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As one of the most famous and influential couples in the world, David and Victoria Beckham have attained iconic status. For decades, adoring fans have been captivated by the glamorous world they have created, while their unrivalled fusion of showbiz, fashion, football and celebrity has been cultivated alongside the image of a strong marriage. When the much-trailed Netflix documentary Beckham aired in 2023, viewers were offered an even more intimate insight into their private lives. Produced by the Beckhams themselves, the series raised many questions, not only about their success and personal relationship, but also about the ruthlessly successful management of their image in the media. Are their lives really as perfect as the Beckhams would like the world to believe?
For Long Island native Humaira Mirza, it's always been about love – and she has the matchmaking track record to prove it. Having successfully found the one for both her aunt and her sister, the twenty-three-year-old is ready to claim a bit of romance for herself. The perfect candidate? The gorgeous Rizwan Ali. But as Humaira employs her unique skills to obtain the perfect match with Rizwan, she's forced to endure the disapproval of family friend Fawad Sheikh who she's known forever. Fawad and Humaira have long traded barbs but as her romantic meddling leads to unintentional misadventures, she realises something shocking – is she starting to care what Fawad thinks?
Charlotte and Perry long for summers at Cliff View, their gorgeous holiday home overlooking the turquoise waters of Pine Ridge. And now that city friends Amy and Linus have bought a property nearby, they plan lazy weeks of sun, sea, and sipping rosé on Charlotte's summerhouse veranda. But there's trouble in paradise. A rising tide of resentment towards second-home owners is heading their way and small acts of criminal damage are escalating into something more menacing. By the end of the summer, families and friendships will be torn apart and Pine Ridge will be known for more than its sun-drenched beaches. It will be known for murder.
August 1961. Old Trafford, Manchester. The three previous Tests of the series: a draw, a win for Australia, a win for England. A wonderful snapshot of a game on cusp, with everything to play for. Watching on, an entire nation sits on tenterhooks as England led by Peter May risk-adverse and establishment-minded seem on the verge of victory. Yet, somehow, they manage to throw it all away as Australia led by their charismatic skipper Richie Benaud storms to victory. The difference between May and Benaud is highlighted the evening before when Benaud, dashing and free-thinking, strolled out to inspect the wicket wearing a pair of blue suede shoes. Such sartorial boldness would have been unthinkable from his opposite number known for sporting a sharp blazer and cravat. Written by master historian, David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts, this book marks a vivid recreation of five days of sharply fluctuating fortunes and weaves the narrative of the match into a broader tapestry of social change in the 60s a time when the old amateur era of cricket is reaching its overdue end, and broader changes were afoot.
American Professor Evan Kirby, moving to Barrowcester to research paradise after a successful book on hell, expects a very English cathedral society of gentle clergymen and coffee mornings. What he finds instead is a town thrown into chaos by strange, supernatural events, scandalous pregnancies and a Satanic summoning of a young feral girl.
Why do mobile phones work when you're on a train? What happens when you pull a pop song apart into pure sine waves and play it back on a piano? And what did mathematicians have to do with the great pig stampede of 2012? The answer to each of these questions can be found in the triangle. Humans have been using triangles for thousands of years, but trigonometry is not a thing of the past – triangles underpin all of modern data technology. Join Matt Parker, stand-up comedian and author of the first ever maths book to be a No. 1 bestseller, as he uncovers the secrets of trigonometry and shares extraordinary stories about the mathematicians, philosophers and engineers who dared to take triangles seriously.
The Doctor has a unique bond with the Tardis. They've always loved the old girl for the way she's gone looking for trouble anywhere in the universe. The Doctor says they stole the Tardis from Gallifrey. The Tardis disagrees. She stole them. It hasn't always taken the Doctor where they want to go, but it's made sure to take them where they needed to be. For the Tardis is far more than just a time machine crossed with a spaceship. Its life reflects the Doctor's life – a shared wanderlust and longing to explore. Now you can revisit the Doctor's adventures as seen through the eyes – or the flashing rooftop light, at least – of the Tardis.
With nothing but time on her hands, retired nurse Rose Lanyon finds herself drawn to the garden that had once been her husband's pride and joy. It may have started as a means of honouring her husband's memory, but her little Cornish garden soon becomes so much more - a place where the lost and lonely can find solace, the forgotten can be remembered, and second chances take bloom. Because, as long as new life is growing, there will always be hope and new memories to make.
Angela Wynter reads this novelisation of the first full adventure for the Fifteenth Doctor, as played on TV by Ncuti Gatwa, and Ruby Sunday as played on TV by Millie Gibson. I've been waiting, all this time, for my life to begin. Maybe it's time to stop waiting. Maybe it's time to start living. Chance. Misfortune. Coincidence. These are the weapons of choice for the Doctor's latest enemies. And those enemies are very, very hungry. For Ruby Sunday, this Christmas Eve is a birthday shell never forget. It's the day she joins the Doctor on board a Goblin ship. The day she learns of dangers from beyond the universe. The day her life really begins or, perhaps, the day it ends.
Sue Barker first walked through those famous SW19 gates aged 13 in 1969, to play in the National Schools event. She knelt down and picked some blades of grass, wrapped them up in a tissue and took them home. Her own bit of Wimbledon. What Sue didn't know then, was that every year for the next half century, she would be back in some capacity. As a junior, aged 15, as a semi-finalist and Grand-Slam winner ranked No 3 in the world, and as a broadcaster leading the BBC coverage for thirty years. And now she returns as a storyteller. Wimbledon has a magic that draws people in, players and fans. It respects tradition, but embraces the future and stays relevant. Sue goes in search of what sets this place apart. She talks to the greats of tennis, her former mentors, contemporaries on the circuit, friends and colleagues, and they tell their stories of their own triumphs and disasters, reveal how Wimbledon changed their lives, and what it has meant to them. Sue's personal history of Wimbledon is as tightly packed with stories as the courts are with blades of grass. From the most memorable matches to the fashions and trends, the famous rivalries, the upsets - this is a Centre Court seat on all the riveting drama that has defined British sporting summers for all of our lifetimes.
Wendy is lonely but coping. All nineteen-year-old Wendy wants is to drive the 255 bus around Uddingston with her regulars on board, remember to buy milk when it runs out and just to be okay. After her mum died, there's nobody to remind her to eat and what to do each day. And Wendy is ready to step out of her comfort zone. Each week she shows her social worker the progress she's made, like the coasters she bought to spruce up the place, even if she forgets to make tea. And she even joins a writers' group to share the stories she writes, like the one about a bullied boy who goes to Mars. But everything changes when Wendy meets Ginger. A teenager with flaming orange hair, Ginger's so brave she's wearing a coat that isn't even waterproof. For the first time, Wendy has a real best friend. But as they begin the summer of their lives, Wendy wonders if things were simpler before. And that's before she realizes just how much trouble Ginger is about to get them in.
The Turning Tide is a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance. Combining social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics, Jon Gower charts a sea which has carried both Vikings and saints, invasion forces and furtive gun-runners, writers, musicians and fishermen. The divided but interconnected waters of the Irish Sea - from the narrow North Channel through St George's Channel to where the Celtic sea opens out into wide Atlantic - have a turbulent history to match the violence of its storms. Jon Gower is a sympathetic and interested pilot, taking the reader to the great shipyards of Belfast and through the mass exodus of the starving during the Irish Famine in coffin boats bound for America. He follows the migrations of working men and women looking for work in England and tells the tales of more casual travellers: sometimes seasick, often homesick too. The Irish Sea is also a place with an abundant natural history. The rarest sea bird in Europe visits its coasts in summer while the rarest goose wings in during winter. Jon Gower navigates waters teeming with life, filled with seals and salt-tanged stories and surveyed by seabirds. At a time when Irish affairs feel like they are building towards an historic crescendo, he tells the story of the people who have crossed these waters, and who live on their shores. Lyrically written and deeply considered, this is a remarkable and far-reaching book.
She's meant to save lives... not destroy them. For readers of The Silent Patient comes a propulsive, edge-of-your-seat thriller that asks: can you ever escape your past? Former police officer Tia quit the Met years ago when she failed her exam to become a negotiator, her dream job. But when a peaceful climate protest at a London museum turns deadly, and one of the radicalised group members takes Tia and others hostage, she realises this is her chance to prove she has what it takes. Only not everyone gets out of the siege alive. Three years later, Tia discovers that the surviving hostages are being harassed by an anonymous person, leading one of them to take their own life. Refusing to have another death on her conscience, Tia begins to investigate. But Tia was a hostage that day too... and now she's a target.
You can find more reading ideas on our “Let’s Talk About Books!” suggestions page.
You can also download lists of talking books for each genre, from the “Book Lists” page.