Showing results by narrator "Dan Stevens" in All Categories

'Once there was a widow with three sons, and their names were Black, Brown and Blue. Black was the eldest; moody and aggressive. Brown was the middle child, timid and dull. But Blue was his mother's favourite. And he was a murderer.' Blueeyedboy is the brilliant new novel from Joanne Harris: a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysfunctional family, a blind child prodigy, and a serial murderer who is not who he seems.

Set on the Western Front, in London and in Paris, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You is a moving and brilliant novel of love, class, and sex in wartime, and how war affects those left behind as well as those who fight.

Max Carver's father - a watchmaker and inventor - decides to move his family to a small town on the Atlantic coast, to a house built for a prestigious surgeon, Dr Richard Fleischmann and his wife, that was abandoned when the couple's son drowned in a tragic accident. Behind the house, Max spies an overgrown garden full of statues surrounded by a metal fence topped with a six-pointed star....

In Beirut, a brilliant young Sky TV reporter Katie Dartmouth has been captured by a ruthless gang of Hezbollah terrorists. She is to be executed live on television unless British troops are withdrawn from Iraq. A nation holds its breath and the government is tottering on the edge of collapse.

Calcutta, May 1916. Lieutenant Peake pauses for breath outside the ruins of Jheeter's Gate station knowing that he only has a few hours to live. Inside his overcoat he is sheltering two newborn babies - twins, a boy and a girl. Peake runs at full tilt to the house of Aryami Bose, to whom he entrusts the children. In 1932 we meet the boy, Ben, and his group of friends the night before they are due to leave St Patricks orphanage.

Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he had promised to find Rose Janko. Rose was married to the charismatic son of a travelling gypsy family, Ivo Janko. When Ray starts to investigate her disappearance he's surprised that her family are so hostile towards him.

Paperback Hell takes a wry look at well-known genres riding high in the publishing charts and mercilessly lampoons them to hilarious effect. Featuring choice chapters culled from titles that bear a striking resemblance to something you've read before, it's the book show that seems determined to destroy the good name of literature.

For 15-year-old Gemma, it is already too late. Her body is found in the nave of a church in Ealing, West London. At first, all the signs point to suicide. But then the autopsy suggests it was not, and Detective Inspector Mark Tartaglia and the Barnes murder squad are called in.

The meeting rooms are the focus of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous—a place where members share stories, enjoy a sense of fellowship, and begin healing. Living in the Solution: Understanding and Using the Wisdom of the Rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous will give those interested in the recovery process profound insight and a sense of the experience. From accompanying sensations, struggles, challenges, newly acquired attitudes, and new life strategies—to the crudeness, toughness, seriousness, profundity, results, and gratitude—it's here in this powerful work.

The Jersey Devil is a legendary creature said to inhabit the Pine Barrens of South New Jersey. The Devil is often described as a flying biped with hooves, but there have been several variations encountered by many eyewitnesses over the last 300 years. In 1735, a woman known as Mother Leeds gave birth to her 13th child on a stormy night surrounded by friends (who some claim were witches) who exclaimed "May it be the Devil."

Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive—and she hasn’t woken up since. Dubbed “Sleeping Beauty” by the tabloids, Anna suffers from a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.” Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and an expert in the field of sleep-related homicides. His methods represent the last possible hope of solving the infamous “Anna O” case by waking Anna up so she can stand trial.

England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself.

Dara Willcox, in New York for a weekend, meets Austin Clarke at an art gallery. The two are on different courses-Austin is British, temporarily in New York. Dara's from North Carolina, set on law school. They fall in love at first sight, and are determined to make their lives together. Days after their engagement dinner, Austin hears unsettling news from London that wrecks their plans. Dara abruptly cancels the wedding. She refuses to reveal why, not even to her best friends or her parents or grandmother, disrupting their family tradition of openness.

From Margaret Atwood, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, comes a dazzling collection of fifteen stories. These stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords.

Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers—characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.

Following the acclaimed first novel comes the second instalment of the adventure in which Daniel and Beatrice continue their secret and dangerous dragonological studies; Dr Drake searched for dragonological treasures and visits old friends in India and China; Alexandra Gorynytchka's wicked plans are laid bare; dragons the world over are in terrible danger of extinction; and Ignatious Crook plots a horrible revenge.

When two young apprentice dragonologists, Beatrice and Daniel Cook, are taken into his care to attend his Dragonology summer school, all sorts of trouble ensues. The three must deal with wayward dragons, missing diaries and the evil antics of the terrible Ignatius Crook, who is intent on stealing the dragon's eye, and claiming the title of Dragon Master for himself.

A Week in December is Sebastian Faulks's first wholly contemporary novel. Set in London, it's a brilliant social satire, structured like a thriller, that takes place over the course of a single week at the end of 2007. It brings together an intriguing cast of characters, each apparently in his or her own world but - as gradually becomes clear - ultimately intricately related.

In Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, one of our very best writers brings the opulent world of the Tudors to bloody, glittering life. It is the backdrop to the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell: lowborn boy, charmer, bully, master of deadly intrigue, and, finally, most powerful of Henry VIII’s coutiers. But the bloody theatre of Cromwell’s ascension will leave no one unscathed.

Now, in 1949, employed as an extra in a war film that echoes his real experience, Alfred Day begins to recall what he would rather forget.