Showing results by narrator "Greg Wagland" in All Categories

M. R. James wrote, arguably, the finest supernatural tales in English literature, and this collection contains the best of them, including ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook’, ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’, ‘Lost Hearts’, ‘Casting the Runes’, and ‘Count Magnus’. James was something of an actor and gifted storyteller and read his tales aloud to select gatherings on many a Christmas Eve. His intention, he said, was to implant in his listener the idea that, ‘if I am not careful, something of this kind might happen to me!’

'The decisions Harry made within the next few seconds would stay with him for the rest of his life - or result in his immediate death. And he knew it.' When a gang war threatens to rip the metropolis apart, 'London's top copper' finds himself under siege. Held accountable for the unstoppable wave of chaos that is turning the streets of his city red with blood, hounded by a media he cannot understand and continually thwarted by an establishment cover-up, H is in trouble.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a chilling novella written by Robert Louis Stevenson and published in 1886. The subject matter may be partly that of a shilling shocker but the whole is executed with great panache and a fine Gothic sensibility. Lawyer Gabriel Utterson leads us apace through the rain-swept streets of Victorian London in pursuit of the diminutive but thoroughly monstrous Mr. Hyde.

At the two four-kilometre long LIGO observatories in the US, scientists developed incredibly sensitive detectors, capable of spotting a movement 100 times smaller than the nucleus of an atom. In 2015, they spotted the ripples produced by two black holes spiralling into each other, setting spacetime quivering. This was the first time black holes had ever been directly detected, and it promises far more for the future of astronomy. Brian Clegg presents a compelling story of human technical endeavour and a powerful new path to understand the workings of the universe.

Selected Poems by Edward Thomas (1878-1917) is read by Greg Wagland for Magpie Audio. The selection is as follows: 'March", "Old ManTears", "But These Things Also", "Melancholy", "The Glory", "Words", "Aspens", "This is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong", "Rain", "No One So Much As You", "The Sun Used to Shine", "As the Team’s Head-Brass", "Gone, Gone Again", and "Lights Out The Lane".

Mass murder. A damaged, hurting cop at war with his son. One last shot at redemption. Bound by Blood is the second book in the London Large crime thriller series, featuring the exploits of Detective Inspector Harry 'H' Hawkins, an old-school London copper in a new world. H is only just back at work after a mental and physical breakdown when pop superstar Bazza Wishbone is murdered in the dead of night in a top London hotel. As the whole world looks on in horror, H investigates the crime.

This audiobook comprises two works: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and his autobiographical A Personal Record. The opening of Heart of Darkness finds Charles Marlow in fading light on the Thames Estuary, as he and his companions relax on deck, waiting for the turn of the tide.

Mario and Luciano are twin brothers trying to scratch a dishonest living in the slums of Palermo. Mario is wild, dangerous, and a natural leader; Luciano is his brother's nervous shadow, reluctantly following him in all things. When the twins rob and kill a shopkeeper, Mario thinks they are going up in the world. He longs to be recognized by the Mafia hierarchy and will do anything to achieve his aim. The brothers move on to an ambitious bank heist and a bloody shootout in the streets of Palermo.

Taking a winter holiday in a splendid resort in the Swiss Alps our hero finds himself billeted in a surprisingly large room, furnished with two beds. He checks with the man at the bureau, but there’s no mistake: it’s all his, a veritable snip at 12 francs a night! What a stroke of luck! And what could possibly connect this alpine idyll with Boston, Massachusetts? E. F. Benson is well known for his Mapp and Lucia novels but his ghost and supernatural stories are marvellous jewels, combining elegant writing and moments of blood-curdling horror.

Keep Your Friends Close is the third story in Granelli's hard-hitting series of Mafia tales. Using the vibrant backdrop of Palermo, old characters reappear to continue the internecine struggles of the Tomasso Cruci Family, where double-dealing, treachery, and violent retribution seem the norm. Granelli also brings in a police element for the first time in the form of Carlo 'CC' Carpanini and his memorable sidekick Leo Bracchi. It seems they are up against insurmountable odds.

Time is running out for the passengers and crew of the tourist cruiser Selene, incarcerated in a sea of choking lunar dust. On the surface her rescuers find their resources stretched to the limit by the mercilessly unpredictable conditions of a totally alien environment.

The Horror Horn is set in the Swiss Alps and opens in the cosy lounge of a resort hotel, where a string ensemble strikes up with the sugary strains of Puccini. Our hero is further entertained to an unlikely yarn of savage sub-humans living near the Ungeheuerhorn, or Horror Horn, a forbidding mountain peak nearby. Next day, a skiing trip to St. Luigi in the next valley to lunch with a friend marks the start of an unexpectedly terrifying adventure. The Horror Horn is not a ghost story as such: the creatures in it are most definitely flesh and blood and they are hungry!

The Man Who Went Too Far: A Ghost Story by E. F. Benson opens one summer’s day in a beautiful, sequestered garden on the edge of the New Forest. A forty-something artist visits a friend to recuperate from a debilitating illness but is staggered to discover him looking remarkably young and oddly vibrant. He listens as this ‘boy’ explains his new found philosophy, expands on the delight he takes in the natural world all around him and describes the strangely haunting music he has begun to hear in the woods and among the reeds.

In the Scottish Highlands, the Royal Artillery is testing a lethal new weapon. A Russian trawler fleet is nosing about in the Atlantic in entirely the wrong season. And a very rich Australian is using his financial power to put together an army. Mission-ready or not, Paul Chavasse must prevent the government’s deadliest missile technology from falling into enemy hands. An enemy who is one of the most dangerous men in the world. But once upon a time, so was Paul Chavasse.

A fascinating tour through the curious history of Western civilization told through its most emblematic invention–the book.

In 1970, Harold Stamp, a retarded 20-year-old, was convicted on disputed evidence and a retracted confession of brutally murdering his grandmother. Less than three years later he is dead, driven to suicide by isolation and despair. Thirty years on, Jonathan Hughes, an anthropologist specialising in social stereotyping, comes across the case by accident. He finds alarming disparities in the evidence and has little doubt that Stamp's conviction was a terrible miscarriage of justice. But how far is Hughes prepared to go in the search for justice?

Raconteurs Audio has created this collection to include Dickens' two Christmas novellas, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth, as well as some of his lesser-known short stories with a Christmas theme.

The Powder of Death opens with a returned envoy to China meeting an English scholar in Oxford in the mid-13th century; their purpose is to share a deadly secret. They vow that the knowledge of gunpowder must die with them. The audiobook tells the story of its rediscovery, one man's obsession with the powder of death, and Edward III's determination to use it to his advantage. The nature of warfare is changed forever, and the world hears the death knell of knightly chivalry.

Baptiste Molino has devoted his life to other people's happiness. Moored on his houseboat, he helps his clients navigate the waters of contentment yet remains careful never to make waves of his own. However, it is Baptiste's new client, the elegant and enigmatic Amandine Rousseau, who is the puzzle he longs to solve. But when his mysterious birth mother's legacy finally reveals itself, he finds himself torn between pursuing his own happiness and safeguarding that of the one he loves.

Locked away inside the impregnable fortress of Schloss Neustadt, Father Sean Conlin, survivor of Dachau and lifelong champion of human freedom, is fighting to deny his jailers their ultimate goal. On this momentous day, when the whole world is watching, they must make him admit to being a CIA hireling. But the West is determined to save him, and, gambling with their lives, a small band of men begin a daring rescue mission that could change the course of history.