RADIO CHOICE

TRACKS is an ongoing radio series of thrillers starring Romola Garai (pictured) as Helen Ash. Helen is a doctor with a sharp bedside manner and a mysterious past. In this new, fourth series, TRACKS: INDIGO (RADIO 4, 10.45AM), Helen is involved in a road accident, which seems to have wiped out some of her memory. Have sinister forces been at work? Continues daily.

THE week-long drama, STARVE ACRE (RADIO 4, 12.04pm, 10.45pm), is set in a chilly house on the edge of a Yorkshire moor and tells of a couple who are distraught with grief after the death of their young son. Husband Richard throws himself into the task of trying to find a mystical oak tree, while his wife Juliette finds comfort in the company of a group of occultists called

the Beacons. Both these attempts to escape their grief brings them to the realms of the sinister in a brooding gothic horror, read by Bryan Dick.

THE ghostly theme continues in HAUNTED WOMEN (RADIO 4, 4PM), a look at 19th-century ghost and horror fiction. Scary stories were a mainstay of publishing houses and magazines in Britain and America, with women writers excelling at the genre. This programme delivers some spine-chilling examples, and asks why these women writers took such pride in scaring their readers witless.