Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But will the SAS patrol escape the deadly Malayan jungle alive? Malaya in the 1950s, and Communist terrorists wage a bloody war against the country’s estates and rubber plantation owners. Chased into the interior by British Army units, the guerrillas soon...

Sasha Grover-Williams hated her wealthy father's dubious business affairs - and ended up dead on a railway track. But did she jump or was she pushed? That's the burning question for Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton. She and her pathologist lover, Dr John Eisenmenger - an expert in forensics - are immediately plunged into a messy world of corruption and violence. Who is the father of the Sasha's foetus that unexpectedly comes to light? How can Beverley be mired in the charge of collusion?

‘The sweetness of her glance—or rather, my evil star already in its ascendant and drawing me to my ruin—did not allow me to hesitate for a moment...’ So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tale of passion and betrayal, of delinquency and misalliance, which moves from early 18th-century Paris—with its theatres, assemblies, and gaming-houses—via prison and deportation to a tragic denouement in the treeless wastes of Louisiana. It is one of the great love stories, and also one of the most enigmatic.

Oath sworn to Wiglaf, King of Mercia and acknowledged as a member of Ealdorman Ælfstan’s warrior band, Icel continues to forge his own destiny on the path to becoming the Warrior of Mercia. With King Ecgberht of Wessex defeated and Londonium back under Mercian control, the Wessex invasion of Mercia is over. But the Wessex king was never Mercia’s only enemy. An unknown danger lurks in the form of merciless Viking raiders, who set their sights on infiltrating the waterways of the traitorous breakaway kingdom of the East Angles, within touching distance of Mercia’s eastern borders.

A tender, impassioned and unforgettable story of a father's love and a daughter's ambition in the wake of devastating tragedy. It all starts with the death of Martijn van Vliet's wife. His grief-stricken young daughter, Lea, cuts herself off from the world, lost in the darkness of grief. Then she hears the unfamiliar sound of a violin playing in the hall of a train station, and she is brought back to life. Transfixed by a busker playing Bach, Lea emerges from her mourning, vowing to learn the instrument.

In London, a newly-arrived Kurdish immigrant is brutally murdered by Turkish people-traffickers. The dead man’s wife, Irena, flees to East Anglia where she disappears into the murky world of illegal foreign workers. Reporter Joe Verdi goes undercover as a migrant worker to try to find Irena. But he’s not the only one looking for her – the Turks are also on her trail. Meanwhile, Joe’s colleague, Elli Mason, is following up the story of a typhoid outbreak. Three people have contracted the disease and the only link between them is a supermarket chain.

A novel in verse form, Byrne echoes and takes further many of the preoccupations of Burgess's earlier fiction. It tells the story of a rampant Irish artist who, in the early days of the century, goes rapidly to the bad and ends up within Hitler's Third Reich.

A wolf howls through the forests of Transylvania, the murky graveyards of H.P. Lovecraft, the mythic marshes of Count Stenbock and the ghostly vaults of English cathedrals in these timeless stories read by award-winning actors from The Story Circle company.

The Royal British Legion was founded in 1921. It is now the country’s leading charity providing financial, social and emotional support to those who have served or who are currently serving in the British Armed Forces and their dependants. The RBL is behind the annual Poppy Appeal, the highest...

Grace Macallan is at breaking point, and a new investigation is testing her to the limit. An undercover officer is missing and a woman is washed up, traumatised and barely alive, on the shores of Berwickshire. As she untangles the woman's story, Grace is drawn into a cold-blooded criminal world headed by Pete Handyside, a notorious gangland boss who will fight hard and dirty to control his empire. But a traitor in his midst is intent upon betrayal, triggering an uncontrollable wave of violence. As she hones in on crucial evidence, Grace knows that one wrong move could end in tragedy.

Eisenmenger has reluctantly taken a job as a locum in the pathology department of St Christopher's Hospital - his partner Helena is pregnant and they must prepare financially for the baby's arrival. John doesn't relish the prospect of being back on the treadmill, working within the NHS again, but when he is unwilling to accept his boss' "death from natural causes" diagnosis after autopsies on various bodies, his professional suspicions are piqued.

When the twisted Dark Mechanicus priests of the Bloodborn descend upon Quintarn, the Ultramarines are quick to move in defence of their prized agri-world. However, it soon becomes apparent that the planet's fate will not be decided by the massed battle companies of the Space Marines but by the actions of just one lowly sergeant - Torias Telion.

Darkness falls. The undead rise to feast on the succulent blood of the living. For years vampires have fascinated great writers of the occult such as De Maupassant, Count Stenbock, E Nesbit and EF Benson. This is The Story Circle's collection of some of their spine-chilling tales told by award-winning actors.

One of the best-loved composers of all time, Dvorák rose from rural origins to become not only a great but an influential composer. The first composer to put his native Bohemia on the musical map of the world, he was invited to do the same for America. One result was the famous "New World" Symphony, which made him a household name across the globe. Writing music of irresistible color, lilt and peasant vitality, he was also a melodist-in-a-million. This portrait-in-sound follows a lovable and in many ways a very simple, man from hay cart to imperial palace, from tragic loss to heart-warming joy, to pigeon-raising and world celebrity.

October, 1975. When Dr Lance Elliot receives a call from his elderly father to say he has been arrested for arson, he can hardly believe it. Especially when he discovers that the intended victim was his father’s neighbour, Oliver Lightoller, with whom his father has a long-running feud. But things quickly take a dark turn when Lance stumbles across Lightoller’s body, which has been pinned by an old sword to an office chair in the dead man’s South London antiques shop.

Twenty floors above the shimmering lights of the Hamburg docks, public prosecutor Chastity Riley is celebrating a birthday with friends in a hotel bar when 12 heavily armed men pull out guns and take everyone hostage. Among the hostages is Konrad Hoogsmart, the hotel owner, who is being targeted by a man whose life - and family - have been destroyed by Hoogsmart’s actions. With the police looking on from outside - their colleagues’ lives at stake - and Chastity on the inside, increasingly ill from sepsis, the stage is set for a dramatic confrontation.

July, 1977. Lance’s eccentric father, the retired Dr Benjamin Elliott, has been running a Horticultural Club at local Bensham Manor School, a good deed he decided to take on to impress Ada Clarke, the head dinner lady at the school. One summer’s evening, Lance and his girlfriend Max turn up for the school’s parents evening to show their support of the elder Dr Elliott’s efforts.

"I heard, with an unpleasant surprise, close to me, a voice that was drawling, and, I fancied, sneering, repeat the words: 'Food for worms, dead and rotten; God over all.' There was a small window in the wall, here very thick, which had been built up, and in the dark recess of this, deep in the shadow, I now saw a sharp-featured man, sitting with his feet dangling. His keen eyes were fixed on me, and he was smiling cynically...."

In the heat of a Greek island summer, some slake their thirsts with cool, clear water. Others prefer something stronger, but disgraced government minister Gikas Fragolis has taken his love of the bottle too far. His habitual drunkenness has cost him his job and lost him many friends - but is it at the root of an enemy's wish to see him dead? In this first short story featuring the enigmatic Greek detective, Hermes Diaktoros uncovers good intentions gone bad and plumbs the murky depths of human nature for an unlikely killer.

Following Icel’s epic rescue of Lord Coenwulf's children from their almost certain death, King Wiglaf is forced to call upon Icel’s loyal services once more. Furious that the conspirators behind the audacious move to snatch the children have yet to face justice, he dispatches Icel to hunt down the enemy of Mercia and discover who seeks to conspire against the throne.