Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Literary Fiction

Wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, speaking a broken-down English lost after the end of civilisation, Riddley Walker sets out to find out what brought humanity here. This is his story.

The Brookes are gathering in their eighteenth-century ancestral home to bury Philip, the head of the family. Frannie, inheritor of a thousand acres of English countryside, has dreams of rewilding and returning the estate to nature: a last line of defence against the coming climate catastrophe. Milo envisages a treetop haven for the super-rich where under the influence of psychedelic drugs a new ruling class will be reborn. Each believes their father has given them his blessing and are set on a collision course with the other.

Ebby Freeman travels to France to take a three-month hiatus from her complicated home life, the last person she expects to find is her ex-fiancé Henry, with his new girlfriend in tow. Nearly twenty years earlier, the Freemans were the only African American family living in a wealthy coastal enclave in Connecticut when armed robbers invaded their family home and tragedy changed their lives forever. Then, just as Ebby thought she had a new chance at happiness, her storybook romance with Henry fell apart. Now, this unexpected encounter with Henry will force Ebby to reckon with her past.

In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love - against their better judgement - with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with Mum again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead...but waiting to return to life.

In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilots Hank Redmond and John Griffin; mission specialist Lydia Danes; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe.

On the precipice of Y2K, unpaid intern Lily Chen is attempting to live the American dream in New York City. But her scientist parents imagined so much more for her when they fled Mao's cultural revolution, hoping for a better life. Despite the glamour of her media job, Lily can barely make rent - until she falls into the arms of Matthew. This young financier can give her a fairy tale life of luxury, and for the first time her dreams appear within reach.

With fierce imagination, a woman revisits the moments that shape her life; from crushes on teachers to navigating relationships in a fast-paced world; from overhearing her grandmothers' peculiar stories to nurturing her own personal freedom and a boundless love of literature.

Siblings Greta and Valdin have, perhaps, too much in common. They're flatmates, beholden to the same near-unpronounceable surname, and both make questionable choices when it comes to love. Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who left the country because he thought he was making Valdin sad. Greta is in love with fellow English tutor Holly, who only seems to be using her for admin support. But perhaps all is not lost. Valdin is coming to realize that he might not be so unlovable, and Greta, that she might be worth more than the papers she can mark.

On the Black Hill is an elegantly written tale of identical twin brothers who grow up on a farm in rural Wales and never leave home. They till the rough soil and sleep in the same bed, touched only occasionally by the advances of the 20th century. In depicting the lives of Benjamin and Lewis and their interactions with their small local community Chatwin comments movingly on the larger questions of human experience.

In this compelling and beautifully-patterned novel, Han Kang tells the interwoven stories of a Greek instructor who is losing his sight and a woman who refuses to speak. Uniquely involving, and thoughtful, it explores the depths and limits of human connection.

In 1973, Moll Gladney goes missing from the Tipperary hillside where she was born. Slowly, her parents - Paddy and Kit - begin to accept that she’s gone forever. But she returns, changed, and with a few surprises for her family and neighbours. Nothing is ever the same again for the Gladneys, who learn that fate cares little for duty, that life rarely conforms to expectation, that God can’t be relied upon to heed any prayer. A story of exile and return, of loss and discovery, of retreat from grief and the saving power of love.

The Aylward women of Nenagh, Tipperary, are mad about each other, but you wouldn't always think it. You'd have to know them to know—in spite of what the neighbours might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes—that their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world. Their story begins at an end and ends at a beginning. It involves wives and widows, gunrunners and gougers, sinners and saints. It's a story of terrible betrayals and fierce loyalties, of isolation and togetherness, of transgression, forgiveness, desire and love.

In her debut novel, Rajaa Alsanea reveals the social, romantic, and sexual tribulations of four young women from the elite classes of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Originally released in Arabic in 2005, it was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia because of the controversial and inflammatory content, though black-market copies circulated widely.

He's the best cop they've got. When a drug bust turns into a bloodbath, it's up to Inspector Macbeth and his team to clean up the mess. He's also an ex-drug addict with a troubled past. He's rewarded for his success. Power. Money. Respect. They're all within reach. But a man like him won't get to the top. Plagued by hallucinations and paranoia, Macbeth starts to unravel. He's convinced he won't get what is rightfully his. Unless he kills for it.

In Heart, Be at Peace, which can be listened to independently, Donal picks up the twenty-one voices from The Spinning Heart ten years on, in 2019. Small-town Ireland is a different place, the economy having recovered from the economic crash that served as a backdrop to the events in that book. Now the work is back, the dramas have all seemingly died down, the dark days of recession and struggle are over. But a new menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, old grudges are festering and new ones are rising, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered.

Growing up in the suburbs in postwar Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his 30s. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Mrs Osmond by John Banville, read by Amy Finegan. 'What was freedom, she thought, other than the right to exercise one's choices?' Isabel Osmond, a spirited, intelligent young heiress, flees to London after being betrayed by her husband, to be with her beloved cousin Ralph on his deathbed. After a sombre, silent existence at her husband's Roman palazzo, Isabel's daring escape to London reawakens her youthful quest for freedom and independence.

A damaged survivor of the First World War, Tom Birkin finds refuge in the quiet village church of Oxgodby where he is to spend the summer uncovering a huge medieval wall-painting. Immersed in the peace and beauty of the countryside and the unchanging rhythms of village life he experiences a sense of renewal and belief in the future. Now an old man, Birkin looks back on the idyllic summer of 1920, remembering a vanished place of blissful calm, untouched by change, a precious moment he has carried with him through the disappointments of the years.

A brother chosen. A brother left behind. And a family where you'd least expect to find one. Leon is nine, and has a perfect baby brother called Jake. They have gone to live with Maureen, who has fuzzy red hair like a halo, and a belly like Father Christmas. But the adults are speaking in low voices, and wearing pretend faces. They are threatening to give Jake to strangers.

When a chance encounter with Theodore Camden, one of the architects of the grand New York apartment house the Dakota, leads to a job offer for Sara Smythe, her world is suddenly awash in possibility - no mean feat for a servant in 1884. The opportunity to move to America. The opportunity to be the female manager of the Dakota. And the opportunity to see more of Theo, who understands Sara like no one else...and is living in the Dakota with his wife and three young children.