It is April 1939 and unaware that the German war machine is advancing towards the Channel Islands, seventeen-year-old Meg Colivet and her sister are enjoying a holiday in Oxford with their aunt. Here Meg meets charismatic German undergraduate Rayner Weiss and the couple fall passionately in love. But all too soon, Britain is at war with Germany, Gu...

The first science fiction written by a Black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of Black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrench...

The first modern tale of alien invasion, H. G. Wells's story of tentacled Martians attacking the Earth remains one of the most influential of all science fiction works. First published by H. G. Wells in 1898, The War of the Worlds is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator intones, "...

With unapologetically sensual prose, Nalo Hopkinson, the Nebula Award-winning author of Midnight Robber, explores slavery through the lives of three historical women touched by a goddess in this "electrifying bravura performance by one of our most important writers" (Junot Diaz).

'When you start believing in Spirits, you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are, you're believing in Gods. And then you're in trouble.' Reality is all very well in small doses. It's a perfectly conventional and convenient way of neutralising the imagination. But sometimes when there's more than one reality at play, imag...

'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...

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...

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...

From one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists comes a stunningly insightful, emotionally powerful novel about an outsider haunted by an inescapable past: a story of loneliness and survival, guilt and loss, and the power of forgiveness. Jake Whyte is living on her own in an old farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rains and...

Here are four stories by the most popular mystery writer of all time; stories told by Miss Marple and her friends and solved by that elderly white-haired lady with the faded blue eyes and quiet nature. They are read by Joan Hickson, who played Miss Marple in the television series based on the works of Agatha Christie. In The Thumbmark of St Peter M...