Based on the definitive edition and translation of the classic French novel, the second volume, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1919, follows the narrator's transition from childhood to adolescence and first love on the beaches of Normandy. As the novel ends, we are introduced to Albertine, whom the narrator meets in a Norman ocean-side resort named...

Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He isn't as young as he used to be. He drives a Saab. He points at people he doesn't like the look of. He is described by those around his as 'the neighbour from hell'.Every morning he makes his inspection rounds of the local streets. He moves bicycles and checks the contents of recyclin...

Welcome to Mummy's world. The Boy Child Peter is connected to his iPad by an umbilical cord, The Girl Child Jane is desperate to make her fortune as an Instagram lifestyle influencer, while Daddy is constantly off on exotic business trips.Mummy's marriage is feeling the strain, her kids are running wild and the house is steadily developing a forest...

The young narrator succumbs to the charms of the enchanting Gilberte, but his plan to ingratiate himself with her by becoming friends with her parents backfires badly when Gilberte begins to distance himself from him. A classic account of the pangs of adolescent love. Part one of the third volume of Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past' series.

'Swann in Love' tells the story of man-about-town Charles Swann's passionate, tormented love affair with the courtesan Odette de Crecy, and of its surprising outcome. Set in the degenerate demi-monde of 19th century Paris as well as in the fashionable drawing rooms of the aristocracy, this audiobook vividly brings to life the original novel.

Italy, 1964. Maria Domenica is the eldest daughter in the Carrozza family from the tiny southern village of San Giulio. At sixteen, Maria's life is limited to the confines of her mother's rural kitchen (where she bakes bread every morning, the way the Carrozza women always have), and the Caffe Angeli, a place of friendship, strong espresso and famo...

When James Walker first arrives at Tudor College, Cambridge, he is anxious to find his place among new friends. By accident, he encounters one of the members of a club calling itself the Tudor Night Climbers, a tightly knit, wealthy, secretive and tantalizingly eccentric circle of undergraduates who at night scale the college towers and gargoyles i...

When Howard Baker dies in a car crash, he finds himself transported to heaven, where he soon starts to become a very important person and a good friend of God.

Naser is an outsider in Saudi. It's hard to adjust to a world that puts up so many barriers between men and women: walls in the mosque, divider panels in the buses and veils on the street. A splash of colour arrives in Naser's world when, unexpectedly, a small piece of paper is dropped at his feet. It is a love note, from a woman whose face he has...

Twas the night before Christmas, and Savannah was breezy. But there's trouble afoot - and it's heading toward Weezie.Seems BeBe's been holding a big secret backthat would make Santa's reindeer stop dead in their tracks. Can these two best friends wriggle out of these twists? Will they do it in time to ensure CHRISTMAS BLISS?

An idealistic American radio actor, Iron Rinn, becomes a victim of the McCarthy era during the 1950s. He marries America's reigning radio actress, yet his life is blighted by a brutal personal secret from which he is perpetually fleeing. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND/OR ADULT THEMES.

Having been wounded on the Russian Front, Martin Hamer, a heroic and principled German officer, is seconded to a labour camp in occupied Poland. Gradually, Hamer finds himself drawn to one of the inmates, Julia Smollen. As the burgeoning relationship between the German officer and the Polish prisoner causes mounting tension in the camp, Hamer's tro...

Ruth was a ghost of a girl when she arrived into foster mother Maggie Hartley's care. Pale, frail and withdrawn, it was clear to Maggie that Ruth had seen and experienced things that no 11-year-old should have to, that she had been conditioned to 'see no evil, speak no evil'. Ruth is in desperate need of help, but can Maggie get through to her and...

Howard Kirk is the trendiest of radical tutors at a fashionable university. Timid Vice-Chancellors pale before his threats of disruption and reactionary colleagues are crushed beneath his merciless Marxist logic. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Malcolm Bradbury. Copyright Malcolm Bradbury 1975...

Three lives. Three loves. Three reasons to let go. Izzie Silver left the small Irish town of Tamarin behind for New York. Life is good - until she breaks her own rules and falls for a married man. On the other side of the ocean, Izzie's aunt Anneliese discovers the pain of infidelity for herself. Then Lily, the wise and compassionate family matriar...

Robin Burnett has spent years at the heart of power, pulling the strings. With friends in Downing Street, the White House and the CIA, he is known as the brightest politician of his generation, tipped to go all the way to the top. But when the media discover that Robin is at the heart of a shocking sex scandal, his glittering career comes to an abr...

It is 1972 and Neil Countryman is from the public high school in north Seattle. He slumps at his desk all day and gets high in the park at lunchtime. John William Barry is from a private academy for the more privileged of the city's youth. He is an earnest, fiery young man, and his family background is one of material wealth and emotional deprivati...

Elisabeth Devine causes quite a stir on her arrival in the village. No one can understand why the head of a big inner city school would want to come to sleepy little Barton-in-the-Dale, to a primary with more problems than school dinners. And that's not even counting the challenges the mysterious Elisabeth herself will face: a bitter former head te...

Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full employment, educational opportunity and a welfare state are gone. When his family starts to...

Mei is a modern, independent Chinese woman; she runs her own business in Beijing, working as a private investigator, owns a car, and even has that most modern of commodities, a male secretary. One day, 'Uncle' Chen - no relation but a close friend of her mother's - approaches Mei and asks her to find the Eye of Jade. A Han dynasty artefact of great...

Until recently, Julia hadn't had sex in three years. But now: a one-night stand is accusing her of breaking his penis; a sexually confident lesbian is making eyes at her over confrontational modern art; and she's wondering whether trimming her pubes makes her a bad feminist. Julia's about to learn that she's been looking for love - and satisfaction...