1792. It's winter in Berkeley Square and the night-watchman comes across the body of silversmith Pierre Renard, his throat cut and his valuables missing. It could be common theft, but as news of the murder spreads, it soon becomes clear that Renard had more than a few enemies. At the centre of this web is Mary, the silversmith's wife. Ostensibly th...

Hull, 1874. Clara had always wondered about the beautiful, mysterious Jewel Newmarch, who was adopted as a baby and turns heads wherever she goes - her exotic looks point to her origins far away from the streets of Hull. Even at her twin sister Elizabeth's wedding, Clara knows that Jewel is the belle of the ball. And as Jewel looks on at the happy,...

Four thousand years ago, a stranger's ominous gift and his death at the Old Temple of Ratharryn would precipitate the building of one of mankind's most remarkable achievements. Cornwell's epic novel, Stonehenge, catapults us into a powerful world of ritual, betrayal, and the never-ending pursuit of power, wealth, and spiritual fulfillment. Three br...

Pressed into service at the court of the mad king, Charles VI of France, Mette's young charge is the princess, Catherine de Valois, caught up in the turbulence and chaos of life at court. Mette and the child forge a bond, one that transcends Mette's lowly position. But as Catherine approaches womanhood she becomes a pawn between two powerful dynast...

Commander William Monk: in search of justice, he will not stop until he has found the truth. It is a time of progress, with the Empire's interests expanding and the contentious new Suez Canal nearing completion. Many people stand to gain-and to lose-as the world rapidly changes. When a Thames pleasure boat is blown up with the loss of many lives, a...

Against the odds, miner's daughter Theda Wearmouth succeeds in gaining a nursing place at Newcastle Hospital. By the time war breaks out, she is newly qualified and working in a children's ward, a role she adores. She also finds herself being courted by a young soldier. Only Theda's dreams of becoming Mrs Alan Price are shattered when he is killed...

1942, Nazi-occupied France. Sandrine, a spirited and courageous nineteen-year-old, finds herself drawn into a Resistance group in Carcassonne - codenamed 'Citadel' - made up of ordinary women who are prepared to risk everything for what is right. And when she meets Raoul, they discover a shared passion for the cause, for their homeland, and for eac...

Summer 1779, a British force of fewer than one thousand Scottish infantry were sent to build a garrison in the State of Maine. The War of Independence was in its third year and the State of Massachusetts was determined to expel the British. But when they sent a fleet of 40 vessels to 'captivate, kill and destroy' they underestimated their enemies,...

'I could not fathom they were going to kill the queen. Nor could I bear to witness Anne Boleyn's beheading...' As a favour to a doomed queen, Kat Ashley agrees to become governess and confidante to the young Elizabeth Tudor. Together they suffer bitter exile, assassination attempts, and imprisonment, barely escaping with their reputations and th...

September 1919: twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver some letters to Marian Bancroft. Tristan fought alongside Marian's brother Will during the Great War, but in 1917 Will laid down his guns on the battlefield, declared himself a conscientious objector and was shot as a traitor, an act which has brought...

On a moonlit night in 1943 an Indian princess was parachuted in to occupied France to join the Resistance as a radio operator code-named Aurora. Daughter of a Sufi mystic, she had declined the Special Operations Executive firearms training because she did not want to kill anyone - yet she landed in Brittany knowing that she had a 50 per cent chance...

Ruby and Grace had grown up in the slums of Middle Court, the poorest place in Hull. Friends since early childhood, they had supported each other in bad times and good. Ruby's ma, Bess, addicted to the opium which dulled the pain of her miserable existence, tried hard to be a good mother, but without too much success, while Grace's parents, Bob and...

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both ideal...

Continuing what began in the Man Booker Prize-winning WOLF HALL, we return to the court of Henry VIII, to witness the irresistible rise of Thomas Cromwell as he contrives the destruction of Anne Boleyn. By 1535 Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn. But the split from the Catholic Church has left E...

Set in the ruggedly wild countryside of West Cork, Ireland, in the early part of the twentieth century, Songs of Love and War is an epic tale of three very different women all born in the year 1900: Kitty Deverill, the flame-haired Anglo-Irish daughter of the castle, Bridie Doyle, the daughter of the cook and Celia Deverill, Kitty's flamboyant Engl...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, read by Niamh Cusack. It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her ho...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Master by Colm Toibin, read by Geoffrey Howard.In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they ar...

London, the Blitz, autumn 1940. Ambulance drivers Elinor Brooke and Kit Neville ferry injured survivors from bomb sites to hospitals while Elinor's husband Paul works as an air-raid warden. Once fellow students at the Slade School of Fine Art, before the First World War destroyed the hopes of their generation, now all three find themselves caught i...

Letters of love, telegrams of loss - the postmistress awaits them all. The wireless crackles with news of blitzed-out London and of the war that courses through Europe, leaving destruction in its wake. Listening intently on the other side of the Atlantic, newly-wed Emma considers the fragility of her peaceful married life as America edges closer to...

Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is one odour he cannot capture. It...

Lily Larkin is the youngest of six and the least important member of her family. With their father dead and their mother a stranger to them, she must stay at home and keep house whilst her elder siblings go out to work. As she goes about her daily chores, her head is full of dreams. And she longs for the day she can have a life of her own. When a f...