Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the kingdom of Phthia. Here he is just another unwanted boy living in the shadow of King Peleus and his golden son, Achilles. Yet one day, Achilles takes the shamed prince under his wing. As they grow into young men their bond blossoms into something far deeper – despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother. When word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, the men of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name.

One single act of kindness becomes an endless reign of terror...Tom Bryce did what any decent person would do. But within hours of picking up the CD that had been left behind on the train seat next to him, and attempting to return it to its owner, he is the sole witness to a vicious murder. Then his young family are threatened with their lives if he goes to the police. But supported by his wife, Kellie, he bravely makes a statement to the murder enquiry team headed by Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a man with demons of his own to contend with.

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched firsthand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living - or at least the undead - hell of that dreadful time.

On 7th November 1843, Harriet Monckton, 23 years old and a woman of respectable parentage and religious habits, is found murdered in the privy behind the chapel she regularly attended in Bromley, Kent. The community is appalled by her death, apparently as a result of swallowing a fatal dose of prussic acid, and even more so when the surgeon reports that Harriet was around six months pregnant. Drawing on the coroner’s reports and witness testimonies, Elizabeth Haynes builds a compelling picture of Harriet’s final hours through the eyes of those closest to her and the last people to see her alive. 

An assassin haunted by his past. Two young refugees out of their depth and in need of his special talents. John Milton is no stranger to the world's seedy underbelly. But when the former British secret service agent comes up against a ruthless human trafficking ring, he'll have to fight harder than ever to conquer the evil in his path. After Milton meets a refugee who lost a sister to people smugglers, he travels through war-torn Libya and the murkiest parts of Italy and France to get the girl back.

Bury your enemies, and bury them deep. John Milton thought he was done with Avi Bachman. The most dangerous man he's ever known has been incarcerated in Angola, the brutal Louisiana prison. Inmates rarely leave Angola. Once you go in, the only way out is in a box. But Bachman is no ordinary prisoner. He was an assassin for the Mossad, and he has favours to call in.

John Milton is a former assassin for the British government. He is a ronin, trying to atone for his past sins by offering his services to those people who have no one else to whom they can turn. Milton is keeping a low profile in London when he meets Eddie Fabian. Fabian confesses that he is considering suicide and that the reason for his depression was the abuse that he suffered as a child. Milton offers to help, but, before he can, Eddie is found dead in circumstances that Milton considers suspicious.

John Milton is trying to make amends for a career spent killing for the British Secret Service. He has a burning need to right wrongs - and rewrite his own bloody past. He finds himself in Louisiana - the Big Sleazy, the bayou, and the post-Katrina wreckage of the Gulf Coast - with a debt of honor to repay. Isadora Bartholomew, who saved his partner's life, needs his help. Joel Babineaux, a ruthless property magnate, is out to sink the charity she established to help rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward.

John Milton travels to Bali in search of a new identity, but he can't even manage the flight without finding someone who needs his help. A beautiful woman falls ill and confesses that she has swallowed packages of cocaine in order to smuggle it across the border. She has been forced to work as a mule by a Yakuza gang in Tokyo who are holding her child to guarantee her compliance. Milton decides that's unacceptable and promises to lend her his help.

Cloud Atlas features six characters in interlocking stories, each interrupting the one before it: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death row; and Zachry, a young Pacific islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation.

John Milton has a nose for trouble. He can smell it a mile away. And when he witnesses a suspicious altercation between a young man and two thugs in a car auction parking lot, he can’t resist getting involved. Milton came to Kansas City hoping to find a way out of danger. His recent vendetta against a cartel hitman who killed his friend has made him enemies in high places. Now he needs to find the only man who can get him out of this mess. 

The third novel in Simon Scarrow's best-selling Roman series. After a series of bloody battles, Camulodunum (modern-day Colchester) has fallen to the invading Roman army. The Emperor has returned to Rome, leaving the fearless Centurion Macro and his young Optio, Cato, to rest and regroup, along with the rest of the Second Legion. As their leader, General Plautius, plans the next phase of their campaign, word arrives that the ship carrying his family to join him was wrecked in a storm off the south coast.

John Milton is used to operating in the shadows, weaving his way through dangerous places behind a fake identity. Now, to avenge the death of a close friend, he must wear his mask of deception once more. Beau Baxter was brutally murdered by a drugs cartel but that doesn’t stop Milton from blaming himself for his friend’s death. With the help of a trusted team of undercover experts and Beau’s son, Milton is determined to track down the killers. And he isn't just after the man who gave the order. He’s heading right for the top.  

August, 1940. On the streets of London, locals watch with growing concern as German fighter planes plague the city’s skyline. But inside the famous Ritz Hotel, the cream of society continues to enjoy all the glamour and comfort that money can buy during wartime - until an anonymous man is discovered with his throat slashed open. Detective Chief Inspector Coburg is called in to investigate, ably assisted by his trusty colleague, Sergeant Lampson. 

A family is gunned down in the snow, but one of the children survives. Three years on, that child takes revenge, and the Snow Killer is born. But then, nothing - no further crimes are committed, and the case goes cold. 50 years later, has the urge to kill been reawakened? As murder follows murder, the detective team tasked with solving the crimes struggle with the lack of leads. It’s a race against time and the weather - each time it snows, another person dies.

A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn't have prevented it. Could she? In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief, and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever. Slowly Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future.

On this day of ill omen, plague makes its entrance. Within weeks, swathes of England will be darkened by death's shadow. While panic and suspicion flood the land, a small band of travelers comes together to outrun the breakdown in law and order. But when one of their number is found hanging from a tree, the chilling discovery confirms that something more sinister than plague is in their midst.

The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, Shadrapar is a museum, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new is Stefan Advani: rebel, outlaw, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts and into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld. 

The first novel in Simon Scarrow's bestselling Roman series. It is 42 AD, and Quintus Licinius Cato has just arrived in Germany as a new recruit to the Second Legion, the toughest in the Roman army. If adjusting to the rigours of military life isn't difficult enough for the bookish young man, he also has to contend with the disgust of his colleagues when, because of his imperial connections, he is appointed a rank above them.

John Milton has started to hope that he might have a future. He has a job driving a taxi around the streets of San Francisco. He has his anonymity and his solitude. Being invisible has become a comfortable habit. He doesn't want to be found. But when a girl he drives to a party goes missing, Milton is worried. Especially when two dead bodies are discovered, and the police start treating him as their prime suspect. Milton is a fugitive from the British Secret Service, and a man in his position needs extra attention like he needs a hole in the head.