Around 117 AD the Roman Ninth Legion was ordered to put down an uprising among the Caledonian tribes. Four thousand men vanished without a trace into the swirling mists of the north of Roman Britain. Many years after their disappearance, a young centurion, Marcus Aquila, sets out to discover the truth about what happened to the legion and to its Fi...

BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China's infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the da...

Set in Russia 1913, Frank Reid arrives home from work on a day just like any other to find that his wife has left him. How should he cope? 'The Beginning of Spring' tells the story of how the family copes with this unexpected event, set against a turbulent political backdrop.

A historical novel on the corruption of innocence, using the famous painting by Vermeer as an inspiration. Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in 17th century Holland, obtains her first job as a servant in Vermeer's household. Tracy Chevalier shows us, through Griet's eyes, the complicated family, the society of the small town of Delft, and li...

Nancy's place is in her father's seaside restaurant in Whitstable, Kent, shucking shellfish and stirring soup. At night she often ventures to the nearby music hall and the moment she spies a new male impersonator, the beautiful Miss Kitty Butler - still something of a curiosity in England circa 1888 - she falls head-over-heels in love with her. Fol...

The sequel to 'The Clan of the Cave Bear'. Life on the glacial continent of the last Ice Age, when two kinds of human beings, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, shared the earth, is an exotic, primeval world where the beautiful Ayla leaves the safety of the clan who raised her and sets out alone on a journey of discovery. CONTAINS ADULT THEMES.

Where else to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? All along the coast, the Roman Empire's richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas. The world's largest navy lies peacefully at anchor. Only one man is worried. The engineer Marcus Attilius has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct t...

Arthur and George grew up worlds apart in late 19th-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, while George remains in hard-working obscurity. But as t...

In 1666, The Great Plague scorched London whilst the north of England remained untouched until, in a small community of leadminers and hill farmers, a bolt of cloth arrived from the capital. The tailor who cut the cloth had no way of knowing that the damp fabric carried with it bubonic infection. So begins the 'Year of Wonders', based on real-life...

Read in the style of a secret diary, this famous sequel to I, Claudius gives a wry and human view of the Roman world, bringing to life some of the most scandalous and violent times in history. Claudius has survived the murderous intrigues of his predecessors to become, reluctantly, Emperor of Rome. He recounts his surprisingly successful rule; how...

I, Claudius is Robert Graves' riveting account of Ancient Rome in all of its madness and debauchery. First published in 1934 and written in the form of a secret autobiography, it endures as one of literature's most celebrated and compelling historical novels. Abhorred for his weakness and viewed by his family as little more than a stammering fool,...

Madame de Lafayette's classic tale of intrigue and love, La Princesse de ClŠves, dramatised for BBC Radio 3 and originally broadcast in the Drama on 3 slot on 28 February 2010. Set in the 16th Century, the play follows the life of a beautiful young lady newly presented to Court. It's the reign of Henri II and Mary Queen of Scots is safely en...

A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Virgil's sweeping epic, starring Ralph Fiennes as Aeneas and Derek Jacobi as the Narrator. One of the classics of all time, The Aeneid was Virgil's last and greatest work. In it, he recounts in vivid imagery the legendary origin of the Roman Empire. The story begins after the Greeks have destroyed the city of Troy. Th...

Shrewsbury, 1139. The bloody civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud has swept through the country towards the rural security of Brother Cadfael's monastery. The citizens of Worcester have fled, among them two orphaned children of noble stock, together with their tutor, a young nun. A Benedictine monk in whose care Lady Ermina and her broth...

When Fate and a chivalrous impulse combine to saddle Viscount Desford with a friendless, homeless waif in the engaging shape of Cherry Steane, who else should he turn to in such a scrape but his childhood playmate, Henrietta Silverdale? And although they refused to oblige their parents by marrying, they have always been the best of friends. But as...

January 1895. On a freezing morning in the heart of Paris, an army officer, Georges Picquart, witnesses a convicted spy, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, being publicly humiliated in front of twenty thousand spectators baying 'Death to the Jew! The officer is rewarded with promotion: Picquart is made the French army's youngest colonel and put in command of...

Recently named the Best Work of American Fiction in the last 25 years by the New York Times Book Review. First published in 1987, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, BELOVED has become a modern classic, read and re-read by people of all ages and races. Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a...

Two months before Adolf Hitler's rise to power, a young woman is found half naked and near death in the woods outside Berlin. The only clue to her identity is a handbill advertising a lecture by Albert Einstein. Psychiatrist Martin Kirsch little knows this will be his last case. Searching for the truth about his celebrated patient, he finds profess...

St Petersburg, 1911: Inna Feldman has fled the pogroms to take refuge with relatives in Russia's capital city. Welcomed into the flamboyant Leman family, she is apprenticed into their violin-making workshop. But revolution is in the air and, as society begins to fracture, she is forced to choose between her heart and her head. She loves her broodin...

In 1913 an orphan girl is delivered to The Hall of Eternal Splendour, seemingly destined to live out her life as a prostitute in its smoky backrooms. Yet one day hope appears in the unlikely form of a customs inspector, a modest man who will take Pan Yuliang as his concubine and introduce her to a glamorous new life in 1920s' Shanghai: a life of lo...

The year is 1859 and Hero Hollis, beautiful and headstrong niece of the American consul, arrives in Zanzibar. It is an earthly paradise; it is also the last outpost of the Slave Trade. A passionate opponent of slavery, Hero is swept into a turmoil of royal intrigue, abduction, piracy, smuggling and a virulent cholera epidemic. There in Zanzibar, th...