Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Contemporary Fiction

Rachel has always loved being at the centre of her large family. She has fiercely devoted herself to her three sons all their lives,and continues to do so even now they are all grown up. They are, of course, devoted to her – she and Anthony, their father, hold the family together at their big, beautiful, ramshackle house near the wide, bird-haunted coast of Suffolk. But when Luke, her youngest, gets married, Rachel finds that control is slipping away.

A razor-sharp portrait of a morally bankrupt and gleefully wicked modern man, Worst. Person. Ever. is Douglas Coupland's gloriously filthy, side-splittingly funny and unforgettable novel. Meet Raymond Gunt. A decent chap who tries to do the right thing. Or, to put it another way, the worst person ever: a foul-mouthed, misanthropic cameraman, trailing creditors, ex-wives and unhappy homeless people in his wake. Men dislike him, women flee from him.

It's 1977 and Jack Sheffield is appointed headmaster of a small village primary school in North Yorkshire. So begins Jack's eventful journey through the school year and his attempts to overcome the many problems that face him as a young and inexperienced headmaster. The many colourful characters include Ruby, the 20-stone caretaker with an acute spelling problem; a secretary who worships Margaret Thatcher; a villager who grows giant carrots; a barmaid/parent who requests sex lessons, and a five-year-old boy whose language is colourful in the extreme.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner, read by Royce Pierreson. A tale of smuggling set among the cliffs, caves and downs of Dorset. Everyone in the tiny village of Moonfleet lives by the sea one way or another, so it's no surprise when young John Trenchard gets involved in the smuggling trade. Forced to flee England with a price on his head, John little guesses the adventures and trials he will have before he sees Moonfleet again or the change in his fortunes when he does.

Martin Sturrock desperately needs a psychiatrist. The problem? He is one.Emily is a traumatised burns victim, Arta a Kosovan refugee recovering from a rape. David Temple is a long-term depressive, while the Rt Hon Ralph Hall MP lives in terror of his drink problem being exposed. Very different Londoners, but they share one thing: every week they spend an hour at the Prince Regent hospital, revealing the secrets of their psyche to Professor Martin Sturrock.

The truth can kill you…Reuben Maitland runs the UK’s most elite crime squad, working only on the highest-profile cases, tracking down the country’s most vicious criminals. At the cutting edge – controversial, ruthless, effective – the squad have always made enemies. But now they’re in danger. A killer is using their own techniques against them. The hunters have become the hunted.Reuben must find the killer before his team is eradicated. But the more questions he asks, the more complex the answers become.

Once it had been the great forest of Lythe - a vast and impenetrable thicket of green.And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor, visited once by the great Gloriana herself. But over the centuries the forest had been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes have dwindled too; now they live in 'Arden' at the end of Hawthorne Close and are hardly a family at all.

At the end of Charles Webb's first novel, The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock rescues his beloved Elaine from a marriage made not in heaven but in California.It is now eleven years and 3,000 miles later, and the couple live in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City, with their two young sons, whom they are educating at home.

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....

Maria and Emma have not seen each other since their mother's funeral two years before. Now, Emma has come to visit Maria at her house in Spain, and her presence is an unsettling intrusion on Maria's quiet and solitary life. Over six days in the seaside town together, the sisters cautiously sink into conversations recounting the years of their separate adult lives. Their walks through the quiet town and evening talks on the terrace reveal almost more than Maria can deal with, until finally, the sisters confront the unspeakable....

Mara is a successful lawyer, and devoted wife and mother. Struggling with a devastating illness, she has set herself five days to make the ultimate decision for her family. Scott lives a thousand miles away, and is a foster parent to a troubled eight-year-old. Scott is facing his own five-day countdown until his beloved foster son is returned to his biological mother. The two connect through an online forum, and find a friendship to help guide them through the most difficult, and momentous, week of their lives.

Mitford's village rector, Father Tim, is running scared. He can no longer deny (even to himself), that he's in love with his neighbor, Cynthia Coppersmith. Cynthia, after all, sees in him a man of warmth and daring, if only he'll meet her halfway. But now a wealthy widow is pursuing Father Tim with hot casseroles. And the mysterious Cousin Meg has moved into the rectory bag and baggage, not to mention uninvited.

It's 1978, and Jack Sheffield begins his second year as headmaster of a small village primary school in North Yorkshire. There are three letters on his desk - one makes him smile, one makes him sad, and one is destined to change his life forever. This is from nine-year-old Sebastian, suffering from leukaemia in the local hospital, who writes a heartbreaking letter addressed to "Mister Teacher". Jack tries to help, and so begins a journey through the seasons of Yorkshire life, in which the school is the natural centre of the community.

Having spent the last 20-something years with her nose in a textbook, brilliant and driven Norah Kapadia has just landed the medical residency of her dreams. But after a disastrous first day, she's ready to quit. Disgruntled patients, sleep deprivation, and her duty to be the "perfect Indian daughter" have her questioning her future as a doctor.

Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, Clifford encourages her to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to her husband's gamekeeper and embarks on a passionate affair that brings new life to her stifled existence. Can she find a true equality with Mellors, despite the vast gulf between their positions in society?

Newly famous actor Charlie Outlaw said too much in an interview, and now his fans have turned on him, and his girlfriend, actress Josie Lamar, has left him. He's fled to a remote island in search of anonymity, but his solitary hike into the jungle takes him into danger he never anticipated. As Charlie struggles with gaining fame, Josie struggles with its loss. The star of a cult TV show in her early 20s, Josie has spent the 20 years since searching for a role to equal that one, and feeling less and less like her character, the heroic Bronwyn Kyle.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of My Sunshine Away by M. O. Walsh, read by Kirby Heybourne. One day Lindy Simpson cycles home from school and straight into a trap: Someone is lying in wait for her, a wire strung between lampposts across the path. She is raped just yards from her front door. No one sees a thing, and the perpetrator is not caught.

Take an ordinary, well-off family like the Prices. Watch what happens when, one Sunday, 17-year-old Hannah disappears without a trace. See how the family rallies when a ransom note demands half a million pounds for Hannah's safe return. But it's when Hannah comes home that the story really begins. Now observe what happens to a family when they lose their house, their status, all their wealth. Note how they disintegrate under the pressures of guilt and poverty and are forced to confront their true selves.

In a small Kent town in the 1950s, a bewildered little girl is growing up. Ostracised because of her colour, she tries her best to fit in, but nobody wants anything to do with her. A nanny climbs the steps of a smart London address. She’s convinced that her connection to the family behind the door is more than professional. And on the walls of an English stately home, amongst the family portraits, hangs an eighteenth-century oil painting of a mysterious black woman in a silk gown.

How far would you go for your family, for love, for revenge? In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Elspeth Howell returns home to find her family brutally murdered. The only survivor is her 12-year-old son who witnessed it all. Wounded, frightened, and with retribution in their hearts, mother and son set out into the frozen wilderness to track down the red-scarfed men who killed their loved ones in cold blood.