It's 1979: Dallas is enthralling the nation on TV, Mrs Thatcher has just become prime minister, Abba is top of the pops, and in the small Yorkshire village of Ragley-on-the-Forest, Jack Sheffield returns for his third year as headmaster of the village school. Jack and his staff struggle to keep a semblance of normality throughout the turbulence...

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. There are some situations where the correct response is to display the sort of ignorance which happily and wilfully flies in the face of the facts. In this case, the birth of a baby girl, born a wizard - by mistake. Everybody knows that there...

Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Pity he's not very good at it. All he wants is his three wishes granted.Nothing fancy - to be immortal, rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him, the usual stuff. But instead of a tractable demon, he calls up Rincewind, probably the most incompetent wizard...

'England invented football, codified it, became champions of the world in 1966 but humiliatingly then forgot how to play the greatest game of all. England took their eye off a ball they arrogantly thought they owned, allowing other nations to run off with it.' It has been Fifty Years of Hurt since Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup trophy at Wembl...

Farouk's country has been torn apart by war. Lampy's heart has been laid waste by Chloe. John's past torments him as he nears his end. The refugee. The dreamer. The penitent. From war-torn Syria to small-town Ireland, three men, scarred by all they have loved and lost, are searching for some version of home. Each is drawn towards a powerfu...

'A foot on the neck is nine points of the law' There are many who say that the art of diplomacy is an intricate and complex dance between two informed partners, determined by an elaborate set of elegant and unwritten rules. There are others who maintain that it's merely a matter of who carries the biggest stick. Like when a large, heavily fortified...

In January 2006, a month or two after my father died, I thought I saw him again - a momentary impression of an old man, a little stooped, setting off for a walk in his characteristic fawn corduroys and shabby quilted jacket. After teenage rifts it was walking that brought us closer as father and son; and this 'ghost' of Dad has been walking at my e...

Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a miniature version of their neighbourhood so she can memorise it. But when the Nazis invade, they flee with a dangerous secret. Werner is a German orphan destined to labour in the mines, until he discovers a knack for engineering. As Europe is engulfed by war and lives collide unpr...

Jefferson Winter is no ordinary investigator. The son of one of America's most renowned serial killers, Winter has spent his life trying to distance himself from his father's legacy. When he accepts a particularly disturbing case in London, Winter arrives to find a psychopath on the loose who likes abducting and lobotomising young women. Winter mus...

One cold January morning, two young sets of eyes... One pair belongs to smartly dressed Lavinia Waterhouse, whose mother clings to the traditional values she sees slipping away; the other to Maude Coleman, whose mother longs to escape the grip of Victorian society. Thrust together by the girls' friendship, these two very different families embark o...

The first nine months of Donald Trump's term were stormy, outrageous-and absolutely mesmerising. Now, thanks to his deep access to the West Wing, bestselling author Michael Wolff tells the riveting story of how Trump launched a tenure as volatile and fiery as the man himself. In this explosive audiobook, Wolff provides a wealth of new details about...

Honor Bright is a sheltered Quaker who has rarely ventured out of 1850s Dorset when she impulsively emigrates to America. Opposed to the slavery that defines and divides the country, she finds her principles tested to the limit when a runaway slave appears at the farm of her new family. In this tough, unsentimental place, where whisky bottles sit a...

The Liar's Gospel is the story of Yehoshuah, a Jewish man who wandered Roman-occupied Judea giving sermons and healing the sick. Now, a year after his death, four people tell their stories, recalling their memories of a man battling with a loss of faith in a land on the brink of conflict. It was a time of brutal tyranny and occupation, of rumour an...

Alexander McCall Smith's delightful series of novels form the basis of these radio dramas featuring the inhabitants of an Edinburgh tenement building. With its multiple-occupancy flats, Scotland Street is an interesting corner of Edinburgh's New Town. Verging on the Bohemian, here the haute bourgeoisie rubs shoulders with students and the more colo...

A brand new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Neil Gaiman's bestselling and much-loved novel. When his father dies, Fat Charlie Nancy discovers that not only was the late Mr Nancy actually the god Anansi, but that he also has a long-lost brother, Spider, who is everything Fat Charlie is not. When Spider begins to take over Fat Charlie's life,...

Seven instalments of the classic radio crime drama starring Cecil Parker, plus special documentary feature A Case for Dr Morelle. Dr Morelle uses psychological insight, criminology and dogged persistence to solve cases. Here he must deduce the answers to mysteries including a hotel death, a man tormented by nightmares, and deadly threats made to an...

Ian Carmichael is Lord Peter Wimsey in these consummate BBC radio dramatisations of Dorothy L Sayers' much-loved mysteries. Elegant, erudite and sharp-witted, aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey featured in numerous novels and short stories by 'Queen of Crime' Dorothy L Sayers. These full-cast adaptations - first broadcast on BBC radio between...

Join Professor John Lloyd and Curators Jimmy Carr, Humphrey Ker, Phill Jupitus and Sarah Millican as they plunge down the badger hole of ignorance in a search for the universe's most mind-boggling oddnesses. The Museum of Curiosity is BBC Radio 4's monumental comedy edifice, and the only one with gargoyles in the foyer. It allows nothing inside tha...

A fascinating collection of archive radio programmes focusing on the life and work of crime fiction's grande dame and featuring Agatha Christie in her own words. Dame Agatha Christie published 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections in her lifetime, but to the public she remained an enigmatic figure. This quartet of BBC radio programm...

Two new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of Roald Dahl's gripping autobiographical stories. These two compelling adaptations, based on Roald Dahl's real-life tales of his of his boyhood and youthful overseas adventures, celebrate his remarkable life and commemorate his genius. Boy Dahl's childhood was one of excitement, wonder, terror and...

Strong of will and slender of ankle, twenty-year-old orphan Flora Poste is blessed with every virtue save that of being able to earn her own living. Casting around for suitable relatives with whom she can make her home, Flora alights on the mysterious Starkadders and, ignoring the horrified shrieks of her friends, heads down to darkest Sussex. Ther...