As an actress, Diana Quick was forever trying on the mask of other people's lives - raiding her own memory to service the character she was playing. Coming from a large, noisy family in Kent that seemed to be plain-speaking and straightforward, she was astonished to find on her beloved father's death that his childhood in India was far from idyllic. She was then thunderstruck to hear that he was to have a requiem mass. She had no idea he was Catholic. She discovered that his stepmother had...

Towering over the other characters, Tolstoy’s beautiful tragic heroine, Anna Karenina, dominates the action of the great book which bears her name. Anna is sensitive, generous, warm-hearted and intelligent, but all her virtues count for nothing when she is overcome by passionate love for Count Vronsky. Handsome and sensual, Vronsky is everything Anna’s dry, legalistic husband is not. Their love, which flouts the rigid laws of marriage, proves disastrous. Russian high society will not forgi...

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby...Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day ...

Sixteen years after being locked up, at the age of sixteen, for the bloody murders of her employer and his housekeeper, Grace Marks is examined by Dr Simon Jordan, an expert in amnesia.As the days and weeks pass Simon tries to prise open the memories Grace claims to have lost and reveals a life of love and betrayal, poverty and abuse, drawing the listener in to the rooms of Grace’s mind.

Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize. The richly exotic story of the childhood the twins Esthappen and Rahel craft for themselves amongst India’s vats of banana jam and mountains of peppercorns.Here, perhaps, is the greatest Indian novel by a woman. Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’ is an astonishingly rich, fertile novel, teeming with life, colour, heart-stopping language, wry comedy and a hint of magical realism.Set against a background of political turbulence in Keral...

Married to a man of importance in 19th century St.Petersburg, Anna's world crumbles when she falls passionately in love with the handsome Count Vronsky, and is forced to choose between her lover and her young son. Her tragedy lies in the cruelty meted out to her in high society by those who had been her friends.A masterpiece of 19th century fiction, Tolstoy's classic romantic tragedy remains as moving and powerful as ever. Evocative and emotional reading by Diana Quick.

‘An absolute belter of a biography’ MARINA HYDE A Times Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022 An LA Times Best Book of the Year 2022An intimate, revealing and profoundly moving biography of Jean Rhys, acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea.An obsessive and troubled genius, Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling and unnerving writers of the twentieth century. Memories of a con...

When career criminal Terry Greene is sentenced to life for a murder he didn't commit, his wife has two choices: to walk away from the criminal empire he'd built up, or to take it over - to become as big a gangster as her husband. So far as Samantha "Sam" Greene is concerned, there is no choice. All the family's assets are tied up in the business, and the family means more to her than anything else. But being a gangland boss doesn't come easily to Sam - other criminals are trying to take ov...

Penguin Classics presents Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, adapted for audio and now available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actress Diana Quick.'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?'Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Vic...

A woman, an obsession, an unforgettable bestseller.Television war correspondent Nicky Wells is a media superstar. Courageous, beautiful and renowned for her hard-hitting reports from the world’s most dangerous trouble spots, her life is shattered when she loses the only man she ever truly loved – a dashing English aristocrat, Charles Devereaux.Nicky seeks solace in her work and friendship with photographer Cleeland Donovan and, after a romantic interlude in Provence, begins...

A captivating story of family and friends, innocence and corruption.Four friends swore eternal friendship when all they had was each other. Now their dazzling careers, their seemingly successful lives, are to be disrupted by a devastating singer – and by the shadow of their past.Rosie Madigan is the angel… an award-winning costume-designer, she is blessed with worldly goods yet troubled by personal commitments.Gavin Ambrose is the Hollywood megastar: talented and id...

The gripping sequel to A Woman of Substance (now a major new tv series) and Hold The Dream.Set in Yorkshire, Hong Kong and America, this remarkable novel continues the story of an unorthodox and endlessly fascinating family. As the spirit of Emma Harte lives on in her granddaughter, Paula O’Neill, an engrossing drama is played out in the glamorous arena of the wealthy and privileged, underscored by a cut-throat world of jealousy and treachery....