Hardy's first collection of short stories was written between 1879-1888, with many of the tales set before Hardy's birth in 1840. These humorous and affectionate observations of rustic life include the following tales: 'An Imaginative Woman', 'The Three Strangers', 'The Withered Arm', 'Fellow-Townsmen', 'Interlopers at the Knap' and 'The Distracted...

Floral designer Larry and his feisty young wife, Dorrie, spend their honeymoon in England. At Hampton Court Larry discovers a new passion for mazes. Perhaps his ever-growing obsession with their secrets will help him find a way through the bewilderment deepening about him as, through twenty years and two failed marriages, he endeavours to understan...

Bizarre, amusing and grotesque, these tales enter the unexpected world of Dahl. They illustrate the different lives that people lead: a life of chance, of risk and of plain bad luck. The stories are specially chosen for teenagers to introduce them to Dahl's work for adults. The stories included are: 'Katina', 'Man from the South', 'Mrs Bixby and th...

Hibbert charts the French Revolution from its beginnings as an impromptu meeting on an indoor tennis court at Versailles in 1789, through to the coup d'etat of 1795 that brought Napoleon to power.

Set in British trenches during the First World War, this play deals with the horror and futility of trench warfare, as Captain Stanhope and his officers await attack in their dugout. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of R.C. Sherriff. Copyright R.C. Sherriff 1929.

Stalingrad marked not only the psychological turning-point of the Second World War, but was the first major modern battle fought in a city, with thousands of helpless civilians caught up in its horrors. In the epic struggle between Stalin and Hitler for the eastern front, soldiers were driven beyond the limits of mental and physical endurance. This...

Charles Paris, actor and amateur sleuth, is working in television as the brainless bobby sidekick to a suave detective. The accidental death of an unpromising actress causes little suspicion, except in Charles' mind. He decides to investigate.

Philip Marlowe is the centre of a succession of curious and increasingly violent happenings when he agrees to take on a case for Little Sister. He is swept into a series of collisions with movie stars, gangsters, small town girls and the police.

The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn are agog with curiosity over an advertisement in the local gazette which reads: A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30pm. Is it a hoax? As the time approaches a crowd gathers, and then the lights go out. Miss Marple investigates.

Identical twins Ruby and Garnet are inseparable. They do everything together, and go every where together. They love being twins, and since the death of their mother they have been closer than ever, safe in their little world. But when Dad finds a new girlfriend everything in the twins' lives is turned upside down--new home, new school, new everyth...

Howard Kirk is the trendiest of radical tutors at a fashionable university. Timid Vice-Chancellors pale before his threats of disruption and reactionary colleagues are crushed beneath his merciless Marxist logic. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Malcolm Bradbury. Copyright Malcolm Bradbury 1975...

Mandy has been picked on at school for as long as she can remember. That's why she can't believe it when cheeky, daring, and fun Tanya wants to be her friend. But Mum thinks Tanya is not a suitable friend at all and, when Mandy discovers Tanya shoplifts, she realises there may be trouble ahead.

When Howard Baker dies in a car crash, he finds himself transported to heaven, where he soon starts to become a very important person and a good friend of God.

In 2051 Britain is a divided country - half the population shelters in fortified suburbs, the other half smoulders in sealed off ghettos. Zoe is one of the privileged, Daz a semi-literate ghetto dweller. What happens when they fall in love?

In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont Neuf in Paris, Therese Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin Camille. The tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on an affair with her husband's friend Laurent, and their passion for each other soon causes the lovers to commit a shocking crime that will haunt the...

This audiobook presents Karl Marx as a man of both brilliance and frailty: as a poverty-stricken Prussian emigre who became a middle-class English gentleman; as an angry agitator; as a gregarious and convivial host; as a devoted family man; and as a deeply earnest philosopher who loved drink and cigars.

Grace's life starts to change the day she catches a glimpse through a telescope of a ghostly-looking knight, but her search for the knight seems impossible. Over-protected by her family, she can't go off the estate alone. The only answer is to break the rules and in doing so she finds herself on a quest that will lead her to a guardian angel, a ban...

Nick is a bit of an outsider and worried that he's a failure. On his way home after losing yet another battle with the school bully, he meets the mysterious Moe Nagic. Moe is selling a puzzle made from a watercolour painting called `The Trokeville Way'. What makes this puzzle unusual is that you can actually go into it, to step into another world....

The human voices of the story are those of the BBC in the first years of the Second World War when the Concert Hall was turned into a dormitory for both sexes. The whole building became a target for enemy bombers, and in the BBC as elsewhere, some had to fail and some had to die.

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.

Frayn's 1967 novel about Fleet Street portrays a newspaper world long since gone. Stuck in a sleepy newspaper department, covering nature notes and crosswords, Dyson dreams of liberation and recognition. When a chance occurs to appear on TV, he eagerly prepares to embrace a celebrity lifestyle.