Showing results by narrator "John Telfer" in All Categories

John Pearce discovers that Madrid plans to desert the British-led coalition and join the enemy. In company with Lord Langholm, he has taken a Spanish treasure ship but is forced into a deep bay overlooked by Spaniards who have a cannon aimed at the entrance. Pearce must take the lead and find a way to get Langholm's frigate and the damaged Santa Leocadia through the bottleneck. His orders take him via Gibraltar, then to Admiral Jervis to warn of Spanish duplicity.

Throughout her career prize-winning novelist Jane Gardam has been writing glorious short stories, each one hallmarked with all the originality, poignancy, wry comedy, and narrative brilliance of her longer fiction. Passion and longing, metamorphosis and enchantment are Gardam's themes, and like a magician she plucks them from the quietest of corners: from Wimbledon gardens and cold churches, from London buses and industrial backstreets.

1346. France. King Edward III is restless. Despite earlier victories the French crown remains intact. Determined to bring France under his own rule, Edward has devised a new plan of attack – one which he believes will finally bring the French army to its knees: a final, cataclysmic battle ... Berenger Fripper, Vintener of a pox-ridden mob of sixteen who make up the Vintaine of Sir John de Sully, storms the beaches of Normandy to bring victory to their king. But the French are nowhere to be seen…

For centuries, the Japanese samurai were the unquestioned leaders of their society, maintaining their position through their iron will, Zen-like emotional control, and clan-building social skills. Today, in a world that focuses on instant gratification and self-indulgence, the way of the samurai is a challenging path to follow but will bring huge rewards to anyone who commits to it.

The discovery of Sir Robert Boniface's body on the floor of his limousine was made quite accidentally on a sultry Friday evening towards the end of June. The industrial and financial tycoon, and former stalwart of the British Cabinet, was shot in the head and left in the quiet Vale of Health. Nearby, a rejected portrait of Sir Robert is found riddled with bullets in the studio of the now missing artist Matt Caldwell.

London, 1921. Lord Johnny Fairfax has been found dead in his study, along with a second victim, a mysterious American who arrived unannounced the previous evening. For DCI Paul Stark, the case is personal: he's in a relationship with Lord Fairfax's former wife, Lady Amelia. The dead man had no shortage of enemies. Winston Churchill, his former colleague at the War Office, is convinced the murder is revenge for the disaster at Gallipoli. Lady Amelia herself is accused of the crime.

While Senior History Master of Queen's School, Newminster, Carolus Deene has a troubling hobby as a criminologist and sometime sleuth. Even more troublingly, he has jaundice. But with the papers shouting of the crime wave sweeping the seaside resorts of England sending him to the coast to recover...

As the country recovers from the war with France, and whispers that the pestilence has returned to England grow louder, fear is in the heart of every nobleman and commoner alike. Sir Ralph de Mandeville, ex-solider and newly appointed Justice of the Peace is sent to Langbarugh, just outside York, to investigate the murder of Coroner Sir Boderick de Whitby. More deaths quickly follow, and while these are swiftly dealt with as plague victims, Sir Ralph and his two assistants Merek and Peter soon uncover something altogether more horrifying… A greater evil is at large in the northern wapentakes.

France, 1356. Ten years have passed since the battle of Crécy, and the English fighters are still abroad, laying siege to cities, towns and villages. Meanwhile the Prince of Wales raids across the continent to draw King John into a battle for sovereignty over all France. Berenger Fripper, having lost everything during the plague, is now captain of a company of mercenaries, but treachery and deceit dog him when his travels with the company lead him to Uzerche.

This compelling collection brings Baker Street's celebrated resident and his cohort, Dr Watson, out of retirement to investigate seven of the most notorious mysteries in the annals of true crime, from the murder of a London prostitute to the 1907 theft of the Irish Crown Jewels.

September 1920. A young bride is discovered dead at a country house on her wedding day. Has she fallen victim to the deadly Withington curse, which strikes down any woman who marries into the family? Forensic Pathologist Dr Bernard Spilsbury doesn't believe in such superstitions, and suspects a more earthly reason for Theodora Tupper's death. But as he and his trusty assistant Violet investigate, they soon discover that there are indeed ghosts at Withington Hall. And they, too, have a story to tell.

Ancient Egypt wasn't all pyramids, sphinxes and gold sarcophagi. For your average Egyptian, life was tough, and work was hard, conducted under the burning gaze of the sun god Ra. During the course of a day in the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor), Egypt's religious capital, we meet 24 Egyptians from all strata of society - from the king to the bread-maker, the priestess to the fisherman, the soldier to the midwife - and get to know what the real Egypt was like by spending an hour in their company.

211 BCE. The Roman invasion from the western seas is imminent, and from the south the Spartans are burning and pillaging their way north. Battle-hardened Philopoemen believes the Achean League is facing annihilation if it does not arm. But without a formal army or cavalry, they don't stand a chance. Convincing his friend and healer Alexanor that the threat is real, together they begin to build a massive cavalry guard from the ground up - one that will fight on all fronts. It is the last roll of the dice for the Achean League.

Jung's discovery of the 'collective unconscious', a psychic inheritance common to all humankind, transformed the understanding of the self and the way we interpret the world. In On the Nature of the Psyche Jung describes this remarkable theory in his own words, and presents a masterly overview of his theories of the unconscious, and its relation to the conscious mind. Also contained in this collection is On Psychic Energy, where Jung defends his interpretation of the libido, a key factor in the breakdown of his relations with Freud. 

The Saint is back - 50 audiobooks are now available starring the debonair classic crime hero. Simon Templar is the Saint - daring, dazzling, and just a little disreputable. On the side of the law, but standing outside it, he dispenses his own brand of justice one criminal at a time. In these three early adventures, the Saint's reputation starts to rise, as he tackles thieves, smugglers and killers.

A psychopathic criminal on the run from prison. A family of five held hostage in their home. A frantic police manhunt across the snowbound Derbyshire moors. Just one survivor. The definitive account of the terrifying 1977 Pottery Cottage murders that shocked Britain. For three days, escaped prisoner Billy Hughes played macabre psychological games with Gill Moran and her family, keeping them in separate rooms of their home while secretly murdering them one by one.

For a world that over the past century has witnessed horrors the like of which could not have been imagined by earlier generations, Job’s cries of despair and incomprehension are all too recognisable. The visionary psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung understood this and responded with this remarkable book, in which he set himself face to face with 'the unvarnished spectacle of divine savagery and ruthlessness'.

1346. Calais. Berenger Fripper and the men of his Vintaine are stationed near the ancient port city, a French city under English siege. They are here to capture the city from and use it as a staging-post for future incursions into France. But with the French army and Genoese mercenaries all about them, and trouble brewing among the unit, Berenger must keep a calm head. Someone in the Vintaine is leaking vital information to the French, jeopardizing not only the safety of his men but also the future of the war, and Berenger must find out who before it's too late.

Our pupils' success will be defined by their ability to read fluently and skillfully. But despite universal acceptance of reading's vital importance, the reading gap in our classroom remains, and it is linked to an array of factors, such as parental wealth, education and book ownership, as well...

At the age of sixty, and having lived with Parkinson’s disease for over ten years, Guy Deacon CBE set out on one last adventure: to drive solo from his home in the UK 18,000 miles and through twenty-five countries to Cape Town on the southern tip of Africa. This incredible journey, across Europe and down the full length of Africa, took the former British Army officer over twelve months. Along the way, he broke down five times, underwent one emergency evacuation, and took 3,650 prescription pills.