Nelly Dean

Part of a remarkable family that produced three acclaimed female writers at a time in 19th-century Britain when few women wrote and fewer were published, Charlotte Brontë has been a great source of inspiration to writers, especially women, ever since. Now, in Reader, I Married Him, 20 of today's most celebrated woman authors have spun original stories using Jane Eyre as a springboard.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child - not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring, like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power - the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Haworth, West Yorkshire, 1848. Branwell Brontë - unexhibited artist, unacknowledged writer, sacked railwayman, disgraced tutor and spurned lover -finds himself unhappily back in Haworth Parsonage, to face the crushing disappointment of his father and his three sisters, whose own pseudonymous successes - allegedly kept secret from him – are only just becoming apparent.

On the day of his daughter's wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory. Three years later he returns home, and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence as they enter a world of hushed commands and soundless journeys through the palace's dungeons and bedchambers.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Charlotte Brontë: A Life written and read by Claire Harman. Raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors, watching five beloved siblings sicken and die, haunted by unrequited love: Charlotte Brontë's life has all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired. Charlotte was a literary visionary, a feminist trailblazer and the driving force behind the whole Brontë family.

A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.

A brilliantly written and gripping historical Nordic noir thriller with all the intrigue and atmosphere of Burial Rites, the pent-up passion of The Piano, and the suspense of The Tenderness of Wolves. There are six homesteads on Blackåsen Mountain. A day's journey away lies the empty town. It comes to life just once, in winter, when the church summons her people through the snows. Then even the oldest enemies will gather. But now it is summer, and new settlers are come.

Martha is lost. She’s been lost since she was a baby, abandoned in a suitcase on the train from Paris. Ever since, she’s waited in the station's lost property for someone to claim her. It’s been 16 years, but she’s still hopeful. In the meantime, there are mysteries to solve: secret tunnels under the station, a suitcase that may have belonged to the Beatles, the Roman soldier who appears at the same time every day with his packed lunch. Not to mention the stuffed monkey that someone keeps misplacing.

Jasper Tudor, son of Queen Catherine and her second husband, Owen Tudor, has grown up far from the intrigue of the royal court. But after he and his brother Edmund are summoned to London, their half brother, King Henry VI, takes a keen interest in their future. Bestowing earldoms on them both, Henry also gives them the wardship of the young heiress Margaret Beaufort. Although she is still a child, Jasper becomes devoted to her and is devastated when Henry arranges her betrothal to Edmund.

Cal McGill is an Edinburgh-based oceanographer, environmentalist and one-of-a-kind investigator. Using his knowledge of the waves - ocean currents, prevailing winds, shipping records - McGill can track where objects came from or where they've gone. It's a skill that can help solve mysteries ranging from disappearances to murder. Two severed feet wash up on two different islands off the coast of Scotland. Forensics shows that the feet belong to the same body.