Paul Craddock is still young when he is invalided out of the army after the Boer War and he discovers the neglected estate of Shallowford in a secluded corner of Devon. It seems remote from the march of progress. But as storm clouds gather over Europe, Paul learns that no part of England, however remote, can escape the challenge of the times.

On a bitter winter's day, an unnamed girl lies dangerously ill in hospital. When two coarse, rough-speaking individuals come to claim her, she can remember nothing of the events that brought her to her present state, not even her name. According to the men, she is their young sister, Lucy. As her health improves and her memory gradually returns, sh...

Thomas Kydd, a wig-maker from Guildford, is seized by the press gang to be a part of the crew of the 98-gun line-of-battle ship. The ship sails immediately and Kydd has to learn the realities of shipboard life fast. Despite all that he goes through in danger of tempest and battle, he comes to admire the skills and courage of the seamen. CONTAINS ST...

When seventeen-year-old Mary O'Connor collapses one Sunday in church she is taken to live with Dr Roberts and his wife in a beautiful Yorkshire village for her health. Though initially employed as a maid, Mary soon becomes the daughter the couple were never able to have. With Britain at war, unable to remain idle, Mary finds employment in the local...

The year is 1348 and the first plague victim has reached English shores. Panic erupts around the country and a small band of travellers comes together to outrun the deadly disease, unaware that something far more deadly is - in fact - travelling with them. The ill-assorted company - a scarred trader in holy relics, a conjurer, two musicians, a heal...

In the small Yorkshire town of Cottenly - dominated by the steel works and surrounded by beautiful countryside - Isaac Stanford lives with his wife Emily and their three lovely daughters, known locally as the Stanford lasses. Alice, the eldest, lives only for her work as a secretary and chapel on Sunday. Fair and loving Lizzie is content with her j...

It is 1940 and Britain is at war with Germany. In London, eighteen-year-old Susan Banks longs to do her duty. Her secret ambition is to learn to fly - to serve her country and realise her dream. But she knows it is out of the question for a girl like her; a foundling, unwanted and unloved and dependent on strangers for her welfare. Just as she fear...

Anna and the Swallow Man is a stunning, literary, and wholly original debut novel that tells a new WW2 story. Krak¢w, 1939, is no place to grow up. There are a million marching soldiers and a thousand barking dogs. And Anna Lania is just seven years old when the Germans take her father and suddenly, she's alone. Then she meets the Swallow Man....

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, read by Kristin Atherton and Michael Fox. From the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war comes a re-imagining of the most famous conflict in literature - the legendary Trojan War. The great city of Troy is unde...

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...

Thrilled at his first command, a little brig sloop called Teazer, Thomas Kydd must race to bring his ship to battle readiness - he is desperately needed to defend Malta against Barbary corsairs, ferocious privateers and the French who are frantically trying to rescue the remnants of their army in the Levant. But his jubilation does not last long -...

Newly married to the caring RAF pilot Jonathan Reece, Emma thinks that life couldn't be better. But her happiness is short-lived: within months, Jon's plane is shot down over France and he is declared missing, presumed dead. Alone and with two children to care for, Emma's first thought is how to support her family. But when she makes a new friend i...

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...

Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is one odour he cannot capture. It...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Never Look Back by Lesley Pearse, read by Holli Dempsey. One good deed takes her into another world . . . Sixteen-year-old Matilda is a poor Covent Garden flower girl until the day she saves the life of Tabitha, a minister's daughter. Welcomed into Tabitha's family, Matilda is offered the chance of a lifeti...

1950s Liverpool. In the tight-knit community of the Four Streets, two girls are growing up. One is motherless and hated by the cold woman determined to take her dead mother's place. The other is hiding a dreadful secret which she dare not tell to anyone. The people of Four Streets laugh, grieve and hope together. But what can they do when a betraya...

Philippa Gregory-the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Parker Pen Novel of the Year The Other Boleyn Girl-delivers the first in a series of historical novels set during the tumultuous War of the Roses. This compelling tale of romance, rivalry, and revenge unfolds through the eyes of Elizabeth Woodville, the woman whose renowned beauty catapu...

Crowned the "queen of royal fiction" by USA Today, Philippa Gregory is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Romantic Novelists' Association's RoNA Award for The Other Boleyn Girl. The White Princess continues the saga of the War of the Roses as Princess Elizabeth of York weds Henry VII after he kills Richard III in battle. Now q...

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...

When Sylvester, the Duke of Salford, first meets Phoebe Marlow, he finds her dull and insipid. She finds him insufferably arrogant. But when a series of unforeseen events leads them to be stranded together in a lonely country inn, they are both forced to reassess their hastily formed opinions, and begin a new-found liking and respect for each other...

A thrilling BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation based on the third novel in C. J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime series featuring hunchback lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake. Autumn, 1541. Henry VIII, accompanied by his young bride Catherine Howard, has embarked on a Great Progress from London to York, to establish his power and authority with h...