Fiction Drama

Goethe’s two-part dramatic work, Faust, based on a traditional theme, and finally completed in 1831, is an exploration of that restless intellectual and emotional urge which found its fullest expression in the European Romantic movement, to which Goethe was an early and major contributor. Part I of the work outlines a pact Faust makes with the devil, Mephistopheles, and encompasses the tragedy of Gretchen, whom Faust seduces.

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth - almost certainly in 1605/1606 - he had already completed three of the great tragedies with which modern audiences are so familiar: Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), and King Lear (1605). Each of those plays gives us an eponymous hero who is in some significant way flawed, but for whom we also inevitably feel deep sympathy, whatever his errors or crimes. But in MacBeth, Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.

North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher's life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, her dream of a career in art is put on hold - until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will get her released from prison immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy Southern town. Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to be free, she accepts. What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small town secrets.

Single mom Robyn Caldwell needs a new plan for her future. She has always put her family first. Now, with her kids grown, she yearns for a change. But what can she do when her daughter has become the most demanding bride ever, her son won’t even consider college, her best friend is on the brink of marital disaster and her ex is making a monumentally bad decision that could ruin everything?

He was the one man I couldn’t avoid. And the one man I couldn’t resist. Damien Stark could have his way with any woman. He was sexy, confident, and commanding: Anything he wanted, he got. And what he wanted was me. Our attraction was unmistakable, almost beyond control, but as much as I ached to be his, I feared the pressures of his demands. Submitting to Damien meant I had to bare the darkest truth about my past - and risk breaking us apart. But Damien was haunted, too. And as our passion came to obsess us both, his secrets threatened to destroy him - and us - forever.

Praised as "deeply affecting" and "heartbreaking" by The Guardian (UK), this is a faithful adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout's best-selling novel of the same name. Unsteady after an operation, Lucy Barton wakes to find her mother sitting at the foot of her bed. She hasn't seen her in years, and her visit brings back to Lucy her desperate rural childhood, and her escape to New York. As she begins to find herself as a writer, she is still gripped by the urgent complexities of family life.

Don’t be intimidated by Shakespeare. These audiobook editions make the Bard’s plays accessible and enjoyable.

A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary.

He started the fire. Nate Shepherd's client didn't intend to kill anyone. That doesn't matter. After an old friend recruits him, Nate Shepherd heads north to defend a teenager charged with igniting a blaze that killed a toddler and a firefighter. When he arrives, Nate finds a neglected case and a looming trial date for double murder. As he scrambles to discover what happened, Nate is resisted by a stonewalling prosecutor and a grieving town, each bent on punishing his client. Worse, every fact Nate uncovers confirms that his client started the tragic Mission Road fire.

Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path.

Superstar mystery novelist Grace McCabe needs to unwind after a grueling book tour, and visiting her sister, whom she hasn't seen in months, seems the perfect solution. But Grace is surprised to find the fastidious Kathleen living in a grungy Washington, D.C., neighborhood. Kathleen, reeling from a bitter divorce and the loss of her son, is saving every penny of her teacher's salary to hire a hotshot lawyer for a custody battle. Then Grace discovers that Kathleen is boosting her income with an unlikely profession: as an at-home phone-sex operator.

When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all their lives. Bill is overwhelmed without his beloved wife, and Annemarie wrestles with the bad habits her best friend had helped her overcome. And Ali, the eldest of Annie’s children, has to grow up overnight, to care for her younger brothers and even her father and to puzzle out for herself many of the mysteries of adult life. Over the course of the next year what saves them all is Annie.

Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates—a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name. But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident.

Using forbidden Marrangha magic and the three stolen vapours, the evil sorcerer Zharradan Marr has created a creature....but for what purpose?

Even a year removed from living in the bayou, Ruby still wonders at the splendor of her family’s New Orleans mansion. She rejoices in the love of the father she had never known, even as true happiness remains as elusive as swamp mist. Her stepmother sneers at her backwater upbringing, and while discovering she has a twin sister should be a cause for joy, Gisselle has greeted Ruby with nothing but a bitter heart.

Here is the full-cast production of Shakespeare's classic love story, fully dramatized from the complete text, and starring Michael Sheen as Romeo and Kate Beckinsale as Juliet.

Needing to escape her abusive marriage, Hadley flees with her two kids, knowing it might be her only chance. A woman who can’t even kill a spider, Hadley soon finds herself pushed to the limits as she fights to protect her family. Grace, new mother of baby Miles, desperately wants to put her rough past behind her for good, but she finds it impossible when her path crosses with Hadley’s, and her quest for a new start quickly spirals out of control and turns into a terrifying flight for survival.

From the acclaimed author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney offers two short stories exploring the "fleeting, sometimes awkward moments of attraction between people".

Therapist turned stay-at-home mom Jules Hart’s idyllic suburban life shatters when she crashes her car into an icy lake. Her son and another teenage boy plunge into the water with her, but Jules can only manage to save one—the wrong one. Reeling from the death of her son, Jules spirals into a violent and unstable mental state. Ten months after the accident, she’s still trying to reckon with the fact that she rescued Isaac Greer, another woman’s child, when Isaac suddenly vanishes.

It was a case that gripped the nation. In December 2003, Luke Ryder, the stepfather of acclaimed filmmaker Guy Howard (then aged 10), was found dead in the garden of their suburban family home. Luke Ryder’s murder has never been solved. Guy Howard’s mother and two half-sisters were in the house at the time of the murder—but all swear they saw nothing. Despite a high-profile police investigation and endless media attention, no suspect was ever charged.