Showing results by narrator "Dan Bottomley" in All Categories

Pick a card... Pick a side... Ryder Waites thought amnesia from a childhood accident was his biggest problem. Then a fallen angel tried to kill him on the London Underground. Now he's dodging assassins while uncovering an impossible truth: he's the heir to the Royal Court of Spades, part of one of the most powerful magical organisations in existence. But someone murdered his mother — the Queen of Spades — before she could restore his missing memories... and powers.

After the year Aidan and I have had, we needed some respite. My husband is overworked, whilst I'm anxious about the past, so renting a night at this converted barn house in the countryside seems like the perfect place for the pair of us to relax and unwind. It might be situated at the bottom of a large garden, but it's private enough that we don't have to mingle with the homeowners who live nearby. Or at least that's what I thought . . .

DI Thomas Ridpath was on the up in the Manchester CID: a promising detective who captured a notorious serial killer. But 10 years later, he’s recovering from a serious illness and on the brink of being forced out of the police. Then people start dying, in an uncanny echo of his first case.

When ten-year-old Felix drops a penny in the wishing fountain at the center of town, he really doesn't expect his sixteen-year-old sister to suddenly like him again, or to offer to share a cinnamon bun or watch cartoons like they used to. She hasn't even remembered she was supposed to give him a ride home! But someone else is at the fountain too: a strange old man with a fishing pole who claims to be invisible.

Play with fire, and you're going to get burned. The unputdownable new Ridpath crime thriller. In Manchester, a block of flats is burning. The only victim is a middle-aged man, sat watching TV. Are the fire and the man's death an accident or is something more frightening at work? Meanwhile, DI Ridpath is back with his wife and enjoying work at the Coroner's Office, his myeloma still in remission. But the quiet life is soon shattered by a new threat.

Podkin is the son of a warrior chieftain. He knows that one day it will be up to him to lead his warren and guard it in times of danger. But for now, he's quite happy to laze around. Then Podkin's home is brutally attacked, and the young rabbits are forced to flee. With danger all around them, Podkin must protect his family and attempt to defeat the most horrifying enemy rabbitkind has ever known.

Ron Fawcett is a natural-born climber. In 1969, while still at school in his native Yorkshire, he tied into a climbing rope for the first time and was instantly hooked. From that moment on, it seemed nothing else in his life mattered nearly as much as his next vertical fix... Fawcett found the pressures of the limelight too much to bear, and at the end of the 1980s he faded from view. Now, for the first time, he tells his extraordinary story, of how his love of nature and the outdoors developed into a passion for climbing that took him to the top - and almost consumed him.

A death in custody. A life in jeopardy. When Ben Holdsworth dies alone in a police cell, riots erupt in Manchester. But after a post mortem, the authorities have decided nobody was to blame. DI Ridpath is asked to investigate by the coroner before an inquest, and immediately uncovers some discrepancies in the witness statements. Why was the CCTV not working that night? Where was the custody sergeant, and did he know the victim? Wherever he turns there are lies and gaps. It's a dangerous game and the net is closing... On Ridpath himself.

After a tornado uproots her from her home in Kansas, Dorothy and her beloved dog, Toto, are whisked away to the strange and magical Land of Oz! Landing in Munchkin Country and accidentally killing the Wicked Witch of the East, Dorothy and Toto embark on a quest to find the only person who can help them return home: Oz, the Great and Terrible Wizard.

Driven by revenge, Serena and Gallows must join forces to take down the conspiracy before the kingdom falls to ruin. Symphony of the Wind is the first audiobook in a gritty epic fantasy trilogy. If you like hardened heroes, bloody action, dark magic, and monsters, then you’ll love Steven McKinnon’s visceral adventure.

A child's body in an unmarked grave. A killer waiting to strike again. A young boy's body is found in a meadow beside the River Mersey. No DNA. No witnesses. No clues. It brings back painful memories of the Moors Murderers.

Join Stella Starflake Pearl and her three fellow explorers as they trek across the snowy Icelands and come face-to-face with frost fairies, snow queens, outlaw hideouts, unicorns, pygmy dinosaurs and carnivorous cabbages.... When Stella and three other junior explorers get separated from their expedition, will they be able to cross the frozen wilderness and live to tell the tale?

Three severed hands. No clues. A race against time. Three embalmed hands are discovered in a disused Victorian house. Is it a gangland ritual? The work of a cult? Or just a prank played by Medical Students? And what happened to the bodies? Meanwhile the Coroner needs to issue a Presumption of Death certificate on a teenage girl who vanished eleven years ago in mysterious circumstances. As hints emerge the two cases are connected, DI Ridpath pushes himself to the limit to find out what really happened.

This year the secret service made a major mix -up. They mistook a 13-year-old boy called Kevin for a secret agent (I know, so much for an 'intelligence' agency). This was the sort of kid that would try and zip wire across a building and end up falling headfirst into a fountain, with his bum on show. Despite this, it is up to Kevin to save us all from an evil supervillain!

Danny Mack's mates are brilliant: there's his best mate Giraffles (yeh, you read that right), so-called because of his unusually long neck; the MandM twins (you got it - like the chocolate) who are always finishing each other's sentences; and Lucky Success, who, well I reckon you can guess how he got his name. They're the best mates a kid could ask for, and when an epic school trip is announced, they're all properly made up about it. Because school trips are just an excuse to have a big laugh with your mates, right? Erm, wrong.

The past is never over. It's just waiting for an opportunity to return... When the notorious serial killer the Beast of Manchester was captured, the streets should have been safe. Except the police got the wrong man. An innocent person was convicted, and only later was the culprit put away. Now, those connected to the case are being targeted. Someone wants revenge. DI Thomas Ridpath has to relive the horrors all over again. As the bodies stack up once more, Ridpath knows the answers lie in the mistakes made the first time round.

One chance encounter, one murder, will change everything. DI Thomas Ridpath is in the process of getting his life back together when everything goes wrong. Caught in a gruesome motorway incident, one question remains: why did nobody else see what happened? Ridpath's investigations soon pulls the police force itself into question, and hints at something even more sinister. With Manchester on the brink of violence unlike anything seen in decades, Ridpath must battle this unprecedented conflict alongside his own demons...

The controversial science that claims to have revolutionised economics. For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimise our own ‘utility’. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don’t really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational, we are prone to ‘cognitive biases’ with complex effects on decision-making, such as forgetting to prepare for retirement.

Nowhere is safe. No one can be trusted. A bloodied body is found in a Manchester Immigrant Removal Centre. The investigating officer and the pathologist seem certain: a suicide. But for DI Ridpath something doesn't add up. As the evidence starts to unravel, and with few leads, the pressure is on to find answers before the Inquest is closed. Caught between the police, the coroner and a system that doesn't care, Ridpath isn't making any friends.

Tomek lives a quiet life running his late parents' village store, which has everything you could ever need, and more. Then one day a girl visits. She asks Tomek if he sells something he's never heard of before: a drop of water from the magical River Qjar, which flows back to front and upside down. When he admits he has none, she slips away.