A BBC Radio 4 full-cast production of Homer’s epic seafaring adventure, dramatised by award-winning poet Simon Armitage and starring Tim McInnerny, Amanda Redman & Benedict Cumberbatch.‘My fame is written in the heavens, and my fate too...’ So speaks Odysseus as he starts to recount his struggles to sail home to Ithaca, in one of the greatest pieces of storytelling in Western literature.'The Odyssey' is his incredible traveller’s tale – and also the story of his faithful wi...

The full-cast BBC Radio adaptation of C. P. Snow's epic series about the English establishment across the twentieth century**'**A vivid portrait of British academic, political and public life' Guardian'A very considerable achievement... It brings into the novel themes and locales never seen before (except perhaps in Trollope)' Anthony BurgessIn 1920s Leicester, Lewis Eliot must escape the drudgery of a council clerk's office and his provinc...

Two full-cast adaptations from the iconic Australian feminist novelist, Miles FranklinThese stunning dramatisations recount the life of an impassioned, ambitious Australian heroine, frustrated by rural bush life at the turn of the last century.Born in 1879, writer Stella Miles Franklin grew up in poverty in the Australian outback, with limited education. She completed her first book at the age of just nineteen: the ironically titled My Brilliant Career

Frank Cottrell Boyce’s series of plays about the punk generation 30 years onWhat if punk heroes The Adverts had played a gig in Camberley in 1977, to an audience of 27 people? And what if, three decades later, someone tried to bring that audience back together for a reunion? That’s the premise of these five linked plays by award-winning screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce, telling the stories of some of those audience members as they look back on that life-changing n...

David Morrissey stars as Billy Rucker in these two gritty urban noir thrillersEx-copper turned private investigator Billy Rucker scours the seamy underbelly of London, hunting for runaways - and murderers. Tough, worldly-wise and street-savvy, he can go where the police can't: and once he's on the trail, he won't stop until he finds the truth...Shut Eye - When an airline pilot is found brutally murdered with a champagne bottle, his...

'[An] elegant and forensic double portrait setting Greene, that sociologist of sin, alongside the Kremlin's golden boy Philby, with the lengthening shadow of the cold war falling between them ... both his subjects make for terrific copy ... Part of the pleasure of Verkaik's book is the vicarious glide through their parallel rake's progresses.' - Pratinav Anil, Guardian'A wholly fascinating account of an extraordinary friendship. Robert Verkaik's nu...

Brought to you by Penguin.A GRIPPING AND SEARINGLY HONEST ACCOUNT OF A YEAR IN THE TURBULENT LIFE OF A PROFESSIONAL JOCKEY, FROM FOUR-TIME CHAMPION OISIN MURPHY.Born prematurely, weighing less than a bag of sugar, Oisin Murphy’s life has always been one of struggle. From a young age he found communion with horses. Mesmerised by their power, their spirit, he discovered a gift for the saddle.Oisin quickly established himself as one of...

**Brought to you by Penguin.Introducing an outstanding new voice in literary fiction: a sensual, sharp, and utterly compelling campus novel about grief, reinvention, and the ripple effects of telling lies**If I ever woke up with an ungodly dread — that I could change it all now, turn around, and confess — I ignored it. I had never been good, and there was no point in trying now.On a small liberal arts campus in upstate New York, Charlotte begins her final y...

Brought to you by Penguin.**The enthralling history of the iconic, world class Jumbo Jet, from former 747 pilot Scott BatemanNothing like Boeing's 747 had ever been seen before.**Everything about it was superlative. When it emerged from the Boeing factory in 1968, the sheer scale of the jet made clear the vision, boldness and scale of the engineering challenge that had been required to build it.When the airliner took to the skies for the fir...

The Catchprices may be the most spectacularly contentious family since Dostoevsky's Karamozovs. Granny Catchprice runs her family business and her family, with senility, cunning and a handbag full of explosives. Sixteen-year-old Benny dreams of transforming a failing automobile franchise into an empire, and himself into an angel. But when a beautiful and very pregnant agent of the Australian Taxation Office enters their lives, the resulting collision becomes, in Carey's hands, a masterpiec...

Brought to you by Penguin.We tend to think that everything important comes from the centre: from big cities, from established orthodoxies in the sciences and the arts, from the Establishment in all its forms. We think this because the centre tells us it is so, but it's a lie. It is only at the edges that we think, innovate and thrive.This book travels to the frontiers of human culture and consciousness; to the edges of continents, of evolution, of artistic ...

‘A feast for mind and soul, a treasure trove of insights into the enigmatic and enchanting world of the birds we share our lives with but barely notice. I have learnt so much. Every page is a thrill. Bird School has opened my eyes' Isabella Tree, author of WildingStep into the hide for a glorious new encounter with the British wildClose to Adam Nicolson’s home in Sussex, there is a forgotten field overrun by bracken and th...