountains of Vystrana, and her exploits in the depths of Eriga, to the high seas aboard The Basilisk, and then to the deserts of Akhia, the Lady Trent has captivated hearts along with fierce minds. This concluding volume will finally reveal the truths behind her most notorious adventure—scaling the tallest peak in t...

A full-cast BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel, known to be a favourite among her own works.When Doctor Calgary visits the Argyle family, he believes he brings good news. He is there to clear the name of Jacko, who was convicted of the murder of his own mother, Rachel. But the doctor's news is not greeted with the enthusiasm he expec...

The author of Excellent Women explores female friendship and the quiet yearnings of British middle-class life-a literary delight for fans of Jane Austen. Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were close friends at Oxford University, but now live very different lives. Forty-one-year-old Jane lives in the country, is married to a vicar, has a daughter sh...

Sam is a war photographer famous for her hauntingly beautiful pictures of the dead. After a particularly gruelling assignment, she checks into an expensive hotel. Unfortunately she has chosen the exact moment terrorists attack the hotel. Abhi, the hotel manager, thought his hotel was a safe haven, a place where he could be himself. Now stuck inside...

Tremarnock is a classic Cornish seaside village where Liz has found sanctuary for herself and her young daughter, Rosie. From early in the morning with her job as a cleaner, till late at night waitressing in the restaurant, Liz works all the hours God sends to provide for them both. But trouble is waiting just around the corner. As with all village...