The Larkins descend on Brittany and find the French weather, food and hotel less than ideal; but things improve as Pop sweet-talks the local ladies.

Instead of building the bungalow he promised Mariette and her fiancé, Pop buys a derelict country home to renovate; but selling it to unsuspecting city folk is too lucrative an opportunity to miss.

Mariette and Charley decide to get baby Blenheim christened, leading to a wholesale christening of all the other Larkin children, general chaos and the vicar run ragged.

In the final book of the series, Pop Larkin is in bed after a heart attack brought on by too much of what he fancied – but a seductive nurse is all he needs for a full recovery.

A devious villain is threatening to kidnap the Governor of California and has duped Vicente Canchola, a wealthy landowner. To save the family estate, Canchola’s sister Panchita desperately needs Zorro’s help.

To save the people of Reina de Los Angeles and establish his own innocence, Zorro must unmask an evil impostor who is terrorizing the town and marking his victims’ faces with Zorro’s trademark: ‘Z’ cut by rapier.

Zorro’s beloved, the beautiful Lolita Pulido, is captured by the evil Captain Ramon and our hero is forced to go to sea and fight pirates to win her back.

As new tenants of Wildfell Hall, the reclusive Helen Graham and her young son find themselves the objects of gossip and scandal. Brontë’s passionate, psychologically honest novel is read here, unabridged, by Piers Wehner and Katy Carmichael.

Jonathan Harker’s meeting with Count Dracula in Transylvania leads to carnage in England, as Jonathan's fiancée Mina and her friend Lucy are pursued by the terrifying creature. Stoker’s famous vampire story is read by a full cast led by David Horovitch.

Told by an award-winning audiobook reader, Good Wives is the sequel to Alcott’s enduring and popular Little Women. Here, Meg gets married, Jo starts her writing career and Amy sets off on the trip of a lifetime.

When Sylvester and Phoebe first meet, they don’t hit it off. Later, stranded together in a country inn, there is definitely a mutual attraction. But will Sylvester recognize himself in the villain in Phoebe’s about-to-be-published novel? Heyer’s Regency romance is read, unabridged, by Nicholas Rowe.

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was considered disreputable when it was published in 1855; now he is seen as ‘America’s poet’. This selection of ten poems includes ‘I Sing the Body Electric’ from Leaves of Grass and Whitman’s Civil War rallying cry to the North, ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’.

Considered a bridge between romanticism and modernism, Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) wrote verse that is simple and unadorned. This collection of 23 complete poems starts with the famous ‘Dover Beach’ and includes ‘The Scholar Gypsy’ and ‘Growing Old’.

Jane Austen's first novel tells the story of Mrs Dashwood and her two daughters, Elinor and Marianne – one full of good sense, the other prone to romantic notions. Originally published in three volumes in 1811, the novel is read here, unabridged, by Juliet Stevenson.

Virginia Woolf’s first novel is a haunting account of a naive young woman’s sea voyage to South America – and her internal journey into adulthood. The lyrical intensity of Woolf’s mature prose is already in evidence, read here by one of Britain’s finest actresses.

One of the most popular Russian novels of the 20th century, The Master and Margarita blends surrealism and political satire with a dazzling cast that includes Satan, Pontius Pilate and a talking cat. This careful abridgement of a new translation is read by the charismatic Julian Rhind-Tutt.

Though he died in obscurity in 1937, HP Lovecraft is now recognized as a master of the uncanny. In addition to the title story, this collection includes his chilling tales ‘The Outsider’, ‘The Doom that Came to Sarnath’ and ‘The Rats in the Walls’.

DH Lawrence’s classic novel follows the lives and loves of three generations of the Brangwen family as their world is transformed by industrialization, culminating in the passionate, headstrong sisters Ursula and Gudrun’s struggle to grasp a higher form of existence, symbolized by the rainbow.

Having made a wager at his gentlemen’s club in London, Phileas Fogg, along with his long-suffering manservant Passepartout, sets off on the race of a lifetime – to circumnavigate the globe in exactly 80 days. In pursuit is Detective Fix, convinced that Fogg is a bank robber. Read by Bill Homewood. Unabridged.

‘A Book of Job transferred to 18th-century bourgeois England’, Goldsmith's tale begins with Charles Primrose, his wife and four children in their tranquil rural parish: an idyll to be shattered by bankruptcy, seduction and prison. Whether a story of suffering and fortitude or a satire of 18th-century life, the novel's appeal has never faltered. Read, unabridged, by Nicholas Farrell.

During the Siege of Sarajevo, a cellist plays at a site where many have died, while enemy snipers besieging the city try to kill him. Galloway’s bestselling novel revolves around the cellist, following three citizens as they go about their lives, risking death with every simple journey. Read by Gareth Armstrong.

In Mary Shelley’s powerful Promethean fable, Dr Frankenstein’s experiment and its terrible outcome is told through the letters of an English explorer who met the doomed scientist as he pursued his monster into the Arctic wilderness. Read by Daniel Philpott, Roger May and Jonathan Oliver.

Written in Reading Gaol, De Profundis is Oscar Wilde's letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, whose relationship with Wilde had led to the writer’s trial and imprisonment for ‘gross indecency’. In the first part, Wilde reflects on Douglas’s vanity and his own weakness, but goes on to describe how his ordeal has brought a deeper wisdom. The work is read here by Simon Russell Beale.

Poets of the Caribbean diaspora, such as E A Markham, Grace Nichols and Benjamin Zephaniah, have contributed powerfully to the poetry scene in Britain since the latter part of the 20th century, their work often responding to the harsh realities of the immigrant experience. This 2-CD anthology collects studio recordings from the British Library archive, including previously unissued live performances by Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jean 'Binta' Breeze and Michael Smith.

WH Hudson (1841-1922) was a founder member of the RSPB whose books helped to popularize birdwatching as a pastime. This set of six CDs presents an unabridged reading by Neville Jason of one of Hudson's charming accounts of the hours he spent absorbed in studying birds' behaviour and listening to their songs; he also observes the actions of predators and appeals for his Edwardian contemporaries to pay greater attention to conservation. 6 CDs 7hrs 23mins

Ken Follett's epic The Century Trilogy follows the experiences of families across the globe during the 20th century's most tumultuous events, and this final novel explores the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights movement and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Read by John Lee. Abridged.

The Lady Elizabeth is the daughter of Henry VIII, but disinherited and declared a bastard after the execution of her mother. How the young Elizabeth survives the savage world of Tudor politics, inherits the throne and becomes queen is the subject of Alison Weir's novel. It is read here by Emma Fielding. Abridged.

When a surgeon decides to transplant human body parts into a stray dog he creates a drunken, aggressive and selfish monster. Bulgakov's wild and comic novel is read by Roy McMillan. Unabridged. 3 CDs total duration 3 hrs 45 min.

The Pac Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris's accessible and entertaining narrative history of the British Empire from the accession of Queen Victoria to the death of Winston Churchill. A snapshot of the Empire at the Diamond Jubilee, this second volume looks at what it comprised – from adventurers and politicians to communications and infrastructure – but also examines the jumble of ideologies within it and how they affected its 370 million people. Read by Roy McMillan. Unabridged.

The famous soliloquy from James Joyce's Ulysses in which Leopold Bloom's passionate wife meditates on love and life is read here by the Irish actress Marcella Riordan. A Naxos Audiobook: 2 CDs, duration 2hrs 24 min.

DH Lawrence's reflection on mankind's relation to nature, expressed through the story of Lady Chatterley's sexual involvement with her gamekeeper, is read by Maxine Peake.

Written as a Greek tragedy, with the Chorus commenting on the action, Milton's 'dramatic poem' tells the story of blind Samson's revenge on his captors, the Philistines. Performed by Iain Glen and cast, directed by John Tydeman.

This famous tale by Washington Irving (1783–1859) is set before and after the American Revolutionary War and tells of a Dutch villager who went wandering in the Catskill Mountains, fell asleep and awoke 20 years later – after the Revolution – to find the world much changed. Rip van Winkle and two more short stories are read here by Adam Sims. Unabridged.

The actor Rory Kinnear reads a selection of war poetry ranging from the early patriotic optimism of John Galsworthy to the suffering and disillusion of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. The CD features works by 24 poets, both soldiers and civilians, including Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney, Rudyard Kipling and Edith Nesbit.1 CD duration 76 min.

Thomas De Quincey's powerful autobiographical study describes the psychological effects of his addiction to opium: childhood experience turning into dreams, at first euphoric, but becoming horrific as dependence on the drug deepened. Published in 1822, the book brought De Quincey literary fame and was an important influence on later writers. It is read here by Gunnar Cauthery. Unabridged.

Although stories such as The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Murders in the Rue Morgue have remained popular to this day, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) felt that his vocation was poetry. This collection includes both stories and poems, plus a biography of Poe. The works are unabridged and read by Kerry Shale, William Roberts and John Chancer.

Henry Fielding's bawdy and hilarious parody of Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) transforms the eponymous innocent virgin into a shameless slut and predatory social climber intent on marrying Squire Booby. The unabridged novel is read here by a cast led by Clare Corbett as Shamela. 2 CDs 1hr 30mins

Set in London in the late 1950s, this novel by the Nobel laureate Doris Lessing (1919–2013) describes the challenges of life in the aftermath of war. It follows the psychological turmoil of Anna, a novelist and a single mother – as Lessing was – struggling to cope as her personal life and political certainties collapse around her. The Golden Notebook (1962) is read here by Juliet Stevenson. Unabridged.

Against a background of social stagnation, apathy and outmoded institutions, Dickens uses a gallery of vivid characters to show that it is individuals and their acts of kindness, love and generosity that can revitalize society. This Complete Classics unabridged edition of Little Dorrit is read by Anton Lesser. 28 CDs 35hrs 15mins

Probably Victor Hugo's best-known work, Les Misérables (1862) is set in Paris between 1815 and the Paris Rebellion in 1932. It tells the story of Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who redeems his early crime by showing compassion, forgiveness and, ultimately, his courage on the rebels' barricades. This vast novel is presented here in an abridged version, read by Bill Homewood, with music by Berlioz and Honegger.

With a head full of brilliant ideas and wild inventions which never work out quite as planned, Professor Branestawm sets off with his friend Colonel Dedshott on a series of adventures involving wild waste paper, burglars and screaming clocks – among other disasters. First published in 1933, the unabridged classic tales of Branestawm are read here by Martin Jarvis. Age 7+

Including historic speeches, radio broadcasts, music and evocative sounds such as the bell of St Paul's tolling for the King's funeral, this CD traces the history of the House of Windsor over three generations. Slightly off-mint.

For William 'Billy' Fisher, an energetic imagination makes life tolerable, but well-nigh intolerable for all around him. John Simm reads Waterhouse's 1959 classic.

Ian Holm narrates the famous tale of Dr Henry Jekyll and the elixir which he hoped would help him explore the hidden depths of his personality. Jekyll's experiments coincided with the appearance of Mr Edward Hyde on London's streets; but how are the two men related and how can the evil Hyde be stopped? 2 CDs, running time 2.5 hours.

Starring the theatrical Chance twins Dora and Nora, 75, with a past full of jaw-dropping secrets and surprises, Carter's last novel is packed with weird and wonderful characters, mysteries and literary allusions. Read by Eileen Atkins. Abridged. 4 CDs (5 hours)