Barbara Taylor Bradford introduced the illustrious Harte family in her blockbuster A Woman of Substance. Now she has created an unforgettable new dynasty: the Deravenels. On a bitterly cold day in 1904, the Deravenel family's future changes forever. When Cecily Deravenel tells her eighteen-year-old son Edward of the death of his father, brother, un...

Abi, a recently-ordained priest of the Church of England, is appointed to the parish of the charismatic but fundamentalist Kier. He objects to her mysticism, her practice of healing in particular. When she sees a vision, Kier accuses her of witchcraft, but Abi soon sees more visions; an entire Roman family history, dark with betrayal and a promise...

Bereft of the three people she has held most dear - her mother, her husband and her daughter - Celia is on the verge of suicide. Then one night on an exotic island she meets Larraby, a successful portrait painter, and through a long night of talk reveals how she is afraid to commit herself to a second chance of happiness with another person, yet is...

A poignantly funny retrospective of the genteel wit of broadcaster, comedienne, poet and entertainer, Joyce Grenfell, superbly performed by Maureen Lipman and heard on BBC Radio 3. Together with the creative team that produced the stage show, ReJoyce, Maureen perfectly recreates the much-loved material of the late, great Joyce Grenfell. Featuring m...

Compo, Foggy and Clegg wreak havoc in four vintage episodes from the world's longest-running comedy series. Only a man with a ferret down his trousers could love Nora Batty. So lock up your ferrets (and Nora Batty!), here come Yorkshire's hilarious adventurers - three pensioners in four classic capers from the BBC television series which kept the n...

Ron Donachie stars in this two-part dramatisation of Ian Rankin's crime thriller set in Edinburgh and the Highlands in 1992. Inspector Rebus is investigating the death of an MP's wife when an Edinburgh man confesses to the murder of two women. Rebus, however, is not convinced. Much to his superior's dismay, Rebus ignores the confession and disappea...

Materialising in a forest, the Doctor and friends find themselves 12 kilometres from Paris. It is the 18th century, and France is the scene of an ongoing battle between royalists and revolutionaries. Following a blaze at a farmhouse, Ian, Barbara and Susan are separated from the Doctor and arrested as traitors. Ian receives information about James...

What do you do when your wife takes your child and leaves you alone in a city of ghosts? Dutch banker Hans ver den Broek chooses cricket. But New York cricket is a long way from the tranquil sport he grew up with. It's a rough, almost secret game, played in scrubby marginal urban parks by people the city does not see - people like Chuck Ramkissoon....

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master's Son follows a young man's journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world's most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea. Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother--a singer "stolen" to Pyongyang--and an influential father who runs Long Tomorro...

When Eva's film star sister Katrina dies, she returns to Cornwall to scatter Katrina's ashes. But the house where she stayed as a child is home not only to her friends the Halletts, but also to the people who lived there in the 18th century. When Eva accepts that she can slip between centuries, she begins to question her place in the present and co...

The unforgiving New England weather has taken a turn for the worse on the day Doyle drags his reluctant sons to a speech by Jesse Jackson. Fired by Jackson's rhetoric, he is perplexed by the boys' indifference. Tiff and Teddy are adopted. Teddy - open, affectionate, the gentle dreamer - thinks he has found his calling in the Catholic church. Tip is...

Ireland 1944. In a violent storm a German plane heading for Britain is blown off course. The pilot, completely disorientated, plunges down an Irish hillside and shatters a young family. The children who survive that terrible night try to leave the past behind, but the past will not let them go. Rescued by their Aunt Lucy, Amelia and Mattie need to...

On a beach in southern England a dog returns to its owner with a human hand in its mouth. The hand belongs to Henry, the homeless eccentric who has been wandering south west England for the last 30 years. A local policeman and his colleague, in piecing together his movements prior to his death, uncover an extraordinary life. But as their investigat...

The year is 1859 and Hero Hollis, beautiful and headstrong niece of the American consul, arrives in Zanzibar. It is an earthly paradise; it is also the last outpost of the Slave Trade. A passionate opponent of slavery, Hero is swept into a turmoil of royal intrigue, abduction, piracy, smuggling and a virulent cholera epidemic. There in Zanzibar, th...

Who would sever the tongue of a living person? Or kill a pathetic, homeless old man? Or frighten a young doctor into silence? The questions are piling up, and Doug McHarg can't stop asking them - especially when he's warned off by his boss in the local police, by Scotland Yard, and by increasingly professional death threats. The pattern that emerge...

Germany 1927: the English filmmaker Henry Whitaker is on a desperate pilgrimage to the dying Weimar Republic. The present day: Henry's daughter Miranda is on a quest to understand what happened to her mother, a refugee Henry met and married in Germany at the end of the war. Did Henry - as his mother has always supposed - drive his wife to her death...

The year is 1348 and the first plague victim has reached English shores. Panic erupts around the country and a small band of travellers comes together to outrun the deadly disease, unaware that something far more deadly is - in fact - travelling with them. The ill-assorted company - a scarred trader in holy relics, a conjurer, two musicians, a heal...

A down-to-earth forensics expert has just discovered a crime scene that is out of this world. In criminal forensics they train you to uncover evidence, no matter how brutal or bizarre the murder. But what if one night you encounter a crime scene so terrifying that no one on earth can explain it? It begins deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest,...

Is it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. For in this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of Sleepless in Seattle reminds us that comedy depends on anguish as surely as a proper gravy depends o...

In I Am Legend, a terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive are transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Every other man, woman, and child has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood. By day, he is the hunter, stalking...

1861. Growing up in rural Japan, Sachi has always felt different, her pale skin setting her apart. When she is 11, a princess passes through her village, sweeping her off to the women's palace in Edo, home to 3000 women and only on eman - the young shogun. Sachi is chosen as his concubine. But Japan is changing. As civil war erupts, Sachi flees for...