Comedian and broadcaster Susan Calman danced her way across our screens and into our hearts for 10 weeks on Strictly Come Dancing 2017, but how did this ability to find joy change her life? These are extremely difficult and confusing times - people are cross and shouty. It's exhausting! But more than anything, people like Susan, people who don't ha...

As war rages across Europe, one young woman faces an impossible choice. Will she save her country...or the man she loves? It is the late 1930s. In London, socialite Rosamund Hanbury is determined to give up the parties and social sets of which she is a prominent member to join the war effort, along with scores of other young women. After a stint at...

In Sight a woman recounts her progress to motherhood while remembering the death of her own mother and the childhood summers she spent with her psychoanalyst grandmother. Woven among these personal recollections are significant events in medical history: Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of the X-ray and his production of an image of his wife's hand; Sig...

London, 1952. Dick Bourton is not like the other probationer policemen in Notting Hill. He's older, having fought in Europe and then Korea. And he's no Londoner, being from Cotswold farming stock. Then there's Anna, the exotically beautiful White Russian fianc‚e he has brought back to these drab streets and empty bombsites. She may as well co...

In On This Day in History, Dan Snow, Britain's favourite historian, tells the story of an important event that happened on each day of the year. From the signing of the Armistice treaty at 11 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat on 1 December 1955, our past is full of all kinds of fascinating...

Shortly after the outbreak of the WW2, a country house called The Firs in Buckinghamshire was requisitioned by the War Office. Sentries were posted at the entrance gates, and barbed wire was strung around the perimeter fence. To local villagers it looked like a prison camp. But the truth was far more sinister. This rambling Edwardian mansion had be...

Best-selling author and historian Lucy Worsley tracks a new course through Queen Victoria's life, examining how she transformed from dancing princess to the Widow of Windsor and became one of Britain's greatest monarchs along the way. Taking 24 significant days from Victoria's life, from her birth, her wedding and her coronation to her husband's de...

This is one of the great untold stories of the 20th century. It is a firsthand account of a mission by an SAS soldier sent behind the Iron Curtain by MI6 to find someone who didn't necessarily want to be found and how, on a follow-up mission, he found himself manoeuvring against a mysterious KGB officer and a murder plot by Kremlin hardliners. If t...

When captured Royal Flying Corps pilots Captain David Gray, Captain Caspar Kennard and 2nd Lieutenant Cecil Blain had arrived at Holzminden - or 'Hellminden' as its occupants called it - the Germans' highest-security prison complex had seemed impregnable. 'The Black Hole' was ruled by the iron fist of Camp Commandant Carl Niemayer, under whose brut...

In the enchanting new Baby Ganesh Agency novel, Inspector Chopra and his elephant sidekick go undercover to investigate a murder at Mumbai's grandest hotel. For a century the iconic Grand Raj Palace Hotel has welcomed the world's elite. From film stars to foreign dignitaries, anyone who is anyone stays at the Grand Raj. The last thing the venerable...

Leah Turner's father has been killed in an accident at the laundry, and since her mother died years ago it falls to her to become sole provider for her little sister. But women's wages are half those of men and pawning the few belongings she has left will only keep their vicious rent collector at bay for a few weeks, so even if she finds a job, the...

Lancashire, 1931. When Finn Carlisle loses his wife and unborn child, he spends a few years travelling to keep the sad memories at bay. Just as he's ready to settle down again, his great-uncle dies and leaves everything to him. This includes Heythorpe House in Ellindale, just down the road from Leah Willcox and her little fizzy drink factory. Finn...

Widower Harry Makepeace lives in Manchester with his sickly daughter, Cathie, scrimping and saving to get by. But after she suffers a violent asthma attack, the doctors say she must move to the clean, fresh air of the countryside to have any hope of survival. When Harry chances upon a patch of land for sale in Ellindale and an advert for a disused...

The basis for Killing Eve, now a major BBC TV series, starring Sandra Oh and written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. In a hotel room in Venice, where she's just completed a routine assassination, Villanelle receives a late-night call. Eve Polastri has discovered that a senior MI5 officer is in the pay of the Twelve and is about to debrief him. As Eve inte...

Ebo's sister left months ago. Now his brother has disappeared too, and Ebo knows that, to see them again, he must follow in their footsteps and make the hazardous voyage from Ghana to a safe haven in Europe. So the twelve-year-old sets off on an epic journey that takes him across the Sahara Desert to the dangerous streets of Tripoli and finally out...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Back Home written and read by Michelle Magorian. Back Home tells the story of Rusty, returning to England after being evacuated to America for five years in the Second World War. After five happy years in America, Rusty must return to England: the place she used to call home. But it doesn't fell like home....

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of First Prize for the Worst Witch by Jill Murphy, read by Gemma Arterton. Accident-prone Mildred Hubble is the Worst Witch at Miss Cackle's Academy. She's always getting her spells wrong and landing herself in trouble. But Mildred is in the last term of Fourth Year and determined to prove that she's not as us...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Jack of Hearts (And Other Parts) by L.C. Rosen, read by Drew Caidan. My first time getting it in the butt was kind of weird. I think it's going to be weird for everyone's first time, though. Jack Rothman is seventeen. A solid student with a talent for art, he likes partying, makeup and boys. Sometimes all a...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, read by Edith Bowman, Guy Garvey, Cerys Matthews and Benjamin Zephaniah. All over the country, there are words disappearing from children's lives. Words like Dandelion, Otter, Bramble, Acorn and Lark represent the natural world of childhood, a rich land...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of This Cruel Design by Emily Suvada, read by Skye Bennett. Catarina thought they'd stopped the Hydra virus. She was wrong. After laying everything on the line to decrypt the vaccine, Cat realises that Lachlan's daemon code is in the panel of every person on the planet. With it, he can reprogram humanity. She,...

Penguin presents The Truth and Lies of Ella Black by Emily Barr, read by Kelby Keenan. Ella Black seems to live the life most other seventeen-year-olds would kill for . . . Until one day, telling her nothing, her parents whisk her off to Rio de Janeiro. Determined to find out why, Ella takes her chance and searches through their things. And realise...