British Birds

From the opening story, "Willing" - about a second-rate movie actress in her 30s who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being - Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time. 

A total of 175 species are heard on this download, ranging from the familiar tawny owl to the very rare call of the bittern. The authoritative guide to all British birds likely to be encountered by the average birdwatcher and the ideal gift for anyone wishing to learn the sounds of the great variety of birds that can be seen and heard throughout the seasons. A perennial best seller.

Sunday Times Bestseller ‘A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement’ Charles Foster Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month (September) Are trees social beings? How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? In The Hidden Life of Trees Peter...

Brought to you by Penguin. Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. A marvellous, allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism - an esoteric system concerned with the search for...

Bloomsbury presents The Birds by Camille Paglia, read by Gabrielle Glaister. Drawing on Daphne du Maurier's short story and contemporary newspaper reports of bird attacks in California, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) featured Tippi Hedren in her first starring role. Camille Paglia's...

As heard on the New Yorker Radio Hour: The triumphant and "engaging history" (The New Yorker) of the young women who devised a winning strategy that defeated Nazi U-boats and delivered a decisive victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. By 1941, Winston Churchill had come to believe that the...

The British countryside is renowned for its natural beauty and diverse wildlife and any walk, whether it be in woodland, wetland or open country, is always accompanied by the varied songs and calls of our birdlife.

‘A feast for mind and soul, a treasure trove of insights into the enigmatic and enchanting world of the birds we share our lives with but barely notice. I have learnt so much. Every page is a thrill. Bird School has opened my eyes' Isabella Tree, author of Wilding Step into the hide for a...

In this new anecdotal book, the unstoppable Dickie Bird takes one County Cricket Club at a time and revisits each with the aid of memorabilia, statistics, books and videos. A mass of new hilarious stories flow from Dickie as he flexes his memory: he describes the cricketers, the matches and the...

'Packed with insight and anecdote, his story brings the Tower ravens to vivid life, each bird with a personality of its own. I've been fortunate enough to tour the Tower and meet the ravens a few times in years past; after reading this book, I cannot wait to go back' George R. R. Martin For...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Remarkable. If only every endangered species had a guardian angel as impassioned, courageous and pragmatic as Jonathan Slaght' Isabella Tree, author of Wilding 'Gripping' Dave Goulson, author of A Sting in the Tale Primorye, a remote forested region near to where...

1939, and Will and Alice are evacuated to a granite farm in north Cornwall, perched on a windswept cliff. There they meet the farmer's daughter, Maggie, and against fields of shimmering barley and a sky that stretches forever, enjoy a childhood largely protected from the ravages of war. But in...

This download showcases some of the most exquisite sounds that can be heard in the natural world, from the rich, melodious songs of the Blackbird, Pied Butcherbird and Nightingale that are full of complexity, ingenuity and perfectly arranged phrases, to the breathtaking compositions of the Skylark, Albert's Lyrebird and White-rumped Shama, and the rhythmical variations on a theme from the Chiming Wedgebill and White-browed Robin-chat.

Before Shetland and Vera, Ann Cleeves wrote the George and Molly Palmer-Jones series following remarkable mysteries in a birdwatching community—now available for the first time in the US. In England’s birdwatching paradise, a new breed has been sighted—a murderer . . . Young Tom French is...

'When a robin appears, a loved one is near' In 2019, Tony Putman was working as a gardener in Edenbridge, Kent, when he noticed a bold robin sitting on a branch of an old plum tree. The robin glanced in his direction as he approached, but he didn't move, so Tony grabbed his camera and took a...

A dead man’s secret. A government that kills to keep it. And a PI who won’t let go. When PI Callie Munro finds her tech specialist murdered inside his fortress-like Edinburgh flat, she knows the killing wasn’t random. He let his killer in. What he left behind is far more dangerous...

Brought to you by Penguin. In How Flowers Made Our World, biologist David George Haskell redefines our understanding of flowers, casting them as powerful revolutionaries at the heart of Earth's story. Far from being mere ornaments, flowers have shaped the very fabric of life on our planet. Their...

In the spirit of Lisa Jewell and Kate Morton, an emotional mystery set in the rugged remote landscape of north Cornwall full of dark secrets and twists, about three unusual sisters forced to confront the past. Some secrets need to be set free… When half-sisters Kat, Flora, and Lauren are...

A very popular audio guide which helps to identify the birds that come to our gardens. This download features top-quality recordings of the typical songs and calls of the fifty-two species most commonly found in British gardens. The perfect introduction to learning and identifying bird sounds in your garden.

"Sounding appropriately David Attenborough-esque, Dugald Bruce-Lockhart narrates this in-depth look at the lives of 10 species of seabirds." — AudioFile Magazine Life itself could never have been sustainable without seabirds. As Adam Nicolson writes: "They are bringers of fertility, the...