Literature & Fiction

Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white and her white husband knows nothing of her past.

As a child Gifty would ask her parents to tell the story of their journey from Ghana to Alabama, seeking escape in myths of heroism and romance. When her father and brother succumb to the hard reality of immigrant life in the American South, their family of four becomes two - and the life Gifty dreamed of slips away. Years later, desperate to understand the opioid addiction that destroyed her brother's life, she turns to science for answers. But when her mother comes to stay, Gifty soon learns that the roots of their tangled traumas reach farther than she ever thought. 

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Inside the walls of their old cottage, they make music, and in the garden they grow (and sometimes kill, everything they need for sustenance. But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. Jeanie and Julius would do anything to preserve their small sanctuary against the perils of the outside world.

In Baxter's Beach, Barbados, Lala's grandmother, Wilma, tells the story of the one-armed sister, a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers. For Wilma, it's the story of a wilful adventurer, who ignores the warnings of those around her, and suffers as a result. When Lala grows up, she sees it offers hope - of life after losing a baby in the most terrible of circumstances and marrying the wrong man. 

When they are girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to their father - that they will stay together, no matter what.... 

In a sleepy village in the Shire, a young hobbit is entrusted with an immense task. He must make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ruling Ring of Power - the only thing that prevents the Dark Lord Sauron’s evil dominion....

The company of the Ring is torn asunder. Frodo and Sam continue their journey alone down the great River Anduin - alone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go....

In Silverview, John le Carré turns his focus to the world that occupied his writing for the past 60 years - the secret world itself....

The Midnight Library is a gloriously relatable novel about life, death and the in-between. It is about finding hope, playing chess, dumping regrets and picking the right people around you....

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood....

The armies of the Dark Lord are massing as his evil shadow spreads even wider. Men, Dwarves, Elves and Ents unite forces to battle against the Dark. Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam struggle further into Mordor in their heroic quest to destroy the One Ring....

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End....

Audible is proud to present Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, read by Stephen Fry, a lifelong fan of Doyle's detective fiction....

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it....

Gaiman's gods are thoroughly alive - irascible, visceral, playful, and passionate - and the tales carry us from the beginning of everything to Ragnarök and the twilight of the gods....

For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl....

The second Dune installment explores new developments on the planet Arrakis, with its intricate social order and strange, threatening environment....

Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.... 

Mallory - he was the best of the best, a Special Forces leader and a hero. But then he made a fatal decision, gambling with the lives of his men with terrible consequences: two dead, and his young friend, Donno, left in a coma....

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished....

Detective Roger LeCarre: a man on a quest to rid the world of crime (starting with Devon and Cornwall and then working outwards) so he can concentrate on his watercolours....

Reacher never backs down from a problem. And he's about to find a big one, on a deserted road in Arizona, where a car has crashed into the only tree for miles around....

Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.... 

Shay Bastable is the woman in the middle. She is there for everyone else, holding them all together, looking out for them all. She is part of the sandwich generation - caring for her parents and her children....

Big Brother is watching you.... 1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates....

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life....