In a memoir that’s equal parts love story, investigation, and racial reckoning, Munemo unravels and interrogates her whiteness, a shocking secret, and her family’s history.When interracial romance novels written by her long-dead father landed on Julia McKenzie Munemo’s kitchen table, she—a white woman—had been married to a black man for six years and their first son was a toddler. Out of shame about her father’s secret career as a writer of “slavery porn,” she hid ...

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...

Full-cast BBC adaptations of Oliver Goldsmith’s two most famous worksAnglo-Irish author Oliver Goldsmith was one of the most accomplished writers of the 18th century. A novelist, playwright, poet and essayist, he came to fame with his novel The Vicar of Wakefield and comic play She Stoops to Conquer. Both those classics are included here, with star casts including Julia McKenzie, Amanda Root, Peter Jeffrey and Sunny Ormond...

Timothy West, Julia McKenzie and Oliver Peace star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Charles Kingsley’s classic tale of a chimney sweep who becomes a water baby.Forced up the chimneys of Hartover Hall by his cruel master, Grimes, young Tom gets lost and comes down the wrong one, frightening little Miss Ellie. In the chase that follows, he is rescued by the fairies and taken to be a water baby under the waves. There, he makes friends with sea creatures such as the Lobst...

Riveting radio dramatisations of Charles Dickens' fifteen full-length novels.Charles Dickens is one of the most renowned authors of all time, and this digital volume of the dramatised canon of his work includes fifteen of his most popular novels.This collection includes the episodic adventure Nicholas Nickleby, comic tale The Pickwick Papers, poignant melodrama The Old Curiosity Shop, the much-loved Oliver Twist. Plus, th...

A BBC radio dramatisation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's much-loved children's storyBrought from India to chilly, fog-bound London, Sara Crewe is enrolled as a pupil at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Her doting father, Captain Crewe, has provided her with fine clothes and luxuries fit for a princess, and she attracts envious attention. But Sara soon wins friends with her kindness, taking the school's misfits under her wing, and telling them wonderfu...

Captivating radio dramatisations of seven of Charles Dickens' most famous novels.Charles Dickens is one of the most renowned authors of all time, and this first digital volume of the dramatised canon of his work includes seven of his most popular novels.This collection includes the episodic adventure Nicholas Nickleby, comic tale The Pickwick Papers, poignant melodrama The Old Curiosity Shop and the much-loved Oliver Twist

Julia McKenzie and Simon Carter star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of E Nesbit’s much-loved children’s novel.‘an enchanting adaptation’ Independent on SundayOn a hot, Edwardian summer’s day, five children are playing in a gravel pit when they dig up something very peculiar: a funny, furry, fat litte creature with the feet of a monkey and bat’s ears! The Psammead is a magical sand fairy who has the power to grant wishes: but the children can only have ...

A quirky BBC Radio 4 comedy by Ben Lewis about a teenager who becomes an internet phenomenon. Originally broadcast as the ‘Afternoon Play’ on 17 September 2010. This is the story of a legend in the making. A nervous young man lives at the dead end of a dead-end town. On his eighteenth birthday he comes into his inheritance. With a little help from an old teacher, he finds it equips him to broadcast over the internet. Living in a house where rolling news is a constant presence, he does what...

A collection of BBC radio full-cast dramatisations of Jane Austen's six major novels Jane Austen is one of the finest writers in the English language, and this volume includes all six of her classic novels.Mansfield Park: On a quest to find a position in society, Fanny Price goes to live with her rich aunt and uncle.Northanger Abbey: Young, naïve Catherine Morland receives an invitation to stay at the isolated Gothic mansion Northanger Abbey.Full chapter listing:

In this BBC radio full-cast dramatisation of one of Jane Austen's most beloved works, Catherine Morland's overactive imagination makes her life more complicated than she would have wished...Catherine is obsessed with Gothic novels, often getting swept up by her taste for the dramatic and tragic. Did Mrs Tilney really die nine years previously, or has she been murdered or imprisoned in her chambers this whole time?Meanwhile she is torn between two suitors, the handsome and c...

A BBC Radio collection of dramatisations of E. Nesbit's finest children's books with extra magical readings plus an original drama by Martin JamesonE Nesbit is widely regarded as the first modern children's writer. Her ground-breaking novels have influenced authors from Oscar Wilde to Jacqueline Wilson, and over 100 years after their first publication, they remain perennially popular.This wide-ranging collection comprises some of her very best children's fi...