Our Island Story by H.E. Marshall is an Edwardian history book for younger listeners (aged six & twelve) which tells the story of England, concluding with the reign of Queen Victoria. Antonia Fraser and many other current historians declare that it was this book that opened the delights of history for them. It fell from fashion in the 1960s, but its recent re-release in hardback has seen it become a publishing surprise in the UK, with sales of some 75,000 copies in a few months. Now, Naxos Audiobooks releases it unabridged in three volumes released in March 2006, April 2006 and May 2006.

This sequel to Five Children and It sees the four children finding a carpet—and then being told by a Phoenix that it is a magic carpet. It means a series of adventures. Anna Bentinck reads the tale with great charm. With delightful music of the period.

To inherit a great fortune. To inherit a great misfortune.' These words, from Nathaniel Hawthorne' notebook, neatly encapsulate the theme of the House of the Seven Gables-that of a family whose fortunes are poisoned by it's past misdeeds.

Now considered by many to be Charlotte Bronte's best novel, though unlikely to eclipse Jane Eyre in fame and popularity, Villette is largely concerned with the experiences of Lucy Snowe in a girl's boarding school in a fictionalized Belgium. Lucy flees unhappiness in England only to find more abroad. Her love for Dr John unrequited, she slowly realizes that a deeper attachment is growing between her and her irascible domineering mentor and colleague, M. Paul Emanuel.

A complex plot of love and inheritance is set against the English legal system of the mid-nineteenth century, with all it's tortuous avenues and disguised resolutions. Here is the firm, Jarndyce & Jarndyce, the young orphan and ward of court Ester Summerson (who tells much of the story). As always, it is the skilled pen of Dickens himself that creates the momentum with his acute eye for both individual characters and their traits, and the backdrop of Victorian London.

How did the great scientists make their remarkable discoveries? And what kind of men were they? This companion volume to Inventors and their Inventions introduces the work of ten men to younger readers, and range from the world of Ancient Greece to the twentieth century discovery of DNA. Among them are the crucial discovery that the earth goes around the sun (Galileo), the principle of gravity (Newton), the evolution of the species (Darwin) and the principle of inherited characteristics or genetics (Mendel).

A mysterious boatman on the Thames, a drowned heir, a dustman and his wife, and a host of other Dickens characters populate this novel of relationships between the classes, money, greed and love.

Information is everything in Hard-boiled Wonderland. A specialist encrypter is attacked by thugs with orders from an unknown source, is chased by invisible predators, and dates an insatiably hungry librarian who never puts on weight. In the End of the World a new arrival is learning his role as dream-reader. But there is something eerily disquieting about the changeless nature of the town and it's fable-like inhabitants. Told in alternate chapters, the two stories converge and combine to create a novel that is surreal, beautiful, thrilling and extraordinary.

STORYTELLING AUDIO CD PACK

The World Cup is the largest sports event outside the summer Olympics: The progress of the 32 countries which qualify for the finals is watched by billions all over the globe. Since the very first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, there have been 18 finals, held every four years (with a 12-year break over the World War II period). The World Cup in South Africa will be the 19th. Brian Glanville, the distinguished journalist and World Cup historian, has written a fascinating history of the event. Here are the men who played, the goals they scored, the triumphs, the failures, the sho.

The common view of the Romans is that they were only interested in watching gladiators hack one another to pieces, and in lying on couches while they stuffed large meals down their throats. But of course they were a busy and clever people, who built up a great empire to prove it, with fine cities and harbours, bath houses and roads, laws and good government. In this audiobook you can hear the stories of the great Roman emperors and the enduring legacy that they left for later generations.

This widely-studied play is one of the best sellers of the Shakespeare canon. This production is the seventh Shakespeare play in the series undertaken by Naxos Audiobooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press.

HENLEY, D: Famous Composers (Alsop, USA) (Unabridged)

CHESTERMAN: Famous Americans in History

In the enveloping mists of desolate Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes sets out to solve the mystery of the Hound of the Baskervilles, accompanied by the faithful Dr Watson, and the savage murder of the local squire.