Showing results by narrator "Matt Addis" in All Categories

Xander Shute - once a wealthy banker, now living on the streets - shelters for the night in an empty Mayfair flat. When he hears the occupants returning home, he scrambles to hide. Trapped in his hiding place, he hears the couple argue and he soon finds himself witnessing a vicious murder. But who was the dead woman, who the police later tell him can't have been there? And why is the man Xander saw her with evading justice?

It is 1852, and in Sweden's far north, deep in the Arctic Circle, charismatic preacher and Revivalist Lars Levi Læstadius impassions a poverty-stricken congregation with visions of salvation. But local leaders have reason to resist a shift to temperance over alcohol. Jussi, the young Sami boy Læstadius has rescued from destitution and abuse, becomes the preacher's faithful disciple on long botanical treks to explore the flora and fauna. Læstadius also teaches him to read and write - and to love and fear God.

They killed Robert Harland today, and they're going to kill the rest of you. This is the warning private investigator Paul Samson receives right after Joni Fremantle, the woman he has been guarding for a mysterious client, gives him the slip. No time to worry about that now: his life, and those of Denis Hisami, Anastasia Christakos and even the young Syrian Naji, is on the line. Samson is sure he knows why - to expose a company supplying funds to far-right groups across Europe is to paint a target on your own back.

Two friends, one a specialist in archaeology, the other an artist, were spending a day or two in the interesting old town of Bingly. One in investigation of the old church, the other in sketching it. A telegram announcing the death of James Briggs, the artist’s brother, put an end to the holiday, sending Joshua Briggs post-haste to his sister-in-law’s house.

It was one of the happiest and strangest marriages there has ever been. Both Vita and Harold were always in love with other people and each gave the other full liberty 'without enquiry or reproach', knowing that their love for each other would be unaffected and even strengthened by the crises which it survived. This account of their love story is now a modern classic.

All you have to do is find out why Harry is prepared to blame an innocent man. That's the thread. Follow it. You'll reach the Silent Ones. This is your way - our way - of making a difference. With this challenge from Father Edmund Littlemore, Anselm returns to the Old Bailey to fight the most difficult and troubling case of his life. The man in the dock is Littlemore himself. He is charged with grave offences against Harry Brandwell, who, it seems, is both a victim and a liar.

Born in the 1920s on a working-class London street, Harry Miles wins a scholarship and grows into adulthood as a sensitive man, torn between his love for poetry and the immediate demands of the world around him. When he marries the magnetic and demanding Evelyn amongst the outbreak of war, his capacity to love is increasingly tested - up to and beyond when she abandons him on the cusp of death. An unconventional love story, harrowing and deeply tender, Dear Evelyn studies two people who permanently shape each other over a shared lifetime.

Archaeologist Clare Hills is struggling to finance her recently established university research institute along with her long-time friend, Dr David Barbrook. When Professor Margaret Bockford finds the Hart Unit work with a housing developer in the Cotswolds, the pair are hardly in a position to refuse. There is just one catch: the previous site director, Beth Kinsella, was found hanged on-site, surrounded by mutilated wildlife.

Following the recent death of her husband, Clare Hills is unsure of her place in the world. When her former university friend Dr David Barbrook asks her to help him sift through the effects of deceased archaeologist Gerald Hart, she sees this as a useful distraction. During her search, Clare stumbles across the unpublished journals detailing Gerald's most glittering dig. Supposedly destroyed in an arson attack, she cannot believe her luck. Finding the Hungerbourne Barrows archive is every archaeologist's dream....

These two autobiographical essays by Douglas Harding were written 30 years apart. Harding wrote the first one in the 1960s when he was in his early 50s. He wrote the second one, "On Having No Head," when he was 80. They are instructive, insightful, and entertaining.

On a deserted road in Calabria, Greek aid worker Anastasia Cristakos is driving alone to visit one of the new refugee centres funded by billionaire Denis Hisami, whom she has recently married. She slows down to greet two African migrants she recognises. Too late she realises they are not her friends. This is an ambush. She manages a desperate phone call to Hisami before her Mafia kidnappers silence her with a powerful drug. Hours later she wakes up in the pitch dark on a container ship powering eastwards across the Mediterranean.

If these tales were by an unknown author, they would be no more than reflections on a childhood in the early 20th century. But they gain in interest because of who wrote them, for they provide insight into the young life and mind of a great philosopher and spiritual teacher: Douglas Harding (1909-2007), author of The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, On Having No Head, and other books. The stories open a window on Harding's early life; their autobiographical nature is only thinly disguised. After listening to them, you will understand Harding in a new and more intimate way.

Unravelling the Double Helix covers the most colourful period in the history of DNA, from the discovery of 'nuclein' in the late 1860s to the publication of Watson's The Double Helix in 1968. This is a saga packed with awful mistakes as well as brilliant science, with a wonderful cast of heroes and villains. Surprisingly, much of it is unfamiliar because the early history is largely neglected by books which focus on the episode of the double helix.

We all talk about them. We all plan our lives by them. We are all obsessed with the outlook ahead. The changing seasons have shaped all of our lives, but what happens when the weather changes beyond recognition? The author, Joe Shute, has spent years unpicking Britain’s long-standing love affair with the weather. He has pored over the literature, art and music our weather systems have inspired and trawled through centuries of established folklore to discover the curious customs and rituals we have created in response to the seasons.

London, 1608. Three years after the Gunpowder Treason, the King's enemies prepare to strike again. Daniel Pursglove is tasked by royal command with one final mission: he must infiltrate the Serpents - a secret group of Catholics plotting to kill the King - or risk his own execution. But other conspirators are circling, men who would blackmail Daniel for their own dark ends. In the Serpents' den, nothing is quite as it seems. And when Daniel spies a familiar face among their number, the game takes a dangerous turn.

Sion, a metalworker, strikes up an illicit relationship with Katherine, the wife of the mineowner's personal dogsbody. And so begins the struggle of non-transactional and non-exploitative human love to be recognized in a place bent on the destruction and negation of that very thing. Of Talons and Teeth seeks to explore that moment when human beings and the natural beauties around them were turned into mere chattels; when Mammon became the only god worth worshipping.

Impossibly beautiful, disarmingly witty, and completely self-absorbed: Meet Lady Susan Vernon, both the heart and the thorn of Love & Friendship. Recently widowed, with a daughter who's coming of age as quickly as their funds are dwindling, Lady Susan makes it her mission to find them wealthy husbands - and fast.

When Oleg and Emma invent a new classmate called Sebastian, they are amazed when he appears - very much real - in their secret den. Sebastian isn't like the rest of their classmates. He's never eaten pizza, he's not sure what goose bumps are and he has a satchel that seems to hold an endless supply of hot ice cream. But as the three friends begin their adventures, more impossible things keep happening, from a runaway goat at school to a sighting of some snowwomen on the move.

Goals is a very personal and deeply moving collection of life-affirming and inspirational real-life stories from which Chelsea and Italy football legend Gianluca Vialli has drawn great strength and resolve during his battle with pancreatic cancer. The stories and the individuals involved have been selected by Vialli because they have offered him comfort and inspiration at the time of his greatest challenge and he feels that they can do the same for many of us, whatever it might be that we are facing.

Bombs detonate in a busy souk, causing massive devastation. An explosion rips apart a mosque, killing and injuring those inside. But this isn't the Middle East - this is Cardiff.... In a city where tensions are already running high, DC Will MacReady and his colleagues begin the desperate hunt for the attacker. If they knew the 'why', then surely they can find the 'who'? But that isn't so easy, and time is fast running out....