One hot August day a family drives to a mountain clearing to collect birch wood. Jenny, the mother, is in charge of lopping any small limbs off the logs with a hatchet. Wade, the father, does the stacking. The two daughters, June and May, aged nine and six, drink lemonade, swat away horseflies, bicker, sing snatches of songs as they while away the...

The Comfort Food Cafe is perched on a windswept clifftop at what feels like the edge of the world, serving up the most delicious cream teas, beautifully baked breads and carefully crafted cupcakes. For tourists and locals alike, the ramshackle cafe overlooking the beach is a beacon of laughter, companionship and security - a place like no other, a...

This radio dramatisation of Robert Harris's thriller comes from John Dryden, the producer of award-winning Radio Collection releases The Handmaid's Tale and A Suitable Boy. Nazi Germany has won the war. Churchill is living in exile. King Edward and Queen Wallis are puppet monarchs of the United Kingdom. It is 1964, a week before Hitler's 75th birth...

'You think you're invincible. You think you won't ever miss. We need to put the fear on you. You need to surrender yourself to death before you ever begin, and accept your life as a state of grace, and then and only then will you be good enough.' At 14, Turtle Alveston knows the use of every gun on her wall;That chaos is coming and only the strong...

'I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.' So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and her truly unique family secret, born on the slopes of Mount Olympus and passed on through thr...

Ben is still desperately trying to forget that Katy had a one-night stand just before she announced she was pregnant. Nine months later a new baby explodes into their lives, creating utter chaos. Being a stay-at-home dad isn't as simple as it seems, in fact it's a disaster. Then help arrives, in the most unlikely form: the wife of Katy's ex-lover....

Lou Clark has lots of questions. Like how it is she's ended up working in an airport bar, spending every shift watching other people jet off to new places. Or why the flat she's owned for a year still doesn't feel like home. Whether her close-knit family can forgive her for what she did eighteen months ago. And will she ever get over the love of he...

1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three great powers: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Throughout Oceania 'The Party' rules by the agency of four ministries whose power is absolute. In The Ministry of Truth, which deals in propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine t...

Innocent is the shocking true story of little Molly and Kit, siblings, aged three years and 18 months, who are brought into care as an emergency after suffering non-accidental injuries. Aneta and Filip, the children's parents, are distraught when their children are taken into care. Aneta maintains she is innocent of harming them, while Filip appear...

1967. Vietnam. Susan Gifford is one of the first female correspondents on assignment in Saigon. Son is a Vietnamese photographer anxious to get his work into the American press. Together they cover every aspect of the war. Then one morning they find themselves the prisoners of three Vietcong soldiers. Under constant threat from American air strikes...

Award-winning writer Ayeesha Menon's rework of Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit is set amongst the Catholic community in modern-day Mumbai. Convinced his relatives are after his money, Martin Chuzzlewit, a wealthy old landlord, has adopted orphan girl Mary as his carer with the understanding she will be housed and fed as long as he lives - but on his dea...

Thirty years ago, somethings terrible happened to Luna's mother. Something she's only prepared to reveal after her death. In settling her mother's affairs, Luna funds more questions than answers, until something impossible and magical happens... Luna meets her mother as a young woman back in the summer of 1988. If she can truly travel back in time,...

When eighteen-year-old Ian Bedloe pricks the bubble of his family's optimistic self-deception, his brother Danny drives into a wall, his sister-in-law falls apart, and his parents age before his eyes. Consumed by guilt Ian finds the hope of forgiveness at the Church of the Second Chance, and leaves college to cope with the three children he has inh...

On paper, Iris Atkins is an estate agent, but she has a gift: Iris is able to see into people's lives and understand exactly what is missing and what they need - and not just in bricks-and-mortar terms either. Of course, this doesn't leave much time for examining her own problems and while she may know what's best for everyone else, she doesn't nec...

Week after week, the postcards arrive, addressed to someone Ellie does not know, each signed with an initial: A. These alluring cartes postales of Greece brighten her life and cast a spell on her. She decides she must see this country for herself. On the morning Ellie leaves for Athens, a notebook arrives. Its pages tell the story of a man's odysse...

Toru Okada is going through a difficult time. He is without a job, his cat has disappeared and his wife is behaving strangely. Into this unbalanced world come a variety of curious characters, a young girl sunbathing in a nearby garden, sisters who are very peculiar indeed, an old war veteran with a violent, disturbing story. Okada retreats to a dee...

Georgine loves Christmas. The festive season always brings the little village of Middledip to life. But since her ex-boyfriend walked out, leaving her with crippling debts, Georgine's struggled to make ends meet. To keep her mind off her worries, she throws herself into organising the Christmas show at the local school. And when handsome Joe Blackt...

Moving to the little village of Budbury, Zoe hopes the crisp Dorset sea breeze and gentle pace of life will be a fresh start for her and her goddaughter, Martha. Luckily for them both, the friendly community at the caf‚ provide listening ears, sage advice, shoulders to cry on and some truly excellent carrot cake. And when Martha's enigmatic,...

On a peat and heather island off the west coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear, like who her father was - variously Jimmy, Jack, or Ernie. Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee, th...

In the winter of 1952, Isabel Carey moves to Yorkshire with her husband Philip, a GP. With Philip spending long hours on call, Isabel finds herself isolated and lonely. Woken by intense cold one night, she discovers an old RAF greatcoat in the back of a cupboard. Sleeping under it for warmth, she starts to dream. And not long afterwards, she is sta...

Iris Murdoch's first novel is set in a part of London where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Its hero, Jake Donaghue, is a drifting, clever, likeable young man who makes a living out of translation work and sponging on his friends. A meeting with Anna, an old flame, leads him int...