Showing results by narrator "Jeff Harding" in All Categories

Her name is Elise Freeman, and her chilling cry for help - to whoever may be listening - comes too late to save her. On a DVD found near her lifeless body, the emotionally and physically battered woman chronicles a year-and-a-half-long ordeal of monstrous abuse at the hands of three sadistic tormentors. But even more shocking than the lurid details is the revelation that the offenders, like their victim, are teachers at one of LA's most prestigious prep schools.

True Detectives follows Moe Reed and Aaron Fox on the twisted trail of a missing girl, a dark, baffling whodunit that forces the brothers to put aside their mutual animus - and to confront the unresolved family mystery that turned them into enemies. PIs can do things, legally, that cops can't. And cops have access to resources denied their private counterparts.

It all starts with a cat-and-mouse chase to the death in a Baltimore funfair: the Jackal, Bourne's age-old antagonist, is back and Bourne is forced from his idyllic retirement with his wife and children to confront his enemy. In Europe, Russia and America there are men and women whose lust for power is disguised by their positions and respectability. Their aim: to gain control at the highest level, to avenge, to destroy.

A short story from the British Library Tales of the Weird collection Evil Roots. Best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, this short story by Conan Doyle preceded the famous detective by almost a decade. After an altercation, a disgruntled American storms off into the night, only to disappear mysteriously. Could a giant flytrap really be capable of engulfing an adult victim?

Drawing on years of archival research both in the US and Iran - including access to Iranian government archives rarely available to western scholars - the Iranian-born, Oxford-educated historian leads us through the four seasons of US-Iran relations: the 'spring' of mutual fascination, the 'summer' of early interactions, the 'autumn' of close strategic ties and the long, dark 'winter' of mutual hatred.

On a dark night, out on the Houston bayou to celebrate his wife’s birthday, Jay Porter hears a scream. Saving a distressed woman from drowning, he opens a Pandora’s Box. Not the lawyer he set out to be, Jay long ago made peace with his radical youth, tucked away his darkest sins and resolved to make a fresh start. His impulsive act out on the bayou is heroic, but it puts Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him is practice, his family and even his life.

Eminent scientist Dr Ralph Padley is dying - and he knows it's time to finally tell the truth. Padley has a dark secret which, if it got out, would have deadly consequences. But there are powerful men who will stop at nothing to silence him. FBI special agent Reilly has an agenda of his own. For months he has sought the man who kidnapped and brainwashed his five-year-old son. But that man is a ghost - a highly protected CIA official with no name and no identity, and who may have links to Reilly's own father.

Ruben Prien is still at work with the Project, still dreaming of altering man's fate by going back in time to adjust events. Ruben's purpose in summoning Simon Morley back from that earlier world is to prevent World War I. It is ironic, therefore, that the man assigned to carry to America the papers that might help avert the Great Catastrophe travels to his meeting onboard the Titanic. And it is Si's task to attempt to ensure his safe passage.

In the vein of Graham Greene and John le Carré, The Matchmaker delivers a chilling Cold War spy story set in West Berlin, where an American woman targeted by the Stasi must confront the truth behind her German husband's mysterious disappearance. Berlin, 1989. Protests across East Germany threaten the Iron Curtain, and communism is the ill man of Europe.

In Western Union: The year is 1861, and the nation is at war. The Western Union Telegraph Company intends to connect East with West as never before but is beset by enemies. Wires are cut and telegraph poles burned, and then matters take a darker turn when a repair crew is massacred. The question is, who might be responsible? Could it be embittered Indians, belligerent Confederates, or even the Pony Express, which will surely go out of business as soon as the transcontinental telegraph is completed?

Early one morning a foreman shows up at the building site of a mega-mansion. Proceeding up unfinished plank steps, he arrives at the master bedroom. There, lying on a blanket, are a man and a woman, stabbed and bludgeoned to death. Who are the lovers? Why have they chosen a construction site for their late-night tryst? Is the double murder simply a horrific example of wrong-place, wrong-time? Or were the victims stalked? And will the outrage be repeated?

Twenty-two-year-old pop star Cherry Pye is attempting a comeback from her latest drug and alcohol disaster. Ann DeLusia is Cherry’s ‘undercover stunt double’, standing in for Cherry whenever the singer is too wasted to go out in public. But, one night, Ann-as-Cherry is mistakenly kidnapped from a Miami hotel by an obsessed paparazzo named Bang Abbott. Now the challenge for Cherry’s handlers is to rescue Ann while keeping her existence secret from the public.

Four friends, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it’s no joke. For two years, the strategy they devise works like a charm – until they kidnap the wrong man. Now two groups are after them – the law, in the form of veteran state investigator Kirk Stevens and hotshot young FBI agent Carla Windermere, and an organised crime outfit looking for payback.

Nashville: Homicide detectives Baker Southerby and Lamar Van Gundy face a return to their musical roots when a legendary musician is found stabbed to death. It seems John Wallace "Jack" Jeffries was the victim of a random street crime: but as the detectives probe into Jack's chequered past, they discover he had many secrets.

It is December 6, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. Los Angeles has been a haven for loyal Japanese-Americans - but now war fever grips the city, and the Japanese internment begins. The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angeles Police. He’s superbly gifted but consumed by dubious ideology.

It is 1910 and Dr Hawley Crippen has been convicted of the murder of his wife Cora. In his cell at Pentonville Prison, Crippen faces the prospect of the gallows. Laying bare his innermost feelings, he looks back at his austere childhood in Coldwater, Michigan, his tempestuous marriage and life on the run with his lover Ethel Le Neve. Yet as he revisits his life, Crippen entreats us to consider his "confession": I am not a murderer.

"Who is the man with the roses in his hand?" thinks Anna. "I want to meet him." ’’Who is the girl with the guitar?’ thinks Will. "I like her. I want to meet her." But they do not meet. "There are lots of men!" says Anna’s friend Vicki, but Anna cannot forget Will. And then, one rainy day....

Michael Finkel was a top New York Times Magazine journalist publicly fired and disgraced for making up a composite character for a big investigative news piece about Africa. This audiobook is about how this brilliant, high achieving journalist found himself at that point in his life. But in parallel it's also about Christian Longo, a man accused of the multiple murder of his own wife and three children. After the deaths, Longo fled to Mexico, where he passed himself off as Michael Finkel, New York Times journalist.

The Time Traveller's Almanac is the largest, most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled. Gathered by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, here is over a century's worth of literary travels into past and the future. The anthology covers millions of years of Earth's history - from the age of the dinosaurs to strange and fascinating futures, through to the end of Time itself.

America, 1960. In Washington, DC, John F. Kennedy has just been elected president. In Havana, Fidel Castro has been in office for a year, and with Cold War tensions rapidly heating up and the Soviets leading the space race, the thought of a Communist leader so close to home is already raising American blood pressure. Anti-communist fever is rampant in the USA, with a paranoid establishment seeing reds under every bed. Nevertheless, the decision to snuff out the threat of Castro by hiring Tom Jefferson, America's best assassin, to kill him comes from an unusual quarter: the Mafia.