Playaway

Adult

July to August

2010

Pre-Loaded Digital Audio Books

The first all-in-one audiobook is now available from BBC Audiobooks. Playaway doesn't require a separate player, so it comes ready-to-listen. And as it comes already loaded with great digital content, there's no need for CDs, cassettes or downloads.

It's light and compact - smaller than a pack of cards - so you can fit a whole book in your pocket. It also has digital quality sound and up to 80 hours of playing time. Just plug-in the headphones that are included, press 'play' and listen straight away. No technical knowledge is needed - Playaway's user-friendly features mean you can bookmark your favourite points and control the speed of the narrator's voice. It even remembers your place when it's turned off. Now you can listen wherever you go.

Light, compact,
complete and unabridged…

Margaret Atwood
Dancing Girls

Read By Laurel Lefkow
This splendid volume of short fiction testifies to Margaret Atwood's startlingly original voice, full of a rare intensity and exceptional intelligence. Her men and women still miscommunicate, still remain separate in different rooms, different houses, or even different worlds. With brilliant flashes of fantasy, humor, and unexpected violence, the stories reveal the complexities of human relationships and bring to life characters who touch us deeply, evoking terror and laughter, compassion and recognition--and dramatically demonstrate why Margaret Atwood is one of the most important writers in English today.

Evelyn Waugh
A Handful of Dust

Read By Andew Sachs
A Handful of Dust (1934) marks a turning point in Waugh's fiction. Harsher and more serious in intent than its predecessors, it looks towards the themes of the post-war novels. The book's hero, Tony Last, lives a life of dull but satisfying routine as the owner of Hetton Abbey, a large Victorian-Gothic house regarded by many as a monstrosity but loved by Tony himself. At the start of the novel, his friend Jock Grant-Menzies sums up the situation: “I often think Tony Last's one of the happiest men I know. He's got just enough money, loves the place, one son he's crazy about, devoted wife, not a worry in the world.” But fortune's wheel is about to turn. Tony's wife Brenda is in reality less devoted than he thought....

Charlotte Bingham
The Daisy Club

Read By Kim Hicks
Daisy lives at Twistleton Hall, along with her unmarried Aunt Augusta, and the spirits of her four dead uncles from World War One.

Twistleton is a village untouched by time, taking its rhythms from the countryside around. Daisy, Jean, Freddie and their friends Aurelia and Laura are devoted to the place, so that when war breaks out Twistleton becomes the embodiment of everything for which they are fighting. For the previous generation the new conflict causes private despair, increased when Twistleton is requisitioned by the Army. Turfed out of their houses, the villagers take refuge at the Hall.

Robert Crais
Indigo Slam

Read By William Roberts
Hired to find a missing dad, detective Elvis Cole follows a series of clues to Seattle, where he runs afoul of the newly emerging Russian Mafia and U.S. Federal Marshals as he discovers more about his client's missing father.