Showing results by narrator "Sam Dastor" in All Categories

December 1864. As a cold winter wind scours the Worcestershire countryside, an excursion train comes through a tunnel in the Malvern Hills, only to be confronted by a blockage on the line ahead. The driver manages to slow the train down so that the impact is minimised, but the passengers are alarmed. The first person to alight is Cyril Hubbleday, the man in charge of the excursion. He walks to the front of the locomotive—and, as he is talking to the driver, fireman and guard, he is shot dead by a sniper.

On a dark, brooding evening on the Isle of Wight, Agnes Raybould and her companion find themselves an empty first-class compartment on the train. But before long a middle-aged man, clearly in high spirits after dining at his club, joins them, and begins a conversation. His name is Edwin Blanchard – and within moments of the train leaving the station, Agnes and her accomplice strangle him.

An exquisite silver coffee-pot in the shape of a locomotive is on its way to Cardiff in the care of silversmith, Hugh Kellow. When the coffee-pot is stolen and a murder is committed, Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called in to investigate.

1865. A passenger train stands in York station. Jack Follis, the guard, patrols the platform to make sure that everyone is safely aboard. Returning to the brake van to load a box into it, he is alarmed by a smell of burning. Before he can find the cause, there is an explosion and the van is engulfed in flames. Responding to summons from the North-Eastern Railway, Robert Colbeck and Victor Leeming are sent to investigate. The two are split on whether a murder has taken place. Although the information they received was scant, Colbeck is convinced this is a murder case.

An American visitor to India is killed on the road from Bombay to Poona. Called in to investigate the murder, Inspector Ghote soon makes the acquaintance of the victim's brother, Professor Gregory Strongbow. But the professor is both stubborn and evasive, refusing to tell Ghote what he knows about the events leading up to Hector's death. Soon Ghote finds his own life in danger, as he is faced with a conspiracy that reaches to the very highest levels of Indian politics... This is the third book in the hugely popular 'Inspector Ghote' series from H.R.F. Keating.

Searing. Explosive. Lyrical. Compassionate. Here is the astonishing new novel by the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger, a book that took rage and anger at injustice and turned it into a thrilling murder story. Now, with the same fearlessness and insight, Aravind Adiga broadens...

This was no ordinary murder, for the victim was Frank Masters, millionaire and philanthropist. The case was bound to attract much public attention. But Inspector Ghote finds that his demands for evidence are met with nothing but lies and evasions.

“An uncannily honest writer,” Amitav Ghosh has published firsthand accounts of pivotal world events in publications including the New York Times, Granta, and the New Yorker (The New York Times Book Review). This volume brings together the finest of these pieces, chronicling the turmoil of our times.

A collection of RD Wingfield’s finest thrillers from the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties Best known for his ‘Inspector Jack Frost’ series of novels, RD Wingfield also penned a string of gripping thrillers for BBC Radio. Initially thought lost, many of the 14 dramas in this collection were...

Here are the stories of nine great adventures and the lives of the men who took part in them. They pushed back the frontiers of man's knowledge of the world by their vision, courage, and sheer doggedness. They were very different people, from bold adventurers facing the unknown with enjoyment to careful, more scientific individuals. Their journeys are placed within their historical context, but also contain the words of the men themselves.

Former government minister Ralph Singh is the perpetual outsider: displaced, disillusioned, and now living in exile, Ralph reflects on his earlier life and the searing effects of colonialism. Ralph's constant estrangement sees him ever attempting to fit into various communities, only to find home in more transient spaces. Born on the tropical island of Isabella, he is one of West India's many "Mimic Men".

Yorkshire 1855. When Colonel Aubrey Tarleton walks into the path of a speeding train, he is crushed to death on the track. The famous Railway Detective, Inspector Robert Colbeck, is immediately put on the case to determine why such a well-respected man would have resorted to suicide. Tarleton's wife had recently gone missing, but was the colonel responsible for her disappearance? It's up to Colbeck and his trusty sergeant Victor Leeming to uncover the truth.

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

When Robert Pomeroy, a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, finds a letter slipped under his door in the early hours of a rainy day, he flies into a panic. He hurries to the railway station. But he doesn’t reach his destination alive. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate this tragedy on the railway. It soon becomes apparent that Cambridge’s hopes of success in the forthcoming boat race rested on Pomeroy’s shoulders.

A couple's tranquil life abroad is irrevocably transformed by the arrival of their son's widow and children, in the latest from Somalia's most celebrated novelist. For decades, Gacalo and Mugdi have lived in Oslo, where they've led a peaceful, largely assimilated life and raised two children...

No great composer’s story is more predominantly happy than Haydn’s, though even his has its share of clouds. A classic rags-to-riches tale, it sees him move from humble beginnings through decades as a liveried servant to his emergence as the most popular and successful composer of his time. One of the healthiest and least neurotic artists in musical history, he did more than any other single figure to pioneer the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet - and he was the first truly great practitioner of each.

The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation - of both human life and the natural environment - and the origin of our contemporary climate crisis. Tracing the threats to our future to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean, The Nutmeg's Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. The story of the nutmeg becomes a parable revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials.

In a small, provincial town in the heart of India, a politician’s wife has done her husband’s career a great service, by dying under suspicious circumstances. That the corpse and the trail have been cold for fifteen years hasn’t saved Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID from being sent to investigate. But what chance does he have when his chief suspect is so powerful, when the whole district is against him, and when a holy man is fasting to the death to protest his prying?

In The Guiding Light, Dr Kalam chooses the finest examples of writings from the numerous books, religious texts, philosophical tracts and poetry that he has read over the years. These words have impacted and shaped his thinking, helped him in times of need and made him the person he is. He has quoted from these works in his writings and lectures that have inspired millions of people he has met all over the world.

Sent to a remote part of India to find out who could benefit from Judge Asif's death, Ghote can get no cooperation from the judge until it becomes evident that the anonymous threats are coming from someone in the judge's household.