Showing results by narrator "James Bryce" in All Categories

The Clyde Valley Stompers became, in the 1950s, Scotland's first ever super group. In 1961, at just 20 years of age, Peter 'Pete' Kerr inherited leadership of the Clydes after they moved to London. The band stormed the charts the following year and were launched into the glitzy world of mainstream popular music. Then, to the dismay of the Stompers' legions of fans, the curtain came down. But this is more than just a chronicle of their rise and fall.

From acclaimed author Quintin Jardine comes the latest gripping mystery in his bestselling Bob Skinner series. Amidst a family celebration, a cataclysmic storm uncovers long-buried horrors - and a team of detectives struggle to solve a thirty-year-old double murder. The police are also searching...

When millionaire Leo Speight is found poisoned at his Ayrshire mansion, Police Scotland has a tough case on its hands. The charismatic young Speight was a champion boxer with national hero status. A long list of lovers and friends stand to benefit from his estate. Did one of them decide to speed things up? Or was jealousy or rivalry the motive? Suspecting links to organised crime, the Security Service wants to stay close to the investigation. They have just the man to send in: ex-Chief Constable Bob Skinner.

A plane explodes mid-flight and plunges to disaster from the Scottish skies, the British and American defence secretaries among the victims. Now Edinburgh’s Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner must lead the most high-profile investigation of his career. The means of destruction is apparent from the start, but the investigation quickly grows more puzzling. When Skinner himself is wrenched from the case, his colleagues struggle with the mass of clues while he fights for his life, trapped with the secret horrors of his past.

1818, Carluke, Lanarkshire. Mathew Fleming returns home to Scotland following heroic service at the Battle of Waterloo. After seven years away, he is a ghostly presence to those he left behind. But Mathew is ambitious and soon becomes a man of influence in his country and beyond. Yet through all his success, he still hides the loss of his one true love. When a terrible act of murder occurs, Mathew must choose between the rule of blood and the rule of law.

DCC Bob Skinner has a failed marriage on his hands and a death on his conscience, but little time to deal with either as he faces the biggest challenge of his career within the secret corridors where dark power is wielded. Four crimes, four crises: can Skinner and his people solve them?

When two young female artists are murdered in what looks like ritualistic killings, the pressure is on to find a highly professional murderer. The arrival of the father of one of the victims, millionaire businessman Davor Boras, brings in the big guns of the Home Office, MI5, and the CIA. It isn't long before Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner gets called back to the front line in a case that is as deadly as it is mysterious.

With his boss recovering from a heart attack, Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner is filling his shoes - and that means more time behind a desk. But he's about to be provided with more drama than he could ever want. One of the world's most ruthless terrorists is on his way to Edinburgh - and he can only have one thing on his mind: the forthcoming conference of world heads of government.

From the author of ‘The Music of the Primes’ and ‘Finding Moonshine’ comes a short, lively book on five mathematical problems that just refuse be solved – and on how many everyday problems can be solved by maths. Every time we download a song from Itunes, take a flight across the...

In the house of a Roman Catholic bishop a man lies in a pool of blood. Out in the bishop’s diocese the quiet life of parish priest Father Vincent Ross is about to be thrown into turmoil by a terrifying revelation. There are ugly scandals being hidden by the church, and a murderer is on the prowl. The police and the authorities are groping in the dark, but Father Ross has been given special information that he cannot disclose to anyone.

Assistant Chief Constable Bob Skinner's legendary cool is shaken when he's faced with the bodies of his wife's parents, who have been brutally murdered. At the death scene in New York state, Skinner's out of his jurisdiction - but he's not going to let that stop him shaping the investigation.

The twenty-fifth novel in the Bob Skinner series sees the Edinburgh cop undertake a very different assignment. After thirty years of service, former chief constable Bob Skinner faces the possible end of his police career at its pinnacle. A quiet trip to Catalunya to contemplate his future soon takes on a different flavour when Skinner is approached by an old friend, media owner Xavier Aislado, with an unusual request. One of his business' brightest talents, Hector Sureda Roca, has vanished without a trace.

Fifteen years in the past, newly promoted Detective Superintendent Bob Skinner is called to investigate a most brutal death. A man lies at the deep end of an empty swimming pool, his neck broken and almost every other bone in his body shattered. Soon, an organised-crime connection looms, and bloody retribution spreads to a second city. Then violence erupts on a new front, as a vicious knifeman seems to be targeting Edinburgh's gay population.

Skinner's Thursday Legends amateur football team has more to worry about than aching backs and dodgy knees. Is someone targeting this disparate group of colleagues and friends in some bizarre scheme of retribution? Or is the murderer one of them?

When the sleepy Scottish village of Cuddyford is colonised by well-heeled retirees and big-city commuters, Jigger McCloud, a Jack-the-lad local with an eye for the ladies, isn’t slow to make a quick buck at their expense. Life seems rosy for Jigger and his odd-but-loveable family, until he tries to scam a mysterious foreign millionaire, who arrives on the scene with plans to develop the area in unappealing ways. The folk of Cuddyford, native and otherwise, promptly close ranks.

Doogie O’Mara, a young Scottish veterinary student, applies for a gap-year job as a tour rep in Africa, where he also hopes to find time to study the wildlife. Instead, he finds himself on Mallorca, thrust in at the deep end of the madcap package tour business. Gannets are the only form of wildlife encountered. But these aren’t the sort of birds he can treat. These are laden with fun-seeking holidaymakers! Problems are bound to arise, and they do, as does the bewitching influence of Mallorca and a beautiful young Mallorquina called Catalina.

Talking It Better is a practical book about the everyday practice of counseling and psychotherapy, written by a practitioner for fellow practitioners. Using case studies based on his own clients, Elton carefully examines what helps and what hinders the process of change in the therapy room. At the heart of therapeutic work, he argues, is the development of effective mind skills. And he shows us that, when it comes to developing our mind skills, practice is often far more important than insight or theory.

A small time crook stumbles upon a body hanging from a tree; a veteran from a Belgian marching band is killed in a hit and run incident and another dies of an apparent heart attack.

Eight folktales from all the corners of the world, wonderfully retold, reaching from the Caribbean to Russia. Hours of audio fun to keep children entertained while on the move! Introduce your family to a selection of folk tales from around the world, written especially for children. Filled with...

Four Albanian gangsters have infiltrated Edinburgh. They are smart guys, ruthless operators and deep undercover. MI5 are on their case and, unknown to DCC Bob Skinner and his men, they have set up a drug-dealing sting to flush the gangsters out.