In this audiobook Dawkins argues for the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm it has inflicted on society. He suggests that while Europe is becoming increasingly securalised, the rise of religious fundamentalism, whether in the Middle East or Middle America, is dangerously dividing opinion around the world - and all from belief in a...

Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even wit...

The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird. Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a re...

Fourteen years after her last adventure, Thursday Next, literary detective, finds herself in an unusual situation her job policing the fictional characters of the BookWorld has been downgraded since her previous escapades are now themselves in print. However, a pressing threat may call her back into action: first Sherlock Holmes and then Miss Marpl...

In a sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the hush-hush floor of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning. Gentle,...

If you could travel back in time, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history. It's the age of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London, bawdy comedy and the libertine court of Charles II, Christopher Wren in architecture, Henry Purcell in music and Isaac Newton in science. In The Time Traveller's Guide...

Filled with stories, poems, and guidelines, Soulcraft introduces over forty practices that facilitate the descent to soul, including dreamwork, wilderness vision fasts, talking across the species boundaries, council, self-designed ceremony, nature-based shadow work, and the arts of romance, being lost, and storytelling.

Revisiting the terrain of her acclaimed novel NW, The Embassy of Cambodia is another remarkable work of fiction from Zadie Smith. 'The fact is, if we followed the history of every little country in the world - in its dramatic as well as its quiet times - we would have no space left in which to live our own lives or apply ourselves to our necessary...

At Waterloo Station, hopeful new arrivals from the West Indies step off the boat train, ready to start afresh in 1950s London. There, homesick Moses Aloetta, who has already lived in the city for years, meets Henry 'Sir Galahad' Oliver and shows him the ropes. In this strange, cold and foggy city where the natives can be less than friendly at the s...

In this BBC Radio 4 series, Richard Herring attempts to reclaim objects that we've grown to fear and hate because of what they symbolise. Via stand-up comedy, vox pops and interviews, he tackles a selection of things that have been given a bad name - including the toothbrush moustache, the hoodie, Dolly the sheep and the St. George's Flag - and deb...

On sabbatical from the Franciscan order, Father Paolo Baldi is working as a philosophy lecturer in Dublin when his life takes an unexpected turn and he finds himself helping the police to solve crimes. In No Sin, Father Baldi looks into a death at the local gym. His investigation leads him to make an interesting connection between the fanatical pur...

"Once there was a widow with three sons, and their names were Black, Brown and Blue. Black was the eldest; moody and aggressive. Brown was the middle child; timid and dull. But Blue was his mother's favourite. And he was a murderer." Blueeyedboy is the brilliant new novel from Joanne Harris: a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysf...

Michael Mont is succeeding in his public life in Parliament, but holds grave doubts about his private life and his wife, Fleur. Fleur's original love, Jon Forsyte, her cousin and the son of her father's ex-wife, returns to England where a meeting is inevitable. Fleur's undying love for Jon is disclosed.

A witty and powerful BBC Radio 4 coming of age drama starring Tim McInnerny as Sydney Larkin and Pip Carter as Philip Larkin. Written by Alan Pollock and broadcast as the Afternoon Play on 11 June 2010.

Featuring: The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-on-Sea, The Histories of Pliny the Elder, The Jet Propelled Guided Naafi, The Evils of Bushey Spon. Anarchic, ground-breaking and hilariously inventive, The Goon Show re-shaped comedy and set new standards in the genre. The mix of brilliant wordplay, mental slapstick and surreal clowning ensur...

King Stupid is a new Radio Four panel game where four panellists are funny. It's not the News, sport, adverts, other panel games or anything! King Stupid is also a show where you will not hear any of the following phrases: 1."Now into our mercifully brief second round ...", 2."This weeks winners of the keys to the executive washroom are ...", 3."To...

Brought to you by Penguin. Welcome to The Close - a beautiful street of mansions, where gorgeous Stella is the indisputable Queen Bee . . . It is here that Laura, seeking peace and privacy after her marriage falls apart, rents a tiny studio. Unfortunately, her arrival upsets suspicious Stella - who fears Laura has designs on her fianc‚, Al. W...

If you have anxiety, this book is for you. If you love someone who is anxious, this book is for you. I Quit Sugar founder and New York Times bestselling author Sarah Wilson has lived through high anxiety - including bipolar, OCD and several suicide attempts - her whole life. Perhaps like you, she grew tired of seeing anxiety as a disease that must...

Thursday Next, Head of JurisFiction and ex-SpecOps agent, returns to her native Swindon accompanied by a child of two, a pair of dodos and Hamlet, who is on a fact-finding mission in the real world. Thursday has been despatched to capture escaped Fictioneer Yorrick Kaine but even so, now seems as good a time as any to retrieve her husband Landen fr...

T. S. Eliot's best-selling collection of practical cat poems has been one of the most successful poetry collections in the world. For the first time in company history a companion volume will be published. Originally conceived by Eliot himself, Old Toffer's Book of Consequential Dog poems are a witty, varied and exquisitely compiled as Eliot's cats...

Trier is famous for wine, Romans and for being Germany's oldest city. So when a man is found dead with, his body impossibly covered in a fungal rot, the local authorities know they are out of their depth. Fortunately this is Germany, where there are procedures for everything. Enter Investigator Tobias Winter, whose aim is to get in, deal with the p...