Caribbean Fiction

As Jane Marple sat basking in the Caribbean sunshine she felt mildly discontented with life. True, the warmth eased her rheumatism, but here in paradise nothing ever happened. Eventually, her interest was aroused by an old soldier's yarn about a strange coincidence. Infuriatingly, just as he was about to show her an astonishing photograph, the Major's attention wandered. He never did finish the story.

Before the Black Pearl, there was a teenage stowaway named Jack Sparrow.

Under Western Eyes, Conrad's novel of political treachery and oppression, begins with a bomb that kills a hated Russian minister of police along with innocent bystanders. A young student named Razumov hides the perpetrator, then betrays him and becomes a spy among his exiled comrades. He faces a moral dilemma from which there is no escape. This masterwork, published six years before the Russian Revolution, is a chillingly accurate prophecy of what was to come.

At 18 years old, Dinah gave away her baby son to the rich couple she worked for before they left Jamaica. They never returned. She never forgot him. Eighteen years later, a young man comes from the US to Kingston. From the moment she sees him, Dinah never doubts—this is her son. What happens next will make everyone question what they know and where they belong.

Culture and Anarchy is a series of periodical essays by Matthew Arnold, first published in Cornhill Magazine 1867-68 and collected as a book in 1869. Arnold's famous piece of writing on culture established his High Victorian cultural agenda which remained dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s. According to his view advanced in the book, ‘Culture [...] is a study of perfection’.

Originally published in 1778, Evelina is Frances Burney's first and most beloved novel. It was a landmark in the development of the novel of manners and went on to influence such enduringly popular authors as Jane Austen. By turns hilarious and grim, witty and lyrical, the story follows young Evelina as she leaves the seclusion of her country home and enters into late eighteenth-century London society - both its pleasures and its dangers. Life in eighteenth-century England is vividly rendered as Evelina is educated in the ways of the world and, eventually, love.

DI Richard Poole is hot, bothered and fed up. He’s stuck on the tropical island of Saint-Marie, forced to live in a rickety old shack on a beach, and there isn’t a decent cup of tea to be found anywhere. When a boat explodes in the harbour, Richard and his team soon realise there’s a new murderer on the loose. But who is it? And why did the killer leave behind a ruby at the scene of the crime? As the police dig deeper, they uncover secrets that go back decades and a crime from the past that can never be forgiven.

Zack Tyndale was destined to win gold in the 2012 Olympics, but he tripped and shattered his own dreams. Running from his controlling father and the sympathy in everyone’s eyes, he buys an island in the Caribbean where he can live blissfully alone. Madeline Panetto’s graduation present is a trip sailing around the Caribbean on her father’s yacht. Unfortunately, her father is a pirate, and when there is an uprising on his ship, she escapes and crash-lands on Zack’s island. Can these two find refuge from the pirates and with each other?

Katherine Woodville's sister never gave her a choice. A happy girl of modest means, Kate hardly expected to become a maker of kings. But when her sister impulsively marries King Edward IV in secret, Katherine's life is no longer hers to control....

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as The Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar.

The Old Wives' Tale is broken up into four parts, and the lives of two sisters are laid bare: one timid and unassuming, the other romantic and adventurous. From working as children in their family's drapery shop to their later years, Constance and Sophia's journey through life could not be more different. While one travels the world and defies male expectations, the other becomes a dutiful wife and mother.

A Tall History of Sugar tells the story of Moshe Fisher, a man who was "born without skin", so that no one is able to tell what race he belongs to; and Arrienne Christie, his quixotic soul mate who makes it her duty in life to protect Moshe from the social and emotional consequences of his strange appearance. The narrative begins with Moshe's birth in the late 1950s, four years before Jamaica's independence from colonial rule, and ends in the era of Brexit and Donald Trump.

From the author of The Christmas Hirelings comes this Audible Exclusive production of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s classic sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret. English actress Olivia Poulet gives an assured and captivating narration; a cornerstone of the genre and a scandal at the time of its publication, Lady Audley’s Secret is an entertaining and shocking tale of high drama and shifting perceptions.

 Over 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in audio. This volume restores material, including instances of graphic homosexual content, removed by the novel's first editor, who feared it would be "offensive" to Victorians. 

Captain Marryat's The Children of the New Forest is a wonderful tale in narrative, historically rich and quite fascinating. This story of adventure, treachery, and love takes place during the English Civil War, when fellow countrymen are found enemies, and are set against each other, Roundhead and Cavalier, Parliament and the King. Many hoped for the same thing: justice. But, for a long time, neither could find it. In the midst of all were the Beverlies, the family of a faithful Cavalier, who died in service of the king.

The brilliant conclusion to the Palliser novels, this touching story follows the elderly Duke of Omnium, the former prime minister of England, as he struggles to overcome his grief at the loss of his beloved wife, Lady Glencora. To complicate matters, he must also deal with the willfulness of his three adult children as he tries to guide and support them - his plans for them are quite different from their own. While his two sons, sent down from university in disgrace, rack up gambling debts, the duke’s only daughter yearns to marry the poor son of a country squire.

It's Darcy and Elizabeth's wedding day, and the journey is just beginning as Jane Austen's beloved Pride and Prejudice characters embark on the greatest adventure of all: marriage and a life together filled with surprising passion, tender self-discovery, and the simple joys of every day.

Devil's Island. An abandoned island in the Caribbean Sea with a dark and bloody past. An island with a terrible secret. Nick Gorman, billionaire movie producer, assembles a team of ghost hunters and scientists to investigate the Thornhill Manor on Devil's Island - the most haunted place in the world that no one's ever heard of. He's there to find proof of ghosts, evidence of an afterlife...but he's also there to uncover the secret that is hidden on the island...to possess it.

On Midsummer Eve in a Sussex meadow, Dan and Una act out their version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Suddenly, Puck, as old as Time itself, miraculously appears. The youngsters are swept into the past as Puck conjures up villages of long ago, filled with craftsmen, a Roman centurion, and a Norman knight. Rudyard Kipling’s magical tale brings English history dramatically to life to captivate both the young and the young at heart.

Listeners can set sail for adventure with this full-length retelling of the live-action Disney film. They'll follow every swashbuckling step as a brave young man teams up with a high-seas scoundrel to rescue the woman he loves from the clutches of a band of cursed pirates.