They say that diplomacy is a gentle art. That mastering it is a lifetime's work. But you do need a certain inclination in that direction. It's not something you can just pick up on the job. A few days ago Sam Vimes was a copper - an important copper, true - chief of police - but still, at his core, a policeman. But today he is an ambassador - to th...

From its opening sentences Agnes Grey introduces a heroine who is honest, perceptive and charming. Unfortunately, the Bloomfields, who engage her as a governess, are rather less appealing, and the incarnation of the suppressed cruelties and hypocrisies of the Victorian age. When Agnes moves to a marginally less alarming family, one of her charges s...

Little Emily Steiner left a church meeting late one afternoon and strolled toward home along a lakeside path; a week later, her nude body was discovered, bound in blaze-orange duct tape. Called by the North Carolina authorities, forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta recognizes similarities to the gruesome work of a serial killer who has long eluded th...

Love and death are the principal players in these two BBC Radio full-cast dramatisations of chilling Ruth Rendell stories. In 'The Bridesmaid', when Philip embarks on an affair with Senta, his sister's bridesmaid, she reminds him of the stone statue he adored as a child. Yet Senta is married, and Philip's overwhelming aversion to violence leads ind...

Why is Peter acting so strangely, and will Daniel and Lucy ever get their quiet night in?

In this Christmas special 'Molokai'-It's Christmas morning, but when Carolyn schedules an extra stop-off to the Hawaiian island of Molokai, Arthur has just seven minutes to celebrate Christmas. Stephanie Cole, Benedict Cumberbatch & Roger Allam star in the second series of the hit sitcom about the tiny charter airline for whom no job is too sma...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation written by Eoin McNamee, originally broadcast as the Afternoon Play on 23 March 2009. A truck driver in Ireland gives a lift to a female Asian hitchhiker but gets more than he bargained for, especially when his truck is stopped by immigration officers and he and his illegal occupant are taken in for questioning...

A newcomer to the village, Mary Fortune, is discovered murdered. Agatha seizes the moment and immediately starts yanking up village secrets by their roots and digging the dirt on the victim. But the problem is, Agatha has an awkward secret of her own.

In this BBC full-cast production, King Lear tests his three daughters' love, to disastrous consequences.Some of the most stirring scenes Shakespeare ever wrote resonate powerfully in this dramatic radio production. Tortured madness, pure evil, and the fatal struggle for power grip the listener until the final, shockingly tragic conclusion.Starring&...

Harriet Lockwood has never really bonded with her daughter the way she has with her three sons. Then one day, she discovers why. The girl she's raised for the last fifteen years is not her biological child. As a consequence, two families are plunged into a storm of bitter rivalries and unexpected alliances.

Best-seller number five from Charlaine Harris' beloved Aurora Teagarden series places the amateur sleuth directly in harm's way. Detective Sergeant Jack Burns and Aurora never got along, and now Jack's dead body has been dropped from a plane directly into Aurora's back yard. Murder is personal this time for Aurora-but has she received a message, or...

This is a life told back to front. This is a man who has lied all his life. Roy is a conman living in a small English town, about to pull off his final con. He is going to meet and woo a beautiful woman and slip away with her life savings. But who is the man behind the con and what has he had to do to survive this life of lies? And why is this beau...

When tulip-grower Cornelius van Baerle is framed for treason and sentenced to death, he is powerless against the brutal factional politics that put him in prison. But Rosa, the jailer's daughter, is beautiful and strong-willed, and when they fall in love she determines not only to save him but also to grow the near mythical flower: the black tulip....

Sherlock Holmes is dead.Days after Holmes and his arch-enemy Moriarty fall to their doom at the Reichenbach Falls, Pinkerton agent Frederick Chase arrives in Europe from New York. The death of Moriarty has created a poisonous vacuum which has been swiftly filled by a fiendish new criminal mastermind who has risen to take his place. Ably assisted by...

When author April Prescott gets writer's block, Lucy and Daniel are lumbered with a rather unwelcome house guest.

This audiobook is the story of Clare and Henry, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pul...

Inside the Whale is a story about the big things that hold us together and the small things that prove our undoing. It is a dazzling celebration of the bright joys, hard losses and deep contentments borne by two eccentric families as the twentieth century unfolds.

Returning to Rome after his mission to Germania, Falco finds that his mother is being harassed by a centurion named Censorinus, who says he is chasing a debt owed to him by Falco's brother Festus. Censorinus claims that Festus was involved in a syndicate, shipping valuable statues from Greece - and that even when his ship sunk, Festus had guarantee...

When journalist Ellie looks through her newspaper's archives for a story, she discovers a letter from 1960, written by a man asking his lover to leave her husband... In 1960, Jennifer wakes up in hospital after a car accident with no memory. And then, when she returns home, she uncovers a hidden letter, and begins to remember the lover she was will...

Best-seller number five from Charlaine Harris' beloved Aurora Teagarden series places the amateur sleuth directly in harm's way. Detective Sergeant Jack Burns and Aurora never got along, and now Jack's dead body has been dropped from a plane directly into Aurora's back yard. Murder is personal this time for Aurora-but has she received a message, or...

She'd once been the toast of London, but now scandal has brought her down. Still, pretty, petted Lady Tara Davidson can't believe her new fate. She had wanted to marry for love . . . but her profligate father has promised her hand to none other than Breccan Campbell, the "Beast of Aberfeldy" and laird of the valley's most despised clan! Well, Tara...