Showing results by narrator "Rose Akroyd" in All Categories

A hundred years ago, a team of archaeologists in the Valley of the Kings made a remarkable discovery: a near-complete royal burial, an ancient mummy and golden riches beyond imagination. The lost tomb of Tutankhamun ignited a media frenzy, propelled into overdrive by rumours of a deadly ancient curse. But amid the hysteria, many stories—including that of Tutankhamun himself—were distorted or forgotten. Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma takes a familiar tale and turns on its head.

The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and secure a place at the revered Fulda monastery. So begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of Fulda, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome.

When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child, when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her remote, cruel grandfather was one of the regime's generals and as she sifts through the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather amass such a trove? What human price was paid for them? Helena's desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology.

Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, Witchcraft is a “well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruelest moments in history” (Buzz Magazine), giving voice to those who have been silenced by history.

The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as well over a hundred thousand people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they proved no match for the forces of the lords.

In Summer of Blood, the first history of the German Peasants' War in a generation, historian Lyndal Roper exposes the far-reaching ramifications of this rebellion. Though the war's victors portrayed the uprising as naive and inchoate, Roper reveals a mass movement that sought to make good on the radical potential of the Protestant Reformation. By recovering what the people themselves felt and believed, Summer of Blood reconstructs the thrilling, tragic story of the peasants' fight to change the world.

Kat Frank knows all about loss. A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her intuition. Picked to lead a pilot program that has her paired with Lock, an AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity)—a hologram that is activated by a device on Kat’s wrist—Kat’s gut reactions about people and motives come up against Lock’s statistical calculations and data analysis that can be devised in seconds. But as the two missing person’s cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help when the case begins to target Kat personally.

When the body of a man is found crucified at the top of a hill in the British midlands, AIDE Lock—the world’s first AI Detective—and Detective Kat Frank are thrust into the spotlight as they are given their first live case. When a second body is found the police issue an extraordinary warning to local males aged between 30 and 40 years old. With the national media and local men in an uproar, Kat and Lock have to combine their instincts and algorithms to catch the killer before they can strike again.

Throughout Guatemala’s thirty-six-year armed conflict, state forces killed more than two hundred thousand people. Argentina’s military dictatorship disappeared up to thirty thousand people. In the wake of genocidal violence, families of the missing searched for the truth. Young scientists joined their fight against impunity. Gathering evidence in the face of intimidation and death threats, they pioneered the field of forensic exhumation for human rights.

Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only white foods. Her etiquette handbook guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is clever headstrong Dolly, now on the cusp of leaving home. Into this carefully ordered world step Vita and Rollo, a couple who move in next door.

In The Life of Dad, Dr Machin draws on her research and the latest findings in genetics, neuroscience and psychology to tell the story of fatherhood. She will show the extraordinary physiological changes a man undergoes when he becomes a father, investigate how a man’s genes can influence what sort of father he will be, and show how a dad makes a unique contribution to his child’s life, helping to foster independence of mind and spirit.

The woman haunted by the fate of her predecessor. Eleven days after the death of Anne Boleyn, Jane is dressing for her wedding to the King. She has witnessed at firsthand how courtly play can quickly turn to danger and knows she must bear a son...or face ruin. This new Queen must therefore step out from the shadows cast by Katherine and Anne - in doing so, can she expose a gentler side to the brutal King?

When friends Louise and Irina find a dead body in the local park whilst walking their dogs, they are soon drawn into the mystery of who murdered local entrepreneur Phil Creasey. Phil used to be a member of their dog walking community – nicknamed The Pack – until the death of his cockapoo, and The Pack feel they owe it to Phil to investigate his death. With Louise and Irina leading the charge, they soon come up against local drug dealers, stolen cars and a disturbing incident of poisoned dog biscuits.

When Yaz and her dog Herc find a dead man on a bench along the canal with chicken bones lying around him, she immediately calls Louise – and the police. The case is odd: a chicken bone has been forcibly rammed down the victim’s throat, and the last person to see him was their friend – and Pack-mate – Claire. When the police take Claire into custody, the Pack mobilize, determined to find the real killer.

Anywhere But Here is a powerful exposé of Britain’s broken asylum system and how it fails us all. Each year tens of thousands of people risk their lives to cross the Channel in small boats hoping to find safety in Britain. Yet the very system designed to protect them has all but collapsed. With unique and unparalleled access, award-winning journalist and former Home Office insider Nicola Kelly takes us behind the scenes of the small boats crisis for the first time.

In book four, something mysterious is going on at Tigger's Barn and the Secret Seven are intrigued. Peter thinks it's all just gossip, but Jack isn't so sure when he overhears a strange conversation. It looks like the Seven are on the trail of another exciting adventure!

Fresh from successfully closing their first live case, the Future Policing Unit are called in to investigate when a headless, handless body is found on a Warwickshire farm. But as they work to identify the victim and their killer, the discovery of a second body begins to spark fears that The Aston Strangler is back. And as the stakes rise for the team, so do the tensions brewing within it. When DCS Kat Frank is accused of putting the wrong man behind bars all those years ago, AIDE Lock - the world's first AI Detective - pursues the truth about what happened with relentless logic.

Solve the mystery with the Secret Seven - everyone's favourite detective club! These timeless stories are perfect for young fans of mystery, adventure or detective series. In book seven, the Secret Seven have a fantastic new hiding place, but somebody else has been using it, too. Whoever it is is going there at night, and the gang are determined to catch the cheeky intruder, whatever it takes. Solve the mystery! The story was first published in 1955. This recording has been amended since the previous version (2013) to revert to the original text wherever possible.

In the summer of 1957, anxious to impress an admirer who had moved to Paris, while rebelling against her family, Gill Johnson, aged twenty-five, gave up her comfortable job at the National Gallery in London and travelled to Venice to take up a job teaching English to an aristocratic Italian family. Love from Venice is her vivid evocation of that summer, the last hurrah of the European Grand Tour, when the international jet set lit upon the city for their fun.

DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss. A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificial Intelligence Detective Entity) Lock, Kat's instincts come up against Lock's logic. But when the two missing person's cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal. AI versus human experience. Logic versus instinct. With lives on the line can the pair work together before someone else becomes another statistic?