Showing results by narrator "Philip" in All Categories

AD 69. The year of the four emperors. Three emperors have ruled in Rome this year and a fourth, Vespasian, has been named in the East. As the legions march toward civil war, Sebastos Pantera, the spy whose name means leopard, returns to Rome intent on bribery, blackmail and persuasion: whatever it takes to bring the commanders and their men to Vespasian's side. But in Rome, as he uses every skill he has ever learned of subterfuge, codes and camouflage, it becomes clear that one of those closest to him is a traitor who will let Rome fall to destroy him.

Constable Along the Lane is the seventh in the brilliantly entertaining and heartwarming audiobooks behind the hit '90s TV series Heartbeat - one of the top 10 most watched shows of the decade. A hay barn is set on fire at Low Dale Farm. It seems that an arsonist is targeting isolated barns. Arnold Merryweather's ancient bus helps catch a car thief. And when Nick arrests not only a pig thief but also the expectant pig, the police station cleaner is not very pleased. 

Read by Philip Jackson with an introduction by Sean Bean.After training as a teacher, Pete Postlethwaite started his acting career at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, where his colleagues included Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce, Antony Sher, and Julie Walters. After routine early appearances in small parts for television programs such as The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first success came with the acclaimed British film Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He then received an Academy Award nomination for his role in The Name of the Father in 1993.

Oxford, late summer, 1353. On hearing that his cousin is short-handed for the harvest, Nicholas Elyot takes a group of friends back to the family farm to help. When a deer hunt in Wychwood ends in tragedy, suspicion is directed toward the huntsman, a boyhood friend of Nicholas. But the victim has made many other enemies, any one of whom could have shot the fatal arrow. Can Nicholas uncover the real killer before it is too late?

Alan Garner's exciting and atmospheric tale of magic and evil, which began with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, continues with The Moon of Gomrath.

Colin and Susan are not safe from the evil Morrigan and once more find themselves back in Fundindelve with the wizard Cadellin.

This annual anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a short novel by Christianna Brand. Mystery stories have been around for centuries—there are whodunits, whydunits and howdunits...

A stolen maypole, romantic con artists and the case of a missing child. The villagers are quite a handful, from the rogue that is Claude Jeremiah Greengrass and his wily dog, Alfred, to the mysterious spinster Adelaide Bowes. Even some of the newcomers seem to be a little odd. But thankfully for Constable Nick, they are mostly law-abiding characters. But when old conflicts between villages flare up, it’s Constable Nick who has to sort things out.

Is the ‘perfect murder’ possible? Can that crime be committed with such consummate care, with such exacting skill, that it is unsolvable—even to the most astute investigator? In this unique collection, legendary crime writers Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Russell Thorndike each attempt to create the unsolvable murder, which Superintendent Cornish of the CID then attempts to unravel.

Crowned ‘the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation’ by EM Forster, DH Lawrence has an undisputed place in England's canon of great authors. In this wide-ranging collection, dramatisations and readings of some of his major works are brought together, exploring themes such as romantic love and sexual desire, individual freedom, class division, war, the beauty of nature and the ugliness of industrialisation.

On November 12, 1912, a rescue team trekking across Antarctica's Great Ice Barrier finally found what they sought - the snow-covered tent of the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Inside, they made a grim discovery: Scott's frozen body lay between the bodies of two fellow explorers. They had died just eleven miles from the depot of supplies which might have saved them.

A scenic walk in nature isn't Addison Harper's idea of a good time, but with Sergeant Jake Murphy leading the way, he's willing to give it a go. After a picnic as delicious as his date, things are really looking up—that is, until Addison stumbles over something in the undergrowth. Bad news: it's a dead body. Worse news: it's his ex. And the last time they saw each other, a room full of people witnessed Addison wish him dead.

When a spinster of the parish is found bludgeoned to death in St John's, and the church's most valuable possession, the Lydmouth chalice, is missing, the finger of suspicion points at the new vicar, who is already beset with problems. The glare of the police investigation reveals shabby secrets and private griefs. Jill Francis, struggling to find her feet in her new life, stumbles into the case at the beginning. But even a journalist cannot always watch from the sidelines.

The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this formative year will become perhaps the greatest turning point in Dickens' career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives and develops a new form of writing that will reveal just how interconnected the world is becoming.

Bodies from the Library brings into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown, and the 2023 volume is another indispensable collection for crime fans. The sixth volume of Bodies from the Library includes the usual eclectic mix of pre- and post-war stories by classic crime and thriller...

Raven and the Wolfpack plough the sea-road in pursuit of the Saxon traitor Ealdred, who has left the Fellowship for dead and fled to the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne and the promise of untold riches. Sailing in search of revenge, the pagan Norsemen venture into the heart of a Christian empire that would wipe their kind from the face of the earth, a place where danger lies in wait around every bend of the great river up which they travel.

Policeman Nick Rhea has been posted to the country with his wife, Mary, and their three small children. They move into the police house, high on a ridge overlooking the moors. It sits on the edge of the village of Aidensfield - 'probably the most beautiful site in the country'. In the beautiful North Yorkshire countryside of the 1960s, Constable Nick's roles are as varied as the eccentric villagers. He handles every encounter with his characteristic humour, humanity and professionalism. 

Somerset Maugham's success as a writer enabled him to indulge his adventurous love of travel, and he recorded the sights and sounds of his wide-ranging journeys with a unique urbane, wry style. The Gentleman in the Parlour is an account of the author's trip through what was then Burma and Siam, ending in Haiphong, Vietnam. Whether by river to Mandalay, on horse through the mountains and forests of the Shan States to Bangkok, or onwards by sea, Maugham's vivid descriptions bring a lost world to life.

Annapolis. The U.S. Naval Academy. Here begins Widow's journey—a path from a promising naval career to a crossroads of life and death. Rewind to Widow's final days as a twenty-two-year-old midshipman, where a dying woman's request catapults him into a whirlwind of lies and buried truths. Her last request? For Widow to solve the mystery of her sister's cold-case murder. Aided by The Shadow Club—a secretive cabal of the world's sharpest investigators—Widow is lured into a world where justice is a shadow play of vengeance and power.

Kate Fletcher is my kryptonite. She's also my best friend. Former best friend? I'm not sure what you call it when we grew up attached at the hip and then she left Silver Creek (and me) to travel the world. The important thing is: Kate is back. (Temporarily.) And I'm still in love with her. (Permanently.) But something is different now. The attraction doesn't seem one-sided. I don't think I'm imagining the heat in Kate's eyes or the chemistry crackling between us.

First he considers moments in history - Periclean Athens, the English Civil War, the American and French Revolutions, among them - in which the challenges we face today were first encountered and what solutions, however imperfect, were found. Then he lays bare the specific problems of democracy in the 21st century and maps out a set of urgently needed reforms. With the advent of authoritarian leaders and the simultaneous rise of populism, representative democracy appears to be caught between a rock and a hard place, yet it is this space that it must occupy, says Grayling, if a civilised society that looks after all its people is to flourish.