By David Mitchell. University student Hugo has a strange encounter in Cambridge. Read by Luke Treadaway.

This ambitious, much-anticipated new novel from the author of Cloud Atlas is one to lose yourself in. The Bone Clocks is an intricate feat of storytelling revealing one woman's life through those who encounter her. The journey has a global and historical sweep, it takes us from 1980s Kent via 19th Century Australia to a near future New York with a playfully genre-bending subplot.

Our Book at Bedtime will be read by a stellar cast of five actors over three weeks. We open with Hannah Arterton as Holly Sykes, 15 years old in 1980s Gravesend. Then Luke Treadaway is Cambridge student Hugo Lamb, likeable, good looking, and extremely dangerous. Joe Armstrong is Ed Brubeck, a foreign correspondent in the current decade, struggling to overcome the gaps between his life at home and the loss he experiences daily at work. Robert Glenister is Crispin Hershey, once the wild child of British letters, a novelist now past his best-selling peak. And Laurel Lefkow is Dr Marinus, a psychiatrist from the seventh century who meets Holly Sykes in a near-future America.

Abridged by Robin Brooks
Produced by Allegra McIlroy. Show less