Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland - to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancee he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major's engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the di...

When Tamar's grandfather, an intensely private man, falls from a balcony to his death, he leaves behind a box with Tamar's name on it. For a long time, Tamar refuses even to think about it...until one hot June day she opens it to reveal a series of clues and hidden messages from her grandfather. She and her cousin Johannes follow the clues and disc...

This audiobook was the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2007. The nine surviving 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. His sister Veronica wa...

A story of personal as well as national tragedy centres on the Reverend Stephen Kumalo, a spiritual leader of his people, who is a plain little man of great courage and soul. Setting off from his homeland, he heads for Johannesburg to search for his sister and delinquent son. His search takes him through a labyrinth of crime and desperation to find...

Narrated by Amir, a 40-year-old novelist living in California, this audiobook tells the story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relat...

This is the story of three generations of one family riven by tragedy. When Rosamond, a reluctant bearer of family secrets, dies suddenly, a mystery is left for her niece Gill to unravel. Some photograph albums and tapes point towards a blind girl named Imogen whom no one has seen in twenty years. The search for Imogen and the truth of her inherita...

Katherine is offered a place at university to study philosophy by Jacob Goldman. She little expects to find herself in his home and in love with his son Roger. When the affair ends badly, she flees to Rome. She returns ten years later to discover that their lives are inextricably bound. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND/OR ADULT THEMES.

Tabitha's Beauty Parlour is a haven. The women who cross its portals enter a perfumed world where never a hard note is struck. To Tabitha, Beauty is a broad canvas from which she will draw out what she can. But when Chloe, Tabitha's trainee, sets out to prove that she can give her clients the makeover of a lifetime, the quest for feminine perfectio...

'On the coach, Lev chose a seat near the back and he sat huddled against the window, staring out at the land he was leaving ...' Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to Eastern Europe to support his mother and little daughter. He struggles with the mysterious rituals of 'Englishness', and the fashions and fads o...

In the village of Summerstroke, as autumn beckons, it seems the fireworks party is not the only thing set to go with a bang. Juliet Peters, soap star, publicity junkie and all round flirt, and Isabelle Garnett, ex-artist, neglected housewife and mother of two, seem to have nothing in common. But when both women end up trying to build a new life in...

Lucy Lombard can't resist it - rich, creamy, sweet, delicious chocolate. For her there's nothing it won't cure and she's not alone. Sharing her passion are three other addicts: Autumn, Nadia and Chantal. Together they form 'The Chocolate Lovers' Club'. They meet in their sanctuary, Chocolate Heaven, as often as they can, and with a cheating boyfrie...

Cissie is a stand-up comedienne and national darling. Helena is the toast of Broadway. Maggie is an extremely beautiful but troubled actress - and she's cracking up fast, in fact she's 'out of her tree'. When Cissie takes Maggie to see Helena in New York, it leads to trouble straight away: Maggie disappears into the freezing February night, no one...

Six friends are selling home appliances to the US from a call centre in India. Each one has an issue with love. Call agent Sam works right beside the girl who's just dumped him. He's dating someone he can't stand, just to get over her. Esha is just short of becoming a model. Two inches, to be precise. Vroom wants to change the world. Radikha's tryi...

Before the Second World War breaks, Cheffyns, the idyllic country house where the Garlands have lived for centuries, has already been touched by events in Europe. To the horror of her family, Katherine, the eldest daughter, appears to have run off to join the Nazis. On the outbreak of war, Caro, her younger sister, her friend Robyn, and the maids,...

Rachel Doe is a shy accountant at a low ebb in life when she meets charismatic Ivy Schneider, nee Wiseman, at her evening class and her life changes for the better. Ivy is her polar opposite: strong, six years her senior and the romantic survivor of drug addiction, homelessness and the death of her child. Ivy does menial shift work, beholden to no...

Honey Santana - self-proclaimed queen of lost causes - has a plan. She may be a single mother living in a trailer-park with her teenage son; she may have just been sacked from her day job for whacking an over-friendly co-worker in the balls with a crab mallet; she may be an obsessive compulsive with an anger management problem. But, she's determine...

On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins to keep her journal and vividly records the dramas of everyday life in a family touched by war, tragedy, and money troubles. From bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s, her story moves on to a social worker and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of...

It's devastating enough when Pru's husband confesses to a long term affair on their 20th wedding anniversary. Then when her daughter, Molly, announces she's leaving for Vietnam on a Gap Year project, Pru knows her comfortable family life is over for good. Just as she's picking up the pieces, an email brings news that Molly has become involved with...

Fern Kendal has the voice of an angel but, as a badly paid barmaid and pub singer, her talent is wasted. All she needs is a break, but in the real world she knows that'll never happen. Evan David's exquisite tones have enthralled opera buffs throughout the world. But what Evan needs now is a break - from it all. When Fern takes a job as Evan's PA t...

From her hospital bed in Dublin, the elderly Dilly awaits the visit of her daughter, Eleanora, from London. The epochs of her life pass before her; emigrating to America in the 1920s, a romantic liaison she had there, the destiny that brought her back to Ireland, and her marriage. She also retraces Eleanora's precipitate marriage to a foreigner, an...

Elizabeth Webster is a spinster pushing seventy. Forced out of her teaching job, she unleashes her sharp tongue and dogmatic opinions on everyone in the English village of Little Blessington. Then, one night, she grinds to a dead halt. To recover from this illness, she travels to North Africa where she has a brush with terrorism - not that she care...