Showing results by narrator "Mark Meadows" in All Categories

This memoir was recently discovered and appears to have been written in the 1920s by someone who asserts that he was Jack the Ripper. This person is James Willoughby Carnac, and this memoir was written shortly before his death. It is an account of his entire life, including a few short months in 1888 when he became the murderer known to posterity as Jack the Ripper.

Nine men: each of them at a different stage of life, away from home, and striving - in the suburbs of Prague, in a cheap Cypriot hotel - to understand just what it means to be alive here and now. Tracing an arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, All That Man Is brings these separate lives together to show us men as they are - ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable; vital, pitiable, hilarious, and full of heartfelt longing.

How much can change in less than two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a prime minister utterly different from his Old Etonian predecessors. A Northern Wind, the keenly anticipated next instalment of David Kynaston’s acclaimed Tales of a New Jerusalem series, brings to vivid life the period between October 1962 and February 1965.

Time won't heal his broken heart, but revenge might... Ivor has never loved anyone the way he loves Becky. Then his world collapses – Becky is found dead. Consumed by grief, Ivor is determined to find out what happened. What he discovers is darker than heartbreak: controlling lies, family secrets and a past that refused to stay buried. But Ivor has his own demons. And as his obsession with the truth deepens, his heartache for Becky curdles into something far more dangerous. Murder.

Living in ancient Rome was one of the most intense experiences in human history. It was also superbly and vividly recorded by Rome's historians and poets who were acutely aware of the seething and voluptuous nature of a city that ruled the known world. Populus takes the listener into a world of violent politics, disorder, unspeakably brutal entertainments, extravagance, decadence, eroticism, exotica, and staggering inequality, participated in daily by the Roman people from the hyper-rich elite to the lowliest slaves. 

James Rhodes' passion for music has been his absolute lifeline. It has been the thread that has held him together through a life that has encompassed pain, conflict and turmoil. Listening to Rachmaninov on a loop as a traumatised teenager or discovering an adagio by Bach while in a hospital ward - such exquisite miracles of musical genius have helped him survive his demons and, along with a chance encounter with a stranger, inspired him to become the renowned concert pianist he is today.

*Winner of the CWA Historical Dagger 2023* 'A great insight into Renaissance Florence. What I love about these books is the seamless weaving of factual history with a great story' – Abir Mukherjee Florence. Spring, 1537. When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the...

In the early 1800s Lehmann Gluckstein and his family escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe and made their way to Whitechapel in the East End of London. There, starting with nothing, they worked tirelessly to pull themselves out of poverty, creating a small tobacco factory that quickly grew to become the largest catering company in the world: J. Lyons. For over a century, Lyons was everywhere. Its restaurants and corner houses were on every high street, its coffee and tea in every cup, its products in every home. The company transformed the way we eat, drink and are entertained.

An orphan leaves Dark Ages London, taking a dangerous journey and posing as a Jew to study medicine in Persia, in "an adventurous and inspiring tale" (Library Journal). A child holds the hand of his dying mother and is terrified, aware something is taking her. Orphaned and given to an itinerant barber-surgeon, Rob Cole becomes a fast-talking swindler, peddling a worthless medicine. But as he matures, his strange gift - an acute sensitivity to impending death - never leaves him, and he yearns to become a healer.

From an unmissable voice in epic fantasy comes the final novel in a trilogy where guilds clash, magic fuels machines, and an all-out war has consumed an empire. “Ford succeeds in building a complex fantasy world, complete with warring factions, fearsome creatures, and bloody struggles for...

When two 18-year-old girls go missing in Thailand, their families are thrust into the international spotlight: desperate, bereft and frantic with worry. What were the girls up to before they disappeared? Journalist Kate Waters always does everything she can to be first to the story, first with the exclusive, first to discover the truth - and this time is no exception. But she can't help but think of her own son, whom she hasn't seen in two years, since he left home to go travelling.

The Wings of the Sphinx is the eleventh book in the wickedly funny Inspector Montalbano series by Italian author, Andrea Camilleri. Things are not going well for Inspector Montalbano. His long-distance relationship with Livia is on the rocks, he feels himself getting even older and he's growing...

In the ghetto, the last 50,000 Jews await their fate, but, unlike those who preceded them to the death camps, these Jews are prepared to fight. Jan Kalisz, Kripo investigator and Resistance double-agent, has promised to supply them with weapons. But how will he fulfil his vow? The murder of a German officer appears to provide an opportunity.

What we consume has become the defining feature of our lives: our economies live or die by spending, we are treated more as consumers than workers and even public services are presented to us as products in a supermarket. In this monumental study, acclaimed historian Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary history that has shaped our material world, from late Ming China, Renaissance Italy and the British Empire to the present.

Christmas Day 1943, Arisaig, Scotland. The body of beautiful, well-connected Polish SOE agent Krystina Kowolska is found in the gardens of the country house where she's been preparing for a vital mission to France. The question is, was she already dead when she was hanged? Two days later, resistance double agent, Investigator Jan Kalisz of the Warsaw Kripo is flown to Britain where Winston Churchill himself tasks him with finding Krystina's killer, before the cracks in Britain's alliance with Poland become fractures.

Gripping and tense story of secret agents, even more secret government facilities, and a deadly virus, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense. Mordon Chemical Research Centre: an ultra top secret facility hidden in the English countryside and one of the most secure places in the world...

The Patience of the Spider is the eighth novel in Andrea Camilleri's wryly humorous Inspector Montalbano series. 'A brother,' he said. Jesus Christ! Now where'd this brother come from? Whose brother? Montalbano had known from the start that between all the brothers, uncles, in-laws, nephews and...

The Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger Winning Author City of Vengeance is an explosive debut novel in an historical thriller series by D. V. Bishop, set in Renaissance Florence. 'An impressive and immersive debut set in a beautifully realized sixteenth-century Florence' – Antonia...

Between the eighth and eleventh centuries, the Vikings surged from their Scandinavian homeland to trade, raid and invade along the coasts of Europe. Their influence and expeditions extended from Newfoundland to Baghdad, their battles were as far-flung as Africa and the Arctic. But were they great seafarers or desperate outcasts, noble heathens or oafish pirates, the last pagans or the first of the modern Europeans?

The Track of Sand is Andrea Camilleri's twelfth outing in the wryly humorous Inspector Montalbano series. Inspector Montalbano rises one morning to find the carcass of a horse on the beach in front of his seaside home. But no sooner do his men arrive, than the body has mysteriously vanished...