Showing results by narrator "Andrew Wincott" in All Categories

Using forbidden Marrangha magic and the three stolen vapours, the evil sorcerer Zharradan Marr has created a creature....but for what purpose?

London, 1972: O'Connell, a charismatic anarchist, dies of an overdose, leaving his artist boyfriend, Pearson, and fellow activist Nina in shock. It also leaves a spare room in their squat, so Pearson moves in Sweet Thing, a streetwise yet vulnerable young boy he initially picks up but then tries to help. Pearson isn't the only one who's interested though: glam rock star Johnny Chrome is on the brink of a breakdown and is convinced that Sweet Thing is the only one who can bring him back.

The Time Traveller's Almanac is the largest, most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled. Gathered by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, here is over a century's worth of literary travels into past and the future. The anthology covers millions of years of Earth's history - from the age of the dinosaurs to strange and fascinating futures, through to the end of Time itself.

A Colombian writer is witness to a murder that will mark him forever. A woman sits alone in her house, waiting for her husband to return, while he lies in another woman's bed 20 kilometers away. Through blood-soaked betrayal, a love affair, murder, and long-meditated revenge, Vasquez achieves an extraordinary unity of emotion, morality, and landscape with these fragmented lives.

July 1900: Sam Blackstone has gone to New York to pick up a prisoner, but he soon finds himself drafted in to investigate the murder of Inspector O’Brien who is famed for rooting out police corruption. Working with an enthusiastic young detective who worshipped O’Brien, Blackstone scours the city in search of the killer. And the more he searches, the more he becomes convinced that the police department doesn’t really want the murder to be solved.

Sometimes the facts are even more extraordinary than the fiction... This book tells the story of Lady Catherine, a beautiful American girl who became the chatelaine of Highclere Castle, the setting for Julian Fellowes' award-winning drama Downton Abbey. Charming and charismatic, Catherine caught the eye of Lord Porchester (or 'Porchey', as he was known) when she was just 20 years old, and wearing a pale yellow dress at a ball. She had already turned down 14 proposals before she eventually married Porchey in 1922.

Hansel and Gretel live in poverty on the edge of the forest. Their family is very poor. One day, their parents realise that they will not be able to feed themselves or their children so they make an unforgivable decision: they abandon their children far out in the woods, so that they will never find their way home. But instead of starving to death, Hansel and Gretel find a very strange cottage…

A tailor and a jeweler are out hiking. It's late, they want to go home, but they hear a sound from one of the hills. Tones that get stronger and stronger, and turn into sweet music. The tailor and the jeweler follow the music and discover a group of little people. They party with them all night long and when they wake up the next day, their pockets are filled with gold. But the little people are gone. Who were they and how can the men find their way back to them once more?

Thomas, a young German musician, is dying. Leo, a renowned Italian writer and Thomas's boyfriend, finds it impossible to mourn his loss and condemns himself to wandering the Earth, in the hope of finding the dividing line between the living and the dead. He travels through a Europe where past and present overlap, roads intersect, years merge and faces emerge - and tries in vain to bring into focus the blurred lines of their relationship.

1939: Adolf Hitler, fallen from power, seeks refuge in a London engulfed in the throes of a very British fascism. Now eking a miserable living as a down-at-heels private eye and calling himself Wolf, he has no choice but to take on the case of a glamorous Jewish heiress whose sister went missing. It's a decision Wolf will very shortly regret. For in another time and place a man lies dreaming: Shomer, once a Yiddish pulp writer, who dreams lurid tales of revenge in the hell that is Auschwitz.

Throughout history, there has been a consistent crossover between show business and espionage, often producing some of the most extraordinary undercover agents, and occasionally leading to disastrous and dangerous failures. The fact that one relies on publicity and the other on secrecy might seem to rule out a successful symbiosis, but as both require high levels of creative thinking, improvisation, disguise and role-play, they inevitably attract some remarkably similar personalities. Stars and Spies is the first history of the interplay between the two worlds.

When Jack Colby glimpses a 1938 Lagonda V12 lying uncared for in a Kentish country barn, he just has to have a closer look – which brings him face to face with its angry owner, Polly Davis, former TV presenter and widow of car dealer Mike. Is it the car or Polly that captivates his heart? No question, he has to find out more about both. Jack’s enquiries are abruptly cut short, when some days later he finds Polly’s murdered body lying outside the barn.

Thomas Haller has achieved the kind of fame that most artists only dream of: shows in London and New York, paintings sold for a fortune. The vision he presents to the world is one of an untouchable genius at the top of his game. It is also a lie. Who is the real Thomas Haller? His oldest friend and former dealer, Lorna, might once have known - before Thomas traded their early intimacy for international fame. Between his ruthless new dealer and a property mogul obsessed with his work, the appetite for Thomas and his art is all-consuming.

Opening with the iconic story 'The Destructors', in which a gang of schoolboys destroys a house that has survived the Blitz, Greene offers us deliciously satisfying glimpses into 21 worlds, with each piece written as masterfully as his novels. From the chilling climax of a children's birthday party, to a man whose youthful indiscretions come back to haunt him, these are the unmistakable work of one of the 20th century's greatest and most adored storytellers.

The message was short: "I want to see you now. I want you to come to me, it doesn't matter how late it is, and tell me exactly what you want from me." Like the world around him, at the dawn of the 21st century, Adam Kellas' life is showing distinct signs of cracking apart. Against his better judgement, Kellas - divorced, unstable, spurned by his lover and by the world of letters - accepts a war assignment from his newspaper.

Sir Ian McKellen is that rarest of characters: a celebrity whose distinguished political and social service has transcended his enormous fame and international stardom to reach far beyond the stage and screen. The breadth of his endeavour - professional, personal and political - has been truly staggering. Of some 400 stage and film roles, there are only three, in his own estimation, of which he has not been proud. Iconic roles have not been in short supply: Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings being perhaps the most universally recognised and well-loved.

Seven-year-old Lucy Gibson can barely contain her excitement when she learns that the funfair has come to town and Matt, her mother's new boyfriend, has agreed to take her. Despite her slight uneasiness in Matt's company, she readily goes off with him one evening. The next morning, Chief Superintendent Lambert briefs DS Bert Hook and DS Ruth David on the disappearance of a young seven-year-old local girl from a funfair the previous evening.

With Avantia’s Beasts restored to Good, the Dark Wizard Malvel brings Evil Beasts to the kingdom, to guard the six stolen pieces of The Golden Armour—which Tom must reclaim if he is to truly become Avantia’s ‘Master of the Beasts’.

When Olivia calls the police to report that her husband and children are missing, she believes she will never see them again. Two years later,Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas is called to investigate, but this time it’s Olivia who has disappeared. Her car is in the garage, and her purse is in her handbag. For some reason every single picture of this family has been removed from albums, phones, and computers. Then they find the blood...

Maugham found a parallel to the turmoil of our own times in the duplicity, intrigue, and sensuality of the Italian Renaissance. Then and Now enters the world of Machiavelli, and covers three important months in the career of that crafty politician, worldly seducer, and high priest of schemers.