From the late 19th century, when the Raj was at its height, many of Britain's best and brightest young men went out to India to work as administrators, soldiers and businessmen. With the advent of steam travel and the opening of the Suez Canal, countless young women, suffering at the lack of eligible men in Britain, followed in their wake. This amorphous band was composed of daughters returning after their English education, girls invited to stay with married sisters or friends, and yet ot...

In Persuasion, Jane Austen’s last novel, she reveals the tale of love and marriage told with irony, insight, and an evaluation of human conduct. The characters, Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot, have met and separated years before. A reunion forces the recognition of the false values that drove them apart.

'A Neighbour's Guide to Murder is fiendishly sharp, clever and gripping. Nobody captures the mores of neighbourhoods and communities, and multi-generational complexities, like Louise Candlish. She's in a league of her own' Lisa Jewell‘Tense, clever and bitingly observed. Superb’ Claire DouglasHer secrets will be the death of you…When Pixie moves into Columbia Mansions, divo...

Bird lovers including Will Young, Samuel West, Dermot O'Leary, Greta Scacchi and Sue Perkins introduce us to their favourite birds - plus, Alison Steadman presents The Twelve Tweets of ChristmasSince 2013, Tweet of the Day has been a daily delight for early risers, with its 90 seconds of beautiful birdsong and fascinating ornithological stories. But what of the people who tune in to this avian chorus? In this collection, we bring to the airwaves t...

A two-part radio dramatisation of Vasily Grossman's dark, honest account of the battle of Stalingrad; a prequel to Life and Fate – plus Stalingrad: Destiny of a NovelEpic BBC serial Life and Fate stunned radio audiences in 2011, garnering rave reviews for its powerful depiction of a family torn apart by war in Soviet Russia. Now, with this astonishing prequel published in its first ever English translation by Richard and Elizabeth Chandle...

Seven BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of P.D. James’ acclaimed mysteries, plus P.D. James In Her Own WordsThis collection includes:Cover Her FaceP.D. James' debut novel, introducing her famous detective Adam Dalgliesh. Starring Robin Ellis as Dalgliesh.A Taste for DeathDalgliesh investigates when two bodies are found murdered at a London church. Starring Richard Derringt...

Benedict Cumberbatch, Greta Scacchi and Simon Russell Beale star in Michael Frayn's award-winning play about the controversial 1941 meeting between physicists Bohr and Heisenberg. Copenhagen, Autumn 1941. The two presiding geniuses of quantum physics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg meet for the first time since the breakout of war. Danish physicist Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, live in Nazi-occupied Denmark; their visitor, Heisenberg, is German, the two old friends, now on opposing sides...

In the dying days of 1850, the young detective Charles Maddox takes on a new case. His client? The only surviving son of the long-dead poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his wife Mary, author of Frankenstein.Charles soon finds himself being drawn into the bitter battle being waged over the poet's literary legacy. When a chance discovery raises doubts about the death of Shelley's first wife, Harriet, he starts to question whether she did kill herself - or whether what really happened was...

London, 1850: The Dickensian streets grow darker by the day.Private investigator Charles Maddox is surprised when he is approached by Edward Tulkinghorn for help. The feared and shadowy attorney offers Charles a handsome price he can’t refuse to do some sleuthing for a client. Charles learns that Sir Julius Cremorne has been receiving threatening letters, and now Tulkinghorn wants him to find and stop whoever is responsible.But what starts as a simple, open-and-shut case sw...

While investigating the origins of a mysterious donation to Oxford University, private detective Charles Maddox encounters the mysterious Baron Von Reisenberg, the subject of many rumours and macabre legends. In the light of day Maddox can find no evidence of anything sinister – until a series of disturbing incidents send him on a quest to expose whatever evil lurks in the Baron’s castle.After a terrifying encounter nearly costs him his sanity, Maddox returns home to find London bes...

Seven-year-old Che was abandoned by his radical Havard-student parents during the upheaval of the 1960s, and since then has been raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother. He yearns to see or hear news of his famous outlaw parents, but his grandmother refuses to tell him anything.When a woman named Dial comes to collect Che, it seems his wish has come true: his mother has come back for him. But soon, they too are on the run, and Che is thrown into a world where nothin...