The Comet Seekers

The Bear and the Nightingale

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 48 mins)
• By Katherine Arden
• Narrated By Kathleen Gati
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

In a village at the edge of the wilderness of Northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift - a precious jewel on a delicate chain, intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, the father hides the gift away, and his daughter, Vasya, grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay.

To the Bright Edge of the World

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 27 mins)
• By Eowyn Ivey
• Narrated By Christine Lakin, John Glouchevich, Kiff Vandenheuvel
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester receives the commission of a lifetime when he is charged to navigate Alaska's hitherto impassable Wolverine River with only a small group of men. The Wolverine is the key to opening up Alaska and its rich natural resources to the outside world, but previous attempts have ended in tragedy. Forrester leaves behind his young wife, Sophie, newly pregnant with the child he had never expected to have.

The Bedlam Stacks

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Natasha Pulley
• Narrated By David Thorpe
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

An astonishing historical novel set in the shadowy, magical forests of South America, which draws on the captivating world of the international best seller The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Deep in uncharted Peru, the holy town of Bedlam stands at the edge of a forest. The shrine statues move, and anyone who crosses the border dies. But somewhere inside are cinchona trees, whose bark yields quinine: the only known treatment for malaria. On the other side of the Pacific, it is 1859, and India is ravaged by the disease.

Birdcage Walk

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 9 mins)
• By Helen Dunmore
• Narrated By Emma Fenney
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

It is1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence. Lizzie Fawkes has grown up in radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism. But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. Diner believes that Lizzie's independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued. She belongs to him.

Lincoln in the Bardo

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 27 mins)
• By George Saunders
• Narrated By George Saunders, Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, and others
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other, for no one but Saunders could conceive it. February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved 11-year-old son, Willie, dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery.

How to Stop Time

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 36 mins)
• By Matt Haig
• Narrated By Mark Meadows
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to jazz age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen a lot and now craves an ordinary life. Always changing his identity to stay alive, Tom has the perfect cover - working as a history teacher at a London comprehensive. Here he can teach the kids about wars and witch hunts as if he'd never witnessed them firsthand.

The Girl with All the Gifts

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 2 mins)
• By M. R. Carey
• Narrated By Finty Williams
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her 'our little genius'. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh. Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells.

The Keeper of Lost Things

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 35 mins)
• By Ruth Hogan
• Narrated By Jane Collingwood, Sandra Duncan
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Once a celebrated author of short stories now in his twilight years, Anthony Peardew has spent half his life lovingly collecting lost objects, trying to atone for a promise broken many years before. Realising he is running out of time, he leaves his house and all its lost treasures to his assistant, Laura, the one person he can trust to fulfil his legacy and reunite the thousands of objects with their rightful owners.

The Muse

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 6 mins)
• By Jessie Burton
• Narrated By Cathy Tyson
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

On a hot July day in 1967, Odelle Bastien climbs the stone steps of the Skelton gallery in London, knowing that her life is about to change forever. Having struggled to find her place in the city since she arrived from Trinidad five years ago, she has been offered a job as a typist under the tutelage of the glamorous and enigmatic Marjorie Quick. Although Quick takes Odelle into her confidence and unlocks a potential she didn't know she had, she remains a mystery - no more so than when a lost masterpiece with a secret history is delivered to the gallery.

The End of the World Running Club

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 1 min)
• By Adrian J. Walker
• Narrated By Jot Davies
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Do the impossible or lose your family forever.... Edgar Hill, unsympathetic husband and halfhearted father, finds himself in a hopeless situation. Despite all his best efforts, he hasn't managed to keep his family together. In fact they are further from him than ever - 550 miles, to be precise. And in a world near annihilated by a terrible disaster, leaving the UK harsh and brutal, uncrossable by car or bike, his journey to find his loved ones will be fraught with challenges.

The Outrun

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 47 mins)
• By Amy Liptrot
• Narrated By Tracy Wiles

At the age of 30, Amy Liptrot finds herself washed up back home on Orkney. Standing unstable on the island, she tries to come to terms with the addiction that has swallowed the last decade of her life. As she spends her mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, her days tracking Orkney's wildlife, and her nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Amy discovers how the wild can restore life and renew hope.

Swimming Lessons

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 23 mins)
• By Claire Fuller
• Narrated By Rachel Atkins
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their marriage, but instead of giving them to him, she hides each in the thousands of books he has collected over the years. When Ingrid has written her final letter, she disappears from a Dorset beach, leaving behind her beautiful but dilapidated house by the sea, her husband, and her two daughters, Flora and Nan. Twelve years after her disappearance, Gil thinks he sees Ingrid from a bookshop window.

Homegoing

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 10 mins)
• By Yaa Gyasi
• Narrated By Dominic Hoffman
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, narrated by Dominic Hoffman.

Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery, one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 36 mins)
• By Arundhati Roy
• Narrated By Arundhati Roy
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

In a city graveyard, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet between two graves. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby appears quite suddenly, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. In a snowy valley, a father writes to his five-year-old daughter about the number of people who attended her funeral. And in the Jannat Guest House, two people who've known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around one another as though they have only just met.

The Gustav Sonata

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 3 mins)
• By Rose Tremain
• Narrated By Mark Meadows

Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland where the horrors of the Second World War seem distant. He adores his mother, but she treats him with bitter severity, disapproving especially of his intense friendship with Anton, the Jewish boy at school. A gifted pianist, Anton is tortured by stage fright; only in secret games with Gustav does his imagination thrive. But Gustav is taught that he must develop a hard shell, 'like a coconut', to protect the softness inside - just like the hard shell perfected by his country to protect its neutrality.

His Bloody Project

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs)
• By Graeme Macrae Burnet
• Narrated By Crawford Logan, Cameron Mowat
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

A brutal triple murder in a remote Scottish farming community in 1869 leads to the arrest of 17-year-old Roderick Macrae. There is no question that Macrae committed this terrible act. What would lead such a shy and intelligent boy down this bloody path? Presented as a collection of documents, His Bloody Project opens with a series of police statements taken from the villagers, which offer conflicting impressions, throwing Macrae's motive and his sanity into question.

The Secret Life of Bees

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 54 mins)
• By Sue Monk Kidd
• Narrated By Jenna Lamia
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now 14, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the '60s is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for.

The Essex Serpent

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Sarah Perry
• Narrated By Juanita McMahon
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

London 1893: When Cora Seaborne and her son Francis reach Essex, rumours spread from further up the estuary that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming lives, has returned to the coastal parish of Aldwinter. Cora, a keen amateur naturalist is enthralled, convinced that it may be a previously undiscovered species. As she sets out on its trail she meets William Ransome, Aldwinter's vicar.

The Handmaid's Tale

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Margaret Atwood
• Narrated By Joanna David
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed . If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs....

The Doll Funeral

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 54 mins)
• By Kate Hamer
• Narrated By Charlie Sanderson, Gareth Bennett-Ryan, Georgia Maguire
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

'My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They're not my real parents, but they tell me what to do and what to say. I'm supposed to say that my bruises and black eye came from falling down the stairs. But there are things I won't say. I won't tell them I'm going to hunt for my real parents. I'm going to be with my real family. And I'm not going to let Mick stop me.'

All the Light We Cannot See

• UNABRIDGED (17 hrs)
• By Anthony Doerr
• Narrated By Julie Teal
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighbourhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

Holding

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Graham Norton
• Narrated By Graham Norton
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Graham Norton's masterful debut is an intelligently crafted story of love, secrets and loss. The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama, and yet its inhabitants are troubled. Sergeant PJ Collins hasn't always been this overweight; mother of two Brid Riordan hasn't always been an alcoholic; and elegant Evelyn Ross hasn't always felt that her life was a total waste.

The Gracekeepers

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 15 mins)
• By Kirsty Logan
• Narrated By Kirsty Logan
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The sea has flooded the earth. North lives on a circus boat, floating between the scattered islands that remain. She dances with her beloved bear, while the rest of the crew trade dazzling and death-defying feats for food from the islanders. However, North has a secret that could capsize her life with the circus. Callanish lives alone in her house in the middle of the ocean, with only the birds and the fish for company.

The Trees

• UNABRIDGED (18 hrs and 5 mins)
• By Ali Shaw
• Narrated By Ben Onwukwe
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins. There is no warning. No chance to prepare. They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest. Buildings are destroyed.