Ordeal

Trustee from the Toolroom

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 31 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Frank Muller
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Keith Stewart, a retiring and ingenious engineer, could not have been happier in his little house in the shabby London suburb of Ealing. There he invented the mini-motor, the six-volt generator, and the tiny Congreve clock. Then a chain of events sweeps him into deep waters and leads him to his happiest discovery yet.

Beyond the Black Stump

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 15 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Laurence Kennedy

If somewhere is said to be 'beyond the black stump', it is in the deepest darkest wilds of the Australian outback. This is the sun-baked setting for Nevil Shute's novel of a romance that is tested by the differences between two young people's home lives. Stanton Laird is sent from his small town in America to work in a remote outpost in Western Australia.

Marazan

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 36 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Jeremy Clyde

After Philip Stenning is involved in a near-fatal plane crash, he feels he owes a debt of gratitude to the man who rescued him. However, his mysterious saviour is an escaped convict, and Stenning’s determination to help leads him into a tense and dramatic adventure of intrigue, drug-running and murder. Marazan was Nevil Shute’s first published novel, and in his autobiography, Slide Rule, he recalls writing the book twice over before rewriting large portions a third time.

Ruined City

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 43 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Gareth Armstrong

Through a series of mishaps, Henry Warren, a recently divorced City financier, ends up in hospital in a Northern town ruined by the closure of its shipyard. Moved by the fate of the town's inhabitants, Warren risks his fortune and reputation to save the shipyard and restore the town to its former prosperity. In seeking to change the fate of the town, he radically changes his own.

Lonely Road

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 46 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Laurence Kennedy
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Commander Malcolm Stevenson, a rich middle-aged man, finds his lonely life turned upside down when he falls in love with a pretty dance hostess. His involvement with Mollie "Sixpence" Gordon will lead to the exposure of a conspiracy to sabotage the British General Election, but Stevenson’s dogged pursuit of the criminals will throw his life and the lives of those he cares about into grave danger.

An Old Captivity

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 59 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Cameron Stewart

Young pilot Donald Ross has little in common with the Oxford don who has employed him on an expedition to the Arctic - and still less with his beautiful but stubborn daughter, Alix. But once the three of them reach the treacherous shores of Greenland, their destinies are inextricably bound by the events that unfold there.

The Rainbow and the Rose

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 46 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Robin Kermode

When Johnny Pascoe attempts to rescue a sick girl from the Tasmanian outback, his plane crashes, leaving him dangerously injured. Ronnie Clarke, who was trained by Pascoe, endeavours to fly a doctor in to help but this proves more difficult than he imagined.

As he waits overnight at Pascoe's house, preparing to try again the following day, Clarke revisits the past of this unusual man - and reveals the shocking and tragic secrets that have influenced his life.

Landfall

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 24 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Chris Rowe
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When Jerry Chambers, a fresh-faced young pilot, mistakenly sinks a British submarine, he is punished with a remote posting to test an experimental new bomb; a dangerous mission far away from the girl he loves. While Jerry risks his life, his sweetheart Mona sets about clearing her lover's name... but will she be too late?

Most Secret

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 47 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Roger May
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It is the Second World War and France has fallen. In their trusty fishing boat, Genevieve, armed with only a flame-thrower and limited ammunition, a small group of officers and men take a stand against the might of the German army. This is classic Shute: a thrilling adventure about the heroism of ordinary men that will keep you on the edge of your seat, cheering them on.

Pastoral

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 25 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Frank Muller
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She was from the hills of Yorkshire, country born and bred. He was a city boy. By the stream where they fished they were two young people falling in love. Overhead, the bombers roared, threatening to blow their idyllic world, so young, so fresh, to smithereens.

So Disdained

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 51 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Stephen Thorne

On a rain-swept night on the Sussex Downs in the uneasy peace between the wars, Peter Moran stopped his car to give a lift to a man. His unexpected passenger turned out to be an old wartime comrade, a pilot who had just crash-landed a high-speed French bomber. Trapped between two loyalties, enmeshed in a tangled skein of treason, Moran was about to be swept into a desperate manhunt across Europe...

In the Wet

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 6 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Norman Dietz

An old man lies dying during the rainy season in the Queensland outback. And in the night, slipping in and out of an opium sleep that drifts him towards death, he draws his listener into a tale that opens onto incredible horizons.

The Far Country

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 30 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Julie Maisey
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A young English woman leaves her ageing parents to visit friends living in the Australian outback, where she quickly falls in love - both with the country and with Carl, a doctor and Czech refugee. Brought together through dramatic encounters and strange twists of fate, their relationship hangs in the balance when Jennifer is called back to England.

The Chequer Board

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 35 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Paul Panting

John Turner, a young man with a chequered past, has been told he has just one year to live. He decides to use his remaining time to search of three very different men he met briefly during the war: a snobbish British pilot, a young corporal accused of murder, and a black G.I. accused of attempted rape. Along the way, Turner learns about forgiveness, tolerance, and second chances, and overcomes his fear of death.

What Happened to the Corbetts?

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 12 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Terry Wilton

Nevil Shute wrote this prophetic novel just before the start of the Second World War. In it he describes the devastation that results from an aerial bomb attack on Southampton that destroys the city's infrastructure and leaves the inhabitants at the mercy of cholera and further assaults. The story follows the trials and tribulations of the Corbett family as they struggle to get to safety.

Round the Bend

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 18 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By John Telfer

When Tom Cutter hires Constantine Shaklin as an engineer in his air-freight business, he little realises the extraordinary gifts of his new recruit. Shaklin possesses a religious power which inspires everyone he meets to a new faith and hope for humanity. As Cutter’s business grows across Asia, so does Shaklin’s fame, until he is widely regarded as a unifying deity. Though he struggles to believe Shaklin is indeed divine, Cutter too finds solace in his friend’s teachings, and commits to passing on his message.

A Town Like Alice

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 25 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Neil Hunt
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Eight hundred women and children begin a 1,200-mile journey on foot across Japanese-occupied Malaya. At journey’s end, only 30 will still be alive. This is the story of one woman, of her ordeal, and of how she was saved by the sacrifice of an Australian soldier. It is a story of rare individual courage in the face of certain death, and hope in the face of despair.

The Breaking Wave

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 57 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Patrick Tull

Allan had been away from Coombaragana, flying in the Royal Air Force. Now he has returned, wounded and disillusioned, to his ancestral home. Days before, Jessie Proctor had taken her own life. Why? Allan looked at the young face in the photograph in Jessie’s passport and froze. He knew who she really was.

Pied Piper

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By David Rintoul

John Howard is determined to brighten up his old age by taking a fishing trip to France, but during his stay the Nazis invade. Howard must try to escape back to England with the two small children of some friends who are forced to stay behind in order to help the Allied war effort. As the conflict grows closer, the roads become impassable and Howard also comes across five more children who need his help. He ends up leading this motley group of youngsters through the French countryside, constantly beset by danger yet heroically protecting his charges.

No Highway

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 57 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Ben Elliot
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Theodore Honey is a shy, inconspicuous aircraft engineer whose eccentric interests in quantum mechanics and spiritualism are frowned upon in aviation circles. But when a passenger plane crashes in unexplained circumstances, Honey must convince his superiors that his unorthodox theories are correct before more lives are lost. The title, No Highway, is taken from the poem "The Wanderer" by John Masefield, which Shute quotes at the start of the book.

On the Beach

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Simon Prebble
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A war no one fully understands has devastated the planet with radioactive fallout from massive cobalt bombing. Melbourne, Australia, is the only area whose citizens have not yet succumbed to the contamination. But there isn’t much time left, a few months, maybe more—and the citizens of Melbourne must decide how they will live the remaining weeks of their lives, and how they will face a hopeless future.

Requiem for a Wren

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 3 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By Damien Warren-Smith

Alan Duncan returns to his family home in Australia after the war and several years of study in England. But his homecoming is marred by the mysterious suicide of his parents' quiet and reliable parlour-maid. A search through her belongings in search of clues leads to heart-breaking revelations about the woman's identity, the death of Alan's brother Bill, and, above all, the disappearance of his brother's fiancée, Janet.

A Place Called Freedom

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 39 mins)
• By Ken Follett
• Narrated By Simon Prebble
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This lush novel, set in 1766 England and America, evokes an era ripe with riot and revolution, from the teeming streets of London to the sprawling grounds of a Virginia plantation. Mack McAsh burns with the desire to escape his life of slavery in Scottish coal mines while Lizzie Hallim is desperate to shed a life of sheltered subjugation to her spineless husband. United in America, their only chance for freedom lies beyond the Western frontier - if they're brave enough to take it.

Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 7 mins)
• By Nevil Shute
• Narrated By James Faulkner

Nevil Shute was a power and a pioneer in the world of flying long before he began to write the stories that made him a best-selling novelist. This autobiography charts Shute's path from childhood to his career as a gifted aeronautical engineer, working at the forefront of the technological experimentation of the 1920s and ‘30s. The inspiration for many of the themes and concerns of Shute's novels can be identified in this enjoyable and enlightening memoir.