Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

Down among the dead men... Pathologist Quirke works in the city morgue, watching over Dublin's dead. The latest to join their ghostly ranks is a suicide. But something doesn't add up. The victim has a suspicious head wound, and the only witness has vanished, every trace of her wiped away. On the trail of the missing woman, Quirke finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of Dublin's elite - secret societies, High Church politics and corrupt politicians.

A listener follows Brendan Archer, a major in the British Army, to County Wicklow in Ireland, where he is supposed to meet the woman he thinks he will marry. When his plans do not turn out quite as he imagined, he decides to stay on at The Majestic - a crumbling coastal hotel - which holds a strange charm and many eccentric, often amusing, inhabitants.

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book at War, acclaimed historian Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age.

In these four supernatural dramas, first broadcast on radio in 1984, a house hides more than meets the eye; a B & B landlady helps her guests forget their troubles; a Japanese man inadvertently awakens a vengeful spirit; and a mother and baby become unsettled in remote mill.

A novel in verse form, Byrne echoes and takes further many of the preoccupations of Burgess's earlier fiction. It tells the story of a rampant Irish artist who, in the early days of the century, goes rapidly to the bad and ends up within Hitler's Third Reich.

Lennox liked Quiet Tommy Quaid. Perhaps it's odd for a private detective to like - even admire - a career thief, but Quiet Tommy Quaid was the sort of man everyone liked. Amiable, easygoing, well dressed, with no vices to speak of - well, aside from his excessive drinking and womanising, but then, in 1950s Glasgow those were practically virtues. And besides, throughout his many exploits outside the law, Quiet Tommy never once used violence.

Charlo Torp has problems. He’s grieving for his late wife, he’s lost his job, and gambling debts have alienated him from his teenage daughter. Desperate, his solution is to rob an elderly woman of her money and silverware. But Harriet Krohn fights back, and Charlo loses control. Wracked with guilt, Charlo attempts to rebuild his life. But the police are catching up with him, and Inspector Konrad Sejer has never lost a case yet.

In London, a newly-arrived Kurdish immigrant is brutally murdered by Turkish people-traffickers. The dead man’s wife, Irena, flees to East Anglia where she disappears into the murky world of illegal foreign workers. Reporter Joe Verdi goes undercover as a migrant worker to try to find Irena. But he’s not the only one looking for her – the Turks are also on her trail. Meanwhile, Joe’s colleague, Elli Mason, is following up the story of a typhoid outbreak. Three people have contracted the disease and the only link between them is a supermarket chain.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 4 we bring you the classics 'The Eve of St Agnes' by John Keats; 'Flodden' by Sir Walter Scott; 'The Ballad of Agincourt' by Michael Drayton; 'Tam O'Shanter' by Robert Burns; and 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' by Robert Browning.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.

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. Asta, a newly qualified priest, has contacted FreeFlow with damning information about the former Bishop of Iceland.

After the tragic death of his lover, Helen Flemming, Eisenmenger throws himself back into his work as a forensic pathologist. The newly promoted Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton brings him in to help on the grisly discovery of a severed head in a local farmyard. When a headless – but female – body then turns up in a dustbin, they must acknowledge that this shows all the signs of the work of a serial killer.

It was a mistake for Ben to tell the Hunter that there were still wolves in Surrey. For the Hunter was a fanatic, always on the lookout for unusual prey. Driven by an ambition to wipe out the last English wolves, the Hunter set out on his savage quest.

Fredrik Welin is a 70-year-old retired doctor. Years ago he retreated to the Swedish archipelago where he lives alone on an island. He swims in the sea every day, cutting a hole in the ice if necessary. He lives a quiet life. Until he wakes up one night to find his house on fire. Fredrik escapes just in time, wearing two left-footed wellies, as neighbouring islanders arrive to help douse the flames. All that remains in the morning is a stinking ruin and evidence of arson.

Set against the terrible struggle of the English Civil War, Rebels and Traitors is the story of how this turbulent era effected everyone, from rich to poor, and the hopes and dreams that carried them through years of deprivation, bloodshed and terror. When Gideon Jukes and Juliana Lovell, who are on opposites sides of the struggle, meet during one of the era’s most crucial events, their mutual attraction brings the comfort and companionship for which they both have yearned.

As teenagers, Poppy Carlisle and Serena Gorringe were the only witnesses to a tragic event. Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed 'The Ice Cream Girls' by the press and were dealt with by the courts.Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past.

When a top research institute is broken into and vandalised, the police at first believe that animal-rights activists took things a step too far. Then they discover one of the institute's eminent scientists, Tim Devon, brutally murdered. Dr. Steven Dunbar, working for an elite government agency, is sent to investigate. A few of the dead scientist's research animals have also gone missing, and top-level authorities are strangely obsessed with hunting down and killing the purportedly harmless animals.

Karnstein Castle stands like a bird of prey on the highest point of the hills that surround the village below. A huge monolithic reminder to all those who see it of the power of the family who have lived there for centuries. By day the village of Karnstein is a peaceful place, but by night, an unimaginable evil roams free. Villagers are found dead, their throats ripped open and bodies drained of blood. Young girls disappear and are never seen again.

Vlado Petric, former detective in war-torn Sarajevo, has left his beloved homeland to join his wife and daughter in Germany, where he scratches a meagre living in the building sites of the new Berlin.When Petric returns to work one evening, he finds an enigmatic American investigator waiting for him in the small apartment he and his wife share. The investigator (Pine) works for the International War Crimes Tribunal, and he tells Petric that they want him to return to Croatia

Shocking, but laced with wry humour, Vladimir Pereverzin’s extraordinary story is of an ordinary man whose comfortable life is upended. Refusing to give false testimony against Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he is plunged into lengthy, brutal incarceration in Russia’s nightmarish prisons and penal colonies, including some in which political prisoner Alexei Navalny has been held.