Tag: LoveyourLibrary

Tomas can’t imagine life without his little dragon Flicker. He’s become more than a pet – he’s a friend like no other. And growing dragons on the dragonfruit tree in the garden with his friends Ted, Kat and Kai is the most amazing thing ever.

But Tomas has promised Grandad something – that he and his friends will let their dragons go back to where they belong. The only problem is – that isn’t such an easy thing to do. Not when they are still having so much fun with dragons Flicker, Sunny, Crystal and Dodger. Not when they still have to work out where the dragons’ home is, and how to get the dragons to leave. And not when Tomas is so close to uncovering the true story of the mysterious dragonfruit tree …

Available as an eBooks and eAudiobook
Narrated by Ewan Goddard
Suitable for ages 5+

Shona and her dad are moving house, and at Shona’s new school, the rules are pretty confusing; she keeps getting into trouble without realising! It’s a lot like how it is for Oliver Twist, that boy she’s reading about in English class.

After Shona is unexpectedly given a mobile phone, she begins to suspect there’s something fishy about the new boys she’s met. Where did the phone come from? And some gifts, she soon learns, aren’t exactly free …

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Michael Rosen
Suitable for ages 8+

They killed my mother.
They took our magic.
They tried to bury us.
Now we rise.
Zélie remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. When different clans ruled – Burners igniting flames, Tiders beckoning waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoning forth souls.
But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, anyone with powers was targeted and killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Only a few people remain with the power to use magic, and they must remain hidden.

Zélie is one such person. Now she has a chance to bring back magic to her people and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must learn to harness her powers and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where strange creatures prowl, and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to come to terms with the strength of her magic – and her growing feelings for an enemy.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Bahni Turpin
Suitable for ages 13+

Twelve years ago, Nick’s brother Rob was caught in a storm out at sea and drowned. His body was never found. When Nick met Susie at his brother’s funeral, he thought it was destiny at play.

Then Rob suddenly appears on television. He is a hero. He has brought down a terrorist who opened fire on dozens of restaurant diners. Everyone wants to know who Rob is, but he’s vanished a second time, without a word.

Nick is soon drawn into a multi-layered world of lies and corruption, and is forced to examine everything he once knew. What is Rob running away from? And why do the police want to talk to him?

Nick wants to find his brother but if he does, he also risks losing the woman he loves. Because Susie has her own secrets, and as the truth emerges, Nick finds it is those closest to us we should fear the most…

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Daniel Weyman and Bea Holland
Fiction

Jack Reacher, adrift in the hellish heat of a Texas summer, looking for a lift through the vast empty landscape.

A woman stops, and offers a ride. She is young, rich and beautiful.

But her husband’s in jail. When he comes out, he’s going to kill her.

Her family’s hostile, she can’t trust the cops and the lawyers won’t help. She is entangled in a web of lies and prejudice, hatred and murder.

Jack Reacher never could resist a lady in distress.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Jeff Harding
Fiction

Luis Machi has had enemies for a long time: after all, he’s built his success on dirty deals – not to mention his cooperation with the military junta’s coup years ago, or his love life, a web of infidelities. What’s new is the corpse in the boot of his car. A body with its face blown off, detained by a pair of furry pink handcuffs that Machi knows well . . .

Someone is trying to set him up, but the number of suspects is incalculable. Machi is stuck dredging his guilty past for clues and trying to dispose of the mystery corpse. But time is just another enemy and it’s running out fast.

Like Flies from Afar is a wickedly dark and thrilling ride through the corruption and violence of Argentina, embodied by a single degenerate man and one very complicated day.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Joe Lewis
Fiction

When Jane is caught in a deadly love triangle between rival spies Ellis and Jean-Pierre, she becomes entangled in a web of lust, hatred and deception, which sweeps all three of them from terrorist conspiracies in Paris to all-out guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan.
Jean-Pierre and Jane marry, and go to work as doctors in the Valley of the Five Lions to help the rebels fighting for their freedom against the Russians. Confronted by extreme violence and danger, Jane desperately tries to get out of the line of fire. Then help comes, unexpectedly, in the form of her husband’s greatest enemy . . .
Lie Down With Lions is an exciting tale of suspense and deceit from master of the spy story, Ken Follett.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Emma Fenney
Fiction

Somewhere on the French Riviera, tucked between glitzy Monte Carlo and Cannes’ red carpets, lies the sleepy town of Bellevue-Sur-Mer. Sheltered from the glittering melee, it is home to many an expat – although it hasn’t proved as peaceful as expected.

Now an enterprising band of retirees has resolved to show it’s never too late to start afresh and open a restaurant. Snapping up a local property and throwing themselves into preparations, Theresa, Carol, William and Benjamin’s plans are proceeding unnervingly well. But when Theresa encounters a mysterious intruder, she begins to wonder what secrets the building is concealing.

Meanwhile Sally, an actress who fled the stage to live in quiet anonymity, has decided not to be involved. She’s far too busy anyway, shepherding around a gaggle of A-listers, including a suave Russian with a superyacht and a penchant for her company.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Celia Imre
Fiction

With an absent wife and a daughter going off the rails, wealthy art collector and philanthropist Simon Strulovitch is in need of someone to talk to. So when he meets Shylock at a cemetery in Cheshire’s Golden Triangle, he invites him back to his house. It’s the beginning of a remarkable friendship.

Elsewhere in the Golden Triangle, the rich, manipulative Plurabelle (aka Anna Livia Plurabelle Cleopatra A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever Christine) is the face of her own TV series, existing in a bubble of plastic surgery and lavish parties. She shares prejudices and a barbed sense of humour with her loyal friend D’Anton, whose attempts to play Cupid involve Strulovitch’s daughter – and put a pound of flesh on the line.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Michael Kitchen
Fiction

The Other Woman by debut author Sandie Jones, is a gripping psychological thriller, perfect for fans of Michelle Frances’s The Girlfriend and B A Paris’s Behind Closed Doors.
When Emily meets Adam she knows he is the One.
That together they can deal with anything that is thrown at them.
But lurking in the shadows is another woman, Pammie.
Emily chose Adam, but she didn’t choose his mother.
There’s nothing a mother wouldn’t do for her son, and now Emily is about to find out just how far Pammie will go to get what she wants . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Clare Corbett
Fiction

Within its four walls lay a secret that would last a lifetime.

Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering Society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again.

Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet’s suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long-consigned to the dark reaches of Grace’s mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks. A shocking secret threatens to emerge; something history has forgotten but Grace never could.

A thrilling mystery and a compelling love story, The House at Riverton will appeal to readers of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, and lovers of the film Gosford Park.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Caroline Lee
Fiction

The temperature is rising, which can only mean one thing: it’s summer! Bookings are up at Hotel Flamingo and the hotel is getting busy. Anna is excited to receive word from King Penguin royalty asking to holiday in their Royal Suite. But there’s a lot to get done, and it’s not easy to manage the needs of the penguins when there’s a heatwave on and a huge ice shortage. Help!

When Mr Ruffian of the rival Glitz hotel finds out that the penguins have chosen to stay at Hotel Flamingo he is furious. It’s not long before Anna starts to suspect that there is a spy and saboteur at the hotel; how else to explain why everyone is going so wrong for the visit of the Royal Penguins? Can Anna return Hotel Flamingo to its usual shining self and have happy guests all round?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Sarah Ovens
Suitable for ages 5+

Exciting News! Mr Fullerman announces that class 5F are going on an ‘Activity Break’! Which should be fun. As long as I don’t get stuck in a group with anyone who snores or worse still with … Marcus Meldrew. Delia is already threatening to paint my room funny colours while I’m away. Which is annoying. I just hope the only surprise I have when I get home is the new pet that I hear Mum and Dad talking about. Because I’ve always wanted a pet!

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Rupert Grint
Suitable for ages 7+

The days of my childhood kept turning over, dissolving like sea foam on the crest of the waves. I have been counting them, the days and the nights, the weeks, the months, the years. I have been waiting for this day.

Deep beneath the cold, stormy sea, Gaia is a mermaid who dreams of freedom from her controlling father. On her first swim to the surface, she is drawn towards a human boy. Gaia longs to join his carefree world, but how much will she have to sacrifice? What will it take for the little mermaid to find her voice?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Amy Shiels
Suitable for ages 15+

In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalised readers for decades.

When the van door slammed on Offred’s future at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her – freedom, prison or death.

With The Testaments, the wait is over.

Margaret Atwood’s sequel picks up the story more than 15 years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Ann Dowd, Tantoo Cardinal, Margaret Atwood, Mae Whitman, Derek Jacobi and Bryce Dallas Howard
Fiction

When the police started asking questions, Jean Taylor turned into a different woman. One who enabled her and her husband to carry on, when more bad things began to happen …

But that woman’s husband died last week. And Jean doesn’t have to be her anymore.

There’s a lot Jean hasn’t said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was too busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with the accusing glares and the anonymous harassment.

Now there’s no reason to stay quiet. There are people who want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them that there were secrets. There always are in a marriage.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Clare Corbett
Fiction

The goats of Vigàta once grazed on the trash-strewn site still known as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sort flourishes: drug dealers and prostitutes of every flavour. But their discreet trade is upset when two employees of the Splendour Refuse Collection Company discover the body of engineer Silvio Luparello, one of the local movers and shakers, apparently deceased in flagrante at the Pasture. The coroner’s verdict is death from natural causes – refreshingly unusual for Sicily.
But Inspector Salvo Montalbano, as honest as he is streetwise and as scathing to fools and villains as he is compassionate to their victims, is not ready to close the case – even though he’s being pressured by Vigàta’s police chief, judge, and bishop.
Picking his way through a labyrinth of high-comedy corruption, delicious meals, vendetta firepower, and carefully planted false clues, Montalbano can be relied on, whatever the cost, to get to the heart of the matter.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Mark Meadows
Fiction

Autumn 1941. The war is going badly for Britain and its allies. If Hitler is to be stopped, a new weapon is desperately needed.

In Cambridge, professor Tom Wilde is approached by an American intelligence officer who claims to know of such a weapon – one so secret even Hitler himself isn’t aware of its existence. If Wilde can smuggle the package out of Germany, the Third Reich will surely fall.

But it is only when he is deep behind enemy lines that Wilde discovers why the Nazis are so desperate to prevent the ‘package’ falling into Allied hands. And as ruthless killers hunt him through Europe, a treacherous question hangs over the mission: if Hitler’s secret will win them the war, why is Wilde convinced it must remain hidden?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Adam Sims
Fiction

Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: if you want to lift a society up, invest in women.

Candid and inspiring, in The Moment of Lift, Gates traces her awakening to the link between women’s empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to ‘turbo-charge’ change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference.

Convinced that all women should be free to decide whether and when to have children, Gates took her first step onto the global stage to make a stand for family planning. That step launched her into further efforts: to ensure women everywhere have access to every kind of job; to encourage men around the globe to share equally in the burdens of household work; to advocate for paid family leave for everyone; to eliminate gender bias in all its forms.

Throughout, Gates introduces us to her heroes in the movement towards equality, offers startling data, shares moving conversations she’s had with women from all over the world – and shows how we can all get involved.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Melinda Gates
Non-Fiction

Roy Grace, creation of the CWA Diamond Dagger award winning author Peter James, faces his most mysterious case yet in Need You Dead.
Lorna Belling, desperate to escape the marriage from hell, falls for the charms of another man who promises her the earth. But, as Lorna finds, life seldom follows the plans you’ve made. A chance photograph on a client’s mobile phone changes everything for her.
When the body of a woman is found in a bath in Brighton, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is called to the scene. At first it looks an open and shut case with a clear prime suspect. Then other scenarios begin to present themselves, each of them tantalizingly plausible, until, in a sudden turn of events, and to his utter disbelief, the case turns more sinister than Grace could ever have imagined.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Daniel Weyman
Fiction

How does a family pick up the pieces, when the one person who held them all together has gone?

When forty-year-old Rabbit Hayes dies, she leaves behind a family broken by grief. Her mother Molly is distraught and in danger of losing her faith. Her father Jack spends hour upon hour in the family attic, poring over his old diaries, losing himself in the past.

Rabbit’s brother Davey finds himself suddenly guardian to her twelve-year-old daughter Juliet. Juliet might be able to fill a hole in Davey’s heart – but how can he help Juliet through her grief when he can barely cope with his own?

Meanwhile, Rabbit’s sister Grace is struggling with the knowledge that she carries the same gene that made her sister ill, and Rabbit’s best friend Marjorie is lost, struggling to remain a part of a family she has always wished was her own now that her link to them is gone.

But even though the Hayes family are all fighting their own battles, they are drawn together by their love for Rabbit, and their love for each other. In the years that follow her death they find new ways to celebrate and remember her, to find humour and hope in the face of tragedy, and to live life to its fullest, as Rabbit would have wanted.

Below the Big Blue Sky will make you laugh, cry and shout with joy for the colourful, unruly Hayes family as they battle with the loss of their beloved Rabbit, the daughter, mother, sister and friend, who in her own crazy way taught each of them how to live, and goes on showing them how to love from beyond the grave.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Simone Kirby
Fiction

Mudlark (/’mAdla;k/) noun A person who scavenges for usable debris in the mud of a river or harbour

Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over fifteen years, in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. These objects tell her about London and its lost ways of life.

Moving from the river’s tidal origins in the west of the city to the point where it meets the sea in the east, Mudlarking is a search for urban solitude and history on the River Thames, which Lara calls the longest archaeological site in England.

As she has discovered, it is often the tiniest objects that tell the greatest stories.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Lara Maiklem
Fiction

For years Bilal Hasham and his wife Mariam have lived contented, quiet lives in the sleepy rural village of Babbel’s End. Now all that is about to change.

On her deathbed, Bilal’s mother reaches for his hand. Instead of whispering her final prayers, she gives him a task: build a mosque in his country village.

Mariam is horrified by Bilal’s plan. His friends and neighbours are unnerved. As outrage sweeps Babbel’s End, battle lines are drawn. His mother’s dying wish reveals deeper divisions in their village than Bilal had ever imagined.

Soon Bilal is forced to choose between community and identity, between faith and friendship, between honouring his beloved mother’s last wish and preserving what is held dear in the place that he calls home.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Rita Sharma
Fiction

From the author of the international publishing sensation Life of Pi comes the story of a quest for a lost relic. The journey takes us from Africa in the 1600s through Portugal at the turn of the last century to contemporary North America.

Showcasing Martel’s trademark delight in the fundamental stories that unite us, The High Mountains of Portugal unfolds with a dazzling lightness of touch. With its intricately woven layers of meaning and all the pleasures and surprises of a good yarn, it is also a beautiful, tender, clear-eyed and heartfelt exploration of love, suffering, faith and evolution.

By turns funny, tragic and sublime, The High Mountains of Portugal reminds us that it is our ability to weave remarkable stories out of our spiritual and philosophical concerns that makes us – and keeps us – human.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Mark Bramhall
Fiction

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is one of the bestselling books of the 21st Century. Now, in this essential companion, Heather Morris presents an inspiring manual for life, with a series of tales of the remarkable people she has met, the incredible stories they have shared with her, and the lessons they hold for us all.

In Stories of Hope, Heather will explore her extraordinary talents as a listener – a skill she employed when she first met Lale Sokolov, the tattooist at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the inspiration for her bestselling novel. It was this ability that led Lale to entrust Heather with his story, which she told in her novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz and the bestselling follow up, Cilka’s Journey.

Now Heather shares the story behind her inspirational writing journey and the defining experiences of her life, including her profound friendship with Lale, and explores how she learned to really listen to the stories people told her – skills she believes we can all learn.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by  Nicolette McKenzie and Heather Morris
Fiction

Three children went out to play. Only two came back.

The Flower Girls. Laurel and Primrose.

One convicted of murder, the other given a new identity.

Now, 19 years later, another child has gone missing.

And the Flower Girls are about to hit the headlines all over again …

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Emelia Fox
Fiction

She glanced at her phone again. There were appeals from the girls, from her colleagues, a text from Steve reading with uncharacteristic imperiousness, ‘Call me.’ She couldn’t. She couldn’t call anyone . . . She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the bench, and stared at the ground. God, she thought, am I losing my mind? Is this what happens when you lose your job?

The day Stacey Grant loses her job feels like the last day of her life. Or at least, the only life she’d ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London?

As Stacey starts to reconcile her old life with the new – one without professional achievements or meetings, but instead, long days at home with her dog and ailing mother, waiting for her successful husband to come home – she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby. The girls, now women, had been best friends from the early days of university right through their working lives, and for all the happiness and heartbreaks in between.
But these career women all have personal problems of their own, and when Stacey’s redundancy forces a betrayal to emerge that was supposed to remain secret, their long cherished friendships will be pushed to their limits . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Adjoa Andoh
Fiction

Mabel lives with her parents in The Mermaid Hotel, by the sea. Mabel likes to keep an eye on the comings and goings of all the guests.

Then one day a particularly in-ter-est-ing old lady comes to stay. There is something very suspicious about her, with her growly voice and her heavy trunks and her beady-eyed tortoise. And why does no one know her REAL name?

There can only be one answer, Mabel decides … this guest is a SUPERVILLAIN. But even supervillains have a soft side, and as an unlikely friendship grows between the pair, their fantastical exploits take them well beyond the corridors of their seaside home.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Sophie Dahl
Suitable for ages 5+

Tomas has a secret – a big secret. He has his own tiny dragon, Flicker! A dragon which grew on a very special tree at the bottom of his grandad’s garden. And not only that – his friends Ted, Kai and Kat have dragons too, all grown on the same dragonfruit tree …

Having your own dragon is magical – but Tomas is also about to find out what living with a dragon is REALLY like. When the fire-breathing kicks in and you get singed every five seconds, it’s like having an unpredictable volcano in your pocket. Learning to train the dragons and keep them out of trouble at school and home will take all Tomas’s creativity and patience … What is more, the dragonfruit tree is starting to look droopy and unwell. Tomas and his friends have got to do all they can restore it to health and uncover its deepest mysteries, as well as trying to work out what big secret local bully Liam, ‘King of Trouble’, has got up his sleeve … One thing is for sure, life is never dull when you have a dragon in your pocket.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Ewan Goddard
Suitable for ages 5+

Mira CAN’T WAIT to start Unicorn School. (Her big sister goes and won’t stop going on about it.). But when Mira arrives on her first day all the unicorns are gone … except Dave!

Dave isn’t quite the sparkly unicorn Mira was expecting to find at the end of the rainbow – he’s more grumpy than glittery, more interested in lunch than magical Quests and he always runs off when Mira tries to ride him – but Mira’s not going to let that get her down. Along with her new friends and their (much more glittery) unicorns, she is determined to be the best at Quests and protect the special unicorn world!

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Carlyss Peer
Suitable for ages 6+

After sixth grade, the very worst year of his life, Rafe Khatchadorian thinks he has it made in seventh grade. He’s been accepted to art school in the big city and imagines a math-and-history-free fun zone. Wrong! It’s more competitive than Rafe ever expected, and to score big in class, he needs to find a way to turn his boring life into the inspiration for a work of art. His method? Operation: Get a Life! Anything he’s never done before, he’s going to do it, from learning to play poker to going to a modern art museum. But when his newest mission uncovers secrets about the family Rafe’s never known, he has to decide if he’s ready to have his world turned upside down.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Bryan Kennedy
Suitable for ages 8+

Ari Helix has been running her whole life. An illegal immigrant in the territory controlled by the tyrannical Mercer Corporation, she’s always had to hide who she was. Until now. When Ari crash-lands on Old Earth and pulls a magic sword from its ancient resting place, she is revealed to be the forty-second reincarnation of King Arthur.

The wizard Merlin has been waiting for centuries for a King who can break the curse that’s aged him backwards into a teenager. He’s trained dozens of Arthurs over the centuries, but never a girl. Could Ari finally be the one?

Ari wants nothing to do with Merlin’s talks of quests and knights and dragons. She just wants to use her new power to find a way home. But the Mercer Corporation has been hiding a terrible world-destroying secret, and they’ll do anything to stop her from uncovering the truth.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Lauren Fortgang
Suitable for ages 13+

Leningrad, Russia, 1968.

Alexander Karpenko is no ordinary child, and from an early age, it is clear he is destined to lead his countrymen. But when his father is assassinated by the KGB for defying the state, he and his mother will have to escape from Russia if they hope to survive. At the docks, they are confronted with an irreversible choice: should they board a container ship bound for America, or Great Britain? Alexander leaves that choice to the toss of a coin . . .

In a single moment, a double twist decides Alexander’s future. During an epic tale of fate and fortune, spanning two continents and thirty years, we follow his triumphs and defeats as he struggles as an immigrant to conquer his new world. As this unique story unfolds, Alexander comes to realize where his destiny lies, and accepts that he must face the past he left behind in Russia.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Richard Armitage
Fiction

Dover, 1939

At the heart of Market Square lies Castle’s Café, run by the formidable Nellie Castle and her six children.

Since the scandalous birth of her son ten years ago, Marianne, Nellie’s eldest daughter, has preferred to stay in the kitchen, hidden away from the scrutiny of the town gossips. Overcome with shame, she has never revealed the identity of Donny’s father – not even to her own mother.

But with World War II just around the corner, soon Marianne’s past catches up with her. And suddenly the lives of the Castle family become a lot more complicated.

Will the secrets from her past destroy their future?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Bea Holland
Fiction

In 2008, twenty-year-old Jonny Benjamin stood on Waterloo Bridge, about to jump. A stranger saw his distress and stopped to talk with him – a decision that saved Jonny’s life.
Fast forward to 2014 and Jonny, together with Rethink Mental Illness launch a campaign with a short video clip so that Jonny could finally thank that stranger who put him on the path to recovery. More than 319 million people around the world followed the search. ITV’s breakfast shows picked up the story until the stranger, whose name is Neil Laybourn, was found and – in an emotional and touching moment – the pair re-united and have remained firm friends ever since.
The Stranger on the Bridge is a memoir of the journey Jonny made both personally, and publicly to not only find the person who saved his life, but also to explore how he got to the bridge in the first place and how he continues to manage his diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. Using extracts from diaries Jonny has been writing from the age of thirteen, this book is a deeply personal memoir with a unique insight on mental health.
Jonny was recognised for his work as an influential activist changing the culture around mental health, when he was awarded an MBE in 2017. He and Neil now work full-time together visiting schools, hospitals, prisons and workplaces to help end the stigma by talking about mental health and suicide prevention. The pair ran the London Marathon together in 2017 in aid of HeadsTogether. Following the global campaign to find the stranger, in 2015 Channel 4 made a documentary of Jonny’s search which has now been shown in 14 territories.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by  Jonny Benjamin, Britt Pflüger and Neil Laybourn
Non-Fiction

Sergeant Amy Callan and Lieutenant Caroline Cooke have a lot in common.
Both were army high-flyers. Both were aquainted with Jack Reacher. Both were forced to resign from the service.

Now they’re both dead.

Found in their own homes, naked, in a bath full of paint.
Apparent victims of an army man. A loner, a smart guy with a score to settle, a ruthless vigilante.

A man just like Jack Reacher.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Jeff Harding
Fiction

Fifteen years ago in small-town New Jersey, a teenage boy and girl were found dead.

Most people concluded it was a tragic suicide pact. The dead boy’s brother, Nap Dumas, did not. Now Nap is a cop – but he’s a cop who plays by his own rules, and who has never made peace with his past.

And when the past comes back to haunt him, Nap discovers secrets can kill …

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by John Chancer
Fiction

MI6 created him. Now they want him dead.

John Milton is an assassin for the British government, but he’s old and tired and wants to quit. Unfortunately, that’s impossible. Milton knows too much. The only way out of his job is in a box – there are no exceptions.

Milton goes on the run and meets a young mother who needs his help. Her son has been tempted by a life with a glamorous gang and the charismatic criminal who leads it. Milton must get the boy out of trouble – before it’s too late.

And when his old agency sends another agent after him, the odds against him are stacked even higher.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by David Thorpe
Fiction

‘Am I normal?’
‘What’s an anxiety disorder?’
‘Does therapy work?’
‘How would I know if someone had an eating disorder?’

These are just a few of the questions Natasha Devon is asked as she travels the UK campaigning for better mental health awareness and provision. Here, Natasha calls upon experts in the fields of psychology, neuroscience and anthropology to debunk and demystify the full spectrum of mental health, from A (Anxiety) to Z (Zero F*cks – the art of high self-esteem) via everything from body image and gender to differentiating ‘sadness’ from ‘depression’.

Statistically, one in three of us will experience symptoms of a mental illness during our lifetime. Yet all of us have brains, and so we all have mental health – regardless of age, sexuality, race or background. The past few years have seen an explosion in awareness, yet it seems there is still widespread confusion. A Beginner’s Guide to Being Mental is for anyone who wants to have this essential conversation, written as only Natasha, with her combination of expertise, personal experience and humour, knows how.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Natasha Devon
Non-Fiction

Harrison Foster is a lawyer by training but works as a crisis manager for a London firm that specialises in such matters. Summoned to Newmarket after a fire in the Chadwick Stables slaughters six very valuable horses, including the short-priced favourite for the Derby, Harry (as he is known) finds there is far more to the ‘simple’ fire than initially meets the eye. For a start, human remains are found amongst the equestrian ones in the burnt-out shell. All the stable staff are accounted for, so who is the mystery victim?

Harry knows very little about horses, indeed he positively dislikes them, but he is thrust unwillingly into the world of Thoroughbred racing where the standard of care of the equine stars is far higher than that of the humans who attend to them.

The Chadwick family are a dysfunctional racing dynasty, with the emphasis being on the nasty. Resentment between the generations is rife and sibling rivalry bubbles away like volcanic magma beneath a thin crust of respectability.

Harry represents the Middle-Eastern owner of the Derby favourite and, as he delves deeper into the unanswered questions surrounding the horse’s demise, he ignites a fuse that blows the volcano sky-high, putting him in grave jeopardy. Can Harry solve the riddle before he is overcome by the toxic emissions from the eruption and is bumped off by the fallout?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Martin Jarvis
Fiction

Meet Lori Gottlieb, an insightful and compassionate therapist whose clients present with all kinds of problems. There’s the struggling new parents; the older woman who feels she has nothing to live for; the self-destructive young alcoholic; and the terminally ill 35-year-old newlywed. And there’s John, a narcissistic television producer, who frankly just seems to be a bit of a jerk. Over the course of a year, they all make progress.

But Gottlieb is not just a therapist – she’s also a patient who’s on a journey of her own. Interspersed with the stories of her clients are her own therapy sessions, as Gottlieb goes in search of the hidden roots of a devastating and life-changing event.

Personal, revealing, funny and wise, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone opens a rare window onto a world that is most often bound by secrecy, offering an illuminating tour of a profoundly private process.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by  Brittany Pressley
Non-Fiction

April 1941, Romsey, England.

Josephine ‘Jo’ Fox hasn’t set foot in Romsey in over twenty years. As an illegitimate child, her family – headed by her controlling grandfather – found her an embarrassment. Now, she wants to return to what was once her home and uncover the secret of her parentage. Who was her father and why would her mother never talk about him?

Jo arrives the day after the Luftwaffe have bombed the town. The local pub, The Cricketers’ Arms, has been completely destroyed and rescue teams are searching for the remains of the seven people known to have been in the pub at the time the bomb hit. They are shocked, however, to uncover eight bodies, not seven. The eighth, unidentified, body is that of a teenage girl, who no one in the town claims to know. Who is she, how did she get there, but most importantly – who killed her?

Teaming up with local coroner and old friend, Bram Nash, Jo sets out to establish the identity of the girl and solve the riddle of her death. In doing so, she also uncovers her own personal mystery.

Everyone has secrets – some are just more deadly than others . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Lucy Price-Lewis
Fiction

Meet the Hunter family: Adam, Kate, and their children Hal and Charlotte. And Prince, their black Labrador.

Prince is an earnest young dog, striving hard to live up to the tenets of the Labrador Pact (Remain Loyal to Your Human Masters, Serve and Protect Your Family at Any Cost). Other dogs, led by the Springer Spaniels, have revolted. As things in the Hunter family begin to go badly awry – marital breakdown, rowdy teenage parties, attempted suicide – Prince’s responsibilities threaten to overwhelm him and he is forced to break the Labrador Pact and take desperate action to save his Family.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Mark Meadows
Fiction

In October 1940, the handsome young David Sparsholt arrives in Oxford. A keen athlete and oarsman, he at first seems unaware of the effect he has on others – particularly on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist and destined to become a writer himself. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove: an ephemeral, uncertain place, in which nightly blackouts conceal secret liaisons. Over the course of one momentous term, David and Evert forge an unlikely friendship that will colour their lives for decades to come . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by David Dawson
Fiction

1820, London. 

Sarah McCaffrey, fleeing arrest for her part in a failed rebellion, finds herself alone and on the run. She boards the Serpent, bound from London to the colony of New South Wales – and when the captain’s reckless actions lead the ship to be dashed onto Sydney’s notorious rocks, Sarah is the only survivor.

Adopting a false identity, Sarah determines to make a new life for herself. She takes the first work she can find, under the formidable Molly Thistle, who runs a sprawling trade empire. Sarah begins to see that there is more than one way of changing the world, but her new life is thrown into chaos when her past follows her across the seas.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Lucy Dixon
Fiction

Fixie Farr can’t help herself. Straightening a crooked object, removing a barely-there stain, helping out a friend … she just has to put things right. It’s how she got her nickname, after all.

So when a handsome stranger in a coffee shop asks her to watch his laptop for a moment, Fixie not only agrees, she ends up saving it from certain disaster. To thank her, the computer’s owner, Sebastian, scribbles her an IOU – but of course Fixie never intends to call in the favour.

That is, until her teenage crush, Ryan, comes back into her life and needs her help – and Fixie turns to Seb. But things don’t go according to plan, and now Fixie owes Seb: big time.

Soon the pair are caught up in a series of IOUs – from small favours to life-changing debts – and Fixie is torn between the past she’s used to and the future she deserves.

Does she have the courage to fix things for herself and fight for the life, and love, she really wants?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Fiona Hardingham
Fiction

Give me one name. One person.
And I will make them disappear . . .

When Sarah rescues a young girl in trouble, she expects nothing in return. But her act of bravery puts a powerful and dangerous man in her debt.
He lives by his own brutal code, and all debts must be repaid – in the only way he knows how.

He offers Sarah a way to solve a desperate situation with her intolerable boss. A once-in-a-lifetime deal that will make all her problems disappear.

No consequences. No comeback.
No chance of being found out.

All it takes is a 29-second phone call.

Because everyone has a name to give. Don’t they?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Jane Slavin
Fiction

That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature.

Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis. In his previous life he was ignored or loathed, but in his new incarnation he is the most powerful man in Britain – and it is his mission to carry out the will of the people. Nothing must get in his way: not the opposition, nor the dissenters within his own party. Not even the rules of parliamentary democracy.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Bill Nighy
Fiction

These and many other questions trouble David Mitchell. Join him on a tour of the absurdities of modern life – from Ryanair to Richard III, Downton Abbey to phone etiquette, UKIP to hot dogs made of cats. Funny, provocative and shot through with refreshing amounts of common sense, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse celebrates and commiserates on the state of things in our not entirely glorious modern world.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by  David Mitchell
Non-Fiction

Join these two comedy greats and lifelong friends on their journey from recuperation to riverbank in this hilarious and heart-warming audiobook that gives you a front-row seat at an exclusive Bob and Paul production.

Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse have been friends for 30 years, but when life intervened, what was once a joyous and spontaneous friendship dwindled to the odd phone call or occasional catch up. Then, Glory Be! They were both diagnosed with heart disease and realised that time is short. They’d better spend it fishing…. 

So they dusted off their kits, chucked on their waders and ventured into the achingly beautiful British countryside to fish, rediscover the joys of their friendship and ruminate on some of life’s most profound questions, such as: How did we get so old? Where are all the fish? What are your favourite pocket meats? What should we do if we find a corpse?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse
Non-Fiction

When it’s a bad night for New York City’s rich and famous, they call NYPD Red.

A renowned documentary filmmaker is found dead after a sex game goes horribly wrong. Across town, a homemade bomb explodes at a charity benefit. The only cops who can work both cases are Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald of NYPD Red – the elite, hard-charging, investigative task force called in exclusively for New York City’s most high-profile crimes.

Racing against the clock to keep the city’s most prominent citizens safe, Zach and Kylie uncover enough corruption, blackmail, drugs, sex and vengeance to shock even the most jaded of New Yorkers. But when their investigation threatens to expose the very citizens they’re supposed to protect, Zach and Kylie must put aside their unrequited feelings for one another and follow the truth, no matter where it leads.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini
Fiction

Spring 1935.

On London’s Hampstead Heath two girls meet by chance: well-mannered and smartly dressed Verity and dishevelled and grubby Ruby. Yet the mismatched pair form an instant friendship strong enough to survive their parents’ disapproval.

When war engulfs the country – sending Ruby to Devon while Verity struggles to find a new beginning under a shadow from her past – the girls are convinced they will always be there for each other.

Until the day one breaks the other’s heart …

Can Verity and Ruby find a way back to each other before it’s too late?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Eve Webster
Fiction

Andy and Terry have expanded their treehouse! There are now thirteen brand-new storeys, including a dodgem-car rink, a skate ramp, a mud-fighting arena, an antigravity chamber, an ice-cream parlour with seventy-eight flavours run by an ice-cream-serving robot called Edward Scooperhands, and the Maze of Doom – a maze so complicated that nobody who has gone in has ever come out again . . . well, not yet anyway . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Stig Wemyss
Suitable for ages 7+

Seeing Delia without her sunglasses on is a BIG shock for Tom, but that’s nothing compared with the surprise that Dad has in store with his new-found fitness regime! He says he’s going to compete at the school Sports Day. Can you even imagine the horrendous shame that will bring? Meanwhile Tom, Derek and Norman are also busy with a training regime of their own – practising with Dogzombies to make sure they’re ready for the school talent show.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Rupert Grint
Suitable for ages 7+

Is anything bothering you? Problems in class or at home? Don’t know where to turn for help? Log on to the Worry Website! Type in your worry and wait for the good advice to flow in.

At least that’s the plan when Mr Speed sets up his super-cool new Worry Website for the class. Holly, Greg, Natasha and the rest feel that they’ve got shed loads of worries but, as they find out, sometimes the best advice comes from the most unexpected place.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Helen Lederer
Suitable for ages 10+

Her throne awaits … if she can live long enough to take it.

It was on her nineteenth birthday that the soldiers came for Kelsea Glynn. They’d come to escort her back to the place of her birth – and to ensure she survives long enough to be able to take possession of what is rightfully hers.

But like many nineteen-year-olds, Kelsea is unruly, has high principles and believes she knows better than her elders. Unlike many nineteen-year-olds, she is about to inherit a kingdom that is on its knees – corrupt, debauched and dangerous.

Kelsea will either become the most fearsome ruler the kingdom has ever known … or be dead within the week.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Katherine Kellgren
Suitable for ages 13+

As 14-year-old Ella begins her first day at work she steps into a world of silks, seams, scissors, pins, hems and trimmings. She is a dressmaker, but this is no ordinary sewing workshop. Hers are no ordinary clients. 

Ella has joined the seamstresses of Birkenau-Auschwitz. Every dress she makes could mean the difference between life and death. And this place is all about survival. Ella seeks refuge from this reality, and from haunting memories, in her work and in the world of fashion and fabrics. 

She is faced with painful decisions about how far she is prepared to go to survive. Is her love of clothes and creativity nothing more than collaboration with her captors, or is it a means of staying alive? Will she fight for herself alone, or will she trust the importance of an ever-deepening friendship with Rose? One thing weaves through the colours of couture gowns and camp mud – a red ribbon, given to Ella as a symbol of hope. 

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Katy Sobey
Fiction

This is the age of addiction, a condition so epidemic, so all encompassing and ubiquitous that unless you are fortunate enough to be an extreme case, you probably don’t know that you have it.

What unhealthy habits and attachments are holding your life together? Are you unconsciously dependent on food? Bad relationships? A job that doesn’t fulfill you? Numb, constant perusal of your phone, looking for what?

My qualification for writing this book is not that I am better than you, it’s that I am worse. I am an addict, addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, money, love and fame.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Russell Brand
Non-Fiction

When Frank Woods at number seventy-nine Primrose Square comes home to a surprise birthday party thrown by his wife and adoring children, it is his guests who get the real surprise.

Finding himself alone, he befriends the cantankerous Miss Hardcastle, who hasn’t left her home for decades, and Emily Dunne – fresh out of rehab and desperate to make amends.

As gossip spreads through Primrose Square, every relationship is tested, and nothing in this close-knit community will ever be the same again . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Aoife McMahon
Fiction

For Jack Reacher being invisible has become a habit.

He spends his days digging swimming pools by hand and his nights as the bouncer in the local strip club in the Florida Keys.
He doesn’t want to be found.

But someone has sent a private detective to seek him out. Then Reacher finds the guy beaten to death with his fingertips sliced off. It’s time to head north and work out who is trying to find him and why.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Jeff Harding
Fiction

Seeking women ages 18-32 to participate in a study on ethics and morality. Generous compensation. Anonymity guaranteed.

When Jessica Farris signs up for a psychology study conducted by the mysterious Dr. Shields, she thinks all she’ll have to do is answer a few questions, collect her money, and leave.

Question #1: Could you tell a lie without feeling guilt?

But as the questions grow more and more intense and invasive and the sessions become outings where Jess is told what to wear and how to act, she begins to feel as though Dr. Shields may know what she’s thinking?and what she’s hiding.

Question #2: Have you ever deeply hurt someone you care about?

As Jess’s paranoia grows, it becomes clear that she can no longer trust what in her life is real, and what is one of Dr. Shields’ manipulative experiments. Caught in a web of deceit and jealousy, Jess quickly learns that some obsessions can be deadly.

Question #3: Should a punishment always fit the crime?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Julia Whelan and Barrie Kreinik
Fiction

These, heard over the phone, were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine – a 1982 Chateau Lafite worth £3000, to be precise.

Odd, considering he didn’t drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why was a three-digit number painted on the wall by the killer? And, most importantly, which of the man’s many, many enemies did the deed?

Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony, who’s really getting rather good at this murder investigation business.

But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. As our reluctant narrator becomes ever more embroiled in the case, he realises that these secrets must be exposed – even at the risk of death …

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Rory Kinnear
Fiction

Jane Tennison must navigate the salacious world of theatre to solve a brutal murder in the heart of London’s West End, in the brilliant new thriller from the Queen of Crime Drama, Lynda La Plante.

Things can’t get much worse for detective Jane Tennison. Unceremoniously kicked off the adrenaline-fuelled Flying Squad, she now plies her trade in Gerald Road, a small and sleepy police station in the heart of London’s affluent Knightsbridge.

With only petty crime to sink her teeth into, Tennison can feel her career slowly flatlining. That is until the discovery of the most brutal murder Jane has ever seen: Charlie Foxley has been found viciously beaten to death with a cricket bat – his body dismembered and disembowelled.

As a big-time theatrical agent, Foxley had a lot of powerful friends – but just as many enemies. And alongside her old friend DS Spencer Gibbs, Tennison must journey into the salacious world of show business to find out which one is the killer, before they strike again.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Rachel Atkins
Fiction

The coroner’s report identifies the body as young, black, female, and impossibly anonymous.

Yet one thing is clear to Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison about the latest victim, discovered in one of London’s poorest districts – that news of her murder will tear apart a city already cracking with racial tensions, hurling Scotland Yard and Tennison herself into a maelstrom of shocking accusations and sudden, wrenching violence.

Even as London’s brutal killer remains at large, Tennison remains locked in a struggle to overcome her station house’s brutal chauvinism and insidious politicking. And as the department’s deeply rooted racism rears its head to overshadow every facet of her new investigation, the trail of her prime suspect is growing colder.

Worse, when the details of the beleaguered detective’s stormy personal life explode across the headlines of London’s sleaziest tabloids, Tennison’s already frenzied determination to bring the killer to justice will be catapulted into obsession – one that could send her spiralling over the edge.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Rachel Atkins
Fiction

Tiffy and Leon share a flat.
Tiffy and Leon share a bed.
Tiffy and Leon have never met…

Tiffy Moore needs a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they’re crazy, but it’s the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy’s at work in the day, and she has the run of the place the rest of the time.

But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients at work, wrongly-imprisoned brothers and, of course, the fact that they still haven’t met yet, they’re about to discover that if you want the perfect home you need to throw the rulebook out the window…

Double bedroom in sunny one-bed Stockwell flat, rent £350 per month including bills. Available immediately, for six months minimum. Flat (and room/bed) is to share with twenty-seven-year-old Palliative care nurse who works nights and is away weekends. Only ever in the flat 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. All yours the rest of the time! Perfect for someone with 9 to 5 job.
To view, contact L. Twomey.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Kwaku Fortune and Carrie Hope Fletcher
Fiction

Have we reached a point where anxiety is so common we consider it ‘normal’? In this exploration of the rising anxiety epidemic, psychotherapist and bestselling author Stella O’Malley delves into why we are feeling more anxious, stressed and overwhelmed than ever.

From looking at how our increasingly perfectionist and materialistic society is causing us to value all the wrong things, to practical tips for uncovering the roots of anxiety and strategies to ease it, this book is an essential tool for building resilience to stress.

Anyone can experience anxiety at any time. Fragile arms us with the skills to move forward to a place where we can experience challenges to our mental health and feel adequately empowered to address them, allowing us to live calmer, more satisfying lives.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Stephanie Racine
Non-Fiction

Lisbon, 1943. After escaping from Nazi-Occupied France, SOE agent Elisabeth de Mornay, codename Cecile, receives new orders: she must infiltrate high society in neutral Lisbon and find out who is leaking key information to the Germans about British troop movements. As Solange Verin, a French widow of independent means, she will be able to meet all the rich Europeans who have gathered in Lisbon to wait out the war. One of them is a traitor, and she must find out who before more British servicemen die. 

Complications arise when ‘Solange’ comes to the attention of German Abwehr officer Major Eduard Graf. As they get to know each other, she struggles to keep her lies close to the truth. 

But in a city that is filled with spies, how can she tell who is friend or foe? 

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Kristin Atherton
Fiction

Strongest advocate, best friend, expert, cheerleader and chief photographer . . . Before, during and after labour the role of a midwife is second to none. The Secret Midwife reveals the highs and lows on the frontline of the maternity unit, from the mother that tries to give herself a DIY caesarean to the baby born into witness protection, and from surprise infants that arrive down toilets to ones that turn up in the lift.

But there is a problem; the system which is supposed to support the midwives and the women they care for is starting to crumble. Short-staffed, over worked and underappreciated – these crippling conditions are taking their toll on the dedicated staff doing their utmost to uphold our National Health Service, and the consequences are very serious indeed.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Gloria Sanders
Non-Fiction

‘I am Sofia. I am searching for my daughter, born 1st November 1972. Can you help me?’

On the beautiful beaches of Crete, an old woman is handing out scraps of paper. Sofia, eighty-five years old, unable to speak, is desperate to find a daughter she has never known. After a tragic childhood in Athens and a soaring career as a singer, the brutal treatment of the man she loved by a tyrannical regime forced her to give up her daughter mere days after her birth. Now she longs to be reunited with her child before it’s too late.

Meanwhile in London, Zoe is searching too. In the months since the disappearance of her teenage daughter, Zoe’s life has crumbled apart. Her husband has left her, her son feels forgotten, and every day is a struggle. But Zoe is desperate to track her daughter down, even if she doesn’t want to be found . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Mira Dovreni
Fiction

Set in a parallel world, Northern Lights tells the story of 12-year-old Lyra’s quest to rescue her friend and find her father, aided by her daemon, an armoured bear, and a witch-queen….

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Philip Pullman and Full Cast
Suitable for ages 13+

Ever feel like you’re losing a race you never signed up for?

Everyone in Amy’s life seems to be getting married, having children and settling down (or so Instagram tells her), and she feels like she’s falling behind.

So, when her long-term boyfriend surprises her with a dream holiday, she thinks he’s going to finally pop the Big Question. But the dream turns into a nightmare when, instead, she finds herself on the set of a Big Brother-style reality television show, The Shelf.

Along with five other women, Amy is brutally dumped live on TV and must compete in a series of humiliating and obnoxious tasks in the hope of being crowned ‘The Keeper’.

While inside the house, will Amy learn that there are worse things than being ‘left on the shelf’?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Daisy Edgar-Jones
Fiction

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford – her assigned name, Offred, means ‘of Fred’. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Amy Landecker, Ann Dowd, Elisabeth Moss and Bradley Whitford
Fiction

Love, calmness, confidence, gratitude, hope and happiness: these are the six emotions that tip the balance of our mindset in favour of a positive outlook rather than a negative one. Wouldn’t it be great to feel more of these positive emotions? Now you can with Fiona Brennan’s ultimate manual for the mind.

With a chapter on each emotion and practical steps on how to cultivate them, the plan utilises mindfulness, habit loops, positive psychology and neuroscience to help soothe anxiety and stress. It will show you how to train your brain to embrace negative thoughts with courage and love before transforming them into positive ones.

Accompanied by audio hypnotherapies that take just a few minutes a day, split between morning and evening, it will transform your mental health as you doze off peacefully to the sleep-time audio and start the day happy with the seven-minute morning ritual. Take control of your emotional health and build your ladder to happiness so that you flourish as you develop The Positive Habit.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Fiona Brennan
Non-Fiction

The Peaky Blinders as we know them, thanks to the hit TV series, are infused with drama and dread. Fashionably dressed, the charismatic but deeply flawed Shelby family blind enemies by slashing them with the disposable safety razor blades stitched in to the peaks of their flat caps, as they fight bloody gangland wars involving Irish terrorists and the authorities led by a devious Home Secretary, Winston Churchill.

But who were the real Peaky Blinders? Did they really exist?

Well-known social historian, broadcaster and author, Carl Chinn, has spent decades searching them out. Now he reveals the true story of the notorious Peaky Blinders, one of whom was his own great grandfather and, like the Shelbys, his grandfather was an illegal bookmaker in back-street Birmingham.

In this gripping social history, Chinn shines a light on the rarely reported struggles of the working class in one of the great cities of the British Empire before the First World War. The story continues after 1918 as some Peaky Blinders transformed into the infamous Birmingham Gang. Led by the real Billy Kimber, they fought a bloody war with the London gangsters Darby Sabini and Alfie Solomon over valuable protection rackets extorting money from bookmakers across the booming postwar racecourses of Britain.

Drawing together a remarkably wide-range of original sources, including interviews with relatives of the 1920s gangsters, Peaky Blinders: The Real Story adds a new dimension to the true history of Birmingham’s underworld and fact behind its fiction.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Carl Chinn
Non-Fiction

In North Devon, where the rivers Taw and Torridge converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father’s funeral takes place. The day Matthew turned his back on the strict evangelical community in which he grew up, he lost his family too.

Now he’s back, not just to mourn his father at a distance, but to take charge of his first major case in the Two Rivers region; a complex place not quite as idyllic as tourists suppose.

A body has been found on the beach near to Matthew’s new home: a man with the tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.

Finding the killer is Venn’s only focus, and his team’s investigation will take him straight back into the community he left behind, and the deadly secrets that lurk there.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Ben Aldridge
Fiction

Robin Davis hasn’t spoken to her family in six years.
Not since it happened.

Then they’re attacked; left fighting for their lives.
And Robin is back.

All families have their secrets.
And one of theirs may have put them all in terrible danger . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Brittany Pressley
Fiction

Athens 1941. After decades of political uncertainty, Greece is polarised between Right- and Left-wing views when the Germans invade.

Fifteen-year-old Themis comes from a family divided by these political differences. The Nazi occupation deepens the fault-lines between those she loves just as it reduces Greece to destitution. She watches friends die in the ensuing famine and is moved to commit acts of resistance.

In the civil war that follows the end of the occupation, Themis joins the Communist army, where she experiences the extremes of love and hatred and the paradoxes presented by a war in which Greek fights Greek. Eventually imprisoned on the infamous islands of exile, Makronisos and then Trikeri, Themis encounters another prisoner whose life will entwine with her own in ways neither can foresee. And finds she must weigh her principles against her desire to escape and live.

As she looks back on her life, Themis realises how tightly the personal and political can become entangled. While some wounds heal, others deepen.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Juliet Stevenson
Fiction

An ugly duckling as a child, Jodie Bentley had two dreams in life – to be beautiful and rich. She’s achieved the first, with a little help from a plastic surgeon, and now she’s working hard on the second. Her philosophy on money is simple: you can either earn it or marry it. Marrying is easy, it’s getting rid of the husband afterwards that’s harder, that takes real skill. But hey, practice makes perfect . . .

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is feeling the pressure from his superiors, his previous case is still giving him sleepless nights, there have been major developments with his missing wife Sandy, and an old adversary is back. But worse than all of this, he now believes a Black Widow is operating in his city. One with a venomous mind . . . and venomous skills. Soon Grace comes to the frightening realization that he may have underestimated just how dangerous this lady is.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Daniel Weyman
Fiction

James is getting on a bit and needs full-time help. So Phoebe and Robert, his middle-aged offspring, employ Mandy, who seems willing to take him off their hands. But as James regales his family with tales of Mandy’s virtues, their shopping trips and the shared pleasure of their journeys to garden centres, Phoebe and Robert sense something is amiss. Is this really their father, the distant figure who never once turned up for a sports day, now happily chortling over cuckoo clocks and television soaps?

Then something happens that throws everything into new relief, and Phoebe and Robert discover that life most definitely does not stop for the elderly. It just moves onto a very different plane – changing all the stories they thought they knew so well.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Patience Tomlinson
Fiction

The past never stays buried for long …

Detective Chief Inspector Ryan believes he has put his turbulent history behind him. Then, in the early hours of the summer solstice, the skeleton of a young woman is found inside the Roman Wall at Sycamore Gap. She has lain undiscovered for 10 years, and it is Ryan’s job to piece together her past.

Enquiry lines cross and merge as Ryan is forced to face his own demons and enter into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a killer who seems unstoppable.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Daniel Weyman
Fiction

Thirty years ago, Vincent King became a killer.

Now, he’s been released from prison and is back in his hometown of Cape Haven, California. Not everyone is pleased to see him. Like Star Radley, his ex-girlfriend, and sister of the girl he killed.

Duchess Radley, Star’s thirteen-year-old daughter, is part-carer, part-protector to her younger brother, Robin – and to her deeply troubled mother. But in trying to protect Star, Duchess inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will have tragic consequences not only for her family, but also the whole town.

Murder, revenge, retribution.

How far can we run from the past when the past seems doomed to repeat itself?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by George Newbern
Fiction

In Traces, Professor Patricia Wiltshire will take you on a journey through the fascinating edgeland where nature and crime are intertwined.

She’ll take you searching for bodies of loved ones – through woodlands, along hedgerows, field-edges, and through plantations – solving time since death, and disposal of remains, from ditches to living rooms. She will give you glimpses of her own history: her loves, her losses, and the narrow little valley in Wales where she first woke up to the wonders of the natural world. Pat will show you how her work with a microscope reveals tell-tale traces of the world around us, and how these have taken suspects of the darkest criminal activities to court.

From flowers, fungi, tree trunks to car pedals, walking boots, carpets, and corpses’ hair, Traces is a fascinating, unique, and utterly compelling audiobook on life, death, and one’s indelible link with nature.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Antonia Beamish
Non-Fiction

In this collection there is mystery and magic, laughter and mischief, the joy of shared times and plenty of delicious food – many of the ingredients that have been delighting Enid Blyton’s fans for more than seventy years.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Jilly Bond
Suitable for ages 3+

When Amelia wants a wish to come true she knows just the man to ask – Father Christmas.

But the magic she wants to believe in is starting to fade, and Father Christmas has more than impossible wishes to worry about. Upset elves, reindeers dropping out of the sky, angry trolls and the chance that Christmas might be cancelled.

But Amelia isn’t just any ordinary girl. And – as Father Christmas is going to find out – if Christmas is going to be saved, he might not be able to do it alone . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Carey Mulligan
Suitable for ages 5+

Winston the mouse is on a Very Important Mission. On Christmas Eve, he finds a letter that has gotten lost on its way to Father Christmas – so, with no time to lose, he sets out to deliver it himself in time for Christmas Day! He has a lot of Very Exciting Adventures on his Very Important Mission and makes some wonderful friends along the way.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Mathew Baynton
Suitable for ages 5+

Back to school, but it’s not all bad. Sports Day, the school fair and Tom’s birthday are all coming up. And even better, his awful big sister Delia won’t be at any of those events! On the downside, Granny Mavis is threatening to make his birthday cake – uh oh! But on the other hand, Mr Keen has asked Dogzombies to perform in front of the whole school! YEAH! Maybe they can even play at the school disco too. How can the term turn out any less than seriously amazing?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Rupert Grint
Suitable for ages 7+

CINDER, a gifted mechanic in New Beijing, is also a cyborg. She’s reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s sudden illness. But when her life becomes entwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she finds herself at the centre of a violent struggle between the desires of an evil queen – and a dangerous temptation.

Cinder is caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal. Now she must uncover secrets about her mysterious past in order to protect Earth’s future.

This is not the fairytale you remember. But it’s one you won’t forget.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Rebecca Soler
Suitable for ages 13+

Disillusioned journalist Tom Langdon must get from Washington to LA in time for Christmas. Forced to take the train across the country because of a slight ‘misunderstanding’ at airport security, he begins a journey of self-discovery and rude awakenings, mysterious goings-on and thrilling adventures, screwball escapades and holiday magic.
He has no idea that the locomotives pulling him across America will actually take him into the rugged terrain of his own heart, where he will rediscover people’s essential goodness and someone very special he believed he had lost.
In equal parts hilarious, poignant, suspenseful and thrilling, The Christmas Train by David Baldacci is a delightful journey filled with memorable characters who have packed their bags with as much wisdom as mischief . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Tim Matheson
Fiction

Ailsa Rae is learning how to live.

She’s only a few months past the heart transplant that – just in time – saved her life. Life should be a joyful adventure. But . . .

Her relationship with her mother is at breaking point and she wants to find her father. Have her friends left her behind? She’s felt so helpless for so long that she’s let polls on her blog make her decisions for her. She barely knows where to start on her own.

Then there’s Lennox. Her best friend and one time lover. He was sick too. He didn’t make it. And now she’s supposed to face all of this without him.

But her new heart is a bold heart.
She just needs to learn to listen to it . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Cathleen McCarron
Fiction

Last Seen Wearing is the second novel in Colin Dexter’s Oxford-set detective series.
Morse was beset by a nagging feeling. Most of his fanciful notions about the Taylor girl had evaporated and he had begun to suspect that further investigation into Valerie’s disappearance would involve little more than sober and tedious routine . . .
The statements before Inspector Morse appeared to confirm the bald, simple truth.
After leaving home to return to school, teenager Valerie Taylor had completely vanished, and the trail had gone cold.
Until two years, three months and two days after Valerie’s disappearance, somebody decides to supply some surprising new evidence for the case . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Samuel West
Fiction

London, 1937.

With a new king in place, tensions are rising in London and across Europe. Shaken by the Great Depression and with
talk of another war coming, the Buckingham Hotel is trying to regain some stability.

Upstairs, Vivienne Edgerton is desperate to do something worthwhile with her time and her stepfather’s money, rather than spending it on frivolity and debauchery – but will this land her in even more trouble?

And downstairs, chambermaid Nancy Nettleton is finally starting to feel more settled at the Buckingham, and hopes her brother will soon call London home, too. But she misses the man she loves, demonstration dancer Raymond de Guise, who is noticeably absent from the Grand Ballroom dance floor.

The staff and guests of the Buckingham soon discover that in a hotel full of secrets, there’s always someone listening . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Thomas Judd
Fiction

England 1648. A dangerous time for a woman to be different …

Midsummer’s Eve, 1648, and England is in the grip of civil war between renegade King and rebellious Parliament. The struggle reaches every corner of the kingdom, even to the remote Tidelands – the marshy landscape of the south coast.

Alinor, a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run, and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing that she is leading disaster into the heart of her life.

Suspected of possessing dark secrets in superstitious times, Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her out from her neighbours. This is the time of witch-mania, and Alinor, a woman without a husband, skilled with herbs, suddenly enriched, arouses envy in her rivals and fear among the villagers, who are ready to take lethal action into their own hands.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Louise Brealey
Fiction

Everybody believes that Charlotte Lucas has no prospects. She is unmarried, plain, poor and reaching a dangerous age. When she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of buffoonish clergyman Mr Collins, her best friend Lizzy Bennet is appalled by her decision. Yet this is the only way Charlotte knows how to provide for her future. Her married life will propel her into a new world: not only of duty and longed-for children, but secrets, grief, unexpected love and friendship, and a kind of freedom.

Jane Austen cared deeply about the constraints on women in Regency England. This powerful reimagining takes up where Austen left off in Pride and Prejudice, showing us a woman determined to carve a place for herself in the world. Charlotte offers a fresh, feminist addition to the post-Austen canon, beautifully imagined, and brimming with passion and intelligence.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Isabella Inchbald
Fiction

When Alice Love surfaces from a beautiful dream to find she’s been injured in a gym, she knows that something is very wrong – she hates exercise. Alice’s first concern is her baby – she’s pregnant with her first child, and she’s desperate to see her husband, Nick, who she knows will be worried about her.

But Alice isn’t pregnant. And Nick isn’t worried. Alice is the mother of three children and her hostile husband is in the process of divorcing her. Alice has lost ten years of her life.

In the days that follow, small bubbles of the past rise to the surface, and Alice is forced to confront uncomfortable truths. It turns out forgetting might be the most memorable thing that’s ever happened to her.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Caroline Lee
Fiction

Her beauty saved her life – and condemned her.

Cilka was only sixteen-years-old when she was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, in 1942. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, noticed her long beautiful hair, and forced her separation from the other women prisoners.

Cilka did what she had to in order to survive Auschwitz. And yet after Russian soldiers liberated Auschwitz in 1945, Cilka was charged as a collaborator and sentenced to serve a fifteen-year sentence for ‘sleeping with the enemy’. Once again, she found herself on a brutal train journey, crammed into a carriage with many desperate women and children. This time, her destination was Siberia. She was by then only eighteen-years-old.

So began a new life of horror and brutality in a prison camp close to the Arctic Circle. But in this unimaginable darkness, this terror beyond terror, Cilka found endless resources within herself, her profound humanity and determination helping her to survive against all odds.

Cilka’s Journey is a remarkable novel of courage and resilience, based upon the heart-breaking true story of Cilka Klein.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Louise Brealey
Fiction

A warm-hearted and nostalgic festive family saga – Will Tilly finally find a family to call her own?

As Christmas grows nearer, Tilly, a young maid, is sent away from her home in London to care for a sick child in an old cottage on the Isle of Sheppey, and she little imagines how her life will change . . .

Having settled in with her new family, Tilly dares to believe that the happiness she’s longed for could be hers at last, and that she might finally be free from the secrets of her past. But tragedy strikes, and Tilly is forced to return to London, leaving the cottage under the sea wall – and her new life – behind.

As war approaches and new challenges arise, will Tilly be able to overcome her struggles and find her way home?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Eve Webster
Fiction

How do you make a commitment and achieve your goals?
How do you end procrastination and hesitation that feeds self-doubt?
How do you learn to be courageous in all aspects of your life?

Ex-Special Forces soldier Ollie Ollerton knows more than his fair share about keeping going. As a recruit he survived the infamously tough SAS selection process on a busted ankle with the Directing Staff pleading with him to give up. But it’s in Ollie’s personal life that he really had to dig deep. At his lowest he was battling a failed relationship, substance abuse, depression and a reckless disregard for his own life. In his new book Ollie tells the story of how he turned his life around and passes on the lessons he has learned.

In Battle Ready Ollie shares the step-by-step plan that changed his life. From finding purpose and visualising an outcome, to breaking bad habits and establishing positive new routines, his advice will help readers to overcome their own obstacles; to become ready for any battle.

Featuring an exclusive debrief with Ollie and Jason Fox (co-host of SAS: Who Dares Wins, and author of Battle Scars and Life Under Fire).

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Ollie Ollerton
Non-Fiction

There are things only a President can know.

There are things only a President can do.

And then there are times when the only option is unthinkable …

The President is Missing.

The thriller only a president could write.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by January LaVoy, Mozhan Marnò, Peter Ganim, Dennis Quaid and Jeremy Davidson
Fiction

In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the ‘essential nature’ of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Tilda Swinton
Non-Fiction

Fame and popularity breed envy in high places, and the adulation of the mob is fickle. They often take as much pleasure in tearing down the idols that they have grown tired of as they did in elevating them in the first place. It is safer by far to live unseen and unremarked, as I always attempt to do.

An ancient kingdom. An incredible destiny.

Taita is a humble slave, an expert in art, poetry, medicine and engineering as well as keeping important secrets. He is the most treasured possession of Lord Intef. Yet when Intef’s beautiful daughter, Lostris, is married to the Pharaoh, Taita is commanded to follow her and swiftly finds himself deeper than he ever could have imagined in a world of deception and treachery.

But outside the palace, the great kingdom of Egypt is divided and in even greater danger. Enemies threaten on all sides, and only Taita holds the power to save them all….

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Mark Meadows
Fiction

No secret stays buried forever . . .
In London, the snow is falling and Christmas is just around the corner – but Allegra Fisher barely has time to notice. She’s pitching for the biggest deal of her career and can’t afford to fail. And when she meets attractive stranger, Sam Kemp, on the plane to the meeting, she can’t afford to lose her focus either. She learned to shut off her emotions long ago and only her sister and best friend Isobel knows why. But when Allegra finds herself up against Sam for the bid, their passion quickly turns sour.
In Zermatt in the Swiss Alps, a long-lost mountain hut is discovered in the snow after sixty years and the last person expecting to become involved is Allegra – she hasn’t even heard of the woman they found inside. But it soon becomes clear the two women are linked and, as she and Iz travel out to make sense of the mystery, hearts thaw and dark secrets are uncovered, long buried by the snow.
With glamorous locations and heart-breaking twists, Christmas in the Snow by Karen Swan is all you need in your stocking for a truly decadent Christmas holiday. The perfect gift – even if it’s just to yourself.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Katie Scarfe
Fiction

An unlikely friendship. A dangerous voyage. A story about what it means to be human.
Humans went extinct thirty years ago. Now the world is ruled by machines. And twelve-year-old robot XR_935 is just fine with that. Without humans around, there is no war, no pollution, no crime. Every member of society has a purpose. Everything runs smoothly and efficiently.
Until the day XR discovers something impossible.
Until the day XR discovers a twelve-year-old human.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Paul Panting
Suitable for ages 10+

The monster showed up after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming…

This monster is something different though. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Jason Isaacs and Patrick Ness
Suitable for ages 13+

From London – Georgia gets straight As at school, writes essays for fun, has been placed first in twenty-six drone races and has a serious addiction to buying Japanese stationery. She plans to follow her older sister Sophie and become a doctor, but her worldview is shattered when Sophie commits suicide. To Lagos – Julius lives in Ondo, a Nigerian state where half the population lives on less than a dollar a day. But he isn’t one of them. His uncle has been governor of Ondo for more than a decade and his mother is the power behind that throne. He finds refuge in a derelict zoo with best friend Duke, but as the two of them grow close, the world outside becomes more and more hostile.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Esme Sears
Suitable for ages 14+

This is not a detective story, this is a story about a detective

William Warwick has always wanted to be a detective, and decides, much to his father’s dismay, that rather than become a barrister like his father, Sir Julian Warwick QC, and his sister Grace, he will join London’s Metropolitan Police Force.

After graduating from university, William begins a career that will define his life: from his early months on the beat under the watchful eye of his first mentor, Constable Fred Yates, to his first high-stakes case as a fledgling detective in Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques squad. Investigating the theft of a priceless Rembrandt painting from the Fitzmolean Museum, he meets Beth Rainsford, a research assistant at the gallery who he falls hopelessly in love with, even as Beth guards a secret of her own that she’s terrified will come to light.

While William follows the trail of the missing masterpiece, he comes up against suave art collector Miles Faulkner and his brilliant lawyer, Booth Watson QC, who are willing to bend the law to breaking point to stay one step ahead of William. Meanwhile, Miles Faulkner’s wife, Christina, befriends William, but whose side is she really on?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by George Blagden
Fiction

‘Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them . . .’

So begins this irresistible voyage into the dark side of Victorian London. Amongst an unforgettable cast of low-lifes, physicians, businessmen and prostitutes, meet our heroine Sugar, a young woman trying to drag herself up from the gutter any way she can. Be prepared for a mesmerising tale of passion, intrigue, ambition and revenge.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Jill Tanner
Fiction

Two women from different worlds. And a secret that will change everything…

London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara at London’s Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst – that Clara has died in care – the last thing she expects to hear is that her daughter has already been reclaimed – by her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl – and why.

Less than a mile from Bess’ lodgings in the city, in a quiet, gloomy townhouse on the edge of London, a young widow has not left the house in a decade. When her close friend – an ambitious young doctor at the Foundling Hospital – persuades her to hire a nursemaid for her daughter, she is hesitant to welcome someone new into her home and her life. But her past is threatening to catch up with her and tear her carefully constructed world apart.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Laura Aikman and Hattie Morahan
Fiction

From the number one bestselling author, Peter James, comes an explosive standalone thriller that will grip you and won’t let go until the very last page.

Investigative reporter Ross Hunter nearly didn’t answer the phone call that would change his life – and possibly the world – for ever.

‘I’d just like to assure you I’m not a nutcase, Mr Hunter. My name is Dr Harry F. Cook. I know this is going to sound strange, but I’ve recently been given absolute proof of God’s existence – and I’ve been advised there is a writer, a respected journalist called Ross Hunter, who could help me to get taken seriously.’

What would it take to prove the existence of God? And what would be the consequences?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Hugh Bonneville
Fiction

After being together for ten years, Sylvie and Dan have a comfortable home, fulfilling jobs, beautiful twin girls, and communicate so seamlessly, they finish each other’s sentences. They have a happy marriage and believe they know everything there is to know about each other. Until it’s casually mentioned to them that they could be together for another 68 years … and panic sets in.

They quickly decide to create little surprises for each other, to keep their relationship fresh and fun. But in their pursuit of Project Surprise Me – anything from unexpected gifts to restaurant dates to photo shoots – mishaps arise with disastrous and comical results.

Gradually, the surprises turn to shocking discoveries. And when a scandal from the past is uncovered, they begin to wonder if they ever really knew each other after all…

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Fiona Hardingham
Fiction

She must fight to prove herself . . . before it’s too late

DCI Jane Tennison came through the ranks the hard way, opposed and resented at every step by her male colleagues.

When a prostitute is found murdered in her bedsit, the Metropolitan police set to work finding the perpetrator of this brutal attack. DNA samples lead them straight to known-criminal George Marlow. The police think they’ve found their man, but things are not quite what they seem. . .

Desperate to remove all doubt around her suspect, Tennison struggles to make the charges stick. And then a second body turns up.

With the team against her, DCI Jane Tennison is in a race against time to catch a dangerous criminal ­- and prove she’s just as tough as any man.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Rachel Atkins
Fiction

She says he’s perfect. I know he’s lying . . .

He caught me watching, and our eyes met. That was when it hit me.
There was something not quite right about my daughter’s new boyfriend. . .

The doting father

Ed finally meets his daughter’s boyfriend for the first time. Smart, successful and handsome, Ryan appears to be a real catch. Then Abbie announces their plan to get married.

The perfect fiancé
There’s just one problem. Ed thinks Ryan is lying to them.
Who would you believe?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Philip Stevens
Fiction

The most moving and powerful novel of our times, inspired by true events.
We all have something to tell those we have lost . . .

When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, life must somehow continue.

Then one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone box in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone box spreads, people will travel to it from miles around.

Soon Yui will make her own pilgrimage to the phone box, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Then she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss.

What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking.
For when you’ve lost everything – what can you find . . ?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Yuriri Naka
Fiction

Here is an unbelievable journey to the truth of life as a GP, through spilt urine bottles, the patients who should have been in hospital months ago, existential crises, utterly unexplainable health problems and awkward silences.

Being a GP is a job that requires you to be a detective, relationship counsellor, social worker, friend, sex therapist, parent-fi gure and sometimes, just sometimes, a doctor.

Find out why you only get ten minutes with a GP, why you can never see the same doctor and why they are ALWAYS running late. This is what really goes on in your local doctor’s surgery, through the tired yet tireless eyes of a doctor who, despite it all, really loves his job.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Kris Dyer
Non-Fiction

The lives of the Barretts, a suburban New England family, are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents despair, the doctors are unable to halt Marjorie’s descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry. As she recalls the terrifying events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories begin to surface and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Joy Osmanski
Fiction

Odo and Eleanor are now officially knights, helped (and sometimes hindered) by their magical but rather difficult to control magical swords. But if they thought life as a knight was going to be easy, they are wrong! Before they know it, their first task is to tackle some ferocious bile wolves! A funny fantasy triumph from Garth Nix and Sean Williams, the perfect sequel to Have Sword, Will Travel.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Oliver Hembrough
Suitable for ages 8+

Twelve-year-old Joe Warden isn’t happy. Sure, he’s rich, but his parents don’t care about him. His grandmother should make everything better, except that Joe’s granny is a nightmare. She’s not just physically repulsive, she’s horribly mean. Everyone thinks she’s just a dotty old woman, but Joe knows the truth. He’s seen behind her mask and glimpsed the wicked glimmer in her eyes – she is pure evil. And now she’s out to get Joe, unless he can stop her and her band of nasty grannies first.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Nickolas Grace
Suitable for ages 10+

It’s late one night at the Spanish port of Algeciras and two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing, their world has come asunder – can it be put together again?

Night Boat to Tangier is a novel drenched in sex and death and narcotics, in sudden violence and old magic, but it is obsessed, above all, with the mysteries of love. A tragicomic masterwork from a multi-award-winning writer, Night Boat to Tangier is both mordant and hilarious, lyrical yet laden with menace.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Kevin Barry
Fiction

Cotswolds inhabitants are used to inclement weather, but the night sky is especially foggy as Rory and Molly Devere, the new vicar and his wife, drive slowly home from a dinner party in their village of Sumpton Harcourt. They strain to see the road ahead – and then suddenly brake, screeching to a halt. Right in front of them, aglow in the headlights, a body hangs from a gnarled tree at the edge of town. Margaret Darby, an elderly spinster, has been murdered – and the villagers are bewildered as to who would commit such a crime.

Agatha Raisin rises to the occasion (a little glad for the excitement, to tell the truth, after a long run of lost cats and divorces on the books). But Sumpton Harcourt is a small and private village, she finds – a place that poses more questions than answers. And when two more murders follow the first, Agatha begins to fear for her reputation – and even her life. That the village has its own coven of witches certainly doesn’t make her feel any better …

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Penelope Keith
Fiction

n February 2014, Reni Eddo-Lodge posted an impassioned argument on her blog about her deep-seated frustration with the way discussions of race and racism in Britain were constantly being shut down by those who weren’t affected by it. She gave the post the title ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’. Her sharp, fiercely intelligent words hit a nerve, and the post went viral, spawning a huge number of comments from people desperate to speak up about their own similar experiences.

Galvanised by this response, Eddo-Lodge decided to dive into the source of these feelings, this clear hunger for an open discussion. The result is a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary exploration of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today, covering issues from eradicated black history to white privilege, the fallacy of ‘meritocracy’ to whitewashing feminism, and the inextricable link between class and race. Full of passionate, personal and keenly felt argument, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race is a wake-up call to a nation in denial about the structural and institutional racism occurring in our homes.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Non-Fiction

He is known to the Germans as ‘Sphinx’, to others as Alex Wolff, a European businessman. He arrives suddenly in Cairo from out of the desert, armed with a radio set, a lethal blade and a copy of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca – a ruthless man with a burning, relentless conviction that he will win at all costs.

The stakes are high, for the survival of the British campaign in North Africa is in the balance. Only Major William Vandam, an intelligence officer, and the beautiful courtesan Elene can put an end to Wolff’s brilliant clandestine reports of British troop movements and strategic plans.

As Rommel’s troops come closer to victory, Vandam edges nearer to Wolff and the crucial key. Follett builds tension and suspense to a nerve-tearing pitch as he follows the adversaries across the infernal desert to a confrontation which will determine who wins – and loses – in this deathly struggle.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Tim Downie
Fiction

When she’s not digging up bones or other ancient objects, Ruth Galloway lectures at the University of North Norfolk. She lives happily alone in a remote place called Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea and, for company; she has her cats Flint and Sparky, and Radio 4. When a child’s bones are found in the marshes near an ancient site that Ruth worked on ten years earlier, Ruth is asked to date them.

The bones turn out to be 2000 years old, and DCI Harry Nelson, who called on Ruth for help, is disappointed. He’d hoped they would be the bones of a child called Lucy who’s been missing for ten years; he’s been getting letters about her ever since. Then a second girl goes missing and Nelson receives more letters.

Soon it becomes clear that Ruth is in grave danger from a killer who knows that her expert knowledge is being used to help the police with their enquiries.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Jane McDowell
Fiction

After the Sickness has killed off her parents, and the bombs have fallen on the last safe cities, Monster emerges from the Arctic vault which has kept her alive. When she washes up on the coast of Scotland, everyone she knows is dead, and she believes she is alone in an empty world. Monster begins the long walk south, scavenging and learning the contours of this familiar land made new. Slowly, piece by piece, she begins to rebuild a life. Until, one day, she finds a girl: another survivor, feral, and ready to be taught all that Monster knows. But the lessons the girl learns are not always those Monster means to teach . . . I

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Christine Hewitt
Fiction

When a creature dies, its spirit can go looking for somewhere to hide.
Some people have space inside them, perfect for hiding.

Makepeace, a courageous girl with a mysterious past, defends herself nightly from the ghosts which try to possess her. Then a dreadful event causes her to drop her guard for a moment.
And now there’s a ghost inside her.
The spirit is wild, brutish and strong, but it may be her only defence in a time of dark suspicion and fear. As the English Civil War erupts, Makepeace must decide which is worse: possession – or death.

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Narrated by Tuppence Middleton
Fiction

Perdita Lee may appear your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor flat with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there’s the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it’s very popular in Druhástrana, the far-away (and, according to Wikipedia, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee’s early youth. In fact, the world’s truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread is Harriet’s charismatic childhood friend, Gretel Kercheval – a figure who seems to have had a hand in everything (good or bad) that has happened to Harriet since they met.

Years later, when teenaged Perdita sets out to find her mother’s long-lost friend, it prompts a new telling of Harriet’s story, as well as a reunion or two. As the book follows the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work, wealth, and real estate, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that reliably holds a constant value.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Helen Oyeyemi
Fiction

London, 1960

The lives of teenage twins Maisy and Duncan change for ever the night their sick mother is taken to an asylum. Sent to live in the New Forest with their cold-hearted grandmother, Mrs Mitcham, they feel unloved and abandoned.

At least they have each other.

But one day Duncan doesn’t come home from exploring in the forest and no one – least of all his grandmother – appears to care about his disappearance. The police, who’ve found the bodies of other missing boys, offer little hope of finding Duncan alive.

Yet Maisy refuses to give up. Though she doesn’t know the woods well, she knows someone who does. The strange old woman who lives at their heart.

Dare Maisy enlist the help of the woman in the wood?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Rosie Jones
Fiction

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.

What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women.

For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that ‘the Ripper’ preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time – but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Louise Brealey
Non-Fiction

Julie is devastated to learn that her husband, Paul, is having an affair. It seems her life can’t get any worse – until she comes home to find his dead body in their bed.

When the police establish he was murdered, Julie is the obvious suspect. To protect her son from the terrible situation, Julie sends the teenage boy to his grandparents in Edinburgh while she fights to prove her innocence.

With all the evidence pointing to her, the only way she can escape conviction is by discovering the true identity of her husband’s killer. But who really did murder Paul?

The truth is never straightforward …

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Phillipa Leigh
Fiction

Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband.

In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God. The letters, spanning 20 years, record a journey of self-discovery and empowerment guided by the light of a few strong women. She meets Shug Avery, her husband’s mistress and a jazz singer with a zest for life, and her stepson’s wife, Sophia, who challenges her to fight for independence. And though the many letters from Celie’s sister are hidden by her husband, Nettie’s unwavering support will prove to be the most breathtaking of all.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Alice Walker
Fiction

Rebecca Neumanner’s marriage is on the brink of collapse, as her desire to be a mother becomes an obsession. Then she receives news from her estranged family in Rhodes.

Called back to the beautiful Greek island of her birth, she realises how little she knows of the grandmother she has eluded for over a decade. Bubba has never spoken of the Nazi occupation during her youth, but there have always been whispers. What desperate measures did she take that terrible day in 1944 when her family was ripped apart? Can the rumour she had blood on her own hands really be true? But Bubba intends to take her secrets to the grave.

However, as Rebecca arrives on Rhodes, bringing the promise of new life, this broken family must come together. The time has come to tell the truth about the darkest of days . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Lucy Paterson 
Fiction

At dinnertime Chef Marge cooks up chocolate soup, and at school Marge the Musician conducts a chaotic concert in the playground!

In these three stories, Jake and Jemima have brilliant fun with their new babysitter, but will they manage to tick off all the jobs on Mummy’s list? The first in a fresh, fun, family – friendly series written by actor and comedian Isla Fisher.

Hold onto your rollerskates because Marge is in charge!

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Isla Fisher
Suitable for ages 5+

Best friends Freddy and Sal have accidentally intercepted a message from Alan – a spectacularly grumpy, brain-munching alien from outer space. Alan has only one message. Earth is going to be invaded in exactly ten hours’ time.

Soon the police, NASA and even Presidents from around the world are getting involved – and Freddy is about to become the most famous kid on planet earth for all the wrong reasons. Wolverhampton, we have a problem.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Helen Monks
Suitable for ages 7+

Two young women from totally different backgrounds are thrown together during World War II: one a working-class girl from Manchester, the other a Scottish aristocrat, one a pilot, the other a wireless operator. Yet whenever their paths cross, they complement each other perfectly and before long become devoted friends. But then a vital mission goes wrong, and one of the friends has to bail out of a faulty plane over France. She is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war.

The story begins in Verity’s own words, as she writes her account for her captors.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Lucy Gaskell and Morven Christie
Suitable for ages 13+

When a family man is killed at point blank range in his home, it shakes a sleepy town to its core. The murder is a strange, horrifying crime but for the authorities it’s an open-and-shut case.

Ten years on, the victim’s daughter, Josie, has started afresh in New York – far from the tragic events that blew her family apart. No-one knows the truth about her previous life, not even her fiancé.

Investigative journalist Poppy is convinced the wrong man is in jail for the murder and she’s determined to prove it. What starts off as a true-crime podcast snowballs into a national phenomenon and everyone has an opinion on the case. Poppy’s relentless pursuit of the truth threatens to expose old secrets. Josie realizes that her father’s murder could have consequences more devastating than she had ever imagined.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Rebekkah Ross
Fiction

A picture hides a thousand words …

On a hot July day in 1967, Odelle Bastien climbs the stone steps of the Skelton gallery in London, knowing that her life is about to change forever. Having struggled to find her place in the city since she arrived from Trinidad five years ago, she has been offered a job as a typist under the tutelage of the glamorous and enigmatic Marjorie Quick. But though Quick takes Odelle into her confidence, and unlocks a potential she didn’t know she had, she remains a mystery – no more so than when a lost masterpiece with a secret history is delivered to the gallery.

The truth about the painting lies in 1936 and a large house in rural Spain, where Olive Schloss, the daughter of a renowned art dealer, is harbouring ambitions of her own. Into this fragile paradise come artist and revolutionary Isaac Robles and his half-sister Teresa, who immediately insinuate themselves into the Schloss family, with explosive and devastating consequences …

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Cathy Tyson
Fiction

There are so many stories hidden behind closed doors . . .

It’s late at night and the rain is pouring down on the Dublin city streets. A mother is grieving for her dead child. She stands silently outside the home of the teenage boy she believes responsible. She watches . . .

In a kitchen on the same square, a girl waits anxiously for her mum to come home. She knows exactly where she is, but she knows she cannot reach her.
A few doors down, and a widow sits alone in her room. She has just delivered a bombshell to her family during dinner and her life is about to change forever.
And an aspiring theatre director has just moved in to a flat across the street. Her landlord is absent, but there are already things about him that don’t quite add up . . .

Welcome to Primrose Square.

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Narrated by Aoife McMahon
Fiction

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Mark Meadows
Fiction

A decade ago, kidnappers grabbed two boys from wealthy families and demanded ransom, then went silent. No trace of the boys ever surfaced. For ten years their families have been left with nothing but painful memories and a quiet desperation for the day that has finally, miraculously arrived: Myron Bolitar and his friend Win believe they have located one of the boys, now a teenager. Where has he been for ten years, and what does he know about the day, more than half a life ago, when he was taken? And most critically: What can he tell Myron and Win about the fate of his missing friend?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Steven Weber
Fiction

This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them. . .

In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash . . .

The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all. . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Natalie Haynes
Fiction

Timely, humorous and deeply moving. This is the absolute standout new novel by acclaimed author (and 2018 Asian Woman of Achievement nominee) Ayisha Malik

For years Bilal Hasham and his wife Mariam have lived contented, quiet lives in the sleepy rural village of Babbel’s End. Now all that is about to change.

On her deathbed, Bilal’s mother reaches for his hand. Instead of whispering her final prayers, she gives him a task: build a mosque in his country village.

Mariam is horrified by Bilal’s plan. His friends and neighbours are unnerved. As outrage sweeps Babbel’s End, battle lines are drawn. His mother’s dying wish reveals deeper divisions in their village than Bilal had ever imagined.

Soon Bilal is forced to choose between community and identity, between faith and friendship, between honouring his beloved mother’s last wish and preserving what is held dear in the place that he calls home.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Rita Sharma
Fiction

London, 1941. Emmeline Lake and her best friend Bunty are trying to stay cheerful despite the Luftwaffe making life thoroughly annoying for everyone. Emmy dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent and when she spots a job advertisement in the newspaper she seizes her chance – but after a rather unfortunate misunderstanding, she finds herself typing letters for the formidable Henrietta Bird, the renowned agony aunt of Woman’s Friend magazine.
Mrs Bird is very clear: letters containing any form of Unpleasantness must go straight into the bin. But as Emmy reads the desperate pleas from women who may have Gone Too Far with the wrong man, or can’t bear to let their children be evacuated, she decides the only thing for it is to secretly write back . . .

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Anna Popplewell
Fiction

At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in an fostered family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth.

Here Sissay recounts his life story. It is a story of neglect and determination. Misfortune and hope. Cruelty and triumph.

Sissay reflects on a childhood in care, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home. Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation’s best-loved poets, this moving, frank and timely memoir is the result of a life spent asking questions, and a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Zoe Mills, Lemn Sissay and Richard Burnip
Non-Fiction