Showing results by narrator "Rupert Degas" in All Categories

The Parade's End tetralogy privileges not the conflict of World War I itself, but the impact the war had on its participants and upon society writ large. It is often referred to as one of the greatest 20th century novels, and one of the best depictions of war in literature.

It begins as a school trip to London. But with a sudden tidal surge and a dramatic thunderstorm that hurls rainwater down on the capital, it suddenly becomes something totally different: the site of a major disaster as the Thames Barrier is breached and London is flooded. With streets underwater, communications down, rats pouring up out of the sewers, and thousands of people in a state of panic, survival becomes a very key issue for Ben and his mates.

An early case from the career of the famed Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn sees a most unusual mystery. Mild-mannered Administratum clerk Master Imus is quite sure that he's committed a most dreadful crime...but he's not entirely certain quite what it is or how he did it. Can Eisenhorn get to the bottom of the mystery before it's too late?

After the huge success of Rumble with the Romans!, celebrated author and illustrator Gary Northfield creates another brilliantly fast-paced, funny and utterly bonkers adventure for Julius Zebra and his hapless pals to go on. Emperor Hadrian has one last favour to ask of the gladiator animals before he will grant them their greatest wish - freedom. They must go to the far-off and strange land of Britain to win over the crowds of his empire. But this will be no happy-go-lucky holiday....

Thirteen-year-old Ben Tracey is looking forward to spending the summer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where his father has been hired to examine the valuable mineral Coltan that's being mined there. They soon realise that the people living in the village near the mine are frightened and it doesn't take long for Ben and his father to discover why: behind the door of every hut there is at least one person dying or seriously ill, and no one seems to be doing anything to help.

The award-winning Restoration is one of Rose Tremain's most popular works, and showcases her remarkable talent for capturing historical settings and personalities. Set during the English Restoration in the decadent court of King Charles II, the novel weaves a story of corrupted innocence, betrayal, love and hope against a fascinating historical backdrop.

The primarch Angron: gladiator-king and Horus' lunatic attack dog. Never having hidden his resentment for his brothers, he now carves a bloody swathe through the galaxy in the Warmaster's name, with the Heresy providing a convenient excuse to indulge his love of brutal warfare. When they are tasked with a secretive mission alongside the Word Bearers Legion, the World Eaters' violent tendencies soon attract the attention of xenos raiders, troubled by the portents surrounding the primarch's berserk fury.

Shanghai in 1935 is a 20th-century Babylon, an expatriate playground where fortunes are made and lost, where East and West collide, and the stakes include life itself. Into this, Rowland Sinclair arrives from Sydney to represent his brother at international wool negotiations. Rowland is under strict instructions to commit to nothing...but a brutal murder makes that impossible. As suspicion falls on him, Rowland enters a desperate bid to find answers in a city as glitzy as it is dangerous, where tai-pans and tycoons rule, and politics and vice are entwined with commerce.

Grizzliness is out there. Every child has the makings of mischievousness, and can be lured into committing dastardly deeds. The six stories in each of the Grizzly Tales books show the rise and hard fall of vile and villainous children. In this book, unspeakable things happen to pets - but the...

The Thirty-Nine Steps begins John Buchan’s series of spy novels featuring adventurer Richard Hannay. Having just returned from South Africa, he finds life dull until a mysterious American tells him about an assassination plot before being murdered in Hannay’s London flat.

The good witches of Wadingburn are worried - there's a new witch in town with a bag of magic bones, and she's so evil she makes their toes ache! Truda Hangnail is a very wicked witch, banned from the Five Kingdoms because of her use of deep magic. Then she comes up with a fiendish plan to restore evil to the Five Kingdoms, transforming the good witches of Waddingburn into shrivelled, wicked old witches who will help her take over King Frank's kingdom on his 50th birthday!

Continuing to mark 100 years since Mervyn Peake’s birth, Naxos AudioBooks releases the second novel in the cycle series. Gormenghast follows protagonist Titus (now the 77th earl of Gormenghast) from the age of seven to 17 and describes his desire to break free from the physical and psychological constraints of the castle. Meanwhile, the Machiavellian Steerpike continues his dastardly rise to power. But will he succeed?

All good things come to an end. And this is it: the last stand of the Ketty Jay and her intrepid crew. They've been shot down, set up, double-crossed and ripped off. They've stolen priceless treasures, destroyed a 10,000-year-old Azryx city and sort-of-accidentally blew up the son of the Archduke. Now they've gone and started a civil war. This time, they're really in trouble.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “MARVELOUS.”—The New Yorker An Entertainment Weekly All-Time Greatest Novel A Newsweek Top 100 Book of All Time Winner of the Carnegie Medal The Inspiration for the HBO Original Series His Dark Materials DON’T MISS THE EPIC FINALE TO...

Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. It is no surprise, then, that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety - one of those men who's always got away with things and just keeps going...until the day we meet him, middle aged and in the boot of a car, and everything pointing towards a shallow grave.

On the world of Axonar, a squad of Blood Angels Scouts scale the dizzying heights of a mighty hive city as their battle-brothers fight far below. Their objective: to open the way for a daring aerial assault that will crack open the city and ensure victory.

The Essential Classics: Volume 2 brings together 5 of the greatest classics ever written, perfectly read by an esteemed cast including Adjoa Andoh, Rupert Degas, Kobna Holdbrook Smith, Leighton Pugh, and Jonathan Keeble. Spanning the Atlantic, this collection includes stories of vampiric horror in Dracula, Orwell's modern masterpiece, Animal Farm, as well as Emily Brontë's timeless tale of love on the moors, Wutheirng Heights, and more.

A terrifying ghost is haunting the ancient mansion of Canterville Chase, complete with creaking floorboards, clanking chains and gruesome disguises - but the new occupants seem strangely undisturbed by his presence. Deftly contrasting the conventional gothic ghost story with the pragmatism of the modern world, Wilde creates a gently comic fable of the conflict between old and new. Rupert Degas's hilarious reading brings the absurdity and theatricality of the story to life.

Titus Groan has fled the rambling, ruined and ruinous castle of Gormenghast, desperate for a view of the world beyond. But he wasn’t prepared for this! Satellites, death-rays, sinister policemen and underworld outcasts live in a nightmarish contemporary city that feels like something by Wells, Burroughs or Philip K. Dick. Threatened and lost, he begins to miss the home he left; but surely he won’t be tempted back?

Best known for his masterpiece of horror, Dracula, Bram Stoker wrote a number of other novels and many short stories, all on supernatural themes or filled with a physical terror reminiscent of Poe. "Dracula’s Guest" was originally part of the great novel, but was excised and published separately. Some of these stories, such as "The Squaw", "The Judge’s House" and "The Burial of the Rats", rank very high among classic tales of the macabre.