Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Passengers boarding the 10.35 train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston have no idea that their journey is about to be brutally curtailed. Holly has just landed her dream job, and Jeff is heading for an interview after months of unemployment. They end up sitting next to each other.

Ruari, son of Irish media owner J J Breslin, is in desperate danger, at the mercy of ruthless kidnappers making impossible demands. His terrified mother contacts the only person she knows can help her son: Harry Jones, her former lover, who she walked out on many years ago. Now memories of their passionate affair, the guilt, hurt, anger, and humiliation come flooding back.

Written in diary entries from a Polish scholar, this short story features a mysterious femme fatale, Medea, who is responsible for the deaths of five men, including her husbands. The scholar is soon cast under her spell from behind the grave.

Two boys appeal to the famed Roman oracle for a glimpse into their future, and the Sybil draws an omen of death. As they flee from the cave in fear, Aulus and Lucius make an oath of loyalty until death - one that will be tested in the years to come. Thirty years on and Aulus, now Rome's most successful general, faces his toughest battle. Barbarian rebels have captured his wife and are demanding the withdrawal of Roman legions from their land. It is unthinkable for Aulus to agree, and he fears she must be forfeit for Rome.

Lady Wainwright presides over the Gothic gloom at Belting, in mourning for her two sons lost in the Second World War. Long afterwards a stranger arrives at Belting, claiming to be the missing David Wainwright, who was not killed after all but held captive for years in a Russian prison camp. With Lady Wainwright's health fading, her inheritance is at stake, and the family is torn apart by doubts over its mysterious long-lost son. Belting is shadowed by suspicion and intrigue, and then the first body is found.

The Warcage: 200 worlds harnessed to an artificial sun in a feat of unprecedented stellar engineering. Built to travel through space as a monument to peace between alien species, now its voracious rulers have turned it into a nightmarish wasteland, capturing new planets for slaves and resources then discarding the old. When a verdant agri-world is pulled out of its orbit, the captain of a smuggling ship must journey into the Warcage to rescue his crew.

Lord James Harrington and his wife, Beth, happen upon a road accident where the driver, Bernard Potter, is seriously injured. While giving first-aid, Potter mumbles concerns about his daughter which James takes as the ramblings of a dying man. But, when visiting Mrs Potter, they realise that her husband, a police constable, was secretly investigating the goings-on at a local commune where his daughter lived.

Soundings and Choc Lit present the audiobook edition of What Happens at Christmas. Best-selling author Andrew Vitruvius knows that any publicity is good publicity. But when his agent talks him into the craziest scheme yet - getting himself kidnapped, live on TV - it all starts to feel a little bit too real. Meanwhile, Lori France and her four-year-old niece Misty are settling in to spend the holidays away after unexpected events leave them without a place to stay. Little do they know they’re about to make a shocking discovery and experience a Christmas they’re not likely to forget....

When Rosie's best friend has an affair with her husband, the consequences reverberate through the lives of the two families. Relationships are torn apart, friendships shattered, and childish innocence destroyed. Her daughter Daisy's fragile hold on reality begins to unravel when a letter arrives that opens old wounds. Rosie's son Max blames himself for everything that happened. And her ex-husband Nick has his own version of events. As long-repressed memories bubble to the surface, the past has never seemed more present and the truth more uncertain.

Group Fifteen operative and ex-MI6 officer Charlie Cooper is working undercover as a political negotiator. Attending a conference surrounded by diplomats, businessmen and lobbyists, nobody would suspect what he really does for a living. Also in their midst is Aisha, a Saudi activist whose protests against human rights abuses have made her an enemy of her country's regime.

11th century Italy. The domination of the Normans is causing trouble. At their head is the feared Robert de Hauteville, the 'Guiscard', who has colonised much of Italy and commands the triple Dukedom of the extended Norman family. But Robert has made many enemies, including the ever-powerful papacy in Rome. The newly elected Pope Gregory exercises his vendetta against the Normans by encouraging them to sail to Byzantium and fight the Turks. But first he must deal with the Guiscard.

A Charlotte Riddell novella from the British Library Tales of the Weird collection Haunted Houses. In The Uninhabited House, the owner of haunted house River Hall is taken to court by one of her tenants for failing to disclose prior spectral possession.

A parent's worst fear is realised when seven-year-old Libby Hallforth goes missing at a funfair; no witnesses, no leads, and no trace. Months later, human remains are found, but they're too old to be Libby. It's the tip of a gruesome iceberg - bodies, buried in pairs, carefully laid to rest in a ritualistic manner. For DI Jake Porter and DS Nick Styles, the trail for Libby is cold, and everyone is a suspect.

Terry Flynt is a struggling legal clerk, desperately trying to get promoted. And then he is given the biggest opportunity of his career: to help defend a millionaire accused of murdering a woman in his hotel suite. The only problem is that the accused man, Vernon James, turns out to be not only someone he knows, but someone he loathes. This case could potentially make Terry's career, but how can he defend a former friend who betrayed him so badly?

MI5 agents Marina Griffin and Leo South are made to be together. But their mission's-end encounter with Ashkeloi gypsies in the Russian forest reveals a terrifying prophecy - a fate that will tear them apart, and re-echo into the lives of their sons, John and Mike. Thirty years later, a deadly climate shift has opened up a seaway through the Arctic, and nuclear war is imminent as the global superpowers make a grab for the oil reserves suddenly exposed.

For Pyke and his crew it should have been just another heist. Travel to a backwater desert planet, break into a museum, steal a tracking device then use it to find a ship buried in the planet's vast and trackless sandy wastes. Except that the museum vault is a bioengineered chamber, and the tracking device is sought after by another gang of treasure hunters led by an old adversary of Pyke's, the devious Raven Kaligara. Also, the ship is a quarter of a million years old and about two kilometres long, and somewhere aboard it is the Essavyr Key....

The World War II codebreaking station at Bletchley is well known and its activities documented in detail. Its decryption capabilities were vital to the war effort, significantly aiding the Allied victory. But where did the messages being deciphered come from in the first place? This is the extraordinary untold story of the Y service, a secret even more closely guarded than Bletchley Park. 'Y service' was the code for the chain of wireless intercept stations around Britain and all over the world.

The opening day of the Games in Rome is a time for celebration in honour of the new Emperor. But for Marcus Valerius Pavo, a young military tribune fallen from grace, only despair awaits. Along with former mentor Optio Macro, Pavo must fight for his life in a ferocious beast hunt. Battling against lions and bears, he'll have to use all his wits to survive as well as the help of a hated former rival. But when Pavo achieves a stunning victory, his reward is to be condemned to death in a chaotic free-for-all. Now the young gladiator faces a race against time to triumph over the odds....

Hardcastle is sent to investigate the murder of Colonel Sir Adrian Rivers, Bt. It seems the baronet's second wife, much younger than Rivers, is neither distressed by the murder, nor able to assist in the investigation. It is up to the dogged Hardcastle, aided by DS Charles Marriott, to question an array of characters and narrowly avoid being killed in a Zeppelin raid, before the killer is eventually unmasked.

A DI Hardcastle Investigation - June 1917. Ernest Hardcastle, head of the Whitehall CID, is called to investigate the murder of Sir Nigel Strang, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Munitions, in his office. Given his work, Hardcastle wonders whether the Germans might be responsible. Then another murder leads Hardcastle to a worker at Woolwich Arsenal, who is suspected of passing information to the enemy. But is there a connection? Hardcastle must find out...