New December 2008 Releases




Jessica Blair                    Dangerous Shores
Narrated by Anne Dover
When Abigail Mitchell is a little girl her father, John, inherits a large estate in Cornwall, and moves his family from their comfortable living in Whitby to the rugged Cornish coast. John soon incurs the wrath of their neighbours, the Gainsfords, a powerful old Cornish family, but as Abigail blossoms into a young lady she finds herself attracted to the eldest son, Luke Gainsford. She agrees to marry him in spite of his rakish reputation and her father's objections to the match. Abigail soon learns she should have heeded her father's warning when she uncovers Luke's secret life...
Family Saga                         9781846523205    13 CDs




Glenice Crossland                    Christmas Past
Narrated by Maggie Mash
When seventeen-year-old Mary O'Connor collapses in church she is taken to live with Dr Roberts and his wife in a beautiful Yorkshire village, where she becomes the daughter they were never able to have. With Britain at war, she works in the local steel works but when her fiancé Tom Downing is killed, a grief-stricken Mary is convinced it is retribution for their night of sin during Tom's Christmas leave. Eventually Mary marries local miner Jack Holmes, and sets up her own dressmaking business, but the business starts to dominate her life until tragedy once more threatens to destroy all she most cherishes.
Family Saga                         9781846523373    10 CDs




Stuart Pawson                    The Picasso Scam
Narrated by Andrew Wincott
Detective Inspector Charlie Priest believes in doing things by the book - it's just that he sometimes turns over two pages at once. Sheep stealing and shoplifting are everyday crimes in Heckley, but there are local villains with bigger fish to fry. When Charlie suspects a now-respected businessman, with a background of extortion and GBH, of involvement in international art fraud, he's making an enemy with friends in high places, but Charlie can be persistent to the point of recklessness. Once he's realised that there's a link to the lethal doctored heroin that's striking down the local kids, no threat will stop him...
Mystery                         9781846523762    7 CDs




Peter Sale                    Tom Kipper: The Wartime Years
Narrated by Richard Tate
At the tender age of fourteen, loveable rogue Tom Kipper is thrust from the schoolroom of St Joseph's Academy of Hard Knocks into the adult world of work. Armed with advice from his God-fearing Irish mother, he soon finds himself in the heart of Liverpool as an office boy at El Paso Corned Beef Inc. With the Blitz at its height, life in the city is full of adventure, with air raids to watch and money to be made. He even gets his picture in the paper - but what will his Ma say when she sees he's been arrested as a Nazi undercover agent?
Non Fiction                         9781846523960    6 CDs




Tamara McKinley                    Lands Beyond The Sea
Narrated by Peter Wickham
By the 1700s, the Aborigine had lived in harmony with the land in Australia for 60,000 years. But now ghost-ships are arriving, and their very existence is threatened by a terrifying white invasion. When Jonathan Cadwallader leaves Cornwall to sail on the Endeavour, he is forced to abandon his sweetheart, Susan Penhalligan. But an act of brutality will reunite them in the raw and unforgiving penal colony of New South Wales. Billy Penhalligan has survived transportation and clings to the promise of a new beginning. But there will be more suffering before he or his fellow convicts can regard Australia as home...
General Fiction                         9781407906614    12 CDs




Rebecca Tope                    Blood In The Cotswolds
Narrated by Caroline Lennon
Thea Osborne and her spaniel, Hepzie, are house-sitting in the quiet village of Temple Guiting. Detective Superintendent Phil Hollis is looking forward to visiting for a night or two and celebrating the couple's anniversary. A few days into their stay, a pile of human bones are discovered at the base of an uprooted tree. The locals all have their theories about their identity and rumours abound. Thea and Phil discover that the village turns out to have more than its fair share of secrets, including a strong connection to the Knights Templar. The couple finds their relationship tested to the limits as they try to prevent another murder investigation from threatening the quiet solitude they hold so dear.
Mystery                         9781407906980    8 CDs




Annie Murray                    The Bells Of Bournville Green
Narrated by Annie Aldington
It is 1962 and pretty 17-year-old Greta finds life at home hard. She has no father and loathes her mother's latest boyfriend. She's happiest at work with her friends in Birmingham's Cadbury factory. When her missing vixen of a sister, Marlene, turns up, Greta decides that she has to get away, and the only escape route is marriage. But she soon finds out that life with Trevor is not as she'd hoped, and freedom and happiness still elude her. When the situation worsens, she finds herself out on the streets - pregnant and homeless - until her mother's friends Edie and Anatoli take her in, providing a safe, secure haven...until tragedy strikes.
Family Saga                         9781407906560    12 CDs




Elizabeth George                    Careless In Red
Narrated by Crispin Redman
Barely three months since the murder of his wife, Thomas Lynley takes to the South-West Coast Path in Cornwall, determined to walk its length in an attempt to distract himself from his loss. On the 43rd day of this walk, he spies a body on the beach - a young cliff-climber has suffered a fatal fall. Shortly afterwards, Lynley encounters a young woman from Bristol whose personal history is a blank before her 13th year. These events propel him into a case that brings Barbara Havers from London and thrusts both detectives into a world where revenge is only one of the motives they must sift through to identify a killer.
Mystery                         9780753139080    21 CDs




Richard Askwith                    The Lost Village
Narrated by Nick Rawlinson
The idea of the unspoilt and unchanging village is one of the most potent in the English imagination. Yet the English village is plainly dying. The unaltered rhythms of village life have all but vanished. But not without a trace…they exist in the voices of men and women for whom the old ways were life-shaping realities. Richard Askwith describes a journey in search of the true country dwellers. He captures the voices of poachers and gamekeepers, farmers and huntsmen, thatchers and blacksmiths, and demonstrates that, while the landscape is more changed than we thought, the past is never so simple as we imagine.
Non Fiction                         9780753133941    11 CDs




Alexander McCall Smith                    The Unbearable Lightness Of Scones
Narrated by Hilary Neville
The story of Bertie and his dysfunctional family continues in this fifth instalment, alongside the familiar cast of favourites - Big Lou, Domenica, Angus Lordie, Cyril and others - in their daily pursuit of a little happiness. With customary charm and deftness, Alexander McCall Smith has again given us a clever, witty and utterly delightful new novel. (needs to be a bit longer at some point!)
General Fiction                         9780753138908    11 CDs




Meg Gardiner                    The Dirty Secrets Club
Narrated by Tara Ward
Jo Beckett is a forensic psychiatrist who profiles victims' lives to help solve their deaths. On a San Francisco street, she is confronted by a scene of pure carnage: four dead and five injured after a high speed pursuit. In the mangled remains of a BMW lies prosecutor Callie Harding, dead with the word "dirty" written in lipstick on her thigh. Why did Harding run from the police? Why did she crash through a bridge railing? Was it an accident? Suicide? Or murder? Jo is a last resort in difficult cases. But now she's on the front line, because Callie Harding isn't the first high flyer to go down and take others with her...
Mystery                         9780753138854    9 CDs