Showing results by narrator "Daniel Philpott" in All Categories

Tom and Sophie join their mum in a dash to Whipsnade Zoo to help an elephant deliver its calf, and another exciting adventure begins. At first the elephant calf, Dirshani, struggles to survive as it doesn’t eat well. With expert help and lots of care, the calf grows stronger. During the next year the young elephant is encouraged to take its place in the herd. Tom and Sophie dream that one day Dirshani will take part in the elephant demonstration.

Connor Tempest may only be 14, but he's taken to the life of a pirate like a duck to water. But his loyalties are divided between his shipmates and his sister. Grace Tempest isn't finding the pirate life so appealing. She cannot shake the feeling that all is not well on the Vampirate ship she left behind. Dare she try to return to it? Sidorio may have been expelled from the Vampirate ship, but his dark deeds are just beginning.

Three gripping tales from number one best seller S. J. Parris. The Secret Dead: during the summer of 1566, a girl’s body is found within the walls of a Neapolitan monastery. Novice monk Giordano Bruno has a habit of asking difficult questions, but this time his investigations may lose him his place in the Dominican Order - or deliver him into the hands of the Inquisition. Also includes The Academy of Secrets and The Dead of Winter.

Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall is an Edwardian history book for younger listeners (aged six to 12) that tells the story of England, concluding with the reign of Queen Victoria. Antonia Fraser and many other current historians declare that it was this book that opened the delights of history for them. It fell from fashion in the 1960s, but its recent re-release in hardback has seen it become a publishing surprise in the UK, with sales of some 75,000 copies in a few months.

How long can you pretend to be mad without going mad? Two English pilots are forced to find out when they are shot down behind enemy lines in 1944. The area is swarming with German troops, so, unable to escape, they ditch their clothing and personal belongings, pose as German soldiers, and board a train carrying wounded SS men home from the eastern front.

A bloody war is raging across the oceans, with the Pirate Federation and Nocturnals in alliance against the renegade Vampirates. Connor and Grace Tempest each have important roles to play - he as a pirate warrior; she as a powerful healer. As the twins face their greatest challenge yet, old allies and foes return to play their part in the ultimate battle of Pirate versus Vampirate.

Ignorance is bliss... especially when it comes to murder! Ever since the death of his father, Fellworth Dolphin has slaved away as a waiter to support his miserly, cold-hearted mother. So when she suddenly dies Fellworth is shocked to discover she has left him a fortune. Somewhat confused, Fell teams up with a girl from work, Maggie, to investigate the source of the riches. But what they find instead is a closet full of skeletons... Is it really possible Fell's father was involved in a decades-old train robbery? And who is the mysterious woman in the portrait?

Omar Yussef, teacher-turned-detective, is sent to the troubled Gaza Strip to carry out a routine school inspection. There he learns that a fellow teacher has been arrested, and, instinctively recognizing the signs of grave injustice, he sets out to investigate. The person responsible for the teacher's arrest is Colonel al-Fara, the most powerful - and dangerous - man in Gaza, and Omar's friends urge him not to intervene. But Omar confronts the colonel, and soon finds himself caught in a ruthless power struggle.

This is a story from the Famous People in History II collection.

Naive and already war-weary, James Gouding takes up a position in Naples in 1943. What he doesn't anticipate is that this involves a limited menu of fried Spam fritters and interrogating the would-be Italian fiancees of members of the armed forces.

The Hole-in-the-Tree gang, led by Quickpaw Cassidy and the Sunshine Cub, is the most daring group of raccoons in town. But when these cheeky chancers carry out the biggest, boldest heist of their lives, they push the neighbourhood too far. The heat is on, and the gang goes on the run in this wild adventure ultimately learning that there’s no place like home.

Already an international hit, a sly, sizzling mystery set in the Italian Alps, the first in a sensational crime series. The dark flanks of the Alps tower over everything. Wind whistles through the fir trees. An expanse of ice and snow with no end in sight. A growing stain. A mess of flesh and blood. A corpse buried six inches under the snow. Enter Rocco Schiavone, Deputy Police Chief and a man who has more beautiful women in his bed than sensible shoes under it. He's stuck in this backwards Alpine town after getting on the wrong side of the wrong people...

When the body of a Russian agent is found down a monastery well, Yashim knows exactly who to blame. Fevzi Ahmet Pasha, ruthless commander of the Ottoman fleet. Years ago, Fevzi Ahmet was his mentor. And now Yashim must confront the secret that Fevzi Pasha has been keeping all these years, a secret whose roots lie deep in the tortured atmosphere of the sultan's harem.

Istanbul 1838. Lefevre, a French archaeologist, has arrived in Istanbul determined to uncover a lost Byzantine treasure. Yashim is hired to investigate him, but when the man turns up dead, there is only one suspect: Yashim himself. Once again, the investigator finds himself in a race against time to uncover the startling truth behind a shadowy secret society dedicated to the revival of the Byzantine Empire, caught in a deadly game deep beneath the city streets, a place where the stakes are high—and betrayal is death...

Small towns can hide big secrets, but Rocco Schiavone will do whatever it takes to bring them into the light. The second novel in the internationally best-selling series from Italian crime maestro Antonio Manzini. In an elegant apartment in a chilly Alpine town, a cleaning lady makes a gruesome discovery: the body of her employer hanging from a chandelier in a dark room in an apparent suicide. Working the case is Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone, banished from his beloved Rome to snowy, small-town Aosta.

The third book in Jason Goodwin's celebrated series takes Yashim from the winding alleyways of Istanbul to the decaying grandeur of Venice. Charged by the Sultan to find a stolen painting by Bellini, he enlists the help of his friend Palewski, the Polish Ambassador, and goes undercover. Venice in 1840 is a city of empty palazzos and silent canals, and Palewski starts to mingle with Venetian dealers - self-made men, faded aristocrats and the hedonistic Contessa.

Britain, AD366 - The island is at peace, enjoying an unprecedented age of prosperity. But from beyond the northern frontier come unsettling rumours: the barbarians are rising, eager to prey on the riches of the south. As the shadow of war looms, Cironius Agnus Paulus, a young soldier with a secret past, becomes ensnared in a conspiracy that endangers the home he has forsaken and the family he loves.

The brightest mind meets the darkest killer...1887. When James Murray, a young Scottish doctor fascinated by the workings of the criminal mind, travels to the vibrant city of Turin, it is to study with Cesare Lombroso, the world-renowned criminologist. But just hours after his introduction to Lombroso, the discovery of a horrifically mutilated body in the nearby Piazza Statuto, and a note that appears to implicate the celebrated criminologist himself, changes everything.

Three brothers return to the family cottage by the lake, where, more than two decades earlier, a catastrophe changed the course of their lives. Now, they are here to scatter their mother's ashes - young men, estranged but bound together by the history that defines them. Their lives have been spent competing for their father's favour and their mother's love, in a household more like a minefield than a home. What really happened that summer day when everything was blown to pieces?

Those terrible pirate twins are at it again! Their relentless pursuit of treasure is causing all sorts of havoc in the seaside town of Little Snoring, and only youngsters Tat and Hetty - and their cat called Dog - have a chance of stopping them.