Showing results by narrator "Michael Page" in All Categories

A famous writer is found murdered at the Victorian baths in the Yorkshire town of Harrogate. In a crime worthy of one of his novels, Damian Penrose, who was appearing at the town’s crime writing festival, has been ruthlessly strangled. But with no trace of the murderer and no apparent means of escape, how did the killer simply vanish from the scene of the crime?

In the chilly depths of a Yorkshire winter, a well-liked rector is found bludgeoned to death in her own church. With no sign of a murder weapon, local superstition quickly pins the blame on the ghost of a medieval monk believed to haunt the building. Well accustomed to unusual murder investigations, DCI Jim Oldroyd takes on the case, along with his assistant, Sergeant Andy Carter, but they are hampered at every turn by the deepening snow and the threat of the supernatural.

When Rome transgresses upon his father's domain that lays between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, Pacorus, a prince of the Parthian Empire, is sent to exact revenge. After a string of victories, Pacorus and his men are captured in Cappadocia, clapped in chains, and sent to Italy to live out the rest of their days as slaves. But fate intervenes and Pacorus and his companions are saved from a living hell by a renegade gladiator named Spartacus. In gratitude, Pacorus agrees to help Spartacus build his army as Rome musters its legions to crush the slave uprising.

A retired judge is shot dead outside the Dog and Gun inn in the remote Yorkshire village of Niddersgill. There's a witness who saw everything, and the gunman's on the run; the case should be open-and-shut for DCI Jim Oldroyd. But the murderer had no motive for wanting Sandy Fraser dead and, what's more, no trace of him can be found.

Selchester Castle in 1953 sits quiet and near-empty, its corridors echoing with glories of the past. Or so it seems to intelligence officer Hugo Hawksworth, wounded on a secret mission and now reluctantly assuming an altogether less perilous role at Selchester.

The last thing DS Stephanie Johnson and DS Andy Carter expected during their much-needed canal holiday was a murder. When retired folk musician Annie Shipton is found stabbed through the neck at the helm of her barge, the couple can’t help investigating the seemingly impossible crime. Nobody else boarded Annie’s boat—so how was she killed from behind?

DCI Oldroyd has seen his fair share of victims, but he has never witnessed a murder - until now. When world-famous violinist Hans Muller is shot and killed during a concert, the detective is faced with a case beyond logic. The culprit is nowhere to be found - and the victim’s priceless violin has disappeared too. As Oldroyd investigates the murderer’s identity and the motive for the killing, he enters the ruthless world of wealthy instrument collectors and stumbles upon a dark path where shocking secrets have been buried in the past. But the secrets will soon take centre stage.

When a film shoot on Wharfedale’s vintage railway turns into a grisly crime scene, DCI Oldroyd’s idyllic visit to the countryside with his partner Deborah is well and truly stopped in its tracks. One of the film’s stars has been shot dead in a train carriage while the cameras rolled outside. But nobody else went in—or came out. Has the killer really pulled off the perfect, impossible crime?

Lord Redmire’s gambling habit has placed him in serious debt. Determined to salvage his fortune by putting Redmire Hall on the map, the aristocrat performs an impossible locked-door illusion on live TV. But as the cameras roll, his spectacular trick goes fatally wrong. Special guest DCI Jim Oldroyd has a front-row seat, but in all his years with the West Riding Police he’s never witnessed anything like this. He sees Redmire disappear—and then reappear, dead, with a knife in his back.

Halloween, Whitby. DCI Jim Oldroyd’s daughter Louise is in town with friends for a goth festival. But their visit to an escape room ends in bloody murder when one of the group stabs his girlfriend and flees the scene. It’s a crime with three witnesses - but Louise refuses to take what she saw at face value. Oldroyd and DS Carter are called in to solve the case, assisted from the sidelines by Louise. But the closer they investigate, the more complex the web of deceit appears. This is no straightforward crime of passion.

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes is the utterly beguiling tale of a ten-year-old blind orphan who has been forced into a life of crime. One fateful afternoon, Peter steals a mysterious box that contains three magical pairs of eyes. When he tries the first pair, he is instantly transported to a hidden island where he is presented with a special quest: to travel beyond the known world and rescue a lost kingdom from its treacherous ruler....

Snow dusts the cobbled streets of York as tourists flock to its famous Christmas markets. But for DCI Oldroyd, what starts as a peaceful evening on a ghost tour quickly turns deadly. The tour guide’s grim discovery is no theatrical performance—he finds the body of Henry Marlow, a notorious local landlord, in the doorway of a derelict building. Oldroyd soon has no shortage of suspects: a resentful ex-wife, angry tenants, and even the guide who knows every secret passage of the old city.

A body is discovered deep in a cave beneath the Yorkshire Dales. Leading the investigation into the mysterious death are experienced DCI Jim Oldroyd and his partner DS Carter, a newcomer from London. The deceased is Dave Atkins, well known throughout the village but not well liked. While there is no shortage of suspects, the details of the crime leave Oldroyd and Carter stumped.

Les Johnson takes you on a thrilling tour of the physics and technologies that may enable us to reach the stars. He discusses the latest exoplanet discoveries, promising interstellar missions on the not-so-distant horizon, and exciting new developments in space propulsion, power, robotics, communications, and more. But interstellar travel will not be easy, and it is not for the faint of heart. Johnson describes the harsh and forbidding expanse of space that awaits us, and he addresses the daunting challenges that we need to overcome in order to realize tomorrow's possibilities.

Vicar Max Tudor, reveling in his new-found personal happiness with Awena Owen, feels that life at the moment holds no greater challenge than writing his Easter sermon. With Awena away, he looks forward to a dinner that includes newcomers to the village like West End dramatist Thaddeus Bottle and his downtrodden wife Melinda. But when one of the dinner guests is found dead in the pre-dawn hours, Max knows a poisonous atmosphere has once again enveloped his perfect village of Nether Monkslip.

Even after the legendary evacuation from Dunkirk in June 1940 there were still large British formations fighting the Germans alongside their French allies. After mounting a vigorous counterattack at Abbeville and then engaging a tough defense along the Somme, the British were forced to conduct a second evacuation from the ports of Le Havre, Cherbourg, Brest, and St. Nazaire. Case Red captures the drama of the final three weeks of military operations in France in June 1940.

Ten years ago, DCI Oldroyd was the only person who could see the monster hiding behind Adam Blake’s charm. Oldroyd proved that Blake was a deadly serial killer, responsible for murdering many innocent people. Having vowed to take revenge on Oldroyd, on a crisp autumn morning Blake escapes from jail… Hours later, in the Yorkshire market town of Otley, a man is found strangled inside the old courthouse. Written in bold black ink across the victim’s forehead is a single chilling word: vindicta—revenge. Oldroyd’s blood runs cold when he picks up a call and hears an all-too-familiar voice.

Hugo Hawksworth is on the tail of rogue Cold War agents at a top-secret government facility, while back home at Selchester Castle they're awaiting the arrival of the new earl - an American, the long-lost son of the murdered Lord Selchester.

Steeped in a history of award-winning Yorkshire ale, the town of Markham boasts not one but two breweries. Richard Foster runs one; his sister, Emily, along with her partner, Janice, runs the other. And not without some resentment. The unwelcome return of the town’s former bad boy, Brendan Scholes, threatens to ignite the sibling rivalry further. Scholes claims to have found the long-lost secret recipe to the beer that made Richard and Emily’s father famous, and he wants money.

Don Quixote, a man driven by chivalrous ideals and wild delusions, adopts sword and lance as a knight-errant to defend the weak, slay the ignoble, and win the heart of the farm girl he envisions as a princess. In his world of fantasy - where inns are castles, peasants are kings, and windmills are beasts - Quixote, his nag, and his sound but devoted squire, Sancho Panza, set forth on a picaresque adventure conceivable only to a man obsessed.