Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Pavo's journey begins when he encounters the Roman soldier Macro, who has been charged with his training. Bonds of friendship develop between the two men, both aware that their fates depend not only on Pavo's skills in the arena but also on the whims of powerful and ruthless senators. Can Pavo survive to fulfil his most cherished goal - revenge for the murder of his father at the hands of a champion gladiator?

The spiritualist movement has captivated a segment of society: manifestations, the occult, and “sensitives” are in vogue. But the séance sites seem to be targeted for burglaries. Then, while Cribb is on the case, someone murders the medium. There was a great vogue for table-turning and getting in touch with the dead in Victorian times, and this lent itself to fraud, at the very least. It seemed inevitable that Cribb and Thackeray should take part in a séance at some stage. They come to it indirectly, following an art theft.

In 1350 the people of Cambridge are struggling to overcome the effects of the Black Death - and with a high mortality rate among priests and monks, the townsfolk are vulnerable to sinister cults that have sprung up. At Michaelhouse, Matthew Bartholomew is training new physicians when the body of a friar is found in the massive chest that the university uses to store precious documents. While investigating, Bartholomew stumbles across a derelict church being used as a meeting place for the mysterious sect he believes is at the heart of a web of blackmail.

Delve into the clandestine world of Group 15, the covert organization also featured in the acclaimed John Milton series. Charlie Cooper, an elite Group Fifteen agent, faces a complex mission: eliminate Igor Sidorov, a security-obsessed Russian oligarch implicated in international subterfuge. The only avenue to reach the paranoid Sidorov? Through Crispin Fairweather, the owner of a small yet influential reputation management firm.

2022: Former spy Simon Sharman is eking out a living in the private sector. When a commission to delve into the financial dealings of a mysterious Russian oligarch comes across his desk, he jumps at the chance. But as Simon investigates, worrying patterns begin to emerge. His subject made regular trips to Oxford, but for no apparent reason. There are payments from offshore accounts that suddenly just...stop. Has he found what none of his former colleagues believed possible, a Russian spy ring now nestled at the heart of the British Establishment?

December 1882. Attending the opening of the new Natural History Museum, reporter Alec Lonsdale and his colleague Hulda Friederichs are shocked to discover a body in the basement, hacked to death. Suspicion falls on three cannibals, brought from the Congo as museum exhibits, who have disappeared. But Alec discovers that three other men have been similarly murdered, and when he and Hulda discover a letter in the victim's home warning of a catastrophic event planned for Christmas Eve, they find themselves in a race against time.

The familiar call of the common cuckoo, "cuck-oo", has been a harbinger of spring ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa many thousands of years ago. However, for naturalist and scientist Nick Davies, the call is an invitation to solve an enduring puzzle: How does the cuckoo get away with laying its eggs in the nests of other birds and tricking them into raising young cuckoos rather than their own offspring?

Summer, 1643: England is at war with itself. King Charles I has fled London, his negotiations with Parliament in tatters. The country is consumed by bloodshed. For Thomas Hill, a man of letters quietly running a bookshop in the rural town of Romsey, knowledge of the war is limited to the rumours that reach the local inn. When a stranger knocks on his door one night and informs him that the king's cryptographer has died, everything changes.

In a world where loyalty is fleeting and alliances are temporary, John Milton is on a mission that will bring him face-to-face with enemies old and new. When his friend, Alex Hicks, finds himself pursued by mysterious adversaries, the two men are thrust back into the web of international espionage. Navigating a perilous path that stretches from the war-torn streets of Ukraine to the icy wastelands of Siberia, Milton will stop at nothing to protect his friends and expose a conspiracy that could topple governments and jeopardize global security.

An astonishing historical novel set in the shadowy, magical forests of South America, which draws on the captivating world of the international best seller The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Deep in uncharted Peru, the holy town of Bedlam stands at the edge of a forest. The shrine statues move, and anyone who crosses the border dies. But somewhere inside are cinchona trees, whose bark yields quinine: the only known treatment for malaria. On the other side of the Pacific, it is 1859, and India is ravaged by the disease.

On a fine autumn weekend Lord Aveling hosts a hunting party at his country house, Bragley Court. Among the guests are an actress, a journalist, an artist and a mystery novelist. The unlucky 13th is John Foss, injured at the local train station and brought to the house to recuperate - but John is nursing a secret of his own. Soon events take a sinister turn when a painting is mutilated, a dog stabbed and a man strangled.

Hatushaly, last scion of the Firemane dynasty; his beloved Hava, and their dubious friend Donte have been transported across space and time from their war-torn world of Garn to the relative peace of Midkemia. There, on Sorcerer’s Isle, under the guidance of the great magician Magnus and his reincarnated father Pug, Hatu will explore and expand his unique magical abilities: for if Garn is to be saved, they will be needed.

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 man falls to his death in Western Scotland. From a distance another man watches. He approaches the body, tucks a book into the dead man's pocket, and leaves. When the Scottish police show visiting detective chief inspector Domenic Jejeune the book, he recognises it as a call for help. Back in Saltmarsh the brutal murder of a researcher has everyone looking at the man's controversial studies as a motive.

In 1360 Edward III issues a call to arms, as sporadic attacks by the French threaten to turn into a full-blown invasion. In Cambridge, fear of the enemy is magnified by the belief that foreign agents are lurking in the area. Tension runs ever higher as rumours and ignorance fan the flames of suspicion amid preparations for war. And then the first murder occurs - of a French scholar living in the town.

In 1358 the fledging college of Michaelhouse in Cambridge is in need of extra funds. A legacy from the Archbishop of York of a parish close to that city promises a welcome source of income. However, there has been another claim to its ownership, and it seems the only way to settle the dispute is for a deputation from Michaelhouse to travel north. Matthew Bartholomew is among the small party which arrives in the bustling city, where the increasing wealth of the merchants is unsettling the established order....

A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn't have prevented it. Could she? In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief, and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever. Slowly Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future.

Ben wasn't brought up, he was dragged up. With absent parents and broken friends, a young Ben makes choices that are ruining his life. Before he’s even 20, Ben’s spells in prison begin, and soon he finds himself involved in serious crime. When people begin to die, Ben must choose a side.

Cloud Atlas features six characters in interlocking stories, each interrupting the one before it: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death row; and Zachry, a young Pacific islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation.

The queen of Steelhaven has grown in strength. Taking up her dead father's sword, she must defend the city from the dread warlord Amon Tugha and his bloodthirsty army now at the gates. A vicious, unrelenting four-day battle ensues, the most perilous yet. No side is immune from danger as all hell breaks loose, with the threat of coups and the unleashing of the deadliest and darkest magick. Loyalty, strength and cunning will be put to test in the quest for victory. What fate awaits the free states?