Showing titles in English, Irish, Scottish & Welsh

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' by poet and writer Lavinia Greenlaw. One of the great works of English literature, this powerful, compelling story explores love from its first tentative beginnings through to passionate sensuality and eventual tragic...

From 1938 to 1969 the fictional crime novelist and detective Paul Temple, together with his Fleet Street journalist wife Steve, solved case after case in one of BBC radio’s most popular series. When young drama student Mary Dreisler is found murdered in her flat, her father instantly sends...

Beowulf is considered the finest heroic poem in Old English. It celebrates the character and exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman and warrior, as he proves his superhuman strength and endurance. He also represents the ideal lord and vassal, rewarding his men generously and accomplishing glorious deeds to honor his king.

Fifteen-year-old Esperance Darbois, the only daughter of philosophy professor François Darbois, is determined to become a woman of the stage. But becoming an actress will sully the respectability of the Darbois family, damage her marriage prospects, and harm her father’s distinguished reputation. 

In this wickedly funny play, a seemingly ideal couple and their charming, privileged friends surmount such details as selling government secrets, theft, and bribery with love triumphant over all.

Only four years after publishing his fable Animal Farm, a biting satire of Joseph Stalin’s horrific regime of terror, George Orwell turned his attention to the future. But his next book was to be no satire, no fable. What emerged from Orwell’s pen in 1949 was the most grimly dystopian novel ever written: 1984.

Step into a world where logic loosens its grip and language begins to shimmer with delightful uncertainty. In this audio version of Lewis Carroll's classic nonsense tale, listeners are invited aboard an impossible voyage in search of a creature that may—or may not—exist. Led by a Bellman and accompanied by a most peculiar crew, the expedition unfolds through playful verse, absurd encounters, and a growing sense of unease. What seems to begin as nonsense gradually deepens into something stranger: a meditation on meaning, pursuit, and the fragile line between certainty and disappearance.

Bloomsbury presents Future Indefinite, with the unfinished Past Conditional, by Noël Coward, read by Arty Froushan. The definitive account, in his own words, of one of the most popular figures in British theatre. The second and concluding volume of Noël Coward's legendary autobiography...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. What if the most dangerous words in a kingdom are spoken not by rebels, but by a conscience that refuses to bend? *Sir Thomas More* is one of the most fascinating and politically charged works connected to William Shakespeare: a dramatic portrait of law...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. What if the world’s most famous love story was never only about love, but about the fatal speed of hatred? In *Romeo and Juliet*, William Shakespeare creates a tragedy of youth, passion, family violence, and destiny in a Verona divided by ancient feud...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. The Bogs of Tipperary A short story from a winter on the Loony Line, Ireland, 1990 — buses, caravans, bender tents, and horses holding their ground against the rain, the mud, and the cold. The Bogs of Tipperary follows a community of Travellers and...

Jolie et rayonnante, cuisinière émérite, Dona Flor est très aimée. On la plaint aussi parce qu'elle a épousé Vadinho, vaurien, joueur et coureur. Mais le roman s'ouvre au moment du carnaval et sur la mort inattendue de Vadinho, après sept ans de mariage. Dona Flor se consolera assez vite en épousant le docteur Teodoro, bien qu'il ne soit pas doué d'un tempérament de feu. Vient le jour où Dona Flor trouve Vadinho étendu nu sur le lit. Invisible à tous, Vadinho est complètement réincarné pour la seule Dona Flor et entend bien jouir de ses droits de mari.

Bloomsbury presents Haunting the Black Air, written and read by Anthony Joseph. 'A polyphonic exploration of memory, diaspora and sound' ROMALYN ANTE 'A kaleidoscope of image and word-power . . . A vital addition to the canon' MAGGIE HARRIS 'A work of rare formal daring and spiritual depth'...

In fuga dalla schiavitù, il viaggio di una madre alla ricerca dei figli e della libertà. "È questa la libertà?" si chiede Rachel, mentre corre in una foresta immersa nel buio, sola, atterrita, esausta. Sta scappando dalla piantagione in cui ha trascorso tutta la sua esistenza, da un lavoro sfibrante, da un padrone brutale. Lo stesso padrone che, quella mattina del 1834, ha annunciato la fine della schiavitù, per poi aggiungere che tutti loro avrebbero dovuto prestare servizio come apprendisti per altri sei anni. Una beffa atroce. In quell'istante, qualcosa in Rachel si è spezzato.

'Brian Bilston is a laureate for our fractured times.' Ian McMillan 'Someone who knows their way round both a joke and a bittersweet narrative.' The Times 'Part John Cooper Clarke, part Frank Sidebottom . . . all brilliant.' Esquire 'Bilston is a magician with words' Guardian Alexa, what is...

Nina Auerbach shows how every age embraces the vampire it needs, and gets the vampire it deserves. Working with a wide range of texts, as well as movies and television, Auerbach locates vampires at the heart of our national experience and uses them as a lens for viewing the last two hundred...

In this poem, Arnold tells the story of an Oxford student who abandons academic life to join a band of gypsies. He learns their mysterious, almost magical, and clearly unacademic knowledge and devotes himself to a lifelong quest for direct perception of truth. Unlike the people with whom the poet is surrounded, he never becomes distracted or challenged by corrosive doubt or concern about the trivialities of suburban life.

I am now growing in years, and — since I understand that Shakespeare and Mr. Emmons are deceased — it is not impossible that I may even die. It has occurred to me, therefore, that I may as well retire from the field of Letters and repose upon my laurels. But I am ambitious of signalizing my abdication of the literary sceptre by some important bequest to posterity; and, perhaps, I cannot do a better thing than just pen for it an account of my earlier career.

"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" is a dark comedy short story by the American author Edgar Allan Poe. First published in Graham's Magazine in November 1845, the story centers on a naïve and unnamed narrator's visit to a mental asylum in the southern provinces of France. The story follows an unnamed narrator who visits a mental institution in southern France (more accurately, a "Maison de Santé") known for a revolutionary new method of treating mental illnesses called the "system of soothing".

This collection of 59 short poems consists of verses, some of them incomplete, which remained unpublished at the time of Shelley’s death. Some of them have become the best known of Shelley’s shorter works. The poems were collated and edited by Mary Shelley, who also wrote an introduction to...