The town of Rossmore is a special place, full of character charm. Nestled beside the Whitethorn Woods, the town has grown since the days when it was small and friendly and everyone knew everyone else; now it has chain stories and traffic problems and housing estates. But still, there are the woods, full of spiky bushes and criss-crossed with paths;...

The 'Uncommon Reader' of the title is none other than H M the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely (J R Ackerley, Jean Genet, Ivy Compton Burnett, and the classics) and intelligently. Her reading naturally changes her world view and her relationship with...

Narrated by Amir, a 40-year-old novelist living in California, this audiobook tells the story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relat...

Haroun's father is the greatest of all story-tellers. His magical stories bring laughter to the sad city of Alifbay. But, one terrible day everything goes wrong and his father runs out of stories to tell. Haroun, determined to return the story-teller's gift to his father, flies off on the back of a hoopoe bird to the Sea of Stories... This is a pos...

It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come. This audiobook is a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not...

Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland - to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancee he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major's engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the di...

Set in late 1930s London, this is the dark and disquieting tale of George Harvey Bone, a drunk. With few prospects and suffering from mental health problems, George spends most of his time discussing theoretical plans and political issues with his bunch of drinking acquaintances. Driven by loneliness and his increasingly-violent schizophrenic delus...

Drifters in search of work, George and his childlike friend Lennie, have nothing in the world except each other and a dream - a dream that one day they will have some kind of land of their own. Tackling universal themes, friendship and a shared vision, this is a hugely popular audiobook. A great piece of classic fiction which is studied by many at...

In 1941, Irene Nemirovsky sat down to write a novel that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through, not in terms of battles and politicians, but by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. Set during a year that begins with France's fall to the Nazis in June 1940, this audiobook falls into t...

As their holiday unfolds, Colin and Maria are locked into their own intimacy. They groom themselves meticulously, as though there waits someone who cares deeply about how they appear. Then, they meet a man with a disturbing story to tell and become drawn into a fantasy of violence and obsession. THIS AUDIOBOOK CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND/OR ADULT...

Balram Halwai is the White Tiger - the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopp...

Harriet and Guy Pringle, husband and wife, are in Bucharest, where Guy works, at the outbreak of World War II. They are forced to leave the country, travelling through Greece and ending up in North Africa. They are separated and each fear the worst, but love is strong, and hope and faith are even stronger. This audiobook is a detailed account of lo...

Juggling the demands of her yarn shop and single-handedly raising a teenage daughter has made Georgia Walker grateful for her Friday night knitting club. Her friends are happy to escape their lives too, even for just a few hours. But when Georgia's ex suddenly reappears, demanding a role in their daughter's life, her whole world is shattered. Lucki...

When Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated street kid from Mumbai, wins a billion rupees on a live TV quiz show, he finds himself beaten up and thrown in jail by the programme's producers. During his interrogation he explains, through a series of flashbacks, how he knew the answers to all the show's questions. What he describes about his lif...

Clara Casey, senior cardiologist and mother of two, already has a new job to cope with - and now her ex-husband wants something from her too. For Ania, meeting Clara is a miracle. She never intended to leave Poland, but hopes a new job in a new country will mend her broken heart. Declan is looking forward to joining the clinic - but what should hav...

Even now, at the age of 82, Iris lives in the shadow cast by her younger sister Laura. Now poor and trying to cope with a failing body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death.

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, a kind of last testament to his remarkable forebears. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father - an ardent pacifist - and his grandfather who came west to Kansas to fight for abolition and 'preached men into the Civil War'. And he...

Set in the deep American South between the wars, this is the tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation. Raped repeatedly by the man she calls 'father', she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie, and is trapped into an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, si...

In 1949 four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past begin meeting in San Francisco to play Mah Jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and 'say' stories. Nearly forty years later of the members has died, and her daughter has come to take her place, only to learn of her mother's lifelong wish and the tragic way in which it has come tr...

'You're beautiful', Johnny told her, and so, full of hope, seventeen-year-old Felicia crosses the Irish Sea to England to find her lover and tell him she is pregnant. Desperately searching for Johnny in the bleak post-industrial Midlands, she is, instead, found by Mr Hilditch, a strange and lonely man, a collector and befriender of homeless young g...

This is the compelling true story of how the skull of an Aboriginal man, found on the banks of the Murray River over 40 years ago, came to be returned to his Wamba Wamba descendants. It is a story of awakening, atonement, forgiveness and friendship. 'It is as if a whole window into indigenous culture has blown open, not just the window, but every d...