Matilda is the world's most famous bookworm, no thanks to her ghastly parents.Her father thinks she's a little scab. Her mother spends all afternoon playing bingo. And her headmistress, Miss Trunchbull? She's the worst of all. She's a big bully, who thinks all her pupils are rotten and locks them in the dreaded Chokey. Despite these beastly grownups trying to push her down, Matilda is an extraordinary girl with a magical mind. And she's had enough. So all the terrible adults had better watch out, because she's going to teach them a lesson they'll never forget!

On a dark, silvery moonlit night, Sophie is snatched from her bed by a giant. Luckily it is the Big Friendly Giant, the BFG, who only eats snozzcumbers and glugs frobscottle. But there are other giants in Giant Country. Fifty foot brutes who gallop far and wide every night to find human beans to eat. Can Sophie and her friend the BFG stop them? Let's hope so - otherwise the next child a gruesome giant guzzles could be YOU.

There are witches everywhere. Witches could be a cashier in a supermarket, a woman driving a fancy car, or even your own teacher. The only thing a witch cares about is squelching children. She hunts and squelches as many children as she possibly can. At least one a week. The Grand High Witch hates children most of all and plans to make every single one of you disappear. Only one boy and his grandmother can stop her. But if their plan fails, the Grand High Witch will frizzle them like fritters and then what will happen?

Mr Twit is a foul and smelly man with bits of cornflake and sardine in his beard. Mrs Twit is a horrible old hag with a glass eye. Together they make the nastiest couple you could ever hope not to meet. Down in their garden, the ghastly, evil Twits keep Muggle-Wump the monkey and his family locked in a cage. But not for much longer! Because the monkeys are planning to trick the terrible Twits and make their escape, once and for all.... 

Boggis is an enormously fat chicken farmer who only eats boiled chickens smothered in fat. Bunce is a duck-and-goose farmer whose dinner gives him a beastly temper. Bean is a turkey-and-apple farmer who only drinks gallons of strong cider. Mr Fox is so clever that every evening he creeps down into the valley and helps himself to food from their farms - and those ghastly farmers can't catch him!

The stories on this recording include pieces from the 1950s and 1960s to "The Vicar of Nibbleswicke" which was completed just before he died. This tape includes "The Landlady", "The Hitchhiker", "Mr Botibol", "Edward the Conqueror" and "Taste" and is read by Stephen Fry.

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

Come with us to an Enchanted Place, a forest where Winnie-the-Pooh lived with Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Eeyore, Kanga, and Little Roo. The stories are about Christopher Robin and these good companions having wonderful times getting in and out of trouble. It is all very exciting and, really, quite thrilling no matter how young or old you may be. It is painful to try and imagine what the world would be like without them.

George Kranky's Grandma is a miserable grouch. George really hates that horrid old witchy woman. One Saturday morning, George is in charge of giving Grandma her medicine. So-ho! Ah-ha! Ho-hum! George knows exactly what to do. A magic medicine it will be! One that will either cure her completely of her horrible grouchiness...or blow off the top of her head!

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me, a classic Roald Dahl story, brought to life in an audiobook reading by House star Hugh Laurie. Billy dreams of turning a weird old wooden house into a wonderful sweet-shop. But a giraffe, a pelly, and a monkey already live inside! Soon they are friends, and when they meet the richest man in England, Billy's scrumptious-galumptious dream just might come true....

Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last 15 years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.

Big Brother is watching you.... 1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party’s power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party’s department for propaganda, Winston Smith’s job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair.

James Henry Trotter lives with two ghastly hags. Aunt Sponge is enormously fat with a face that looks boiled and Aunt Spiker is bony and screeching. He's very lonely until one day something peculiar happens.... At the end of the garden a peach starts to grow and grow and grow. Inside that peach are seven very unusual insects - all waiting to take James on a magical adventure. But where will they go in their giant peach, and what will happen to the horrible aunts if they stand in their way? There's only one way to find out....

The Greek myths are amongst the greatest stories ever told, passed down through millennia and inspiring writers and artists as varied as Shakespeare, Michelangelo, James Joyce and Walt Disney. They are embedded deeply in the traditions, tales and cultural DNA of the West. You'll fall in love with Zeus, marvel at the birth of Athena, wince at Cronus and Gaia's revenge on Ouranos, weep with King Midas and hunt with the beautiful and ferocious Artemis.

Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales continue to exert the same pull over the imagination and emotions as they did when he first read them to his children in the 1880s. Written with inspired poetic intensity and sudden flowerings of the matchless wit for which he is so well remembered, the stories combine the wisdom of parables with the impact of drama.