Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

1988: Thirteen-year-old Andy Miller and his friends - Carl, Brian, Johnny and Gavin - become witnesses to the vicious attack of their classmate, Poppy, and the brutal murder of her sister at a flooded railway line they call the frog ponds. They lead the police to a suspect, a vulnerable older boy whose differences single him out. But when he commits suicide, his guilt is never proven. And the crime goes unpunished, until . . .

When Max Brennan’s estranged father and then his own girlfriend go missing in quick succession, he turns to his old friend Detective Jake Porter for help. As Max is then attacked in his own home, Porter and his partner Nick Styles waste no time in investigating. But when their main suspect turns up dead, alongside a list of other targets, it seems the case is much bigger than it first appeared. With events spiralling, can Porter and Styles catch the killer before another victim is claimed?

The year is 1884. London is being terrorised by a series of bomb blasts - even within Great Scotland Yard! Reluctantly, Sergeant Cribb attends a course in the science of infernal machines in a bid to gain expert knowledge of explosives and beat the criminals at their own game. With Constable Thackeray the prime suspect, Cribb feels bound for professional and personal reasons to track down the truth at any cost. And very soon he is abducted at gunpoint by an Irish-American hammer-thrower and finds himself an unwilling but vital member of the Dynamite Party.

Owen Bradwell is a courageous naval officer who returns to England in the 1930s. He believes that his career is over because he has become colour-blind – but with Nazi Germany an increasing menace, the authorities cannot do without Bradwell, and he is assigned a special mission.

A former acquaintance of Bradwell's has been trapped into betraying his country's secrets by a Nazi agent. Bradwell is sent to spy on the spy, and travels down the Thames on a surveillance trip. Things soon take an unexpected turn, and Bradwell finds himself in the company of a dead man, and a pretty young interior decorator called Sally. Will Bradwell triumph over the villains, and will he and Sally fall in love?

When Harry Jones discovers that former friend Zac Kravitz's life is in danger, a debt of honour sends him on a perilous rescue mission to Ta'argistan, a mountainous and landlocked former Soviet republic bordering Russia, China, and Afghanistan.

Bob, Wendy and the team have a new project – to build a treehouse for Saffi! Saffi has drawn up her own exciting designs and wants the treehouse to be the new headquarters for the Spring City Rockets. There’s a lot to do, so the team quickly get to work but the excitement proves too much for Saffi, who just can’t wait to explore her new treehouse before it’s ready. Luckily, Wendy and Bob are on hand to save the day.

In 2050 there will be 9.3 billion people alive - compared with 7 billion today - and the number will still be rising. The population aged over 65 will have more than doubled, to more than 16 percent; China's GDP will be 80 percent more than America's; and the number of cars on India's roads will have increased by 3,880 percent. And, in 2050 it should be clear whether we are alone in the universe.What other megachanges can we expect - and what will their impact be? This comprehensive and compelling book will cover the most significant trends that are shaping the coming decades.

Lucius Falerius is dead, and Rome in its entirety mourns the passing of its most powerful senator. It falls to his son Marcellus to carry out his father's legacy and restore the rights promised to the defeated Sicilian slaves, yet there are those who will not see the honour of Rome compromised and the slaves assuaged. On the Roman border provinces there is trouble, and the legions move north to neutralise the threat posed by the Celts.

Chris works as a librarian in a small-town library in the south of England. This is the story of the library, its staff, and the fascinating group of people who use the library on a regular basis. We'll meet characters like the street sleepers Brewer, Wolf and Spencer, who are always the first through the doors. The Mad Hatter, an elderly man who scurries around manically, searching for books. Sons of Anarchy Alan, a young Down's syndrome man addicted to the American TV drama series.

Tobias Campion, rector of Moreton St Jude, is delighted to welcome the widowed Lady Chase as his parishioner. Although charming and generous-spirited, she harbours a secret sorrow: her son, Hugo, is missing, presumed dead. Her late husband's nephew, Sir Marcus Bramhall, making a prolonged, unwelcome visit to Moreton Hall, speaks darkly of bringing a court case to declare him the heir.

Harriet and Matthew Rowsley, the housekeeper and estate manager of Thorncroft House in Shropshire, have to cut short their successful trip to Oxford when they receive a telegraph: a decapitated and mutilated body has been found on the estate. While trying to help the strangely slow police investigation, the couple face an unsettling threat to their livelihood: after years of searching, a legitimate heir of Thorncroft estate has been found!

"Carnivorine" follows the tale of Ellis Graham, who has been asked to find his friend’s lost son, Julius. Ellis heads to Europe in his search, only to find Julius on the brink of a remarkable discovery about carnivorous plants.

Poo comes in all shapes and sizes. Every animal has its own special sort, and some have fascinating uses for it. Wombats use their cube-shaped droppings to mark their territory; potato beetles build a shield of dung for defence; male hippos spray out a faecal shower to attract mates; and rabbits and dung beetles eat their pellets for extra nutrition. We might call it "waste" but in fact, poo is among the most useful stuff on Earth.

'The Editor of Wisden is an important personage. It is he who decides the policy of the Cricketers’ Bible and cricketers the world over look to him to give a lead on all controversial problems. His is, therefore, no easy task, but Wisden has been fortunate in its editors.' That was written in 1933, and it is still true. The heart of the Almanack is the section entitled "Notes by the Editor". The editor's opinions can change careers, laws - indeed every part of the game.

Jon Bartlett's path is clear before him: finish his last year of schooling, then off on the family's ships to learn the intricacies of interstellar trade. But a message of tragedy at home comes for him, and his expected life is flung far out of reach and he's cast into a role he never wanted.

Prior to assuming his new role with a different constabulary, Danny Maik has taken a holiday in Singapore to reconcile with an old friend, Guy Trueman. When a street brawl turns deadly, Danny is facing a charge of manslaughter, but when evidence emerges that he may have planned the victim's murder, Maik is looking at the death penalty. Back in Norfolk, Maik's replacement is trying to resurrect his career after an earlier serious error. At first, the signs are promising. His astute observations turn the apparent suicide of a local pheasant farmer into murder.

DI Hardcastle tracks a killer who’s left his hat behind... July, 1917. DI Ernest Hardcastle and his assistant, DS Charles Marriott, investigate the murder of a cashier operating in London’s Victoria Station. An army officer claims to have seen the murderer running away, and an army cap left behind appears to identify the criminal. Hardcastle believes that it will be a simple matter to go to Aldershot and arrest him, but things are never as easy as they seem.

Big Ben chimes in the first seconds of the first day of 1900, the start of a fresh century. Inside London's oldest gaol, preparations are afoot to hang Victorian England's deadliest assassin, a man wanted for two decades' worth of murders. Cold-blooded killer Simeon Lynch has lived a brutal and glorious life in the employ of the House of Moriarty - the most feared criminal enterprise in the world. Now, as he faces the noose, Simeon learns dark truths about his master, about Sherlock Holmes and about his own past.

For Pyke and his crew it should have been just another heist. Travel to a backwater desert planet, break into a museum, steal a tracking device then use it to find a ship buried in the planet's vast and trackless sandy wastes. Except that the museum vault is a bioengineered chamber, and the tracking device is sought after by another gang of treasure hunters led by an old adversary of Pyke's, the devious Raven Kaligara. Also, the ship is a quarter of a million years old and about two kilometres long, and somewhere aboard it is the Essavyr Key....

Before dawn on a misty November morning in 1536, prominent mercer Robert Packington was gunned down as he crossed Cheapside on his way to early morning mass. It was the first assassination by handgun in the history of the capital and subsequently shook the city to its core.The identity of his assassin has remained a mystery. the first of a new series investigating real unsolved Tudor crimes, D.K. Wilson brings the streets of Tudor London to spectacular life as Thomas Treviot faces a fight to bring the truth to light.