What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities in eras utterly remote from our own? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief systems of their age-religious, political and aesthetic. From the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece to the...

Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins offer you more than your fair share of laughs, songs and silliness in their imaginatively titled BBC Radio 4 series.

Rates of stress and anxiety are rising. A fast, nervous planet is creating fast and nervous lives. We are more connected, yet feel more alone. And we are encouraged to worry about everything from world politics to our body mass index. - How can we stay sane on a planet that makes us mad? - How do we stay human in a technological world? - How do we...

Where do we go when we die? Or is there nowhere to go? Is death something we can do or is it just something that happens to us? Now in his ninth decade, former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, has spent a lifetime at the bedsides of the dying, guiding countless men and women towards peaceful deaths. In The Last Bus, he presents a positive, me...

If magic has a beginning, can it also have an end? When Amelia wants a wish to come true she knows just the man to ask - Father Christmas. But the magic she wants to believe in is starting to fade, and Father Christmas has more than impossible wishes to worry about. Upset elves, reindeers dropping out of the sky, angry trolls and the chance that Ch...

It isn't always easy growing up as a human in Elfhelm, even if your adoptive parents are the newly married Father Christmas and Mary Christmas. For one thing, Elf School can be annoying when you have to sing Christmas songs every day - even in July - and when you fail all your toy-making tests. Also it can get very, very cold. But when the jealous...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney, read by Dan Russell. Let me get something straight: this is a JOURNAL, not a diary. This was Mom's idea, not mine. But if she thinks I'm going to write down my "feelings" in here or whatever, she's crazy. The only reason I agreed to do this at all is because I figure lat...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert, read by Rebecca Soler. Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice's life on the road, always a step ahead of the strange bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice's grandmother, the reclusive author of a book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone...

Penguin presents the audio download edition of Ladybird Fairy Tale Treasury read by Gemma Whelan and Nigel Pilkington. Listen to eight traditional, captivating fairy tales in this gorgeous audio treasury from Ladybird. Each classic tale has been retold for young readers and is perfect for your little one, whether you're curled up at home or on the...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney, read by Dan Russell. You know how you're supposed to come up with a list of "resolutions" at the beginning of the year to try to make yourself a better person? Well, the problem is, it's not easy for me to think of ways to improve myself, because I'm pret...

Penguin presents the UNABRIDGED audiobook edition of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, read by Indira Varma. 'I've stolen a garden,' she said very fast. 'It isn't mine. It isn't anybody's. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already; I don't know.' After losing her parents, yo...

The debut novel from Nadiya Hussain, winner of 2015's Great British Bake-Off, this is a charming, warm-hearted tale that illustrates the unique bond between four sisters. A story of faith, family and love, it perfectly embodies what it feels like to struggle with self-acceptance. Fatima, Farah, Bubblee and Mae, the four sisters of the Amir family,...

Aberdeen's growing Polish community is under attack from a serial offender who leaves mutilated victims to be discovered on building sites - eyes gouged out and the sockets burned. Detective Sergeant Logan McRae is assigned to the investigation, codenamed Operation Oedipus, but with the victims too scared to talk, it's going nowhere fast. When the...

Richard Knox has served his time, so why shouldn't he be allowed to live wherever he wants? Yes, in the past he was a violent rapist, but he's seen the error of his ways. Found God. Wants to leave his dark past in Newcastle behind him and make a new start. Or so he says. Detective Sergeant Logan McRae isn't exactly thrilled to be part of the team h...

'You will raise money for the safe return of Alison and Jenny McGregor. If you raise enough money within fourteen days they will be released. If not, Jenny will be killed. 'Alison and Jenny McGregor - Aberdeen's own mother-daughter singing sensation - are through to the semi-finals of TV smash-hit Britain's Next Big Star. They're in all the gossip...

From the number-one best-selling author of Shatter the Bones and Birthdays for the Dead, a new crime thriller featuring DS Logan McRae. Detective Inspector Logan McRae is finally getting back on his feet after the events of the last few years. Putting things behind him. Getting better.... But it was never going to last. A body turns up on the outsk...

A little girl's body washes up just outside the sleepy coastal town of Macduff, kicking off a major manhunt. Officially, the investigation is out of Sergeant Logan McRae's hands, but DCI Steel's Major Investigation Team, drafted in from Aberdeen, is getting nowhere fast. Steel is running out of ideas and time. She wants Logan back on her team, and...

Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be do...

You've known her your whole life. Andrea Oliver knows everything about her mother Laura. She knows she's always lived in the small town of Belle Isle; she knows she's a pillar of the community; she knows she's never kept a secret in her life. but she's hiding something. Then one day, a trip to the mall explodes into a shocking act of violence and A...

The world's most beloved detective, Hercule Poirot - the legendary star of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express and most recently The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket-returns in a stylish, diabolically clever mystery set in 1930's London. Returning home after lunch one day, Hercule Poirot finds an angry woman waiting outside his front d...

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...