Miss Marple, living a quiet life in St Mary Mead, is saddened to hear of the death of Jason Rafiel. Not that they were friends - the old financier was much too irascible and self-centred for friendship - but they had once been allies in solving a series of murders that took place on the tiny Caribbean island of St Honoré. She is therefore greatly surprised by a summons to the dead man's solicitor, where she receives a bizarre challenge in the form of a posthumous letter. According to Mr Ra...

The lavish seven-part saga of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table'Wonderful... pure pleasure' The ListenerThe Arthurian legends have long held a powerful grip on our collective imagination, inspiring numerous poets, novelists and playwrights to interpret them in countless different ways. In this epic play cycle, based on Malory's classic Le Morte D'Arthur, Graeme Fife gives us his dramatic, in-depth ret...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin, read by Jill Balcon and David Shaw-Parker.Paradox ruled Thomas Hardy's life. His birth was almost his death; he became one of the great Victorian novelists and reinvented himself as one of the twentieth-century's greatest poets; he was an unhappy husband and a desolate widower; he wrote bitter attacks on the English class system yet prized the friendship of aristocrats.In the hands of Whitbre...

Jane Marple is being treated to a few days' holiday by her niece, staying at Bertram's Hotel - a dignified, establishment tucked away in a back street of busy Mayfair. It is a place where sedate upper-class ladies, retired military gentlemen and the higher echelons of the clergy can indulge in the comforts of a bygone age. But Miss Marple begins to feel uneasy. Something sinister lurks beneath the polished veneer. Why are so many major crimes associated in some way with the hotel and those...

In Agatha Christie’s They Do It with Mirrors**, the indomitable Miss Marple investigates some rather deadly doings at a rehabilitation center for delinquents.**Miss Marple senses danger when she visits a friend living in Stoneygates, a rehabilitation center for delinquents. Her fears are confirmed when someone shoots at the administrator. Although he is not injured, a mysterious visitor is less fortunate—shot dead simultaneously in another part of the buil...

Read by Joan HicksonA Murder is Announced in a small-town newspaper advertisement—and Miss Marple must unravel the fiendish puzzle when a crime does indeed occur.The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn are agog with curiosity when the Gazette advertises “A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m.”A childish practical joke? Or a spiteful hoax? Unable to resi...

The indomitable sleuth Miss Marple is led to a small town with shameful secrets in Agatha Christie’s classic detective story, The Moving Finger.Lymstock is a town with more than its share of scandalous secrets—a town where even a sudden outbreak of anonymous hate mail causes only a minor stir.But all that changes when one of the recipients, Mrs. Symmington, commits suicide. Her final note says “I can’t go on,” but Miss Marple questions the coroner’...

Read by Emilia FoxIn Agatha Christie’s classic mystery 4:50 From Paddington**, a woman in one train witnesses a murder occurring in another passing one…and only Miss Marple believes her story.**For an instant the two trains ran side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth McGillicuddy stared helplessly out of her carriage window as a man tightened his grip around a woman's throat. The body crumpled. Then the other ...

Read by Hugh FraserIn this breathtaking Agatha Christie mystery, the Third Girl sharing a London flat with two others announces to Hercule Poirot that she’s a murderer and then disappears. The masterful investigator must figure out whether the missing girl is a criminal, a victim, or merely insane.Three young women share a London flat. The first is a coolly efficient secretary. The second is an artist. The third interrupts Hercule ...

The iconic Miss Marple must investigate the case of a girl found dead in Agatha Christie’s classic mystery, The Body in the Library.It’s seven in the morning. The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing an evening dress and heavy makeup, which is now smeared across her cheeks. But who is she? How did she get there? And what is the connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an aba...

As Hercule Poirot sifts through his post one particular morning, he alights upon a letter from an elderly and (as it transpires), exceedingly rich spinster - Miss Emily Arundell. She is clearly in great distress and seeking his help, but doesn't say why. Her only specific mention is 'the incident of the dog's ball'. However, what intrigues Poirot is the date of the communication - it was written two months ago. He persuades Captain Hastings that they must visit the lady with all haste. On ...

Following an otherwise-enjoyable literary luncheon, the celebrated crime novelist Ariadne Oliver is accosted by a particularly formidable woman who engages her in conversation about one of her many god-daughters, whom Ariadne hasn’t seen since she was a child. She lands a bombshell with the question ‘What I want to know is this: did her mother kill her father, or was it the father who killed the mother?’ Affronted and bewildered by the assertiveness of this pushy busybody, Ariadne is never...