Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe, read by Nicholas Burns.
On Millennium night, with Blair presiding over a superficially cool, sexed-up new version of the country, Benjamin Trotter finds himself watching the celebrations on his parents' TV. Watching, in fact, his younger brother, Paul, now a bright young New Labour MP who has bought wholeheartedly into the Blairite dream. Neither of them can know that their lives are about to implode.
Set against the backdrop of a changing Britain and the country's increasingly compromised role in America's 'war against terrorism', the characters struggle to make sense of the perennial problems of love, vocation and family.
Brought to you by Penguin.
Unforgettably funny and painfully honest, Jonathan Coe's tale of Benjamin Trotter and his friends' coming of age during the 1970s is a heartfelt celebration of the joys and agonies of growing up.
Featuring, among other things, IRA bombs, prog rock, punk rock, bad poetry, first love, love on the side, prefects, detention, a few bottles of Blue Nun, lots of brown wallpaper, industrial strife, and divine intervention in the form of a pair of swimming trunks.
Set against the backdrop of the decade's class struggles, tragic and riotous by turns, packed with thwarted romance and furtive sex, The Rotters' Club is for anyone who ever experienced adolescence the hard way.
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe, read by Sophie Ward.
Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events; Robert has had his life changed for ever by the misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac, spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which must be eradicated .
A group of students sharing a house. They fall in and out of love, they drift apart. Yet a decade later they are drawn back together by a series of coincidences involving their obsession with sleep - and each other ...
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Rain Before it Falls written by Jonathan Coe, read by Jenny Agutter.
'What I want you to have, Imogen, above all, is a sense of your own history; a sense of where you come from, and of the forces that made you.'
Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of the young blind girl, her cousin's granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at her party all those years ago. This is a story of generations, of the relationships within a family - and of what goes to make a child.
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim written by Jonathan Coe, read by John Heffernan.
Maxwell Sim seems to have hit rock bottom: separated from his wife and daughter, estranged from his father, and with no one to confide in even though he has 74 friends on Facebook. He's not even sure whether he's got a job until suddenly a strange business proposition comes his way which involves a long journey to the Shetland Isles - and a voyage into his family's past which throws up some surprising revelations.
A story for our times, Maxwell finds himself at sea in the modern world, surrounded by social networks but unable to relate properly to anyone.
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe, read by Richard Goulding.
It is the 1980s and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year:
Newspaper-columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't; Henry's turning hospitals into car parks; Roddy's selling art in return for sex; down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock; Thomas is making a killing on the stock exchange; and Mark is selling arms to dictators.
But once their hapless biographer Michael Owen starts investigating the family's trail of greed, corruption and immoral doings, the time growing ripe for the Winshaws to receive their comeuppance. . .
This wickedly funny take on life under the Thatcher government was the winner of the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
'A sustained feat of humour, suspense and polemic, full of twists and ironies' Hilary Mantel, Sunday Times
'A riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes' Time Out
'Big, hilarious, intricate, furious, moving' Guardian
Jonathan Coe's novels are filled with biting social commentary, moving and astute observations of life and hilarious set pieces that have made him one of the most popular writers of his generation. His other titles, The Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, The Rotters' Club (winner of the Everyman Wodehouse prize), The Closed Circle, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, The House of Sleep (winner of the1998 Prix Médicis Étranger), and The Rain Before it Falls, are all available in Penguin paperback.
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Middle England by Jonathan Coe, read by Rory Kinnear.
'It was tempting to think, at times like this, that some bizarre hysteria had gripped the British people'
Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to Olympic fever, Middle England follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change.
There are newlyweds Ian and Sophie, who disagree about the future of the country and, possibly, the future of their relationship; Doug, the political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his Chelsea townhouse, and his radical teenage daughter who will stop at nothing in her quest for social justice; Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father Colin, whose last wish is to vote in the European referendum. And within all these lives is the story of modern England: a story of nostalgia and delusion; of bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage.
Following in the footsteps of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe's new novel is the novel for our strange new times.
'COE IS AMONG THE HANDFUL OF NOVELISTS WHO CAN TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT THE TEMPER OF OUR TIMES' OBSERVER
'Probably the best English novelist of his generation' Nick Hornby
'You can't stop reading....I was haunted for days' Independent on 'Number 11'
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of A Touch of Love by Jonathan Coe, read by Peter Caulfield.
Robin, a postgrad student in Coventry, has spent four and a half years not writing his thesis. He and his academic colleagues, united by pallor, social ineptitude and sexual inexperience, once spent hours discussing their theories, but they somehow never made it into print.
Now his unfinished thesis languishes in a drawer, and Robin hides in his room, increasingly frightened by a world he doesn't understand. His friends have failed him and romance eludes him. His only outlet is his short stories, scribbled in notebooks and expressing his secret obsessions and frustrations.
Then, when an unfortunate and embarrassing incident in a public park lands him in serious trouble, Robin's life finally spirals out of control ...
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Accidental Woman by Jonathan Coe, read by Sophie Ward.
For Maria, nothing is certain. Her life is a chain of accidents. Friendship passes her by, and she's unimpressed by the devoted Ronny and his endless proposals of marriage. Maria lives in a world of her own - yet not of her own making. Stumbling through university, work, marriage and motherhood, she finds it hard to see what all the fuss is about.
Will she ever be able to control the direction of her life? Or will it end, as it began, by accident? What does chance have in store for the accidental woman?
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Dwarves of Death by Jonathan Coe, read by Daniel Weyman.
Music, murder ... and Madeleine
William has a lot on his mind. Firstly there's The Alaska Factory, the band he plays in. They're no good and they make his songs sound about as groovy as an unpressed record. In fact they're so bad he's seriously thinking of leaving to join a group called The Unfortunates.
Secondly, there's Madeleine, his high-maintenance girlfriend whose idea of a night of passion is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical followed by a doorstep peck on the cheek. Maybe they're not soulmates after all?
Lastly, there's the bizarre murder he's just witnessed. The guiding force behind The Unfortunates lies bludgeoned to death at his feet and, unfortunately for William, there aren't too many other suspects standing nearby ...
Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Number 11 by Jonathan Coe, read by Rory Kinnear and Jessica Hynes .
This is a novel about the hundreds of tiny connections between the public and private worlds and how they affect us all.
It's about the legacy of war and the end of innocence.
It's about how comedy and politics are battling it out and comedy might have won.
It's about how 140 characters can make fools of us all.
It's about living in a city where bankers need cinemas in their basements and others need food banks down the street.
It is Jonathan Coe doing what he does best - showing us how we live now.
