Young Lucius's life is suddenly turned upside down, leading him to seek answers amongst the slaves and warriors who work and train at Rome's gladiator school. When his father is accused of being a ruthless government informer, the `Spectre', and disappears, Quintus takes the dreaded Blood Oath and vows to become a gladiator. But while Quintus risks...

A bestselling novelist since 1921, Georgette Heyer is known across the world for her historical romances set in Regency England. Millions of readers love the outrageous lifestyle, fashion and capricious escapades of the elegant bon ton, and no one has captured that world better than Georgette Heyer, with universally beloved novels such as Regency B...

There's nothing like the issue of evolution to get under the skin of academics. Even if their field of expertise is magic rather than biology. With the best and most interfering minds of Unseen University somehow left in charge at a critical evolutionary turning point, the Discworld's last continent needs a saviour. Who is this hero striding across...

Michael McIntyre is Britain's biggest comedy star. He has released two record-breaking DVDs, Live and Laughing and Hello Wembley; hosts his own BAFTA-nominated BBC1 series, Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow; and has picked up British Comedy Awards for Best Live Stand-Up and Best Male TV Comic. Last year he became the youngest ever host of the Roya...

"I wonder today how no one else could see the bad thing coming. Not that I knew back then what the bad thing was; and if I had - if I'd known one of us was going to die - would there have been anything I could have done to prevent it? I play it all back in my mind, over and over. The clues were all there." On New Year's Eve, eleven-year-old Ruth an...

The Wheel. A ring of ice and steel turning around a moon of Saturn, and home to a mining colony supplying a resource-hungry Earth. It's a bad place to grow up. The colony has been plagued by problems. Maybe it's just gremlins, just bad luck. But the equipment failures and thefts of resources have been increasing, and there have been stories among t...

When her mother dies from a snakebite, Comity's life in the Australian outback changes forever. As her father retreats into his work, Comity turns to Fred, the Aboriginal yard boy, who becomes her only friend. But then a new assistant arrives who delights in playing cruel games. As Fred becomes his target, events spiral dangerously out of control.

What do you do when you find yourself suddenly single? Go suddenly suicidal? Suddenly sex-crazed? Or simply slump into self-pity? Alix Callaghan, who thought she was in control of her busy life, feels like doing all three when her long-term boyfriend insists on settling down to a sensible existence - complete with children, proper meals and early n...

The TARDIS touches down on Nadurniss, a planet under quarantine. A joint Nadurni/human mission has recently landed on the planet to survey it for possible re-colonisation. Two millennia have passed since the Nadurni Empire fell at the end of the Prokarian War, and Nadurniss seems to be a lifeless, barren world - but a mysterious illness is infectin...

Bonnie Langford reads this exciting novelisation of a classic Doctor Who adventure, continuing the 'Trial of a Time Lord' story arc. The Time Lords have brought the Doctor to trial, accusing him of gross interference in the affairs of other planets. If he is found guilty he must forfeit all his remaining regenerations. In his defence the Doctor tel...

Michael Jayston reads this gripping novelisation of a classic Doctor Who adventure, concluding the 'Trial of a Time Lord' story arc. Snatched out of time and place and brought before the Time Lords of Gallifrey, the Doctor is on trial for his life. While the Doctor asserts that the evidence of the Matrix, the repository of all Time Lord knowledge,...

Vasily Grossman, author of Life and Fate, was transformed by his experiences as a war correspondent. Following the shock invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Grossman volunteered for front line duty. Declared unfit for active service he was assigned to Red Star newspaper as a special correspondent. In these BBC Radio programmes, Elliot Levey...

Military historian Richard Holmes turns his attention to the infamous First World War trench line, the Western Front. Of the nine million British and Dominion soldiers who were killed in action in the Great War, most died here. In this thorough examination of the role the Front played in the war, the eminent historian Richard Holmes considers its i...

A dying policeman recalls how a gruesome murder many years back was to change his life forever. When John Zebedee is found killed with a knife in the night, our narrator is sent to investigate. He soon finds that Mrs Crosscapel's lodging-house is a place of dark secrets and buried passions - emotions that will soon cloud even his own judgement.

It's time to finish what he started... A young girl is snatched in broad daylight from outside her school and later found brutally murdered and hanging from a tree. When recently retired San Francisco Police Inspector, Bob Farrell, sees this on the news, he realises his worst nightmare has just come true. The same brutal killer a government agency...

Triumphing once again, Barbara Kingsolver has written a beautiful new novel: a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives in southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyot...

NOXIOUS NOISES AND STINKY SMELLS . . . Amaze your mates with top trivia such as: Why do we puke and sweat? Which tribe uses farting as a greeting? How likely are you to be injured by a toilet seat?

'I didn't want you to come here.' So says the note that the boy Edmund Hooper passes to Charles Kingshaw upon his arrival at Warings. But young Kingshaw and his mother have come to live with Hooper and his father in the ugly, isolated Victorian house for good. To Hooper, Kingshaw is an intruder, a boy to be subtly persecuted, and Kingshaw finds tha...

This book explains everything KS2 students will need to know about Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling for the English SATS. There are plenty of examples to demonstrate each point, with quick recap questions for every topic and exam-style tasks at the end of each section.

A riotous journey through the dangerous and dastardly antics of the adventurers who discovered chocolate, tobacco and other useful plant products!

A beautiful collection of poems by Gillian Clarke.