In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay struggles to thwart an assassination plot designed to hasten war between Britain and Germany. Later he is plucked from the trenches first, in Greenmantle, to frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world; and then, in Mr. Standfast, to undertake a vital secret mission against a German spy ring operating among pacifist elements in England. After the war, his adventures continue in The Three Hostages; and then in The Island of Sheep, when an old oath to protect the son of a friend from his days in Africa draws him into new danger.

Sir Richard Hannay introduces this last adventure involving his old friends.

John Blenkiron discovers that a ruthless industrialist is plotting to destabilise America and cause global turmoil. Although Bavarian born, Castor plans to dominate the world from Olifa, a small country in Latin America. Hannay realises he is now too old for the job of thwarting these evil designs and enlists the aid of his old friend Sandy Arbuthnot, now Lord Clanroyden.

In this expansive, rich, and deeply tragic portrait of a German family from 1899 to 1945, Len Deighton brilliantly weaves a portrait of the fortunes of two sons, and a nation, over half a century.

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

Five BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of John Buchan’s espionage thrillers featuring gentleman spy Richard Hannay. The forerunner to James Bond, Secret Agent Richard Hannay is a thoroughly British action hero, pursuing ruthless villains, foiling deadly plans and risking life and limb for his country. This gripping collection encompasses all five of Hannay’s adventures, adapted for radio with superb casts including Tom Baker, Clive Merrison, Stuart Milligan, Jasmine Hyde and Patrick Malahide.

Maurice Leblanc, a writer of detective fiction during the same period as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, created Arsene Lupin, a sort of French Robin Hood. An inventive genius, a master of disguise, and an accomplished actor, Lupin operates in the choice chateaux and salons. He scorns sham and with great disdain leaves his card in a baron's residence. The card reads, "Arsene Lupin, gentleman-burglar, will return when the furniture is genuine."

Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales are rightly ranked among the seminal works of mystery and detective fiction. Included in this collection are all four full-length Holmes novels and more than forty short masterpieces - from the inaugural adventure A Study in Scarlet to timeless favorites like “The Speckled Band” and more. At the center of each stands the iconic figure of Holmes - brilliant, eccentric, and capable of amazing feats of deductive reasoning.

In 1889, satirist Jerome K. Jerome fully intended to write a serious travel guide when he and his two best friends embarked on a boating trip up the river Thames to Oxford. But his musings on landmarks and local history were soon hijacked by his own digressive, waggish voice. And so, what began as a peaceful and edifying two-week exploration soon floated upriver into farce - aided, quite naturally, by a portly ration of cheese, some very bad weather, and a dog named Montmorency.

Graham Greene’s evocative analysis of the love of self, the love of another, and the love of God is an English classic that has been translated for the stage, the screen, and even the opera house. Academy Award-winning actor Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, A Single Man) turns in an authentic and stirring performance for this distinguished audio release.

One of the most revered works in English literature, Great Expectations traces the coming of age of a young orphan, Pip, from a boy of shallow aspirations into a man of maturity. From the chilling opening confrontation with an escaped convict to the grand but eerily disheveled estate of bitter old Miss Havisham, all is not what it seems in Dickens’ dark tale of false illusions and thwarted desire.

Considered one of the first existentialist novels, Notes from Underground contains one of the most unsettling characters in 19th-century fiction. Resentful, cruel, entitled, and pitiful, Dostoyevsky's Underground Man is a disturbing human being bent on humiliating others for his own amusement. The Gambler is perhaps the most personal of Dostoyevsky's novels. Written to pay off the author's own gambling debts, the book follows the obsessions and anxieties of Alexey Ivanovitch, a sympathetic character who has given in to the forces of addiction.

Art teacher Walter Hartright is on the road to London when he encounters an enigmatic woman dressed entirely in white. She's an unnerving portent of strange things to come as Hartright starts a new job as drawing-master at Limmeridge House. There the teacher falls in love with Laura, his betrothed pupil, who bears a striking resemblance to the woman in white. Soon Walter is drawn into a family intrigue of greed, secrets, madness, and revenge.

Miss Marple encounters a compelling murder mystery in the sleepy little village of St. Mary Mead, where under the seemingly peaceful exterior of an English country village lurks intrigue, guilt, deception and death. Colonel Protheroe, local magistrate and overbearing land-owner is the most detested man in the village. Everyone—even in the vicar—wishes he were dead. And very soon he is—shot in the head in the vicar's own study. Faced with a surfeit of suspects, only the inscrutable Miss Marple can unravel the tangled web of clues that will lead to the unmasking of the killer.

Agatha Christie's first two Poirot novels, narrated with a general-American accent. The Mysterious Affair at Styles: Someone has poisoned wealthy Emily Inglethorp. But who? And how? Everyone suspects Emily's young husband, Alfred...and Alfred seems to be actually trying to get arrested and charged.... The Murder on the Links: Poirot comes to France in response to a desperate plea for help to find his client already murdered - stabbed in the back and lying in an open grave. Brusque, arrogant Inspector Giraud thinks he knows who did it.

Exclusively from Audible. The Secret Agent is based on an actual attempt made in 1894 to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. A labyrinth of greed, corruption, and betrayal, it is the most darkly humorous of all Conrad's tales. It follows a European secret agent, Adolf Verloc, 'a London shop owner' with anarchist leanings who becomes reluctantly involved in a plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. Full of great characters, melodramatic irony and psychological intrigue the tale is far from simple....

Riddle of the Sands is set during the long suspicious years leading up to the First World War and is a classic of spy fiction.

Chesterton's allegorical masterpiece is a surreal, psychologically thrilling novel that centres on seven anarchists in turn of the century London who call themselves by the names of days of the week. The story begins when poet Gabriel Syme is recruited as a detective to a secret anarchist division of Scotland Yard by a shrouded, nameless person. Syme infiltrates a secret meeting of anarchists who are intent on destroying the world and becomes known as 'Thursday', one of the seven members of the Central Anarchist Council.

In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay struggles to thwart an assassination plot designed to hasten war between Britain and Germany. Later he is plucked from the trenches first, in Greenmantle, to frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world; and then, in Mr. Standfast, to undertake a vital secret mission against a German spy ring operating among pacifist elements in England. After the war, his adventures continue in The Three Hostages; and then in The Island of Sheep, when an old oath to protect the son of a friend from his days in Africa draws him into new danger.

Here in one recording is every Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Originally appearing in serial form, these famous stories are here presented in the order in which they were first published beginning in 1887. Included in this definitive, award-winning collection are four novels and 56 short stories, a total of 60 titles. The 56 short stories are aggregated into five named collections, just as they were originally published in book form.

Late one moonlit night, Walter Hartright encounters a solitary and terrified woman dressed all in white. He saves her from capture by her pursuers and determines to solve the mystery of her distress and terror. Inspired by an actual criminal case, this gripping tale of murder, intrigue, madness and mistaken identity has never been out of print since its publication and brought Collins great fame and success.

The story of Paxton, an antiquarian and archaeologist who holidays in "Seaburgh" and inadvertently stumbles across one of the lost crowns of Anglia, which legendarily protect the country from invasion. Montague Rhodes James was a noted British mediaeval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918) and of Eton College (1918–1936). He is best remembered for his ghost stories which are widely regarded as among the finest in English literature.

There’s only one way for Professor George Edward Challenger to prove that dinosaurs still roam the earth. He invites skeptical journalist Edward Malone to accompany him and a group of adventurers to see the creatures with his own eyes. But when they arrive at the fantastic volcanic plateau in the Amazon where time stands still, their expedition quickly becomes one of survival. With its cliff-hanging escapes, rousing humor, and nailbiting suspense, The Lost World is a pioneering work of fantasy-adventure that paved the way for every thrill ride to follow.

Kipling's masterpiece Kim is his final and most famous work and one of the first and greatest espionage stories ever written. It explores the life of Kimball O'Hara, an Irish orphan who spends his childhood as a vagrant in Lahore. When he befriends an aged Tibetan lama his life is transformed as he is requested to accompany him on a mysterious quest to find the legendary River of the Arrow and achieve Enlightenment.

Considered the first full-length detective novel in the English language, T.S. Eliot described The Moonstone as 'the first and greatest English detective novel'. The stone of the title is an enormous yellow diamond plundered from an Indian shrine after the Siege of Seringapatam. Given to Miss Verinder on her 18th birthday, it mysteriously disappears that very night. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who have been seen in the neighbourhood. Sergeant Cuff is assigned to the case....

Audible presents an original production of the aptly named The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens’ final, unfinished novel. Following his untimely death at the age of 58, Dickens managed to publish only six of the 12 planned instalments of the story. Though it has gone on to be one of his more popular titles and the source of inspiration for various television, stage and theatre adaptations, no one knows exactly how Dickens planned to end the mystery.

There’s been a murder in studio one, and everyone’s a suspect. Recorded live at the Minetta Lane Theatre, a dozen Today and NBC News anchors take center stage in this hilarious radio play. First released in 1941, Murder in Studio One is a whodunit following a female private eye and her fast-talking sidekick as they reluctantly take the case of a murder in a New York radio station. Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb lead an all-star NBC News cast in the comedic mystery produced in partnership with Audible.

Allan Quatermain, hero of King Solomon's mines, tells a moving tale of his first wife, the Dutch-born Marie Marais, and the adventures that were linked to her beautiful, tragic history. This moving story depicts the tumultuous political era of the 1830s, involving the Boers, French colonists and the Zulu tribe in the Cape colony of South Africa. Hate and suspicion run high between the home government and the Dutch subjects.

The Last Man is Mary Shelley's apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late twenty-first century, the novel unfolds a sombre and pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction. Interwoven with her futuristic theme, Mary Shelley incorporates idealised portraits of Shelley and Byron, yet rejects Romanticism and its faith in art and nature.

A disturbing tale of a young man's uncanny ability to remain both young and beautiful while descending into a life of heartless debauchery, The Picture of Dorian Gray was considered proof of both Wilde's genius and his perversion. Oscar Wilde's scandalous best seller of 1891 was one of the most damning pieces of evidence used against him in the trial that brought about his downfall.