“A beautiful debut, funny, tender, and animated by a willingness to confront life’s obstacles and find a way to survive. . . . It celebrates friendship, finds meaning in difficulty and lets the reader explore dark places while always allowing for the possibility of light. Lenni and Margot are fine companions for all our springtime journeys.”—Harper’s Bazaar, UKA charming, fiercely alive and disarmingly funny debut novel in the vein of John Green, R...

Brought to you by Penguin.An extraordinary friendship. A lifetime of stories.Their last one begins here.Life is short - no one knows that better than seventeen year-old Lenni Petterssen. On the Terminal Ward, the nurses are offering their condolences already, but Lenni still has plenty of living to do.When she meets 83-year-old Margot Macrae, a fellow patient offering new friendship and enviable artistic ski...

Brought to you by Penguin.SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE and the ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTIONA masterful, exuberant novel from the acclaimed author of How to be both and the ongoing Seasonal quartetFive people: four are living, three are strangers, two are sisters, one is dead. In her highly acclaimed and most ambitious book to date, the brilliant young Scottish writer Ali Smith brings alive five...

All six series of the BBC radio comedy centred around a village hairdressing salon - plus pilot episodeBased in the little town of Bridgeford, High-Lites salon boasts the most misanthropic hairdresser in Britain: sharp-tongued, mean-minded Bev. With the help of her soft-hearted (though slightly dim) assistant Shirley, she tends to the tresses of a motley crew of local characters. As she cuts their hair, she finds out everything that's going on in their lives - and ...

Brought to you by Penguin.'To tell the story of a country or a continent is surely a great and complex undertaking; but the story of a quiet, unnoticed place where there are few people, fewer memories and almost no reliable records - a place such as Glen Conach - may actually be harder to piece together. The hazier everything becomes, the more whatever facts there are become entangled with myth and legend. . .'Deep in the mountains of north...

A scandalous full-cast dramatized romp through Hogarth’s famous paintings, bringing to life the story in – and behind – each canvasListen to this double helping of laugh-out-loud comedy featuring an all-star cast including Stephen Mangan, Annabel Scholey (The Split), Sheila Reid (Benidorm) and Will Keen (His Dark Materials and The Crown) as they bring alive the life and times of ...

All six series of Christopher Lee's enthralling parliamentary drama - plus Christmas SpecialSuave, unflappable and ambitious, veteran politician Charles Bannister knows his way around the corridors of power. As Chief Whip, he's adept at keeping MPs in line and squashing potential scandals - aided by his brother-in-law, MI6 agent Henry Colvil, who whispers useful titbits of information in his ear. His position seems invincible - but nothing is forever, and when the ...

BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • Forget room service: this is a riotous elegy, a deadpan celebration of colliding worlds, and a spirited defense of love. Blending incisive wit with surprising compassion, Hotel World is a wonderfully invigorating, life-affirming book.Five people: four are living; three are strangers; two are sisters; one, a teenage hotel chambermaid, has fallen to her death in a dumbwaiter. But her spirit lingers in...

Philippa is a librarian from a long line of librarians. When her father dies and her mother loses her wits, Philippa tries the only language Vera understands, that of the Dewey cataloguing system, to guide her back to sanity. Starring Olivia Colman as Philippa, Sheila Reid as Vera, Caroline Guthrie as Sheila and Paul Rider as Alistair. Written by Sarah Naomi Lee. Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.

In Replacement Parts, internationally recognized bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan and coeditors James J. McCartney and Daniel P. Reid assemble seminal writings from medicine, philosophy, economics, and religion that address the ethical challenges raised by organ transplantation. Caplan's new lead essay explains the shortfalls of present policies. From there, book sections take an interdisciplinary approach to fundamental issues like the determination of death and the dead donor rule; the divis...

BBC Radio full-cast dramatisations of three of the classic novels from Joan Aiken's 'Wolves Chronicles'One of the finest storytellers of her time, Joan Aiken wrote over 100 books for both adults and children. Among her best-known works are the 'Wolves Chronicles', a sequence of novels set in an alternate 19th century England ruled by Stuart kings. Included here are three tales from that magical, wolf-infested world - The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Black Hearts...