Family Life Classics

It's the summer of 1947, and peacetime has brought new challenges to Barsetshire. Beliers Priory, once a military hospital during the War, has now become a flourishing preparatory school for boys run by Leslie and Philip Winter. When Charles Belton is hired as the new school master, six young people are thrown together in a web of flirtations and misunderstandings: Charles and his elder brother, Naval Captain Freddy Belton; Susan Dean, now Red Cross Depot Librarian, and her glamorous sister Jessica, an actress in thrall to the theatre; pragmatic Lucy Marling and her brother Oliver.

A heartwarming classic tale that has been enjoyed by generations of children and adults alike, Heidi tells the story of a young orphan whose innocent and boundless love transforms the lives of all she encounters. Having to adapt to new and uncomfortable surroundings more often than most by her age, Heidi finds joy in the mundane, beauty in the outcasts, and hope in the most dismal of situations.

After a tumultuous year in New York City, the Austins are spending the summer on the small island where their grandfather lives. He's very sick, and watching his condition deteriorate as the summer passes is almost more than Vicky can bear. To complicate matters, she finds herself as the center of attention for three very different boys.

Schooldays at St Clare's are never dull for twins Pat and Isabel O'Sullivan in Enid Blyton's much-loved boarding school series. In audiobook four, the twins have made it to second form. New girls Gladys and Mirabel have great talents for acting and music, and Elsie, the form's unpopular head girl, learns to be less spiteful. Expect more mischief at St Clare's!

Summer, 1947. Kate Herrick, a war widow, returns to her childhood home for a final visit before the house is sold. But Rose Cottage is not the idyllic paradise she remembers from her youth and someone has been there before her. As Kate uncovers an old secret that haunts the home she thought she knew, she is forced to confront a dark truth from her own past.... Beyond the weedy garden with its riot of rose bushes, nothing had changed. And someone was crossing the bridge to approach the garden gate. Someone I knew well....

The story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity; in an uncertain new world, the family’s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the listener into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor.

In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.

Five tales which range from the jungles of India to the frozen emptiness of the North... In all of them, Kipling's extraordinary powers of description and ability to identify with human aspiration and animal survival are vividly shown. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi must battle with Nag, the cobra, in his territory; Toomai has a unique glimpse of the elephant world, Kotick, the White Seal, searches for sanctuary, while Kotuko has to find food for his starving Eskimo village. Above all, Kipling's love of life in all its variety shines through.

Austen’s heroine Elizabeth Bennet deals with the issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Austen at her wittiest.

'You don’t mean you're going to divorce him?' Miss Spanner said with horror. A sophisticated, emotive novel, Chatterton Square concerns the complex web of relationships between two neighbouring families, the Blacketts and the Frasers. Framed by the advance of the Second World War, the subtle mechanics of marriage and love are laid bare through the observation of three of the marital options open to the mid-century woman: unmarried, separated, miserably married.

Set at the outbreak of World War II, Lady Sophia Garfield dreams of becoming a beautiful spy but manages not to notice a nest of German agents right under her nose. Until the murder of her maid and the kidnapping of her beloved bulldog force them on her attention, with heroic and absurd results. One of Mitford's earliest novels and written before Christmas 1939, Pigeon Pie is delivered with a touch lighter than that of her later masterpieces but no less entertaining. This comedy combines glamour, wit and a fiendishly absurd plot into an irresistible literary confection.

In the opening scene of Falling Man, Keith Neudecker emerges from the smoke and ash of the burning tower where he worked, and makes his way to the apartment of his ex-wife and young son uptown. Throughout this bold and haunting novel, DeLillo traces the way the events of September 11 kindled or rekindled relationships, reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory, and our perception of the world.

Mary Lennox is sent to Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire England after her parents die from Cholera. Also living in the manor house is her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as spoiled as she. Mary and Colin are like two peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors, until a secret garden captures their imaginations. As spring brings new life to the Earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to change.

In 1914, when Nicandra is eight, all is well in the grand Irish estate, Deer Forest. Maman is beautiful and adored. Dada, silent and small, mooches contentedly around the stables. Aunt Tossie, of the giant heart and bosom, is widowed but looks splendid in weeds. The butler, the groom, the land-steward, the maids, the men - each as a place and knows it. Then, astonishingly, the perfect surface is shattered; Maman does something too dreadful ever to be spoken of.

In the fifth book in the series, Anne's own true love, Gilbert Blythe, is finally a doctor, and, in the sunshine of the old orchard among their dearest friends, they are about to speak their vows. Soon, the happy couple will be bound for a new life together in their own dream house on the misty purple shores of Four Winds Harbor. But a new life means fresh problems to solve - and fresh surprises. As Anne and Gilbert begin to build that new life, some of those problems and surprises come in the form of their new neighbors.

A witty retelling of a well-known fairy tale features the adventures of two children who are abandoned in the forest and lured into the clutches of a witch by her confection cottage. By the creator of the George and Martha series.

It's the start of the Easter term, and the twins are looking forward to meeting all their friends at St Clare's once more. They are determined to be obedient and studious, but the new girls prove to be so much fun. Poor Mam'zelle had better watch out. Expect mischief at St Clare's!

Eleven-year-old Sport Rocque is living a happy life, keeping his father's absentmindedness under control, and managing the family budget. When Kate, Sport's new - and nice - stepmother enters the picture, things couldn't be better. Then comes the news: Sport's wealthy grandfather has just died and Sport is a multimillionaire. But millions of dollars equals millions of problems, as Sport soon discovers when his mother returns and kidnaps him to double her share of the inheritance! Life at the Plaza Hotel is no fun when you're a prisoner. Will Sport manage to return his life to normal?

Penguin presents Happy Families: The Audio Collection by Allan Ahlberg, read by Alexander Armstrong. Families come in all shapes and sizes. Listen to the story of Mrs Wobble the Waitress, Mr Biff the Boxer, Miss Dirt the Dustman's Daughter and many more in the first ever audio collection of Allan Ahlberg's beloved Happy Families. Features 11 classic tales brought to life with music and dazzling sound effects.

Anne Shirley has come a long way since her days as a mischievous orphan living in the house at Green Gables. She is now 18 and headed to faraway Redmond College in Kingsport. Anne's college years are sure to be full of fun, but they will also be a time for soul-searching and big decisions. When her longtime friend Gilbert Blythe proposes, Anne feels they can never be more than friends. But is her new admirer, the handsome and wealthy Roy Gardner, really the man of her dreams?