Bafta award winning actress Jennifer Ehle reads this wonderful unabridged audiobook of one of Henry James’ funniest and most enjoyable  novels.

The battle between a father and a daughter is usually portrayed in literature as a struggle between a headstrong but feisty girl and a tradition-bound lead weight of a father. Henry James of course had to do it somewhat differently. He tells a story of an intelligent man riding the turn of the tide in mid-nineteenth century New York, and watching what he sees as his numbingly dull and conventional daughter making the mistake of her life in her choice of husband.

The fight between these two delicious characters keeps the suspense carried right up until the last page before you learn  how the contest will end.

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Star actress Julia McKenzie reads this unabridged audio book of Alice Through the Looking Glass, the second of Lewis Carroll’s whimsical tales following the character of Alice into a wild and fantastical world where nothing is as it should be and all systems of logic and reason seem to be turned upside down.

The story of how the adventures that Alice has in Wonderland came to be written, and the author’s association with the Liddell family – and Alice Liddell in particular – is now the stuff of legend. One summer afternoon in 1862, the author, in the company of the Reverend Robinson Duckworth, took the three Liddell sisters, Lorina Charlotte, Alice Pleasance and Edith Mary out in a rowing boat on the River Thames, near Oxford. On that boat trip, he entertained the girls by telling them a story about a bored little girl called Alice who goes looking for an adventure. Alice, aged 10, loved the story so much, she asked Dodgson to write it down for her.

Download Julia McKenzie reading the audiobook Alice Through the Looking Glass and enjoy listening to this wonderful story for only £7.95 

There are very few children’s stories that have raised as much outrage in grown up politics as The Water Babies did when it first appeared in 1863. It was written by Charles Kingsley for his own little boy and shortly after he had been made tutor to the Prince of Wales. It seems fairly innocent at first, suggesting the gentle idea that when the poor little tykes who were used as human chimney brushes in the nineteenth century died, they were turned into water babies, small amphibious cherubs who headed off to paradise via an exciting and educational journey upstream in The Great River.

Innocent it wasn’t however, it changed minds, laws and eventually lives. Tom the young chimney sweep was responsible for more heartache amongst right thinking Victorians than any slightly wicked young chap off on an adventure has a right to be. This book is in fact a highly eloquent plea for the rights of child labourers, it also openly used the ideas of Darwin’s scandalous Theory of Evolution, and even put forward one of the earliest cries against pollution, but all this is hidden in one of the most moving and affecting children’s stories of all time.

The celebrated English actress Virginia McKenna OBE reads this delightful unabridged audiobook of one of  Frances Hodgson Burnett's most popular novels. The Secret Garden has been adapted for film, stage and television, but it is hard to beat this wonderful audio book reading of the original story.

What the Narnia books did for wardrobes, The Secret Garden did for the walled garden. Few readers can fail to share with Mary Lennox that inexplicable thrill of anticipation at the notion of an enclosed and secret world, bursting with potential life and beauty but remaining hidden from view.

When she finds the key to the secret garden, Mary embarks on a journey of self-discovery and enables other characters in the novel to open doors and windows into their own lives, bringing vitality and vigour back to the inhabitants of Misselthwaite Manor. The author’s interest in Theosophy is perhaps reflected in the journey of the crippled Colin, who believes he can heal himself through positive thinking. And, as the roses return to the garden, so they bloom in Mary’s cheeks - as she discovers an ancient and timeless magic that every gardener will recognise and understand.

Eustacia Vye’s great desire in life was to be loved to madness, and in this, one of Hardy’s best loved novels, one of his most superb female characters conducts her wild and lethal campaign against her rival the innocent, rather conventional Thomasin against the back drop of Egdon Heath, the equally wild and lethal Dorset moorland on which Hardy grew up.

When Hardy first published the book, it was greeted with both acclaim and outrage, the response to the unfashionably shocking initial ending meant that Hardy was forced to add the sixth and last book to create the happy outcome that the public demanded for the characters he’d persuaded them to mind so much about. This being a book about desire, gratification and marvellous manipulation he did, however, naturally give them a happy ending on his own terms…!

Forced by the wrongful arrest of their father on spying charges to move from their idyllic life to a rundown cottage by a railway line, three children battle through to one of the greatest tear jerking happy endings of them all in this superb children’s classic novel by Edith Nesbit. Margaret Tyzack brings to life the joys and adversities of the delightful Waterbury family lovingly and touchingly in this unabridged audio book of The Railway Children available in MP3 or iPod audiobook format for you to download immediately.