Check out the most popular audiobooks downloaded or streamed from the Listening Books collection! Updated at the beginning of every month - here is February 2025!
Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and not long after entering Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz's most promising young citizens. But Elphaba's Oz is no utopia. The Wizard's secret police are everywhere. Animals—those creatures with voices, souls, and minds—are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals—even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance.
Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas.
After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there's no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty.
Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it's impossible to know who to trust.
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.
Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.
They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth.
But a storm is coming ... and not everyone can survive its wrath.
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Verity Beresford is worried about her husband. Oliver didn’t come home last night so of course Verity goes straight to Judith Potts, Marlow’s resident amateur sleuth, for help. Oliver, founder of the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, had hired The Marlow Belle, a private pleasure cruiser, for an exclusive party with the MADS committee but no one remembers seeing him disembark. And then Oliver’s body washes up on the Thames with two bullet holes in him – it’s time for the Marlow Murder Club to leap into action. Oliver was a rather complicated chap and he wasn’t short of enemies. Judith, Suzie, and Becks are convinced they’ll crack the case in no time. But things are not as they seem in the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, and the gang will need to keep their wits about them, otherwise a killer may sail away scot-free …
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Her new chapter starts now… Jo Sorsby is hiding from her past when she agrees to run her uncle’s beloved stationery shop. Glimpsing the lives of her customers between the warm wooden shelves, as they scribble little notes and browse colourful notebooks, distracts her from her bruised heart. When she meets Ruth, a vicar running from a secret, and Malcolm, a septuagenarian still finding himself, she suddenly realizes she isn’t alone. They each have a story that can transform Jo’s life… if only she can let them in. The Keeper of Stories meets The Lost Bookshop in this gorgeous novel about secrets, second chances and finding friendship in the most unlikely places.
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Republished for the first time in nearly 95 years, a classic winter country house mystery by the founder of the Detection Club, with a twist that even Agatha Christie couldn’t solve! Stephen Munro, a demobbed army officer, reconciles himself to taking a job as a footman to make ends meet. Employed at Wintringham Hall, the delightful but decaying Sussex country residence of the elderly Lady Susan Carey, his first task entails welcoming her eccentric guests to a weekend house-party, at which her bombastic nephew – who recognises Stephen from his former life – decides that an after-dinner séance would be more entertaining than bridge. Then Cicely disappears! With Lady Susan reluctant to call the police about what is presumably a childish prank, Stephen and the plucky Pauline Mainwaring take it upon themselves to investigate. But then a suspicious death turns the game into an altogether more serious affair…
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The second in the cosy crime series from Greg Mosse, featuring amateur sleuth Maisie Cooper set in the rolling Sussex countryside where crimes and murder abound... Something is afoot in the little village of Bunting and someone is trying to kill the lady of the manor. Luckily, amateur sleuth Maisie Cooper is on the case. Maisie Cooper is done catching murderers, thank you very much. Having recently brought her brother's killers to justice, she's ready to go back to her glamorous life in Paris. But little does she know that the idyllic Sussex countryside is home to more than one criminal... When Maisie receives a letter asking for her help in the little village of Bunting from the lady of the manor, she is curious enough to accept. She is then shocked to discover that the very woman requesting her assistance is her estranged Aunt Phyllis, who believes that someone is out to kill her. Maisie must follow the clues to find the culprit before they strike again.
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Gary Nelson has a routine for the commute to his rather dull job in the city. Each day, he watches as a woman on the train applies her make up in a ritual he now knows by heart. He's never dared to strike up a conversation . . . but maybe one day. Then one evening, on the late train to Gipsy Hill, the woman invites him to take the empty seat beside her. Fiddling with her mascara, she holds up her mirror and Gary reads the words 'HELP ME' scrawled in sticky black letters on the glass. From that moment, Gary's life is turned on its head. He finds himself on the run from the Russian mafia, the FSB and even the Metropolitan Police - all because of what this mysterious young woman may have witnessed. In the race to find out the truth, Gary discovers that there is a lot more to her than meets the eye . . . This audiobook contains an exclusive interview between Alan Johnson and Melvyn Bragg.
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The new start. Fin Macleod, now head of security on a privately owned Lewis estate, is charged with investigating a spate of illegal game-hunting taking place on the island. The old friend. This mission reunites him with Whistler Macaskill - a local poacher, Fin's teenage intimate, and possessor of a long-buried secret. The final chapter. But when this reunion takes a violent, sinister turn and Fin puts together the fractured pieces of the past, he realises that revealing the truth could destroy the future.
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Short-listed for Audible Sounds Crime Award. An unidentified corpse is recovered from a peat bog on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. News of the discovery soon reaches Fin Macleod. However, since swapping his life in Edinburgh for a quiet existence on Lewis, such mysteries are no longer a concern for the former detective inspector. Or so he thought. The sequel to The Blackhouse, which was selected for the WH Smith Richard and Judy Bookclub, and the second book in the Lewis trilogy.
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Everyone knows her life story. But who will win her heart? Gertie has always had her head in the clouds, wondering what her life might be like if she could only pluck up the courage to leave the remote Scottish island where she was born. It's the only place she knows, but you can't do anything there without everyone knowing - the glue of this close-knit community is the Knitting Circle, a group of strong, capable and frankly nosy women who work hard, gossip, knit and support each other through thick and thin. At the centre of this sisterhood is Gertie's mum Jean and her grandmother Elspeth, and the three generations of women live together, surrounded by wool, in one small cottage. When the chance comes to make changes - a new job working with old schoolfriend Morag on the local airline, new friends and even a possible new romance - a world of possibilities opens up before Gertie. Is this the way to make her dreams come true?
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