Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

Sven the Boar is Jarl of Ribe once more. He and Charles try to settle into their new lives, but trouble and treachery are never too far away. Tormented by recent events, Charles struggles to adapt to life amongst the heathens that mock his Christian God and the arrival of a priest from the south only makes things worse. Meanwhile, Sven is burdened with the responsibilities of being Jarl again and protecting his grandson from those hunting him. When forced into an alliance with King Horik’s nephew who is raising an army to challenge his uncle for the throne, Sven makes an important decision.

In search of answers, Merivel sets off for the French court. But Versailles leaves him in despair, until a chance encounter with a seductive Swiss botanist allows him to dream of an honorable future. But back home, his loyalty and medical skill are about to be tested to the limit, while the captive bear he has brought back from France begins to cause havoc.

‘The sweetness of her glance—or rather, my evil star already in its ascendant and drawing me to my ruin—did not allow me to hesitate for a moment...’ So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tale of passion and betrayal, of delinquency and misalliance, which moves from early 18th-century Paris—with its theatres, assemblies, and gaming-houses—via prison and deportation to a tragic denouement in the treeless wastes of Louisiana. It is one of the great love stories, and also one of the most enigmatic.

A body is found in the ruined Constantinople hippodrome: a woman, clutching a piece of red stone. She's recently given birth, but there's no sign of the baby. Inspector Cetin Ikmen discovers she was a Byzantine specialist on a crusade to protect the historic but now squalid areas of Istanbul that her enemy, property developer Ahmet Oden, seeks to destroy and rebuild. As Ikmen searches for the lost child and the truth behind her death, the people of Istanbul rise up in protest against their government....

Thomas Cale has been running from his enemies. Raised and trained in an underground programme - the Sanctuary - he was sent to destroy God's greatest mistake, mankind itself. Cale is a paradox: arrogant and innocent, generous and pitiless. Feared and revered by those that created him, he has already used his terrifying talent for violence and destruction to bring down the most powerful civilisation in the world. But Thomas Cale has been caught.

A routine weekend visit by the Gillibry Bird Observatory Trust is made memorable by the owner’s announcement that he is going to sell the island. A sale would mean the end of the Observatory, which for some of the birders made life worth living. A fire in Charlie Todd’s cottage added to their distress. And when, next morning, after a fierce storm, they found Charlie dead in a bird hide, their pleasant September weekend assumed a dangerous new face.

Here are some of the best of Churchill’s letters, many of a more personal and intimate nature, presented in chronological order, with a preface to each letter explaining the context. The recipients include a vast range of people, including his schoolmaster, his American grandmother and former President Eisenhower. They are taken from within the Churchill Archive in Cambridge, where there is a mass of Churchill’s correspondence. Several of the letters included have never appeared in book form before.

When 16-year-old Dísa is given five bitcoin by her divorced father she is unimpressed. But a year later, when her grandparents are about to lose their farm near the Icelandic village of Dalvik, quiet, unassuming Dísa is able to rescue it with the profits from her astute trading of her father's gift. Unknown to Dísa, her mother Helga catches the cryptocurrency bug. Not only does Helga invest in Thomocoin, a new cryptocurrency sweeping Iceland, but she persuades many of her neighbours in Dalvík to invest too, taking a cut for herself.

Nothing Like the Sun is a magnificent, bawdy telling of Shakespeare's love life. Starting with the young Will, the novel is a romp that follows Will's maturation into sex and writing. It is at the same time a serious look at the forces that midwife art, the effects of time and place, and the ordinariness that is found side by side with extraordinariness of genius.

Four men had arranged to fly to Dublin. When their aeroplane descended as a fireball into the Irish Sea, only three of them were on board. With the identities of the passengers lost beneath the waves, a tense and perplexing investigation begins to determine the living from the dead, with scarce evidence to follow beyond a few snippets of overheard conversation and one family’s patchy account of the three days prior to the flight.

The ravaged world of Tallarn plays host to the greatest armoured conflict in the history of mankind. The bitter and vengeful Iron Warriors led entire divisions of tanks and war machines across the befouled plains, until a macro-transporter plunged to the surface and ended a million lives. Stranded upon an unnamed, toxic battlefield that resembles nothing more than a graveyard of Titans, Warsmith Koparnos has precious little time left - will he find salvation amidst the dead god-machines, or succumb to violent madness?

The exodite world of Ephraeleon is under attack by a deadly tyranid horde. Can the Ranger Una Belphoebe complete her rescue mission on time?

Oli and Magnus Jonson have spent decades trying to escape from the shadows of their past. Raised by their grandparents in Bjarnarhofn, a remote farmstead in Iceland, both brothers had to endure brutal violence at the hands of their grandfather. When Constable Pall Gylfason is called to investigate a suspected homicide in a remote farmstead, he is surprised to find Detective Magnus Jonson is already there. Magnus identifies the dead man as his estranged grandfather. Before long, Magnus is arrested for the murder of his grandfather.

The ravaged world of Tallarn now plays host to the greatest armoured conflict in the history of mankind, with the bitter and vengeful Iron Warriors leading warhosts of tanks and Titans across the befouled plains. In desperation, a covert team of Imperial Fists resort to seemingly unthinkable measures in order to regain the upper hand - but will their mission to seize the macro-transporter Eagle's Talon ensure victory or merely spell doom for their loyal allies on the surface below?

When the twisted Dark Mechanicus priests of the Bloodborn descend upon Quintarn, the Ultramarines are quick to move in defence of their prized agri-world. However, it soon becomes apparent that the planet's fate will not be decided by the massed battle companies of the Space Marines but by the actions of just one lowly sergeant - Torias Telion.

Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that the deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account - and there's only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career's worth of spy secrets.

It’s November 1956. The world is in turmoil, the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Uprising boiling away in the background. Lennox, though, has more immediate concerns, like getting his personal life and his business back on track. In a bid to stay out of trouble, he’s looking for more legitimate cases. Anything’s better than working for the Three Kings, the crime bosses who run Glasgow’s underworld. When a woman comes into his office and hires him to follow her philandering husband, it seems the perfect case. Straightforward, typical and, most of all, legal. As he begins to dig deeper, Lennox realizes this is no simple case....

Charlo Torp, a newly recovered gambler, makes his way through the slush to Harriet Krohn's apartment, flowers in hand. Determined to pay off his debts, Charlo plans to steal the old woman's antique silver collection. But he didn't expect her to put up a fight. The following morning, Inspector Sejer is called to the scene to investigate. Harriet is dead, her silver missing, and the only clue in the apartment is an abandoned bouquet. When Charlo sees the news, he knows he should be relieved, but he's heard of Sejer's amazing record—the detective has solved every case he's ever been assigned to.

FreeFlow is a group of activists dedicated to freedom of information. They have evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and are preparing to unleash it. On the glacial rim of an erupting volcano, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later, one of them is murdered. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects, but he’s getting little help - for a group dedicated to transparency, they’re a secretive bunch. But they are not the only ones with secrets....

The chilling phenomenon begins again. On a summer night the dead body of a woman is found on board an abandoned pleasure boat drifting around in the Stockholm archipelago. Her lungs are filled with brackish water, but there are no traces of this water on her clothes or other parts of her body. Detective Inspector Joona Linna takes up the case. Forensics state that it was a simple drowning, that she must have been pulled aboard the boat which explains the lack of brackish water.