Once the golden boy of the English literary scene, now a clinically depressed writer of pulp crime fiction, Ash Winters has given up on hope, happiness, and—most of all—himself. He lives his life between the cycles of his illness, haunted by the ghosts of other people’s expectations. Then a chance encounter throws him into the path of Essex-born Darian Taylor. By his own admission, Darian isn’t the crispest lettuce in the fridge, but he makes Ash laugh, reminding him of what it’s like to step beyond the boundaries of anxiety. But Ash has been living in his own shadow for so long that he can’t see past the glitter to the light. Can a man who doesn’t trust himself ever trust in happiness? And how can a man who doesn’t believe in happiness ever fight for his own?

Spires

Glitterland

A masterpiece of gothic fiction, The Monk is a cautionary tale of madness, horror, lust and despair. Father Ambrosio, the most pious and venerated monk in all of Madrid, is held as a paragon of virtue. But after thirty years of study and prayer, evil thoughts begin to permeate his mind. As two plots cleverly converge, torture, murder, incest, rape, poison and magic prevail, sustained by an elegance in the writing of the nineteen-year-old Matthew Lewis. The book was banned upon its initial publication in 1796 but later caught the attention of Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with Coleridge naming it ‘the offspring of no common genius’.

THE MONK

The Monk

Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, award-winning author of the Elric series Michael Moorcock offers a captivating and immersive portrait of London from World War II through the 1980s through the eyes of three outpatients from a mental hospital. In this masterful exploration of the human condition, three outpatients from a mental hospital—a music hall artist, reclusive writer, and a woman just awoken from a long coma—experience the history of London from the Blitz to the late 1980s through a chaotic experience of sensory delusions. Believing themselves to hear voices from London’s past, their fragmented and poignant stories create a tapestry of episodes, snippets, and sidelines that capture the essence of those living on society’s fringes. What The Guardian calls “a great, humane document,” Mother London is a literary work that transcends time and place and is a must-read for literary and historical fiction fans alike.

Mother London

"Recognised as one of the greatest works of English fiction, David Copperfield tells the story of a young man, from his painful childhood, through chance, tragedy and adventure, to self-knowledge and happiness. It includes some of Dickens’s most vividly memorable characters. The cruelly saturnine Mr Murdstone; the redoubtable Betsey Trotwood; the charismatic Steerforth; the ever-so-’umble Uriah Heep; the magnificently spendthrift Mr Wilkins Micawber; the spiteful Miss Dartle; the faithful Traddles; and scores more – all are part of a story that is by turns enchanting, enthralling, comic and moving."

David Copperfield

Grigori Aleksandrovich Pechorin is an enigma: arrogant, cocky, melancholic, brave, cynic, romantic, loner, socialite, soldier, free soul, and yet, victim of the world, he eludes definition and remains a mystery to those who know him. Just who is he? And what does he hope to achieve? Evolving from  first person to third person, and then into a diary, A Hero of Our Time takes on a variety of forms to interrogate Pechorin’s cryptic character and his unusual philosophy, providing breathtaking descriptions of the Caucasus along the way. The novel has been hailed as an influence on such writers as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, and is a striking take on Lord Byron’s ‘superfluous man’; it harks back to the teaching of Machiavelli, while anticipating the future work of Nietzsche.

Urban Romantics Classic

A Hero of Our Time

Dramatic, fast-moving and brutal, Gissing’s highly regarded early novel lays bare the reality of urban poverty in 1870s London. Old Michael Snowdon returns to the city with an inheritance that he determines should go towards helping the poor – but goodness and charity are not to play a part here. Everyone has an agenda, and scheming spreads through the story like a disease. Gissing’s own experience of London as an outsider in a vast city that both fascinated and appalled him gave him the tools and the drive to create a visceral sense of place. Life is unremittingly grim for just about everyone, from the weak and well-intentioned Jane to the coarse, cunning Clem Peckover and her feckless rival Pennyloaf Candy. The author offers no escape from the gloomy cycle, and there is something alarmingly timeless in the unvarnished portrait of human nature.

Timeless Classics

The Nether World

After the jealous tyrant Don Rodrigo foils their wedding, young Lombardian peasants Lucia and Lorenzo must separate and flee for their safety. Their difficult path to matrimony takes place against the turbulent backdrop of the Thirty Years War, where lawlessness and exploitation are at their height. Lucia takes refuge in a convent, where she is later abducted and taken on a nightmarish journey to a sinister castle, while Lorenzo goes to Milan, where he witnesses famine, riots and plague – all evoked through meticulous description and with stunning immediacy. The Betrothed is a masterful example of historical fiction and remains one of the most famous novels in Italian literature.

World Classics

The Betrothed

The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories is a bizarre and colourful collection containing the finest short stories by the iconic Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. From the witty and Kafkaesque The Nose, where a civil servant wakes up one day to find his nose missing, to the moving and evocative The Overcoat, about a reclusive man whose only ambition is to replace his old, threadbare coat, Gogol gives us a unique take on the absurd. Gogol’s tales of inconsequential civil servants, mixing the everyday with the surreal, foreshadow the work of his later acolytes, Bulgakov and Kafka. None is more cutting than the main story, The Diary of a Madman, where a government clerk descends to insanity, claiming that he can communicate with dogs and that he is next in line to the throne of Spain.

The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

Completed six years after Dostoyevsky’s own term as a convict, The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical account of life in a Siberian prison camp, and the physical and mental effects it has on those who are sentenced to inhabit it. Alexandr Petrovitch Goryanchikov, a gentleman of the noble class, has been condemned to ten years of hard labour for murdering his wife. He is little prepared for the cruel conditions and punishing temperatures, and struggles to integrate with the other prisoners, who claw for their sanity. Fettered, hungry and isolated, Alexandr Petrovitch must find faith and hope if he is to make his way out alive, and resurrect himself from the ‘dead house’.

The House of the Dead

Naples ’44 is an unflinching autobiographical account of a year in Naples after the armistice and Allied landings in Sorrento in 1943. Working as a British counterintelligence officer under the Allied occupation, Lewis documents the rich pageant of life in the city and its surrounding areas. There is suffering and squalor: criminal gangs are on the rise, along with typhus and black market commerce, and the female population is forced into part-time prostitution, simply to obtain food. Corruption is rife as a Genovese crime family member makes his way into the US army administration, and local hospitals, short on supplies, buy equipment back from those who stole it. There is farce and humour too, witnessed in the Roman uncle paid handsomely simply to appear at funerals and lend an air of gravitas, and in Lewis’s own experience of vetting proposed marriages between British soldiers and local women. Unsparing, penetrating and profoundly humane, Naples ’44 is a moving portrait of the costs of war, and the resilience of a society under extreme stress.

Naples '44

Set in the financial centres of 1820s Frankfurt and London, Jezebel’s Daughter (1880) tells the story of two widows: Madame Fontaine, who will go to any lengths to secure her daughter’s marriage, and Mrs Wagner, who devotes herself to her late husband’s social reforms. In pursuit of her endeavours, Mrs Wagner befriends Jack Straw, a former inmate of Bedlam, who plays a pivotal role as the action, full of plotting and counterplotting, unfolds, culminating in the morgue, where several lives hang in the balance. Jezebel’s Daughter, serialised from 1879 to 80, is a prime example of Collins’s sensation novels, and was based on his play The Red Vial. As seen often in Collins, the depiction of strong and ‘active’ women defies the convention of his time, and the plotline is gripping and full of suspense.

Nicholas Boulton

Contains the unabridged audiobook and an educational audio guide. The ‘Educational Editions’ from Naxos AudioBooks allow listeners to enjoy important works of fiction and learn about their key elements. Each ‘Educational Edition’ combines the unabridged audiobook with an indispensable audio guide that gives background and author detail and explores the book’s themes, structure, key passages and critical perspectives – stimulating content for students and keen listeners wishing to discover more. Jane Austen’s most popular novel, originally published in 1813, some 17 years after it was first written, presents the Bennet family of Longbourn. Against the background of gossipy Mrs Bennet and the detached Mr Bennet, the quest is on for husbands for the five daughters. The spotlight falls on Elizabeth, second eldest, who is courted by Mr Darcy though initially she is more concerned with the fate of her other sisters. This marvellous account of family life in Regency England is read with customary panache by Juliet Stevenson.

Pride and Prejudice (Educational Edition)

In the Ukrainian capital Kiev (‘the City’), life has become frightening and fragile. Bulgakov’s first full-length novel is set in the harsh and chaotic winter of 1918–19, as power struggles start to play out with brutal consequences. Echoing Tolstoy’s approach in War and Peace, Bulgakov contrasts the concerns of domestic life with the wide-ranging and destructive historical events; but where Tolstoy’s structure is clear, Bulgakov interweaves narrative, details of military action, snatches of songs, dreams, dialogue and fragments of thought to capture this swirl of confusion on every level, as those caught in the middle of circumstances beyond their control try to ground themselves. Suffering, tragedy and savagery are set out unflinchingly, but the bleakness is offset by a recognition of the resilience of the human spirit, and of the qualities of loyalty and principle – all embodied by the Turbin family. The novel begins and ends with a view of the night sky: beyond the chaos, beauty is still there to see.

The White Guard

‘Mountolive who had already found the open sesame of language ready to hand, suddenly began to feel himself really penetrating a foreign country...’ In Mountolive, the third volume in Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, the events surrounding the interwoven community of Nessim, Justine, Narouz, Pursewarden and the other major characters are given a very different perspective. The intrigues and complex relationships are seen through the political prism of a world plunging towards war. David Mountolive, once emotionally involved with Nessim’s set, now returns to Egypt as the British ambassador…

The Alexandria Quartet

Mountolive

In Moscow an unknown author approaches a publisher (the narrator), asking him to read and publish his manuscript. The narrator agrees to read it before the author returns three months later. At the heart of the story in the manuscript is a love triangle and themes of corruption, concealed love and fatal jealousy. When one of the central characters is discovered dead, the narrative becomes a murder-mystery as the search for the culprit begins. Written by Chekhov in his early twenties, The Shooting Party is his only full-length novel. Here it is read by the prolific and popular narrator Nicholas Boulton.

The Shooting Party

Appearing in 1854, Hide and Seek was Wilkie Collins’s third published novel. At the centre of the plot is the mystery surrounding a deaf and dumb girl known as Madonna, whom the painter Valentine Blyth rescues from her life as a circus performer. But it is only when Blyth’s friend Zack Thorpe rebels against his disciplinarian father and falls into bad company that the secret of Madonna is revealed. Combining charm and excitement, Hide and Seek is presented in two halves: the first is leisurely and discursive while the second picks up the pace, foreshadowing Collins’s later sensational fiction. Hide and Seek is persuasively delivered by Nicholas Boulton, who has read several of Collins’s novels, including No Name, Armadale, The Dead Secret and Man and Wife.

Hide and Seek

Ulrich von Bek, a facet of The Eternal Champion, makes a deal with the devil in this exciting adventure story from one of the greatest authors of our time. This is the story of Ulrich von Bek, a cynical mercenary who sells his skills as a soldier in the wars taking place all over Europe. After the particularly horrific destruction of a city in which he played a role, von Bek decides to desert the military company he was working for and travel alone for a while before seeking further employment. On his solo journey, he happens upon a castle where he takes refuge with—and then falls in love with—the keeper of the castle, the beautiful Sabrina. It is in this castle that he meets Lucifer, the master of Hell, and finds out that his soul is already destined for Hell. And so, in exchange for his soul, von Bek agrees to go on a quest for Lucifer, namely, to find the Cure for the World’s Pain. This quest is also known as the Search for the Holy Grail. As von Bek travels around Europe on his impossible quest, he will find himself caught up in wars, politics, intrigue, and romance. But he can never forget his purpose—or the terrible bargain he has made with the devil… This audiobook contains the author preferred text for the first of the two volumes of the Von Bek series, The War Hound and the World’s Pain.

The Eternal Champion

Von Bek

The Charterhouse of Parma is a twisting tale of passion and intrigue following the adventures of Fabrizio del Dongo, a young Italian nobleman who dreams of glory on the battlefields of Europe and finds himself fighting alongside Napoleon at Waterloo. After returning home, Fabrizio becomes entangled in Machiavellian scheming, an ill-advised romance, and a fatal duel that lands him in prison, where he begins a star-crossed love affair with the ethereal Clelia, the commandant’s daughter. Admired by Balzac, who considered it the most important novel of his time, The Charterhouse of Parma is a profoundly moving reflection on power, prestige and freedom.

The Charterhouse of Parma

Published 10 years after Collins’s most popular novel The Woman in White, Man and Wife centres on the confused and inequitable marriage laws of 19th-century Britain, reflecting the author’s own antipathy towards the institution. The plot follows the fortunes of a woman who, committed to marriage with one man, comes to believe that she may have inadvertently married his friend, according to the archaic laws of Scotland and Ireland. Collins shows himself to be a masterly storyteller, seamlessly moving the action from a country house to a suburb of London, and into a world of deceit and murder.

Man and Wife

‘I knew that Clea would share everything with me, withholding nothing – not even the look of complicity which women reserve only for their mirrors.’ In Clea, the concluding part of The Alexandria Quartet, Darley returns to Alexandria now caught by war-fever. The conflagration has its effect on his circle – on Nessim and Justine, Balthazar and Clea, Mountolive and Pombal – and a clarity of purpose emerges as the story moves towards its cadence.

Clea

A masterful blend of Gothic drama and romance, Wilkie Collins’s mystery novel is an exploration of illegitimacy and inheritance. Set in Cornwall, the plot foreshadows The Woman in White with its themes of doubtful identity and deception, and involves a broad array of characters. The ‘secret’ of the book’s title is the true parentage of the book’s heroine, Rosamond Treverton, which has been written down and kept in an unused room at Porthgenna Tower. This is where, 20 years later, much of the novel’s action is set.

The Dead Secret

An organisation that doesn’t exist.A spy that can’t be caught.Years ago, a spy was born… 1989: The Cold War will soon be over, but for BOX 88, a top secret spying agency, the espionage game is heating up. Lachlan Kite is sent to France to gather intelligence on the Lockerbie bombing. What he uncovers is terrifying… Now he faces the deadliest decision of his life… 2020: Kite has been taken captive and brutally tortured. He now has a choice: reveal the truth about what happened in France thirty years earlier – or watch his family die. In a battle unlike anything he has faced before, Kite must use all his skills to stay alive. What people are saying about BOX 88‘A spy for the 21st century’Daily Mail, Books of the Year ‘Wonderfully taut, exciting and up-to-date’Spectator, Books of the Year ‘An ambitious fusion of coming-of-age novel and gripping espionage thriller’Financial Times, Books of the Year ‘BOX 88 is so good. Charles Cumming is up there with the very best espionage writers’ Ian Rankin ‘A wonderful spy novel; Charles Cumming’s most ambitious – and his best – yet’ Mick Herron ‘Charles Cumming has breathed new life into the spy novel’ Ben Macintyre ‘Atmospheric and full of sharply realised characters’Sunday Times ‘A clever thriller’Sun ‘Intelligence, grace, and stunning verisimilitude’ Gregg Hurwitz ‘An engaging hero’ James Swallow ‘All the hallmarks of the finest spy thriller’ Charlotte Philby ‘Sharp-eyed and satisfying’ Henry Porter ‘A great new spy hero is born’ Amanda Craig ‘Ideal for anyone nostalgic for their first love and the whiff of Marlboro Lights’The Times

BOX 88

From historian and bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a “captivating, thoroughly researched” (The New York Times Book Review) tale of the rise and fall of the world’s largest airship—and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian princess at its heart. The tragic fate of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong. Airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the 20th century, were a symbol of the future. R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have flown and the product of the world’s most advanced engineering—she was also the lynchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire, from Australia to India, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, and Singapore. No one had ever conceived of anything like this, and R101 captivated the world. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea. Gwynne’s chronicle features a cast of remarkable—and tragically flawed—characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then relentlessly pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the celebrated writer and glamorous socialite with whom he had a long affair; and George Herbert Scott, a national hero who was the first person to cross the Atlantic twice in any aircraft, in 1919—eight years before Lindbergh’s famous flight—but who devolved into drink and ruin. These historical figures—and the ship they built, flew, and crashed—come together in “a Promethean tale of unlimited ambitions and technical limitations, airy dreams and explosive endings” (The Wall Street Journal).

His Majesty's Airship

Magdalen and Norah Vanstone have known only comfort and affluence for their entire lives. Orphaned suddenly following the unexpected deaths of their parents, the illegitimate sisters find themselves flung into the other extreme of living: their father had neglected to amend his will following their parents’ recent marriage, leaving them with nothing, and their bitter, estranged uncle, the legal inheritor of the family fortune, mercilessly refuses them support. They have no money, no rights and no name. Norah, the elder of the two, looks for work as a governess and accepts her fate. Fiery and headstrong Magdalen, however, does not. She vows revenge and schemes a series of traps to recover the fortune, no matter the cost...

Classic Sensation

No Name

What is the material basis of the thoughts that occur inside our heads? Where do imaginative, creative, or spiritual thoughts come from - can these really be the product of nerve impulses in the brain? And is the human mind radically different from that of other species, or is our uniqueness more superficial than real? In this audiobook, Oxford biologist John Parrington proposes a radical new theory of human consciousness, arguing that a qualitative leap in consciousness occurred during human evolution as language and tool use transformed our brains. Rejecting outdated views of the brain as a hard-wired circuit diagram, he draws on the latest insights from neuroscience to show that meaning is created within our heads through a dynamic interaction of oscillating brain waves. This new model of consciousness not only provides a material basis of our innermost thoughts but also explains why the mind can sometimes go wrong, causing deep mental distress.

Consciousness

‘The politics of love, the intrigues of desire, good and evil, virtue and caprice, love and murder, moved obscurely in the dark corners of Alexandria’s streets and squares, brothels and drawing-rooms – moved like a great congress of eels in the slime of plot and counter-plot.’ In Balthazar, the second volume in Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, the story and the characters come more clearly into focus. Darley, the reflective Englishman, receives from Balthazar, the pathologist, a mass of notes which attempt to explain what really happened between the tempestuous Justine, her husband Nessim, Clea the artist, and Pursewarden the writer; new figures emerge and play key roles. Balthazar, in his ‘Interlinear’, explains and warns.

Balthazar

Ancient Egypt – The Glory of the Pharaohs tells us about civilisation under the pharaohs, of mysterious statues and tombs, incredible obelisks, the Sphinx… In this recording, the ancient Egyptian kingdom is brought to life in a way that fuels the listener’s imagination, teaching and entertaining in equal measure.

Ancient Egypt – The Glory of the Pharaohs

Gogol’s great Russian classic is the Pickwick Papers of Russian Literature. It takes a sharp but humorous look at life in all its strata, but especially the devious complexities in Russia with its landowners and serfs. We are introduced to Tchitchikov, a businessman who, in order to trick the tax authorities, buys up dead ‘souls’ or serfs whose names still appear on the government census. Despite being a dealer in phantom crimes and paper ghosts, he is the most beguiling of Gogol’s characters. Gogol’s obsession with attempting to display ‘the untold riches of the Russian soul’ eventually led him to madness, religious mania and death. Dismissed by him as merely ‘a pale introduction to the great epic poem which is taking shape in my mind’, Dead Souls is the culmination of Gogol’s genius.

Dead Souls

Featuring unreported details and stunning revelations, the long-awaited follow-up to the “fabulous, addictive” (Chicago Sun-Times) New York Times bestseller Diana’s Boys explores the last twenty years in the lives of Princes William and Harry and the evolution of their relationship as adults, with one brother the designated heir, and the other doomed to life as the spare—perfect for fans of Netflix’s The Crown. Diana’s Boys revealed the powerful bond between the teenaged princes, and how it strengthened even more in the wake of their mother’s tragic death. Now, twenty years later, Queen Elizabeth II is in her mid-nineties, Prince Charles is in his seventies, and all eyes are turned increasingly toward William and Harry again. Christopher Andersen picks up where he left off, covering everything that has happened to the brothers as they have grown up, gotten married to two remarkable women, and had children—all while facing continual waves of controversy and questions about the ways their relationship has shifted. Andersen examines how the Queen’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering to mold her grandsons in the Windsor image after Diana’s death, and her expectations of William as the future king, played out. He questions whether the brothers’ famously close relationship can survive Harry’s departure from the Royal Family—the first time this has happened since their great-great-uncle King Edward abdicated the throne to marry a divorcée. He delves into the impact sisters-in-law Kate and Meghan have had on each other as well as on their princes, and how marriage and fatherhood have changed the brothers and, in some ways, also driven a wedge between them. Andersen also looks with an honest eye at how the princes and their wives have been continuously buffeted by scandal—including headline-making allegations of bullying, racism, betrayal, and emotional abuse that has pushed more than one royal to the brink of self-destruction. Based on in-depth research and with his “fascinating and insightful” (The Christian Science Monitor) writing, Andersen leaves no stone unturned in this intimate and riveting look into the private lives of the world’s most famous princes.

Brothers and Wives

Two young men linked by a familial murder mystery, a beautiful yet wicked governess who spins a web of deceit, and five individuals named Allan Armadale: Wilkie Collins’s follow-up to The Woman in White and No Name is an innovative take on mistaken identity, the nature of evil and the dark underbelly of Victorian England. The story concerns two distant cousins, both named Allan Armadale, and the impact of a family tragedy, which makes one of them a target of the murderous Lydia Gwilt, a vicious and malevolent charmer determined to get her hands on the Armadale fortune. Will the real Allan Armadale be revealed, and will he survive the plot against his life?

Armadale

“Wonderful reading.” —Scott Turow, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent An extraordinarily accomplished debut novel—a love story, mystery, and philosophical puzzle, told in the singular voices of the residents of a Beaux Arts apartment house in Belgium during World War II. On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of eight apartments at 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on gleaming wood and voices echo off marble, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the eldest son of the art dealer’s family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving behind everything but their invaluable art collection, which mysteriously vanishes. All that’s familiar fractures when whispers of German occupation become reality. A Nazi functionary moves into the building, and the residents’ lives become increasingly entwined. Charlotte’s godmother Masha, a beautiful seamstress upstairs, deepens her dangerous affair with a wartime compatriot of Colonel Warlemont in 3L—a man far more calculating than his neighbors believe. As relationships shift and new alliances form, the question of who to trust becomes a matter of life and death. In the face of their perilous new reality, every member of this accidental community will discover they are not the person they believed themself to be. When confronted with a cruel choice—submit to the regime or risk their lives to save one another—each learns the truth about what, and who, matters to them the most. A propulsive and hopeful tour de force, 33 Place Brugmann champions the restorative power of love, courage, and art in times of great threat.

33 Place Brugmann

*Icarus 17, the fourth book in the gripping Lachlan Kite thriller series is available to pre-order now!* The second book in Charles Cumming’s gripping new thriller series surrounding BOX 88 – a covert intelligence organization that operates below the radar.A spy in one of the most dangerous places on Earth… 1993: Student Lachlan Kite is sent to post-Soviet Russia in the guise of a language teacher. In reality, he is there as a spy. Top secret intelligence agency BOX 88 has ordered Kite to extract a chemical weapons scientist before his groundbreaking research falls into the wrong hands. But Kite’s mission soon goes wrong and he is left stranded in a hostile city with a former KGB officer on his trail. An old enemy looking for revenge… 2020: Now the director of BOX 88 operations in the UK, Kite discovers he has been placed on the ‘JUDAS’ list – a record of enemies of Russia who have been targeted for assassination. Kite’s fight for survival takes him to Dubai, where he must confront the Russian secret state head on… Who will come out on top in this deadly game of cat and mouse? ‘Judas 62 has all you could want from a tense, topical and intelligent spy thriller’ The Times Books of the Year

JUDAS 62

The House on Cold Hill is a chilling and suspenseful ghost story from the multi-million copy bestselling author of the award-winning Grace series, Peter James. Evil isn't born, it's built . . . Moving from the heart of the city to the Sussex countryside is a big undertaking for born townies, Ollie Harcourt, his wife, Caro, and their twelve-year-old daughter, Jade. But when they view Cold Hill House – a huge, dilapidated, Georgian mansion – they are filled with excitement. Despite the financial strain of the move, Ollie sees Cold Hill House as a paradise for his animal-loving daughter, a base for his web-design business and a terrific long-term investment. But, within days of moving in, it becomes apparent that the Harcourt family aren't the only residents in the house. At first it is only a friend of Jade, talking to her on FaceTime, who sees a spectral woman standing behind her. Then there are more sightings of her, and increasingly disturbing occurrences. Two weeks after moving in, Caro, out in the garden, is startled to see faces staring out of an upstairs window of the house. The window of a room which may hold the secret to the house's dark history . . . A room which does not appear to exist. 'Superbly creepy modern horror story' - Book of the Week, Sunday Mirror ***** Praise for The House on Cold Hill: ''Impeccable' – Sunday Times 'James is a compelling storyteller, and he ratchets up the tension in increments, so that his readers will be suitably terrified. By the time you want to scream "Look behind you!", it's already too late' – Daily Mail 'James plays with your expectations - creating a convincing and genuinely terrifying tale that, in the best old-fashioned tradition, will frighten the wits out of you in a most enjoyable way' – Irish Sunday Mirror 'A great piece of escapism that will have you looking over your shoulder' – Scotsman They Thought I was Dead was an instant no.1 Sunday Times bestseller w/c 13/05/2024

The House on Cold Hill

Nicholas Urfe accepts a teaching post on a beautiful, remote Greek island, in order to escape an unsatisfactory love affair. He meets the enigmatic Maurice Conchis, who introduces him to the exquisitely lovely Lily, his ideal of the perfect woman. But is she flesh or fantasy? As the past bleeds into the present, he finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from imagination. Under the spell of this magic isle and its presiding spirit, he struggles to understand the rules of the mysterious game into which he is drawn.

The Magus

Justine is the first volume in The Alexandria Quartet, four interlinked novels set in the sensuous, hot environment of Alexandria just before the Second World War. Within this polyglot setting of richly idiosyncratic characters is Justine, wild and intense, wife to the wealthy businessman Nessim, a Mari complaisant. Her emotional and sexual wildness fuels a highly charged atmosphere which, caught famously by Durrell’s poetic language, made Justine (1957), and the three novels that complete the Quartet – Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960) – both a critical and a popular success.

Justine

“A call to strengthen our spines.” —The New York Review of Books “Nothing short of brilliant.” —The Wall Street Journal “A surpassingly gifted storyteller.” —The New York Times From “one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today” (Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize–winning author), a visionary tale inspired by the life of film director G.W. Pabst, who fled to Hollywood to resist the Nazis only to be forced to return to his homeland and create propaganda films for the German Reich. An artist’s life, a pact with the devil, and the dangerous illusions of the silver screen. G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him. When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. Pabst, his wife, and his young son are suddenly confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. So, when Joseph Goebbels—the minister of propaganda in Berlin—sees the potential for using the European film icon for his directorial genius and makes big promises to Pabst and his family, Pabst must consider Goebbels’s thinly veiled order. While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement. Kehlmann’s latest oeuvre explores the complicated relationships and distinctions between art and power, beauty and barbarism, cog and conspirator.

The Director

Set in the court of Urbino in 1507, Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier presents an invaluable look at court life and culture during the Renaissance. Over four nights of dialogue, the book explores the key question, ‘What should a courtier be like?’; it presents a deep and timeless discussion that is reminiscent of Plato’s Symposium and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and invites comparisons with Machiavelli’s The Prince. It is absorbing and enlightening, and encompasses a wide range of topics that include dancing, fencing, war, religion, culture, courtly and corporeal love and gender relations, with a surprisingly modern defence of women and equal rights.

The Book of the Courtier

Underneath the patina of civilised society lies the Sadean demimonde: a bundle of lustful appetites fueled by momentary impulse and a desire for unfettered indulgence. And the target of this savagery: Justine de Bertole, a pious and virginal heroine. While her amoral sister Juliette gets all the wonders in the world, virtuous and faithful Justine is subjected to punishment after punishment at the hands of sadistic and abusive deviants. Grotesque, inhumane and compelling, Sade’s novel overturns Rousseau’s views of the social contract, and the common trope that punishment only visits sinners, to deliver a passionate treatise on good and evil, virtue and sin.

John Donne, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Thomas Carew and Henry Vaughan: these were some of the 17th-century writers who devised a new form of poetry full of wit, intellect and grace, which we now call Metaphysical poetry. They wrote about their deepest religious feelings and their carnal pleasures in a way that was radically new and challenging to their readers. Their work was largely misunderstood or ignored for two centuries, until 20th-century critics rediscovered it, finding in it a deep originality and a willingness to experiment that made much conventional poetry look merely decorative. This collection provides the perfect introduction to this diverse group of fascinating poets.

The Metaphysical Poets

Considered one of the first existentialist novels, Notes from Underground contains one of the most unsettling characters in 19th-century fiction. Resentful, cruel, entitled and pitiful, Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man is a disturbing human being bent on humiliating others for his own amusement. He despises modern society and stews in a self-imposed misery, articulated through his bitter, contradictory monologues about torment and alienation. The Gambler is perhaps the most personal of Dostoyevsky’s novels. Written to pay off the author’s own gambling debts, the book follows the obsessions and anxieties of Alexey Ivanovitch, a sympathetic character who has given in to the forces of addiction. His despair is compounded by his love for the enigmatic Polina Alexandrovna, a cold and distant figure who exploits his desperation.

Notes from Underground and The Gambler

In the brutal Prussian winter of 1807, Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte’s Grande Armée suffered massive losses to the Russians in the Battle of Eylau. Many thousands died. Young Colonel Chabert falls heroically, his actions having turned the tide of the battle, but he is buried anonymously on the battlefield in a mass grave. Incredibly he is alive but severely injured, and digs himself out. On his eventual return to Paris, he finds his wife, the beautiful and ambitious Rosine, now remarried, his fortune gone. Chabert’s relentless, passionate pursuit of justice, supported by the determined young lawyer Derville, is gripping to the last page. This exquisitely written story has it all: love, hatred, treachery, hope and courage.

My Childhood

Dumas’s novel became one of the great love stories from its first publication in 1848. The title role of the consumptive heroine and her ultimate sacrifice inspired actresses from Sarah Bernhardt to Greta Garbo, and led Giuseppe Verdi to write La traviata. In the hands of Nicholas Boulton, the story of passion and conflict is as fresh and moving as when it was first written.

La Dame aux Camélias [The Lady of the Camellias; Camille]

Praised by Chekhov as his favourite writer, Nikolai Leskov occupies a unique place in Russian literature. His original stories often seem like folk-tales, their larger-than-life characters including soldiers, Tsars, priests and gypsies. Leskov's storytelling, simple in its style, combines a deep religious spirit with comic absurdity. The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Leskov's best-known work, is a realist account of a young woman who escapes from her loveless marriage through adultery, leading to violence and murder. This audiobook collection of six stories also includes The Sealed Angel, The Steel Flea, The Toupée Artist, The Sentry and On the Edge of the World.

The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and Other Stories

Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks and  Water Music, two of his greatest orchestral achievements, have become synonymous with mid-18th-century England and with the pomp, ceremony and tradition of British royalty. But is this music necessarily synonymous with Handel? Where did his eclecticism and experimentalism come from? How and why did he conquer the emerging genre of the English oratorio and what were the circumstances that allowed him to become one of opera’s greatest composers? This revealing audio biography is accompanied by musical examples drawn from his orchestral and instrumental music, his cantatas, oratorios, operas and those two famous royal commissions.

Handel in Words and Music

Contains the unabridged audiobook and an educational audio guide. The ‘Educational Editions’ from Naxos AudioBooks allow listeners to enjoy important works of fiction and learn about their key elements. Each ‘Educational Edition’ combines the unabridged audiobook with an indispensable audio guide that gives background and author detail and explores the book’s themes, structure, key passages and critical perspectives – stimulating content for students and keen listeners wishing to discover more. One of the greatest love stories ever written, Jane Eyre is the tale of a young woman entangled with the powerful Mr Rochester. What lurks in the attic at Thornfield, the ancestral home of the surly Mr Rochester? Will the governess Jane Eyre discover his secret – and having discovered it, live to regret that knowledge? Battling inside Jane are passion and prudence; she struggles to survive the turmoil they cause.

Jane Eyre (Educational Edition)

Richard Mardick is an elderly man with a secret that he has kept since his youth. He recounts his memories to his young protégé and secretary so that his story can be preserved. Faced with illness, the teenage Richard was sent to live with different relatives while being trained as a farmer. Lonely and stifled by family life, he then met a girl and his life changed… with shattering significance for his future. Haunting and subtle, L.P. Hartley’s The Brickfield is a beautifully crafted companion to The Go-Between, exploring childhood and adolescence through the eyes of an adult.

The Brickfield

Overcome with grief at her husband’s death, Lady Franklin, an eligible young widow, unburdens herself to Leadbitter – a gallant, hard-bitten ex-soldier who has invested his savings in the car he drives for hire – as he takes her on a series of journeys. He in turn beguiles her with stories of his non-existent wife and children, drawing her out of her self-absorption and weaving a dream-life with Lady Franklin at its heart. Half-hoping to make his dream come true, Leadbitter takes a bold, not to say reckless, step which costs him dearly, and brings these characters’ tangled story to a dramatic and unexpected conclusion. With the same quality and beauty of writing found in The Go-Between, The Hireling’s nuanced portrayal of post-war England holds a poignant narrative on loneliness and redemption.

The Hireling

Lewis Romayne returns to the family home, Vange Abbey, after a fatal duel in France – the memory of which still haunts him. In an attempt to put the experience behind him, he visits London where he meets Stella Eynecourt, who will become his wife. However, Romayne also comes across the cunning Father Benwell, who is determined to convert him to Catholicism and to regain Vange Abbey for the Church. Father Benwell stops at nothing to achieve his end, including the revelation of a dark secret from the past. His scheming and malevolence recalls the better-known villain Count Fosco, from Collins’s The Woman in White. Published in 1881, The Black Robe is one of Collins’s later novels and is here presented in a multi-voice production featuring a host of popular audiobook actors.

The Black Robe

In the World is the second instalment of Maxim Gorky’s autobiographical trilogy. Published in 1916, the book depicts Gorky’s experiences as a young adult, portraying his encounters with an array of characters from different social classes and conveying his observations of society at large. Gorky skilfully depicts the struggles, dreams and complexities of the lower classes, highlighting the social inequalities prevalent in Russia during the later 19th century. This audiobook offers a fascinating account of the young Gorky’s life, his experiences with poverty, his political beliefs and his journey as a writer, providing a vivid depiction of the social and political climate of pre-revolutionary Russia.

In the World

Appearing in 1852, Basil was Wilkie Collins’s second published novel. The eponymous narrator is emotionally torn between two women: Margaret Sherwin and his sister Clara. His marriage to Margaret, a draper’s sexually precocious daughter, is to remain secret and unconsummated for the first year, as agreed with her father. Anticipating Collins’s later sensation novels, the plot involves betrayal, insanity and death, with a thrilling conclusion set among the cliffs and whirlpools near Land’s End. The book was received with shock upon its publication, most especially due to its treatment of adultery. Here Basil is read by the prolific and popular narrator Nicholas Boulton.

Basil

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