'I thought: opera, how hard can it be? Songs. Pretty girls dancing. Nice scenery. Lots of people handing over cash. Got to be better than the cut-throat world of yoghurt, I thought. Now everwhere I go there's...' Death, to be precise. And plenty of it. In unpleasant variations. This isn't real life. This isn't even cheesemongering. It's opera. Whe...

It's 1978, and Jack Sheffield begins his second year as headmaster of a small village primary school in North Yorkshire. There are three letters on his desk - one makes him smile, one makes him sad and one is destined to change his life forever. This is from nine-year-old Sebastian, suffering from leukaemia in the local hospital, who writes a heart...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Never Greener by Ruth Jones, read by Sharon Small. In her unmissable debut, actress and screenwriter Ruth Jones shows us the dangers of trying to recapture that which was once lost and failing to realise the beauty of what we already have. ***** 'We spend most of our lives wishing we were somewhere...

A NEW YEAR AT RAGLEY-ON-THE-FOREST SCHOOL... It's 1981, the time of Adam and the Ants, Rubik's Cube, the Sony Walkman and the Falklands War, as head teacher Jack Sheffield returns to Ragley-on-the-Forest School for another rollercoaster year. Vera, the ever-efficient chool secretary, has to grapple with a new-fangled computer - and enjoys a royal...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-Stempel, read by Roy McMillan. 'Dusk is filling the valley. It is the time of the gloaming, the owl-light. Out in the wood, the resident tawny has started calling, Hoo-hoo-hoo-h-o-o-o.' There is something about owls. They feature in every major culture from the...

All this books and stuff, that isn't what it should all be about. What we need is real wizardry. All is not well within the Unseen University. The endemic politics of the place have ensured that it has finally got what it wished for: the most powerful wizard on the disc. Which could mean that the death of all wizardry is at hand. And the world is...

It's 1977 and Jack Sheffield is appointed headmaster of a small village primary school in North Yorkshire. So begins Jack's eventful journey through the school year and his attempts to overcome the many problems that face him as a young and inexperienced headmaster. The many colourful chapters include Ruby the 20 stone caretaker with an acute spel...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, read by George Blagden. The tender feelgood story of a man's journey around Japan with a streetcat. Translated by Philip Gabriel, a translator of Murakami. It's not the journey that counts, but who's at your side. Nana is on a road trip, but he is not sure...

William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld's first newspaper. New printing technology means that words just won't obediently stay nailed down like usual. There's a very real threat of news getting out there. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist's life - people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a s...

It's 1980: recession and unemployment have hit Britain, a royal wedding is on the way, and the whole country is wondering Who Shot JR? As Jack returns for his fourth year at Ragley-on-the Forest School, there's a definite chill in the air. Village schools are being closed down all over the place - will his be one of them?As school life continues -...

'Things have to come to an end, see. That's how it works when you turn the world into stories. You should never have done that. You shouldn't treat people like they was characters, like they was things. But if you do, then you've got to know where the story ends.' That's the problem when you let real life get in the way of a good story. You should...

For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed the wood. He coppiced the trees and raised cows and pigs who roamed free there. This is the diary of the last year, by which time he had come to know it from the bottom of its beech roots to the tip of its oaks, and to know all the animals that lived there - the fox, the pheasants, the wood mice, the tawny...

It is Christmas Eve. The Lee family reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. But when Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the village with a friend for Christmas, offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had thei...

Forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway has excavated a body from the grounds of Norwich Castle; it's believed to be that of infamous Victorian murderess Jemima Green, who was hanged in 1867 for the murder of five children in her care. DCI Harry Nelson is immersed in the case of three infants found dead, one after the other, in their King's Lynn home....

Ragnarok is the story of the end of the world, destruction of life on this planet and the end of the gods themselves. As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. When she is given a copy of 'Asgard and the Gods'-a book of ancient Norse myths-her inner and outer worlds are transformed. Ling...

When the body of a girl is found, cut into three, Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is reminded of a magic trick: the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick is an old friend of Edgar's. They served together in the war as part of a shadowy unit called the Magic Men. When Edgar receives a letter warning of another 'trick', the Wolf Trap, he knows t...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth, read by Caitlin Kelly, Xe Sands and Greg Tremblay. Charlie Calloway has a life most people would kill for - a tight-knit family, a loyal set of friends, and top grades a privileged boarding school. But Charlie's never been interested in what most people w...

Penguin Audio presents Eve of Man by Giovanna and Tom Fletcher, read by Charlotte Ritchie and Josh Dylan. AGAINST ALL ODDS, SHE SURVIVED. THE FIRST GIRL BORN IN FIFTY YEARS. THEY CALLED HER EVE . . . Described by Tom and Giovanna as an unconventional love story set in a dystopian future, Eve of Man is the tale of what happens when you turn sixteen...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Find the Girl by Lucy and Lydia Connell, read by Sophie Shad. Falling for your best friend's love interest is bad...Falling for your twin's is catastrophic. As kids, Nina and Nancy were inseparable. As teenagers, not so much... Where Nancy is popular, an Instagram star, and obsessed with boy band heartthrob...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Fragments of the Lost by Megan Miranda, read by Erin Spencer. Jessa Whitworth knew she didn't belong in her ex-boyfriend Caleb's room. But she couldn't deny that she was everywhere - in his photos, his neatly folded T-shirts, even the butterfly necklace in his jeans pocket . . . the one she gave him for saf...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of TimeRiders: The Infinity Cage written by Alex Scarrow. Liam O'Connor should have died at sea in 1912. Maddy Carter should have died on a plane in 2010. Sal Vikram should have died in a fire in 2026. But all three have been given a second chance-to work for an agency that no one know...