Part love story, part historical epic, part tragedy, The House of Special Purpose illuminates an empire at the end of its reign. Living in England with his beloved wife, Zoya, Georgy prepares to make one final journey back to the Russia he once knew and loved, the Russia that both destroyed and defined him. As Georgy remembers days gone by, we are transported to Saint Petersburg, to the Winter Palace of the tzar, in the early twentieth century - a time of change, threat, and bloody revolution.

The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words); his wife, Beverley, a celebrated novelist; and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen. Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant.

Propelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland when priests are highly respected, and Odran believes that he is pledging his life to "the good."

Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent - but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful - but desperately lonely - older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war.

The story of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is very difficult to describe. Usually we give some information about the audiobook, but in this case we think that would spoil the listening. We think it's important that you start to listen without knowing what it is about.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

When Pierrot becomes an orphan, he must leave his home in Paris for a new life with his aunt Beatrix, a servant in a wealthy Austrian household. But this is no ordinary time, for it is 1935 and the Second World War is fast approaching; and this is no ordinary house, for this is the Berghof, the home of Adolf Hitler. Pierrot is quickly taken under Hitler's wing and thrown into an increasingly dangerous new world: a world of terror, secrets, and betrayal from which he may never be able to escape.

The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield's father promised he wouldn't go away to fight - but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn't know where his father might be, other than that he's away on a special, secret mission. Then, while shining shoes at King's Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father's name on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realizes his father is in a hospital close by - a hospital treating soldiers with shell shock.

It is September 1919: Twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a package of letters to the sister of Will Bancroft, the man he fought alongside during the Great War. But the letters are not the real reason for Tristan's visit. He can no longer keep a secret and has finally found the courage to unburden himself of it. As Tristan recounts the horrific details of what to him became a senseless war, he also speaks of his friendship with Will - from their first meeting on the training grounds at Aldershot to their farewell in the trenches of northern France.

After losing her job and boyfriend, Jan Hamlin is in desperate need of a fresh start. So she jumps at the chance to rent a secluded cottage on the edge of Coleshaw Woods. Very quickly though, things take a dark turn. At night, Jan hears strange noises, and faint taps at the window. Something, or someone, is out there.

Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. Having left his wife, his house, his whole life behind in Maryland, he's desperate for money—it's not easy to find steady, safe work when you can't provide references, you can't stay in one place for long, and you're paranoid that your past is creeping back up on you.

Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety.

As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another. Why is the killer seemingly targeting her business?

In the tourist town of Wharton, on the coast of Lake Superior, Tess Bell is renovating her old family home into a bed-and-breakfast during the icy dead of winter… As the house’s restoration commences, a shuttered art studio is revealed. Inside are paintings Tess’s late grandfather, beloved and celebrated artist Sebastian Bell, hid away for generations. But these appear to be the works of a twisted mind, almost unrecognizable as paintings she and others familiar with his art would expect.

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: She must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful 13-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims - a bit too strongly.

It is September 1919: Twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a package of letters to the sister of Will Bancroft, the man he fought alongside during the Great War. But the letters are not the real reason for Tristan's visit. He can no longer keep a secret and has finally found the courage to unburden himself of it. As Tristan recounts the horrific details of what to him became a senseless war, he also speaks of his friendship with Will - from their first meeting on the training grounds at Aldershot to their farewell in the trenches of northern France.

Part love story, part historical epic, part tragedy, The House of Special Purpose illuminates an empire at the end of its reign. Living in England with his beloved wife, Zoya, Georgy prepares to make one final journey back to the Russia he once knew and loved, the Russia that both destroyed and defined him. As Georgy remembers days gone by, we are transported to Saint Petersburg, to the Winter Palace of the tzar, in the early twentieth century - a time of change, threat, and bloody revolution.

The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield's father promised he wouldn't go away to fight - but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn't know where his father might be, other than that he's away on a special, secret mission. Then, while shining shoes at King's Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father's name on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realizes his father is in a hospital close by - a hospital treating soldiers with shell shock.

Propelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland when priests are highly respected, and Odran believes that he is pledging his life to "the good."

Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent - but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful - but desperately lonely - older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war.

Felix Allsey is a travel writer with a keen eye for the paranormal, and he's carved out a unique, if only slightly lucrative, niche for himself in nonfiction; he writes travelogues of the country's most haunted places, after haunting them himself. When he convinces the owner of the infamous Rotterdam Mansion to let him stay on the premises for two weeks, he believes he's finally found the location that will bring him a best seller. Then things start going wrong: screams from upstairs, figures in the thresholds, and more than what should be in any basement.

After years of questioning her sanity, Kat Delancey reluctantly returns to the old family manor as its legal owner, hoping desperately to silence the doubts in her mind and leave the home's tragic past behind her once and for all. But it turns out to be harder than she expected, and not just because of the estranged step-family waiting for her - because maybe Kat's mind was never playing tricks on her after all, and maybe the manor harbors a far more malevolent presence than she ever dreamed...

Recently widowed and rendered penniless by her Ponzi-scheming husband, Julia Bishop is eager to start anew. So when a stranger appears on her doorstep with a job offer, she finds herself accepting the mysterious yet unique position: caretaker to his mother, Amaris Sinclair, the famous and rather eccentric horror novelist whom Julia has always admired...and who the world believes is dead.

An abandoned mansion. A restless spirit. A terrible secret... Fleeing a recent tragedy, antiques expert Katherine seeks refuge in Blackstone, Oregon, a tiny town nestled in the shadow of majestic Mt. Hood. But her sanctuary soon becomes a nightmare when she stumbles upon the long-abandoned Blackstone mansion, its dark halls whispering with secrets. As Katherine explores the labyrinthine rooms filled with priceless antiques, she realizes she's not alone. In the shadows, she can see the tiniest movements, feel the deepest chills, and hear the faintest sounds. The restless spirit of a young ...

This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons, one with his father’s violence in his blood, one with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of 2,000 years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across 50 countries to a life among the stars, their destinies remain the same....

Crowford, a sleepy coastal town in the south of England, might seem like an oasis of calm and tranquility. Beneath the surface, however, dark secrets are waiting to claim fresh victims, and ghostly figures plot revenge. Having finally decided to leave the hustle of London, Daisy and Richard Johnson buy two houses on Nelson Street, a picturesque street in the center of Crowford. One house is perfect and ready to move into, while the other is a fire-ravaged wreck that needs a lot of work.

A plague has fallen across the land. Slaughter fills the streets. All seems lost. After Great Britain is hit by a devastating epidemic, four old friends must cross the war-torn country to get home to their families. But in order to reach their loved ones, they must journey through towns, villages and countryside teeming with the monstrous Infected - mutated people whose only desires are to infect and feed. Run and hide. Seek shelter. Pray for salvation. The last plague is here.

Darkness lurks in the shadows of Blackstone mansion... Katherine thought preparing the eerie estate for an antique sale would be straightforward. She was wrong. A sinister new spirit reaches out from beyond the mansion's crumbling walls, more vicious and relentless than any ghost she's encountered before. It follows her everywhere, its malevolent presence inescapable. As Katherine desperately tries to uncover the spirit's motives, she stumbles upon an ancient occult symbol—the first piece of a chilling puzzle. But the mansion guards even darker secrets: a series of hidden tombs containing...

Mike Gray is still reeling from the sudden death of his father when he inherits Willow House, his father’s childhood home. Keen to move out of the city, Mike decides to move his young family to the small, quaint town of Fairview. But not all is right at Willow House. There are dark forces at work, which threaten to destroy what remains of the Gray family. The curse at the heart of Willow House has lain dormant for decades, but is about to be reawakened and unleashed.

Only a woman with an iron backbone could succeed as an undertaker in Victorian England, but Violet Morgan takes great pride in her trade. While her husband, Graham, is preoccupied with elevating their station in society, Violet is cultivating a sterling reputation for Morgan Undertaking.