The seas of planet Earth are choked by plastic. Plastic that no-one has a use for and no-one can get rid of. Rhys Williams finds himself stranded on a container ship in a sea of debris. People on board are dying. Because, luckily, someone’s found a solution to Earth’s polluted waters. The Nestene Consciousness can never have too much plastic. CAST: Kai Owen (Rhys Williams), Sydney Feder (Kaitlin Russell), Chloe Ewart (Captain Anika Banaczik), Robert Jezek (Yonich), Wilf Scolding (Sailor). Other parts played by members of the cast. NOTE: Torchwood contains adult material and may not be suitable for younger listeners.

A special release for Big Finish's Doctor Who range, containing four single-episode stories! YOU ARE THE DOCTOR (by John Dorney). YOU are the Doctor, a mysterious traveller in time and space. Will YOU succeed in foiling the ghastly plans of the horrible Porcians, the most inept invaders in all the cosmos? Or will you get yourself killed, over and over again? COME DIE WITH ME (by Jamie Anderson). A spooky old house. A body in the library. A killer on the loose. The Doctor accepts the challenge laid down by the sinister Mr Norris: to solve a murder mystery that's defeated 1,868 of the greatest intellects in the universe...and counting. THE GRAND BETELGEUSE HOTEL (by Christopher Cooper). The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Ace to the most opulent casino hotel in the cosmos - a haunt of the rich, the famous and the unutterably corrupt. There's a robbery in progress - but is the Doctor really in on the plan? DEAD TO THE WORLD (by Matthew J Elliott). Tourist spaceship the Daedalus hangs suspended in space, all but three of its passengers having fallen victim to a bizarre infection. But if the Doctor saves those last survivors, he risks destroying the entire human race. Sylvester McCoy originally played the Doctor in 1987 - 1989, (then again in 1996) while his other work includes Radagast the Brown in Peter Jackson's epic The Hobbit films. Sophie Aldred's Ace companion is often viewed as Doctor Who's first contemporary young friend for the Doctor, setting out the template followed in later years by Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and Clara Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman). Jon Culshaw is not only a famous face from British television, but an even more famous voice: one of Britain's best impressionists on shows including Dead Ringers, The Impressionable Jon Culshaw and Horrible Histories. Writer Jamie Anderson is the son of Thunderbirds-creator Gerry. Jamie has not only produced a new series of Terrahawks audio adventures for Big Finish, but is working on a new Firestorm action adventure series coming soon to screens near you! CAST: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Jon Culshaw (Keith/Guard/Chafal), Kim Wall (Chimbly), Nadine Marshall (Katrice/Kordel), Amrita Acharia (The Resurrectionist/Clerk), Juliet Cowan (Bryer/Adriana Beauvais), Oliver Dimsdale (Morecombe/Mervyn Garvey), George Potts (Ruben/Guard), Vinette Robinson (Cynthia Quince).

The third century of the second calendar. Roj Blake is about to discover a powerful spaceship and spearhead a rebellion against the despotic Federation. But he can't be everywhere at once... Throughout the galaxy, brave people fight for freedom, without the benefit of miraculous alien technology. Avalon has only her wits and her contacts to reply on - but her name will become legend, all the same. Ep 2.1 - Bayban's Bounty by Niel Bushnell. A sacred stone might inspire revolution on a recently subjugated planet - if Avalon can only retrieve it from a high-security prison. She enlists the help of the Vankberg Vault's only escapee, the madman at the top of the Federation's Most Wanted list... Ep. 2.2 Mercenary by Christopher Cooper. Funding a crusade isn't easy, and one of Avalon's debts has just come due. She and Madison undertake a dubious mission, in the company of an even more dubious gunfor-hire, a man who has betrayed them once before... Ep 2.3 Heart of Ice by Steve Lyons. What is the Federation President doing on a frozen backwater world? Avalon is determined to uncover the secret buried in Cryonax's mines. By the time she realises that Travis is setting a trap, it might just be too late... CAST: Olivia Poulet (Avalon), Colin Baker (Bayban the Butcher), Hugh Fraser (The President), Stephen Greif (Travis), Luke Barton (Charron), Rachel Atkins (Corelano), Cliff Chapman (Madison), Nicholas Day (Jorah), Rosie Day (Alixa/Senna), Malcolm James (Dev Tarrant), Caroline Lawrie (Bonanne/Mutoid), John Rayment (Control/Pilot), David Sargent (Commander/Garson), Graham Seed (Noral), Charlotte Strevens (Winter). Other parts played by members of the cast.

"[A] tightly crafted, very readable book . . . the best in-depth contemporary analysis we are going to get."--Stephen Flynn, The Washington Post When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on August 29, 2005, federal and state officials were not prepared for the devastation it would bring. In this searing indictment of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block take readers inside FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during the crisis--the bad decisions that were made, the facts that were ignored, and the individuals who saw that the system was broken but did nothing to fix it.
In this award-winning and critically acclaimed book, Cooper and Block reconstruct the crucial days before and after the storm hit, laying bare the government's inability to respond to the most elemental needs. They also demonstrate how the Bush administration's obsessive focus on terrorist threats fatally undermined the government's ability to respond to natural disasters. The incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain.