The Shuttle

Orphaned cousins Jane and Lucilla, both 19, receive the exciting news that their guardian is at last allowing them to leave boarding school. But their rosy future is thwarted when they find he has made some bad investments and fled, leaving them with a cottage in the English countryside and a modest bank account.  

Anna's friends and family think she is living the dream in her beautiful finca under the Spanish sun. But the reality is far from perfect. The handsome, complicated man she was building a life with has left with little more than a note to say good-bye, and the future she imagined has crashed around her ears. Anna has secretly embarked on an ill-advised affair and lives above the dingy bar she runs in the sleepy beach town of Marea, surrounded by British expats as homesick and stuck as she is.

A collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories was first published in 1979 and awarded the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize. This Audible exclusive adaptation is narrated by legendary actors, Richard Armitage and Emilia Fox, who take on different chapters of the audiobook. Among these are 'The Bloody Chamber', 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon', 'The Tiger's Bride', 'Puss in Boots', 'The Erl-King', 'The Snow Child', 'The Lady of the House of Love', 'The Werewolf' and 'Wolf-Alice'.

When Liv and Nora decide to take their husbands and children on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. The ship's comforts and possibilities seem infinite. But when they all go ashore in beautiful Central America, a series of minor mishaps lead the families further from the ship's safety. One minute the children are there, and the next they're gone. What follows is a heart-racing story told from the perspectives of the adults and the children as the distraught parents - now turning on one another and blaming themselves - try to recover their children and their shattered lives.

Little Women itself “has been read as a romance or as a quest, or both. It has been read as a family drama that validates virtue over wealth.” Little Women has been read “as a means of escaping that life by women who knew its gender constraints only too well.” Alcott “combines many conventions of the sentimental novel with crucial ingredients of Romantic children's fiction, creating a new form of which Little Women is a unique model.”

Society believes the worst of Justin Alastair, the notorious Duke of Avon who is clearly proud of his Sobriquet, Satanas. It is he who buys Leon body and soul from a scoundrel in a Paris backstreet.

Selchester Castle in 1953 sits quiet and near-empty, its corridors echoing with glories of the past. Or so it seems to intelligence officer Hugo Hawksworth, wounded on a secret mission and now reluctantly assuming an altogether less perilous role at Selchester.

One day Ceddie Errol is visited by a gruff lawyer at the tiny house he shares with his widowed mother, and his life is never to be the same: for waiting in England is Dorincourt Castle, where Ceddie is to reside as the sole living heir to the irascible, proud, and selfish Earl of Dorincourt. It will be up to this virtuous boy to capture and warm the Earl's heart and transform him into a doting grandfather and responsible landlord.

This is a short story about a shy, quiet little girl living in a big city. When her parents are offered the opportunity to take care of a house in the suburbs for the summer she meets another little girl in the house and they become playmates.

"Cousin Phillis" (1864) is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell about Paul Manning, a youth of seventeen who moves to the country and befriends his mother's family and his second cousin Phillis Holman, who is confused by her own placement at the edge of adolescence. Most critics agree that Cousin Phillis is Gaskell's crowning achievement in the short novel. The story is uncomplicated; its virtues are in the manner of its development and telling.

The second novel from Mary Shelley, written in 1819-20 but not published in full until 1959. The story deals with common romantic themes but also incest and suicide. Narrating from her deathbed, Mathilda tells the story of her unnamed father’s confession of incestuous love for her, followed by his suicide by drowning; her relationship with a gifted young poet called Woodville fails to reverse Mathilda’s emotional withdrawal or prevent her lonely death.

"Under the Lilacs" is a tale of friendship and adventure from celebrated author Louisa May Alcott. When sisters Bab and Betty Moss decide to have a tea party one spring morning, little did they know a strange and talented dog and a bedraggled circus run-away would come into their lives. Ben Brown is believed to be orphaned. With no family to return to, the girl's kind neighbour, Miss Celia, takes Ben under her care, where he learns the true meaning of friendship, home and family.

The Old Wives' Tale is broken up into four parts, and the lives of two sisters are laid bare: one timid and unassuming, the other romantic and adventurous. From working as children in their family's drapery shop to their later years, Constance and Sophia's journey through life could not be more different. While one travels the world and defies male expectations, the other becomes a dutiful wife and mother.

Nick Lansing and Susy Branch are young, attractive but impoverished New Yorkers. They are in love and decide to marry, but realise their chances of happiness are slim without the wealth and society that their more privileged friends take for granted. Nick and Susy agree to separate when either encounters a more eligible proposition.

With his tongue unobtrusively tucked in his cheek, Doyle assists an imaginary French Brigadier in recalling his deeds of valor and gallantry while a young officer in Napoleon's army. Swords are brandished, villains are vanquished, and beautiful ladies swoon when Brigadier Gerard comes to town!