A Canadian playwright's rise to fame amid the terrors of the AIDS era.Brad Fraser suffered an impoverished and abusive childhood, living with his teenage parents in motel rooms and shacks on the side of the highway in Alberta and Northern British Columbia. He grew to be one of the most celebrated, and controversial, Canadian playwrights, his work p...

Abridged version (approved by Natalie) of her book, read by Natalie. Includes spontaneous asides, as she reads. The book is a crisp mix of memoir, teaching guide, non-fiction and poetry. Natalie strips creativity to the essential mind that is "raw, full of energy, alive and hungry." Natalie is compassionate, practical and humorous. "Even if it's ju...

"I am afraid of being the disruptive woman. And of not being disruptive enough. I am afraid. But I am doing it anyway." In this vivid and powerful collection of essays, Emilie Pine boldly confronts the past to better understand herself, her relationships and her role in society. She speaks to the business of living as a woman in the 21st century &n...

Patricia Highsmith - author of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY - had more than her fair share of secrets. During her life, she felt uncomfortable about discussing the source of her fiction and refused to answer questions about her private life. Yet after her death in February 1995, Highsmith left behind a vast archive of personal do...

One of America's most acclaimed novelists boldly re-imagines one of America's most enduring icons in Blonde—the National Book Award-nominated bestseller by Joyce Carol Oates. The legend of Marilyn Monroe—aka Norma Jeane Baker—comes provocatively alive in this powerful tale of Hollywood myth and heartbreaking reality. Marilyn Monro...

A unique life story from a true survivor, read by the author. Born in the tough East End of Glasgow and married into one of the city's most notorious criminal families, Janey Godley's young life was far from ordinary. From the grim and far-from-swinging '60s, to the discos of the '70s, to the tidal wave of heroin addiction which engulfed Glasgow's...

Like many women, Clare Pooley found the juggle of a stressful career and family life a struggle, so she left her successful role as a managing partner in one of the world's biggest advertising agencies to look after her family. She knew the change wouldn't be easy, but she never expected to find herself an overweight, depressed, middle-aged mother...

Rob Beckett never seems to fit in. At work, in the middle-class world of television and comedy, he’s the laddie, cockney geezer, but to his mates down the pub in south-east London, he’s the theatrical one, a media luvvie. Even at home, his wife and kids are posher than him. In this hilarious exploration of class, Rob compares his life...

Brought to you by Penguin The Instant Sunday Times BestsellerThe Instant #1 New York Times BestsellerThe Instand #1 Audible BestsellerNARRATED BY WILL SMITH.One of the most dynamic and globally recognized entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about his life, in a brave and inspiring book that traces his learning curve to a place where out...

'Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously' JILLY COOPER Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer A Radio 4 Book of the Week, April 2021 Barbara Pym became beloved as one of the wittiest novelists of the late twentieth century, revealing the inner workings of domestic life so brilliantly th...

A radical look at Jane Austen As you've never seen her – as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. The Genius of Jane Austen celebrates Britain's favourite novelist 200 years after her death and explores why her books make such awesome movies, time after time. Jane Austen loved the theatre. She learned much of her art from a long trad...

Written as a diary, and starting in September, this is the story of Nigel Slater's love for winter, its fables and its family feasts. Here are legends and folktales, myths and memoir, all told in Nigel's warm and intimate signature style. Nigel Slater's new book will have everything you need to prepare for midwinter, and at the heart of the book ar...

Jackson is aggressive, confrontational and often volatile. His mother, Kayla, is crippled with grief after tragically losing her husband and eldest son.  Struggling to cope, she puts Jackson into foster care. Cathy, his carer, encourages Jackson to talk about what has happened to his family, but he just won’t engage. His actions continu...

This classic memoir of the First World War is now a major motion picture starring Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington. In 1914 Vera Brittain was 20, and as war was declared she was preparing to study at Oxford. Four years later her life - and the lives of her whole generation - had changed in a way that would have been unimaginable in the tranquil p...

In 1992 Franziska Thomas had her first seizure and her whole world was turned upside down - literally. In Fits and Starts Franziska gives a compelling personal description of living with Epilepsy, an illness shrouded in secrecy and antiquated myths. Laden with self-deprecating humour she describes her own coming of age - as an epileptic, a teacher,...

People 'know' my on-stage comedy persona or my scripted ballsy characters and wrongly assume that at home, I must stomp around all day in designer dresses eviscerating those who dare to cross my path and denouncing the existence of men in general. But mostly, I'm just sat eating pickles and being nice to some dogs.Whatever strangers think of me is...

From Aug 12, 2021 'My reading experience with poetry is that I'm in the presence of some...body and we're in that kind of potentially ... it might be that slightly late night kitchen table moment where you've sort of got through all the news and the stuff and you actually enter into where you really are, and what's going on, and what you really n...

From Jul 15, 2021 'The kayak gives this incredible perspective on the world, where you are really embedded in the worlds of the species, you're surrounded by other animals, they don't respond to you in the way that they respond to humans on foot because obviously they are so much more skilled in and on the water than you are.' Writer and historia...

It does play huge roles in describing the character and circumstances, but really it’s there because I love food! Author Claire Fuller talks with Jess about her latest novel, Unsettled Ground, shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and her third novel, the simmering, suspenseful Bitter Orange. Claire reflects on the roles m...

Author Francis Spufford talks about what it's been like to launch his new novel, Light Perpetual, during a pandemic, the many talents and accents required of audiobook narrator Imogen Church, the fondness he holds for his 'unlikable' characters, and why the narrator was especially important for his historical novel Golden Hill. To top it off, he de...

From April 15, 2021 Actor and audiobook narrator Kobna Holdbrook-Smith talks about what it was like to voice Rivers of London as his first audiobook, what he had to unlearn to do voice work and how Frank Sinatra inspired his mic technique.