Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Brighton, 1882: Albert Moscrop spends his holiday peering at beachgoers through a telescope, piecing together disarmingly trivial observations into a compelling drama for his own amusement. A keen student of human nature, Moscrop concentrates his interest on one particular family - the Protheros, especially the beautiful Zena Prothero, whose husband appears to take her for granted. Moscrop gradually moves into the circle of the Prothero family, only to become involved in a sensational murder.

It took us 200 years to establish 15 colonies on the closest habitable planets to Earth. It took the Ghosts only 20 years to destroy them. Navy pilot Colm Mackenzie is no stranger to the Ghosts. He has witnessed firsthand the mayhem and tragedy they leave in their wake. No one knows where they came from or how they travel or what they want. They know only one thing for sure: Ghosts leave no survivors.

Researching her family tree had been little more than a hobby - until Katie stepped onto Kingsley House’s sprawling, ivy-strewn drive. The house may be crumbling today, but it was once the intimidatingly opulent residence of the St Clairs, Katie’s ancestors. Arriving here 200 years later, emotion stirs in Katie: a strange nostalgia for a place she’s never seen before...and when Kingsley House comes up for sale, Katie is determined that her family must buy it.

In 1903, fishermen find a wrecked boat containing a woman, who has been badly beaten, and a young girl. In 1993, All Hallows is now a boarding school. Following his mother’s death and his father’s hasty remarriage, Lewis Tyler is banished to Dartmoor, stripped of his fashionable clothes, shorn of his long hair and left feeling more alone than ever. There he meets Isak, another lost soul, and whilst refurbishment of the dormitories is taking place, the boys are marooned up in the attic, in an old wing of the school.

Join acclaimed travel writer and incurably curious hiker Tom Chesshyre in this celebration of the Peak District, Britain’s first National Park, on its 75th anniversary 'Funny, fair and honest, and effortlessly readable' Matthew Parris In the heart of England lies a fascinating landscape of...

Newly estranged from his girlfriend, Lindy Hey, Inspector Domenic Jejeune returns to Southern Ontario, where he receives news that his brother, Damian, has gone missing in Wood Buffalo National Park while conducting research on whooping cranes. Domenic immediately heads out to try to find him. Back in the UK, Jejeune’s plan to protect Lindy has failed, and she has been kidnapped by his old foe, Ray Hayes. Jejeune's trusty sergeant, Danny Maik, tracks down Lindy, but there is far more to the situation than he anticipated.

Strangling vines and meat-hungry flora fill this unruly garden of strange stories, selected for their significance as the seeds of the villainous (or perhaps just misunderstood) 'killer plant' in fiction, film and video games. Step within to marvel at Charlotte Perkins Gilman's giant wisteria and H.G. Wells' hungry orchid; hear the calls of the ethereal women of the wood and the frightful drone of the moaning lily; and do tread carefully around E. Nesbit's wandering creepers. Every strain of vegetable threat can be found within this new collection.

First contact: the dream that became a nightmare when the first alien life encountered swarmed locust-like through the solar system. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. With little hope of halting the invading forces, Earth's last, desperate roll of the die was to send out three colony ships - seeds of Earth - to different parts of the galaxy

A knock on the door in the middle of the night catches ex-Special Forces Simon Peake off guard. He only recognizes the face of one of the three men standing on the other side, and the 'help' they need is to dispose of a dead body crumpled in the trunk of their car. The problem is - the woman in the trunk isn't dead at all. In a matter of moments, Peake makes a call to help and protect this stranger, but it's a decision that will drag him back into the dark and dangerous world of drug cartels, mob bosses, and rogue CIA operatives who will stop at nothing to use Peake as a pawn in their games.

Lord Oliver Marsden should be more than happy with his life. He's been in love with Vincent for over a decade, and six months ago the impossible happened and they became lovers. But since then, nothing has changed. More specifically, Vincent hasn't changed. Oliver has tried to be patient - it took a lot for Vincent to accept the fact he preferred men. But what felt like a tiny distance between them six months ago now feels like an ever-widening chasm.

London, 1888. Though the beautiful Miriam Cromer has confessed to the murder of her husband’s assistant, she is still confident of her acquittal. But then, she is sentenced to hang. She blames her husband, but he has an alibi. Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray must discover what really happened at Park Lodge on 12th March, 1888, and quickly.

When their dog goes missing during a day trip to London, the Walker family are forced to accept that they may never see Henry again. But as the family search for their beloved pet, the reality of what has happened to Henry never even crosses their minds: Henry has been mistaken for one of the Queen's prized corgis.

Soldier Ralph Delchard and lawyer Gervase Bret lead a group of the king's finest commissioners into the war-torn lands of Yorkshire to settle land claims and compile the Domesday Book. One island of wealth and luxury remains in Yorkshire: the castle of merchant Aubrey Maminot. There the commissioners learn of two great terrors: the rogue Olaf Evil Child, a hero of the poor and conquered Saxon people, and the ravenous lions Aubrey Maminot keeps as pets.

A car speeds down a road between miles of marshes and estuary flats, its passenger a young woman named Agnes - hands bloodied, numbed with fear, her world turned upside down. Meanwhile, the news of a girl found dead on the marsh is spreading round the local area.

For Pyke and his crew it should have been just another heist. Travel to a backwater desert planet, break into a museum, steal a tracking device then use it to find a ship buried in the planet's vast and trackless sandy wastes. Except that the museum vault is a bioengineered chamber, and the tracking device is sought after by another gang of treasure hunters led by an old adversary of Pyke's, the devious Raven Kaligara. Also, the ship is a quarter of a million years old and about two kilometres long, and somewhere aboard it is the Essavyr Key....

Award-winning science writer David Adam reveals how frontier neuroscience can enhance your intelligence. What if the route to better brain power is not hard work or thousands of hours of practice but to simply swallow a pill? In The Genius Within, best-selling author David Adam explores the groundbreaking neuroscience of cognitive enhancement.

When unexpected disaster strikes Lord Westfield's Men during a packed performance, Nicholas Bracewell must save the day. Will a vagabond clown prophesy the end of the troupe - and perhaps the demise of Nick himself?

At two pm on a Monday in 1966, Ned Balfour wakes in Corsica beside a beautiful woman. In the same instant, back in London, fellow art dealer and Dachau survivor Sam Weiss falls 10 storeys to his death. Ned refuses to believe that Sam's death was intentional, and his investigation thrusts him into the deceit and fraudulence of the art world, where he unmasks more than one respectable face. First published in 1967, this thrilling tale of vertigo, suspicion and infidelity is a long-forgotten classic with an intriguing plot twist.

When an inmate is found unresponsive in his high security cell at Belmarsh prison, he's rushed to hospital for treatment. The prisoner is human trafficker and international fixer Tristan Huxley, a man a lot of people have good reason to want dead. But Huxley mysteriously never makes it to the hospital. He may have plenty of enemies but it seems he has some very powerful friends too.

1988: Thirteen-year-old Andy Miller and his friends - Carl, Brian, Johnny and Gavin - become witnesses to the vicious attack of their classmate, Poppy, and the brutal murder of her sister at a flooded railway line they call the frog ponds. They lead the police to a suspect, a vulnerable older boy whose differences single him out. But when he commits suicide, his guilt is never proven. And the crime goes unpunished, until . . .