British Literature

Miss Mildred Percy is a spinster. She does not dance, she has long stopped dreaming, and she certainly does not have adventures. That is, until her great uncle has the audacity to leave her an inheritance, one that includes a dragon’s egg. The egg—as eggs are wont to do—decides to hatch, and Miss Mildred Percy is suddenly thrust out of the role of “spinster and general wallflower” and into the unprecedented position of “spinster and keeper of dragons.” But England has not seen a dragon since…well, ever.

A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY “Burns like a sparkler, quick and mesmerizing.” —The New York Times Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize A young wife following her heart. A husband with the law on his side. Their daughter, caught in the middle. Forty...

From the Author of the Sunday Times Bestseller, Mrs. England! In 1612 Lancaster, England, the hunt for witches has reached a fever pitch… But in a time of suspicion and accusation, to be a woman may be the greatest risk of all. Fleetwood Shuttleworth, the mistress of Pendle Hill’s Gawthorpe...

Claire Barclay finds a home in England after 25 years of travelling. She has money, a tour guide business, and ambitions. She is shocked by the murder in her quiet village, but is not going to give up on the haven she has finally found. With the help of her sister, the barracuda barrister, her new dog, new friends, and the unexpected stimulus of a new man in her life, she deals with suspicion, confusion, and threats.

Ten years ago, DCI Oldroyd was the only person who could see the monster hiding behind Adam Blake’s charm. Oldroyd proved that Blake was a deadly serial killer, responsible for murdering many innocent people. Having vowed to take revenge on Oldroyd, on a crisp autumn morning Blake escapes from jail… Hours later, in the Yorkshire market town of Otley, a man is found strangled inside the old courthouse. Written in bold black ink across the victim’s forehead is a single chilling word: vindicta—revenge. Oldroyd’s blood runs cold when he picks up a call and hears an all-too-familiar voice.

From the Nobel Prize winner, a coming-of-age story that illuminates the harshness and beauty of an Africa on the brink of colonization Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “breakthrough”...

Finn wants precision and calm. His boyfriend, Aly, the charming, chaotic former rower, wants him—and isn't afraid to use a little holiday labour and athletic heat to push Finn's strict boundaries. The other two couples are just as complicated, battling old secrets, simmering jealousies, and the memory of their intense past in the competitive world of rowing. The tension peaks with the arrival of Matt, a handsome Canadian visitor who brings a fresh, unpredictable energy to the house.

From the bestselling author of About a Boy, A Long Way Down and Dickens and Prince, a wise and hilarious novel about love, heartbreak, and rock and roll. “I've always loved Nick Hornby, and the way he writes characters and the way he thinks. It's funny and heartbreaking all at the same time...

In 3001: The Final Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke brings the greatest and most successful science fiction series of all time to its magnificent, stunningly unforeseen conclusion. As we hurtle toward the new millennium in real time, Clarke brilliantly, daringly leaps one thousand years into the future...

When the body of a young woman is found by the coast in Land’s End, Cornwall, Detective Lauren Pengelly and her deputy Matt Price are first on the scene. Sophie Bethany Yates was well-known around the docks – a pretty girl from up the coast, always dreaming of something more. As locals jostle the barricades for a better look, whispers go round that Sophie’s boyfriend Samuel was more than capable of murder.

Newly appointed as land agent to the youthful Lord Croft, Matthew Rowsley finds plenty to keep him busy as he attends to his lordship's neglected country estate. But he's distracted from his tasks by the disappearance of a young housemaid. Has Maggie really eloped with a young man, as her mother attests - or is the truth rather more sinister? What's been going on behind the scenes at the grand country estate...and where has his lordship disappeared to?

Chief Inspector Brian Hooley has a plan, and it won't make him popular. He wants to bring back autistic detective Jonathan Roper. Currently suspended on misconduct charges, his condition, coupled with a relentless work ethic, makes Roper a unique investigator with observational skills that allow him to see what others miss. But he is also a complex man who doesn't get social boundaries, and plenty of his colleagues just don't like him. Hooley doesn't care about that. He knows Roper is the one to make a difference.

Claire Barclay, owner of a mystery book tour company, collects three women at the Manchester airport who have flown in from Tucson, Arizona, then starts on a tour of Yorkshire and the sites of mystery novels. She meets the rest of the tour in York: two British couples and Phillip, a single man.

January 1801, and Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, known as "St. Alan the Liberator" for freeing (stealing!) a dozen black slaves on Jamaica to man his frigate years before, is at last being brought to trial for it, with his life on the line. At the same time, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia are forming a League of Armed Neutrality, to Napoleon Bonaparte's delight, to deny Great Britain their vital exports, even if it means war. England will need all her experienced sea dogs, but...even Alan Lewrie?

DCI Matilda Darke has returned to work after a nine-month absence. A shadow of her former self, she is tasked with reopening a cold case: the terrifyingly brutal murders of Miranda and Stefan Harkness. The only witness was their 11-year-old son, Jonathan, who was too deeply traumatised to speak a word. Then a dead body is discovered, and the investigation leads back to Matilda's case. Suddenly the past and present converge, and it seems a killer may have come back for more....

Kala Pani by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is a gripping Hindi audiobook that sheds light on the inhumane punishment and torture faced by Indian freedom fighters in the Andaman Cellular Jail. Through compelling storytelling, Savarkar portrays the social injustices and the relentless quest for justice. The audiobook not only reveals the cruelty of British rule but also celebrates the courage of those who fought for independence.

Stranded in India after being dismissed without a reference, governess Beatrice Layton exchanges her freedom for passage home to England, taking a position with the only family that will hire her. But Bea hasn’t reckoned for just how dreadful her new employers will be. Stuck with them at sea in increasingly desperate circumstances, she finds an unlikely champion in the injured ex-soldier traveling aboard their ship.

Newly reissued for the modern listener, Martin Amis’s Success is “a terrifying, painfully funny, Swiftian exercise in moral disgust” (The Observer). Foster brothers Terence Service and Gregory Riding could not be more different from one another—Terry “a quivering condom of neurosis and...

An enlightening and entertaining collection of the most esteemed love poems in the English canon, retold in contemporary language everyone can understand James Anthony has long enjoyed poetry with a strict adherence to beat, rhythm, and rhyming patterns, which he likens to the very best pop...

London, 1850: A young Charles Lenox struggles to make a name for himself as a detective...without a single case. Scotland Yard refuses to take him seriously and his friends deride him for attempting a profession at all. But when an anonymous writer sends a letter to the paper claiming to have committed the perfect crime - and promising to kill again - Lenox is convinced that this is his chance to prove himself. The writer's first victim is a young woman whose body is found in a naval trunk, caught up in the rushes of a small islets in the middle of the Thames.