Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

11th century Italy. The domination of the Normans is causing trouble. At their head is the feared Robert de Hauteville, the 'Guiscard', who has colonised much of Italy and commands the triple Dukedom of the extended Norman family. But Robert has made many enemies, including the ever-powerful papacy in Rome. The newly elected Pope Gregory exercises his vendetta against the Normans by encouraging them to sail to Byzantium and fight the Turks. But first he must deal with the Guiscard.

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....

The launch of a major new detective series from the publishers of Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbo and Fred Vargas. A man is burnt alive in a suburban garden shed. DI Zigic and DS Ferreira are called in from the Peterborough Hate Crimes Unit to investigate the murder. Their victim is quickly identified as a migrant worker and a man several people might have had good reason to see dead.

A missile tears a passenger plane from the skies over London. Everyone on board is killed, including thirty-seven special children. As terror turns to international chaos, can the government survive...? Who would have killed them? And why? When Harry Jones starts searching for answers, he...

A cure for Alzheimer’s would be worth billions. And well worth killing for. Simon Ayot is an Englishman working for Revere Partners, one of Boston’s top venture-capital firms. The firm’s star investment, worth millions of dollars for each of its partners, is BioOne, which is working on a cure for the disease. Frank, one of Simon’s bosses and his father-in-law, is found murdered at his summer house in the marshes, and Simon is in the frame. To stay alive, and to save his marriage, Simon must figure out who killed Frank. And who will be the next to die.

Tough City brokers Dekker Ward created, and dominate, the turbulent market in Latin American bonds. Ricardo Ross is their most successful trader: they call him the Marketmaker. You're either with him or you've made an enemy for life. Disgruntled academic Nick Elliot is Dekker's greenest trader, content to ride his luck as the new boy on the stand. Until strange things start happening to Dekker's employees. One top trader is fired, another dies in a bungled robbery. Nick falls for his colleague Isabel. Then she is kidnapped.

Nicholas Bracewell befriends a young beggar who is trying to eke out a living as a counterfeit crank, pretending to have spectacular epileptic fits in order to get money from gullible bystanders. When the beggar is murdered inside Bridewell, Nicholas has to pose as a beggar himself in order to get inside the notorious institution so that he can solve the crime. Counterfeiting of all kinds is exposed.

London, 1889: After Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat became a Victorian best seller, rowing on the Thames was the great craze of 1889. When an elementary school teacher in training takes a midnight swim in the Thames and witnesses a body being dumped, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackerey are called to investigate. The duo uncover strange parallels with the enormously popular Victorian novel, but nobody will take them seriously. Following their instincts, they stick doggedly to the trail, which leads upstream to Oxford.

Casper Candlewacks is the only boy with any sense in a village full of idiots… a hilarious debut novel from the funniest new voice in young fiction Most villages have an idiot but Casper's village is full of them. So being bright makes poor Casper something of an outsider. When famous magician...

On suspension and unable to work, DCI Domenic Jejeune finds his attention snared by an unexplained death at an Antarctic research base. Meanwhile, DS Danny Maik investigates a string of arson attacks in Norfolk. When a corpse is discovered in a bird hide, Danny's investigation escalates. It appears the body links the two enquiries, but the men are unable to share information. As they attempt to unravel a twisted web of leads involving Antarctic researchers, climate scientists and billionaire philanthropists, Jejeune is forced to decide how much he is willing to sacrifice.

A thrilling World War One spy story from the author of the acclaimed Jack Haldean series .“There’s a spy in England. Frankie’s letter. Read Frankie’s letter... ” The last words said by a dying man to Anthony Brooke in Kiel in Germany during the height of World War One. But who is Frankie? With his cover blown and the German army at his heels, English secret agent Anthony Brooke’s search to discover the truth leads him to an innocent-seeming country house.

Lord James Harrington and his wife, Beth, run a country hotel in West Sussex, England. Autumn has arrived, and they are helping with the Harvest festivities when they learn that escaped convict Locksmith Joe is in the area. James suspects that his good friend Bert knows more about this than he's letting on. When new arrival Christie Cameron is found dead in his bedroom, clues suggest foul play, yet the room was locked from the inside. How did the killer get in? When a second death occurs at the scarecrow festival, James puts his sleuthing hat on. Will a surprise discovery jeopardise his friendship with Bert?

As a secret agent for the British government, Anthony Brooke wants to expose a gang responsible for blackmailing innocent people and gruesome murders. But when they plot a kidnap, Anthony must race to reach the little girl before they do. Milly will not be easy to retrieve, for she is in a Belgian convent, in German-occupied territory. To rescue her, Anthony must go behind enemy lines, crawl under the wire, face ruthless guards and break into the convent.

I’ve watched her from afar for weeks. And she has no idea. Bleu MacAllister ran from me three months ago. She thought she could disappear from my life. My beloved believed I’d let her go.

MI5 agents Marina Griffin and Leo South are made to be together. But their mission's-end encounter with Ashkeloi gypsies in the Russian forest reveals a terrifying prophecy - a fate that will tear them apart, and re-echo into the lives of their sons, John and Mike. Thirty years later, a deadly climate shift has opened up a seaway through the Arctic, and nuclear war is imminent as the global superpowers make a grab for the oil reserves suddenly exposed.

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?

When a severed hand is found in an abandoned flat, Detective Jake Porter and his partner Nick Styles are able to DNA match the limb to the owner, Natasha Barclay, who has not been seen in decades. But why has no-one been looking for her? It seems that Natasha's family are the people who can least be trusted. Delving into the details behind her disappearance and discovering links to another investigation, a tragic family history begins to take on a darker twist. Hampered by a widespread fear of a local heavy, as well as internal politics and possible corruption within the force, Porter and Styles are digging for answers. But will what they find ever see the light of day?

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.

A woman is on trial for her life, accused of murder. The 12 members of the jury each carry their own secret burden of guilt and prejudice which could affect the outcome. In this extraordinary crime novel, we follow the trial through the eyes of the jurors as they hear the evidence and try to reach a unanimous verdict. Will they find the defendant guilty or not guilty? And will the jurors' decision be the correct one?

Justinian, the Byzantine emperor, is desperate to revive the empire's glory. Among his actions to this effect is the dispatch of his brave general, Belisaurius, to fight the Persians in the East. But Justinian fights paranoia and grows concerned that Belisaurius will become a threat to his power and person.