Playaway

Adult

September to October

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…

Duncan Campbell
The Paradise Trail

Read By Stephen Perring
On the day of his finals in economics, Anand discovers that he has inherited the Lux Hotel in Calcutta, and, happy to forego Edward Heath's England – atmospherically evoked – he fantasises about transforming it into a utopia for literary types. But his grand plans don't add up, as he returns to an India poised on the brink of war.

The trope of freedom and escape is explored through the motley cast flung together in Calcutta: a 26-year-old who has left his job to escape "the pointlessness of career, the chains of permanent relationship"; a war journalist; and a Californian photographer.

Far from finding themselves, though, they become lost in a fog of hashish, confusion and suspicion. Two deaths at the hotel reveal that there's a worm in paradise. Duncan Campbell skilfully traces how the paradise trail upon which these naive hopefuls stumble leads painfully back to the very selves they had hoped to flee.

JonathanCoe
What a Carve Up!

Read By Colin Buchanan
Michael is a lonely writer, obsessed by a film featuring a mad knifeman. When he is commissioned to write the family history of the Winshaws he realizes that the family have cast a blight on his life and he decides to take his revenge by re-enacting his favourite film.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Read By Derek Jacobi
The great Sherlock Holmes is back from the dead and is once more devoting his life to solving the seemingly unsolvable crimes that plague London. Created by Scottish author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant London-based consulting detective, famous for his intellectual prowess and powers of deductive reasoning.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes is the third of Conan Doyle’s short story collections and features thirteen mysterious tales.