Showing results by narrator "Doyle Gerard" in All Categories

Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.

The Irish soldier has never been a stranger to fighting the enemy with the odds stacked against him. The notion of charging into adversity has been a cherished part of Ireland's military history. In September 1961, another chapter should have been written into the annals, but it is a tale that lay shrouded in dust for years. The men of A Company, 35th Irish Infantry Battalion, arrived in the Congo as a United Nations contingent to help keep the peace. For many it would be their first trip outside their native shores.

A series of nuclear strikes has left huge swathes of the country uninhabitable. It’s a level playing field now: both Hater and Unchanged alike have to fight to stay alive. Both have retreated to their camps to regroup, less than 20 miles away from each other. It’s here that the last major battle of the final war will inevitably be fought, but neither side has any idea what’s waiting for them just around the corner.

As 1995 dawns in the North of Ireland, Belfast is a city of army patrols, bombed-out buildings, and “peace walls” segregating one community from the other. But the IRA has called a ceasefire. So, it’s as good a time as any for Monty Collins and Father Brennan Burke to visit the city: Monty to do a short gig in a law firm, and Brennan to reconnect with family. And it’s a good time for Brennan’s cousin Ronan to lay down arms and campaign for election in a future peacetime government. But then a man goes off a bridge on a dark, lonely road; a rogue IRA enforcer is shot; and a series of car bombs remains an unsolved crime.

1930s Austria. Vienna is a bustling cosmopolitan city on the brink of war. Matthias Sindelar is an internationally renowned soccer player known as “The Paper Man” because of his effortless weave across the field. When Sindelar speaks out against Hitler, his fame can’t protect him from being placed under Gestapo surveillance. Meanwhile, Sindelar falls in love with a young Jewish girl named Rebekah. As the atmosphere in Vienna darkens under the Nazi regime, Rebekah flees to relatives in Cork, Ireland.1930s Austria.

A toy soldier. A butter dish. A compass. Mundane objects, perhaps, but to the remarkable authors in this collection, artifacts such as these have inspired stories that go to the heart of the human experience of World War I. Each author was invited to choose an object that had a connection to the war - a writing kit for David Almond, a helmet for Michael Morpurgo - and use it as the inspiration for an original short story.

Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle shines with this epic conclusion to the saga of his indomitable Irish rebel Henry Smart. Chronicling nearly 25 years of history, The Dead Republic finds Smart working closely with, then violently severing ties to, legendary Hollywood director John Ford and eventually returning to Ireland in the 1950s. Desiring a quiet retired life in a small village north of Dublin, his life is further thrown into tumult by IRA uprisings and a surprising reunion with a woman who may just be his long-lost wife.

It is 1863, but not the one it should be. Time has veered wildly off course, and moves are being made that will lead to a devastating world war. Prime Minister Lord Palmerston believes that by possessing the three Eyes of Naga he'll be able to manipulate events and avoid the war. He already has two of the stones, but he needs Sir Richard Francis Burton to recover the third.

Nine-year-old Louis Drax lies in a coma in a hospital bed, re-living the events that led to his near-fatal fall into a ravine. Despite being attracted to the boy's mother Natalie Drax, Louis' doctor, Pascal Dannachet, begins reluctantly to question her version of Louis' accident and the apparent culpability of her missing husband. As the boy struggles to communicate from within his coma, the chilling truth emerges....

In this second mystery featuring Chief Inspector Peter Cammon, the veteran detective is lured out of retirement once more. With a familiar cast of characters reacquainting themselves with readers of the series, the novel follows Peter as he embarks on his seemingly simple assignment: Travel to Canada to retrieve the body of a murdered Scotland Yard colleague. But Peter can’t resist delving into the oddities of the crime. His colleague was brutally attacked, run over by a car, and then dumped into a canal - all seemingly for the theft of three letters from the American Civil War era, one of which is signed by John Wilkes Booth.

Once There Was a Way: What if The Beatles Stayed Together? is a story of another reality, the one we wish had happened, where the Fab Four chose to work it out rather than let it be. This book is no mere fairy tale but a chronicle crafted from the people and events of our own history, shaped to create a brand-new narrative in which John, Paul, George, and Ringo find a way to stay friends and keep the band together. Imagine there was more. Lots more. It's easy if you try.

Abducted to 1763, Peter Schock and Kate Dyer begin to understand that history has reached a tipping point. The antigravity machine is in the hands of the cruel and ambitious Lord Luxon -- who has set his sights on the most valuable prize of all: America. He is determined to manipulate time to his advantage, no matter what the cost.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm by Christopher Paolini. A wanderer and a cursed child. Spells and magic. And dragons, of course. Welcome back to the world of Alagaësia. It's been a year since Eragon departed Alagaësia in search of the perfect home to train a new generation of Dragon Riders. Now he is struggling with an endless sea of tasks: constructing a vast dragonhold, wrangling with suppliers, guarding dragon eggs and dealing with belligerent Urgals and haughty elves.

Somewhere in the teeming heart of London is a man on a lethal mission. His cause: A long-overdue lesson on the importance of manners. When a man gives a public tongue-lashing to a misbehaving child, or a parking lot attendant is rude to a series of customers, the "Manners Killer" makes sure that the next thing either sees is the beginning of his own grisly end.

Jonathan Barnes, a shining new talent in the UK, intrigues listeners with his "wonderfully original concoction[s] of grotesque humour and sparkling prose" ( Guardian) - providing a literary "cabinet stuffed with curiosities" ( Observer). In The Domino Men, an ordinary office-working Brit discovers that he may be destined to wipe out the wicked House of Windsor.

At just 16, Nancy Martin leaves the small island of Cape Clear for the mainland, the only member of her family to survive the effects of the Great Famine. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she is irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair and a devastating chain of events that continues to unfold over three generations. Spanning more than a century, Billy O’Callaghan’s Life Sentences weaves together the journey of an Irish family determined against all odds to be free.

Drawing on the author’s personal experiences with both tame and wild moose, this handbook contains a wealth of information about this unique animal from all corners of the world. An overview of moose biology is featured, including their specialized diet and the relationship between sex and antlers, where size really does matter. Covering the history of moose on earth and the marked fluctuations in populations that have occurred over time, this guide also contains accessible chapters exploring moose diseases, moose and traffic, moose as a resource, and the uses of live moose in several ways, ranging from transport and clothing to dairy animals and pets.

GBH, short for Grievous Bodily Harm, is an unnerving tale of paranoia and madness in the heart of the 1970s London criminal underworld. Two intertwining narratives - past and present - chronicle the man's tragic fall from power. In London, Fowler resides at the head of a lucrative criminal syndicate that specializes in the production and distribution of "blue films" - illegal pornography and some nasty stuff. Fowler is king, with a beautiful girl at his side and a swanky penthouse office....

Six Award-Winning Authors have contributed new stories to A Timeless Romance Anthology: Silver Bells. Listeners will love this collection of six historical romance novellas, all centered around the Christmas season.

A World on Edge is the story of the aftermath of World War I, a transformative time when a new world seemed possible - told from the vantage of people, famous and ordinary, who lived through the turmoil..