Showing results by narrator "Tim Bruce" in All Categories

It’s a classic, manor house, mystery-within-a-locked-room-mystery for Anty Boisjoly when a death is foretold by a mystic that Anty’s sure is a charlatan. But when an impossible murder follows the foretelling, Anty and his old ally and nemesis Inspector Wittersham must sift the connivance, contrivance, misguidance, and faith in pseudoscience of the household and its haunted history before the killer strikes again.

Trunks packed with potions and cures, Jane Aire sets out on a crisp, clear morning in October to face the greatest challenge of her sheltered girls’-school existence. A shadow lies over Thornfield Hall and its reclusive master, Edward Rochester. And he’s hired her only as a last resort. Jane stumbles again and again as she tries to establish a rapport with her prickly new employer, but he becomes the least of her worries as a mysterious force seems to work against her.

A year after the outbreak and nuclear war, very few in the Northern Hemisphere have survived. Fourteen thousand Europeans and Canadians found safety behind the great defensive walls built across Nova Scotia. When they are attacked by piratical bandits who now control the ruins of New York, they have no choice but to flee.

A security van sets off for Durham prison, a disgraced Special Branch officer in the back. It never arrives. En route it is hijacked by armed men, the prisoner sprung. Suspended from duty on suspicion of aiding and abetting the audacious escape of his former boss, Detective Sergeant Matthew Ryan is locked out of the manhunt. Desperate to preserve his career and prove his innocence, he backs off.

It's the night of 12th November 2019. The worst flooding in 50 years hits the city of Venice. 85 per cent of La Serenissima is underwater. Gale force winds roar across the lagoon and along the narrow streets. And the body of Dr Jennifer Whiteread—a young British art historian, specialising in the depiction of angels in Venetian painting—is found floating in a flooded antique bookshop on the Street of the Assassins. As the local police struggle to restore order to a city on its knees, Nathan Sutherland sets out into the dark streets in an attempt to discover the truth.

A game of cross and double-cross in Venice, one of the most beautiful cities on earth. From his office on the Street of the Assassins, Nathan Sutherland enjoys a steady but unexciting life translating Italian DIY manuals. All this changes dramatically when he is offered a large sum of money to look after a small package containing an extremely valuable antique prayer book illustrated by a Venetian master. But is it a stolen masterpiece - or a brilliant fake?

It is autumn 1941, and a German U-boat commander and his crew set out on yet another hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. Over the coming weeks they must brave the stormy waters of the Atlantic in their mission to seek out and destroy British supply ships. But the tide is beginning to turn against the Germans in the war for the North Atlantic. Their targets now travel in convoys, fiercely guarded by Royal Navy destroyers, and when contact is finally made the hunters rapidly become the hunted.

Herbert George Wells was one of the most prolific and visionary British writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. H. G. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels, although he wrote across many genres, including nonfiction. His fiction embraces history, science fiction, horror, satire, fantasy, and social commentary. Wells was also a futurist, foreseeing air travel, tanks (as in “The Land Ironclads” - part of this anthology) space travel, nuclear weapons, and even satellite television.

In The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning, Wodehousian clubman, flaneur, idler, and sleuth Anty Boisjoly pits his sardonic wits against another pair of impossible murders. This time, Anty Boisjoly’s Aunty Boisjoly is the only possible suspect when a murder victim stands his old friends a farewell drink at the local, hours after being murdered.

An impossible grand theft in a posh Brighton hotel. The locked-room murder of an Italian nobleman. The suspicious suicide of a man worth more dead than alive. What are the motives behind these puzzling crimes? In Agatha Christie’s first collection of short stories, eleven mysteries in all, detective Hercule Poirot makes his investigations. Leave it to the unflappable Belgian sleuth and his partner, Captain Arthur Hastings, to put the pieces together.

On his return from South Africa, Charles Knox is invited to spend the weekend at the country home of Sir Neville Strickland, whose beautiful wife Rosamund was once Knox's fiancee. But in the dead of night Sir Neville is murdered. Who did it? As suspicion falls on each of the house guests in turn, Knox finds himself faced with deception and betrayal on all sides, and only the enigmatic Angela Marchmont seems to offer a solution to the mystery.

When the narrator of Swann's Way dips a petite madeleine into hot tea, the act transports him to his childhood in the French town of Combray. Out of his Pandora's box of reflections comes a memory of an old family friend, Swann - a man who was long ago undone by romantic desire and cruel reality. In this reverie lie the insights the author seeks about his own life and ageless truths about the ephemeral nature of emotions, places, and, ultimately, love.

The Battle of Culloden in 1746 has gone down in history as the last major battle fought on British soil: a vicious confrontation between the English Royal Army and the Scottish forces supporting the Stuart claim to the throne. But this wasn't just a conflict between the Scots and the English: The battle was also part of a much larger campaign to protect the British Isles from the growing threat of a French invasion.

Are you inclined to escape the crumminess of everyday life into fantasy worlds? Are you smart and imaginative in a way that isn't really suited to your surroundings? Are you definitely misunderstood, likely angry, and almost certainly depressed? Set Sytes, hailing from the UK, would prefer you stay alive and sort things out rather than the alternative, thanks. He figures there are better opportunities for you out there and lays it all out in a way that's compelling, funny, sharp, and useful.

As the Imperium of Mankind spreads across the galaxy, bringing all of humanity into its embrace, the advance is spearheaded by the primarchs, superhuman sons of the immortal Emperor. Each of these heroes is a warrior born and a leader bred, but darkness lurks in the hearts of some and threatens to tear apart all that they have worked to build. This audio drama anthology contains three full-cast tales, starring the primarchs Konrad Curze, better known as the sinister Night Haunter, and Perturabo, the Lord of Iron.

When Charles and Perrine Hervé-Gruyer set out to create their farm in an historic Normandy village, they had no idea just how much their lives would change. Neither one had ever farmed before. Charles had been circumnavigating the globe by sail, operating a floating school that taught students about ecology and indigenous cultures. Perrine had been an international lawyer in Japan. Each had returned to France to start a new life.

DCI Kett is back, heading Norfolk Constabulary’s brand-new Extreme Crime Task Force. And it’s just in time. The body of a woman bound in thorns has been discovered in Norwich’s historic Cow Tower. In her mouth is a severed finger wrapped in a scrap of red cloth, and the first few lines of a fairy tale. “Once upon a time, a young maiden waited to be saved from a hideous monster.” The finger belongs to another missing woman, and if Kett, Porter and Savage want to find her alive they must follow a chain of blood-drenched riddles, each victim leading to the next.

There’s a literary niche for all tastes including those who think that either Agatha Christie wasn’t funny enough or that PG Wodehouse didn’t feature anywhere near as many baffling murders as he could have. The Case of the Canterfell Codicil is a classic, cozy, locked-room mystery written in the style of an homage to PG Wodehouse.

Athgar and Natalia have everything they have ever dreamed of - family, friends, and a place to call home. When Athgar's long-lost sister unexpectedly walks into the village, he feels as if life is complete, but not everyone trusts her. Ebenstadt, abandoned by the Temple Knights after their defeat, now suffers under the control of a ruthless despot who uses thugs to enforce his will. To complicate matters even more, the neighboring Kingdom of Novarsk is looking on with greedy eyes, eager to expand its borders.

In Confessions, regarded as the first true Western autobiography, Saint Augustine of Hippo lays bare his heart, body, and soul. In this unguarded prayer, a fallible Augustine admits to the indiscretions, selfishness, and licentious obsessions of his youth. He reveals a man of contradictory desires and beliefs, a regretful libertine torn between sin and morality on a spiritual journey toward his conversion to Christianity.