Books published by publisher Chivers Sound Library

Retired to the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, rumored to be a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African gray parrot.What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out—a top-secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts? Or do they hold a significance both more prosaic and far more sinister?Though the solution may be beyond even the reach of the once-famous sleuth, the true story of the boy and his parrot is subtly revealed in a wrenching resolution.

In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was overcome by the violent shocks of an enormous earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale. The tremors and rumbling, affecting a swathe of California more than two hundred miles long, triggered a vast firestorm in the city, effectively destroying the gold rush capital that had stood there for half a century. Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities to this extraordinary event, exploring not only what happened in northern California nearly one hundred years ago, but what we have learned since then about the geological underpinnings that caused the earthquake in the first place.

Titus Cain, a highly successful businessman with a rock-solid marriage and a loving circle of friends, is being kidnapped. But this is no ordinary abduction. Cain will not be bound, gagged, and carried away to a deserted cabin. He will live his life as usual: kiss his wife, go to work--and slowly, carefully, make a series of "unfortunate investments" totaling sixty-four million dollars. But if he refuses to cooperate, tells anyone, or attempts to get help, the price will be much higher. Any transgression from his kidnapper's orders will trigger a death--one by one, Cain's family and friends will be murdered in a seemingly accidental, yet agonizingly slow manner. For Cain's abductor is a criminal whose greed is exceeded only by his sadism--and Cain, terrified and desperate, but unwilling to give up his family and his life, will soon understand his kidnapper's talent for atrocity.

"Atkinson's bright voice rings on every page, and her sly and wry observations move the plot as swiftly as suspense turns the pages of a thriller."-San Francisco ChronicleTwo years after the events of Case Histories left him a retired millionaire, Jackson Brodie has followed Julia, his occasional girlfriend and former client, to Edinburgh for its famous summer arts festival. But when he witnesses a man being brutally attacked in a traffic jam - the apparent victim of an extreme case of road rage - a chain of events is set in motion that will pull the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a timid but successful crime novelist, and a hardheaded female police detective into Jackson's orbit. Suddenly out of retirement, Jackson is once again in the midst of several mysteries that intersect in one giant and sinister scheme."Compelling and always entertaining." -USA Today"One Good Turn crackles with energy and imagination." -Chicago Tribune"Atkinson's tart prose sparkles." -Entertainment Weekly"Entertaining both as a murder mystery and as a sprawling multi-character study in the best post-Nashville tradition." -The Onion"A remarkable feat of storytelling bravado." -Washington Post