Showing results by narrator "David Monteath" in All Categories

It is 1548, and seven-year-old Mary Queen of Scots, betrothed to her cousin the Dauphin, heir to the French throne, has been dispatched to France. But far from home and vulnerable, surrounded by the double-dealing and debauchery of a dangerous and unpredictable court, she suffers a series of 'accidents'. Her mother, Scotland's Queen Dowager, orders Francis Crawford of Lymond to protect Mary, believing that at the very heart of Henri II's glittering, decadent court is an assassin hired to kill the infant monarch. Lymond must secretly hunt down this individual before he himself is exposed.

It's December, and the Shannon family are returning home to their clifftop mansion. However, a century ago Archibald Shannon stole the land upon which he built their home, and his descendants have been cursed ever since. When heavy snow cuts off Kintyre, DCI Jim Daley and DS Brian Scott are assigned to protect their illustrious visitors. As an ancient society emerges from the blizzards, ghosts of the past come to haunt the Shannons. As the curse decrees, death is coming. But for whom, and from what?

When Professor Francombe and her team of archaeologists find the remains of three women on a remote Kintyre hillside - a site rumoured to have been the base of Viking warlord Somerled - their delight soon turns to horror when they realise the women tragically met their end little more than two decades ago. It soon becomes clear that these are the three missing victims of the ‘Midweek Murderer’, a serial killer who was at work in Glasgow in the early 1990s. DCI Jim Daley now has the chance to put things right.

When a senior Edinburgh civil servant spectacularly takes his own life in Kinloch harbour, DCI Jim Daley comes face to face with the murky world of politics. To add to his woes, two local drug dealers lie dead, ritually assassinated. It's clear that dark forces are at work in the town. With his boss under investigation, his marriage hanging on by a thread, and his sidekick, DS Scott, wrestling with his own demons, Daley's world is in meltdown.

With a bike, a turbo trainer, and the right advice, you can beat anyone. No one but Graeme Obree has the clarity of vision to get to the heart of the "problem" of how to improve as a racing cyclist. His innovative approach took him to the top of world cycling, twice breaking the world hour record - a story picked up in his Hollywood biopic The Flying Scotsman. It can draw the same outstanding athletic performance from you.

A missing person report is not usually something that Hamish Macbeth sees as cause for undue distress. Should a child or a vulnerable person vanish, it's an urgent matter that needs to be treated seriously, but in Macbeth's experience, most other people who go missing tend to turn up again before long. So when Kate Hibbert disappears after having last been seen struggling along the road with a heavy suitcase, he is convinced she has gone travelling and reluctantly goes through the motions of investigating.

Bonnie Scotland, and she is Bonnie that’s for sure. A country with a rich and mysterious history. Strange land formations, ancient standing stone circles, and otherworldly scenery run from coast to coast. It is the land of the Celts and their folklore that includes stories of unicorns, shape shifting spirits, Kelpies, fairies, and monsters that swim in deep Lochs.

Centuries ago, the bride of Reginald of the Victories took her life. The stones of their home Coldstone Castle iced over, ill fortune plagued the clan and everyone knew the chief's dead bride had cursed them. However, they believed that as long as the clan's fleet sailed the seas, the curse would not consume them. But now, the fleet has been destroyed and the clan has lost its wealth and power.

Stewart Glen, Scotland – 1514. Masked in a Gypsy guise, Broderick MacDougal hides his vampiric identity while seeking to destroy the man who slaughtered his family. When an old Clan rival ensnares Broderick in a trap using an enticing widow, he is compelled to discover if she is bait or an accomplice, and the cinnamon-haired beauty is his next conquest. Widow of an abusive husband, Davina Stewart-Russell clings to the only image that gave her strength during those dark times - the Gypsy rogue who stole her heart as a youth. After nine years, she is finally face-to-face with him again, but reality clashes with fantasy as she is confronted with Broderick's passionate pursuit.

Sixteen-year-old Philippa Somerville has left Constantinople intact. Returning to England as wife in name only to Francis Crawford of Lymond, she wastes no time in seeking the truth about her new spouse, even as she finds herself navigating the paranoid court of Queen Mary. Lymond, meanwhile, arrives in Moscow to assist its young Tsar Ivan to create a fledgling Russian army. But when he is tasked to visit London as Ivan's envoy, his path is bound to cross that of the wife he has sworn to divorce.

After being away at fencing school for seven years, James Knightly has returned as a master swordsman, ready to captain his own ship and finally wed his childhood sweetheart, Cailin MacDougal. What he finds waiting for him is a dagger-toting hellion for a bride, an immortal father-in-law, and an enemy bent on extracting revenge by threatening the family James holds most dear - the MacDougals.

James Harrison has recently moved to a restored hunting lodge in Sutherland with his gorgeous private nurse Gloria Dainty. When Hamish visits Mr. Harrison to welcome him to the neighborhood, the old man treats him very rudely. Gloria apologises for her employer's behavior, and Hamish takes the plunge and invites her out for dinner. On the appointed evening, Hamish waits for Gloria at the restaurant. And waits. But Gloria never shows up. Four days later, Gloria's body washes up on the beach near Braikie.

All Sergeant Hamish Macbeth ever wants is a quiet life in the tranquil surroundings of Lochdubh, his home village in the Scottish Highlands. Although the area he polices is vast, he's happiest when he's working alone, yet the police authorities insist he has an assistant. In the past, they have supplied a variety of problematic misfits, but they surpass themselves with their latest effort - an American named James Bland.

Most newcomers don't stay long in remote Lochdubh - usually boredom, dampness and nosy locals drive them out. But it looks as if artist Effie Garrard has come to stay. When Hamish Macbeth calls on her he's amazed to find the woman in residence after a particularly harsh winter. Unfortunately, Effie is also quite delusional, having convinced herself that fellow local artist Jock Fleming is in love with her and that they are engaged. But after a lover's scrap with Jock, Effie is found dead, poisoned by hemlock.

A dawn raid on the home of a suspected rapist leads to a chilling discovery, a disturbing collection hidden under floorboards. Narey is terrified at the potential scale of what they've found and of what brutalities it may signal. When the photographs are ruled inadmissible as evidence and the man walks free from court, Narey knows she's let down the victim she'd promised to protect and a monster is back on the streets.

When 14-year-old Maisie Riddell goes missing from a Glasgow high school, DCI Dani Bevan knows she needs to act fast, particularly as the headmistress is the wife of her DS, Phil Boag. But as the inquiry into the girl's disappearance deepens, Bevan finds herself caught in the fallout from a broken marriage, unsure of whose word she can really trust. The DCI is required to take her search to Norway in order to discover the truth about Maisie's secret life.

Just when Hamish most needs him - the dentist turns up dead... In Scotland, where thrift and a 'nice set of dentures' are generally admired, dental surgeon Dr Frederick Gilchrist's cheap rates and penchant for pulling teeth have gained him a clientele. However, wiser Highlanders (like Hamish Macbeth) opt to steer clear of this reputed womanizer's all-too-busy hands. Only jaw-throbbing agony drives Hamish to Gilchrist's surgery, but what he finds is the dentist's dead body - putting several angry husbands in the frame for murder...

The most hated man in the most dour town in Scotland is sleeping with the fishes, or - more accurately - has been dumped into a tank filled with crustaceans. All that remains of the murdered victim are his bones. But once the lobsters have been shipped off to Britain’s best restaurants, the whole affair quickly lands on the plate of Constable Hamish Macbeth. Exiled to the dreary outpost of Cnothan, Macbeth sorely misses his beloved Lochdubh, but before he can head back home he has to contend with a detective chief inspector who wants the murder hushed up.

Mrs. Gillespie is famous around the northwest of Sutherland for being the best charwoman ever. Of course, if anyone has any social pretensions one does not say charwoman, one talks about "my maid". Hamish Macbeth wins Mrs. Gillespie's services in a church raffle but spends most of the day trying to avoid her. She is a malicious gossip and she bangs around the furniture and clanks pots--he wonders how on earth she managed to get such a good reputation.

The unconventional Hamish Macbeth finds that his own impetuousness places him at the center of a murder investigation. Everyone in the Scottish Highlands village of Lochdubh called Randy Duggan 'the Macho Man'. Duggan went around the village and bragged about everything he had done and said he once was a wrestler in America and an explorer in the Middle East. At first his outrageous stories drew an admiring crowd at the local pub, but soon his bullying ways lead to anger and violence.