The Nick Adams Stories AUDIO

Andrew Barrow (Author)

The Tap Dancer

'My favourite novel and one I wish I'd written.' ALAN BENNETT Winner of the McKitterick Prize for best first novel by an author aged over 40, and the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature. Everyone craves retirement from the Civil Service, don't they? That time for an ageing patriarch to enjoy the fruits of a well-earned pension and the respect of his family; maybe even to indulge in a love of music halls and metropolitan life. If only people would listen and do as they were told... His fourth son William, the long-suffering narrator, is the constant butt of his father's jokes and victim of his brothers' indifference. But as death, divorce and other darker dramas follow, father and son slowly establish a strange harmony.

Jonathan Whitelaw (Author)

The Village Hall Vendetta

There's a fine art to murder... Hal Mulberry has long dreamt of owning the iconic painting, Buttermere at Dawn. And now the entrepreneur has got his hands on it, he's determined to bring it back to the Lakes where it belongs and put it on show, turning Penrith Village Hall into a cultural hotspot - with the painting at its heart. Journalist Jason Brazel is delighted to get the exclusive. Even if his mother in law, Amita, thinks he's making a fuss about an ugly piece of modern art. But when Amita uncovers a theory that the painting is cursed, she wonders just what Hal is bringing to their door: hex, hoax or dirty-deal? While the great and the good gather for the unveiling, someone's got murder on their mind. And it's up to Jason and Amita to find who is trying to put people out of the picture ... permanently.

Padmini Rajappa (Author)

Kadambari: Bana

Bana is among the three most important prose writers in classical Sanskrit, all of whom lived in the