Showing results by narrator "Saul Reichlin" in All Categories

One wet November in Florence a young widow of an eminent Jewish architect comes to visit Sandro Cellini, a disgraced ex-policeman and budding private detective, to ask him to investigate her husband's suicide. But the case abruptly turns into something grimmer and more urgent than he could have imagined.

At the age of nine, Tomi Reichental, along with his mother, brother, grandmother, aunt and cousin, were incarcerated in the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Their crime: being Jews in Slovakia under Tiso’s regime which collaborated in the deportation of over 80 per cent of its Jewish population. He recalls the daily brutality, starvation and dehumanisation of the inmates.

This audiobook takes the listener on a grand musical tour from its origins in prehistory to the 21st century. It describes its roles in culture and religion in ancient China and the Middle East and how it developed in the Mediterranean world of classical Greece and Rome. Andrew Gant considers the evolution of music in medieval Europe and looks at what led to the astonishing revolution of musical forms and genres that took place in the Renaissance, first in Italy and then across the rest of Europe.

Almost 200 years since the Crusader armies took Jerusalem, it is the turn of the Saracen to seek revenge and send an overwhelming force against the last Christian enclave in the Holy Land: Acre. All will be tested and all may perish. For this is the endgame. No quarter will be given and no mercy shown. William of Beaujeu, Grand Master of the Templars, will stop at little to secure the city.

The death of his wife has left Michael Keats bereft; the subsequent discovery of her adultery devastates him. Michael resolves to discover the identity of her lover. That journey leads him to northern Italy where he becomes embroiled in a story of passion and treachery amongst the Partisans and villagers during the darkest days of World War II. As Michael gets closer to the truth he realizes that some secrets should never be told.

Tokyo. 2020. As Japan prepares to host the Olympic Games an English exchange student is found bludgeoned to death in a love hotel. She lies in an empty room with only a dead spider for morbid company. Could this be a calling card from her killer?

The Goode Fritz tells the story of a young Russian named Kirill, the sole survivor of a once numerous clan of German origin, who delves relentlessly into the past. His ancestor, Balthasar Schwerdt, migrated to the Russian Empire in the early 1800s, bringing with him the practice of alternative medicine and becoming captive to an erratic nobleman who supplied entertainers for Catherine the Great. Kirill's investigation takes us through centuries of turmoil during which none of the German's nine children or their descendants can escape their adoptive country's cruel fate.

Benjamim, a young man on the cusp of fatherhood, discovers a disturbing family secret: before his father was born, his paternal grandfather had a child with Benjamim's mother. With both men dead, Benjamim turns to three of their confidantes to piece together his family history: Haroldo, his grandfather's best friend; Isabel, his grandmother; and Raul, a friend from his father's youth. Through their conflicting testimonies, full of blind spots and contradictions, Benjamim will gradually learn of the secrets and conflicts that shattered his wealthy family.

As Sandro gets to grips with the dispiriting realities of life as a private detective, touting for business among old contacts and following errant teenagers, an old case comes back to haunt him... Loni Meadows - the glamorous, charming and ruthless director of an artistic Foundation based in a castle in the hills outside Florence - is found dead in circumstances Sandro cannot convince himself are accidental. He soon finds himself drawn into the lives of the castle's highly strung community and the closed world they inhabit in the Casentino's isolated hills.

The second instalment in a prize-winning series charting the rise of the House of Medici as they become Masters of Florence and progenitors of the Renaissance. Florence, 1469. The Medici family is preparing for the marriage of its son and heir Lorenzo. His heart belongs to another, but this union will strengthen the alliance with a powerful Roman family. Torn between love and power, the bounties and the compromises of governing, Lorenzo has become complacent. He has forgotten the bloody path he forged on his ascent to power and the enemies left in his wake.

Fontainebleau, 1536. Francis II, dauphin of France, is dead. Poisoned. And the royal court believe Catherine de' Medici to be the murderer. With the heir apparent dead, her husband Henry will now be the next king of France - and her queen - and Catherine's family is known to stop at nothing to consolidate their power. But not yet queen and without an heir of her own, Catherine cannot be sure of securing her family's legacy. To ensure the conception of an heir, she will need to seek help from an unexpected ally: Nostradamus, the reclusive astronomer and purported seer.

Justin Robertson's debut novel is a trans-dimensional trip into the mysterious knot of nature; a journey into the 'brilliant darkness' where the timeless divine spirit of the 'Tangle' weaves its spell and all mankind's hubris is rendered insignificant by the radically non-human force of phantom ecology. Salvation, revelation and a terrible reckoning dwell in the ancient roots....

No one knows a city like the people who live there - so who better to relate the history of Paris than its inhabitants through the ages? Taking us from 1750 to the new millennium, Graham Robb's Parisians is at once an audiobook to lose yourself in, to dip in and out of at leisure, and to return to again and again - rather like the city itself, in fact.

The Debatable Land was an independent territory which used to exist between Scotland and England. At the height of its notoriety, it was the bloodiest region in Great Britain, fought over by Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James V. After the Union of the Crowns, most of its population was slaughtered or deported, and it became the last part of the country to be brought under the control of the state. Today, its history has been forgotten or ignored.

Presumed dead by the Stockholm police, master criminal and undercover informant Piet Hoffmann is now on the run from the Swedish authorities, living with his wife and two young sons under an assumed name in Cali, Colombia. Only Hoffmann's former police handler, Erik Wilson, knows where he is - and that he has accepted two dangerous new jobs: one as a high-level enforcer for a Colombian cocaine cartel and one as an infiltrator for the DEA, working to bring the cartel down.

Up the remote James River lies a small fort. This first outpost of the new colony is besieged by natives, beset by danger and sabotaged from within. Christian Hardy is there to protect the new possession on behalf of young Prince Henry, heir to the English throne. Ranged against him are King James I and his spymaster Robert Cecil as well as his old adversary Realm, who will stop at nothing to wreak vengeance on Hardy. A desperate fight for survival begins....

Inspector Akyl Borubaev of the Bishkek Murder Squad has been exiled to the far corner of Kyrgyzstan, but death and corruption still haunt him in the remote town where he has been stationed. Borubaev soon finds himself caught up in a mysterious and gruesome new case: several children's bodies have been found buried together - all tagged with name bands that mark them as orphans, all killed in the same way.

Following heavy casualties, General Townsend withdraws his exhausted troops to the town of Kut Al Amara, Iraq. His orders - to engage as many Turkish troops as possible in a siege situation. A relief force is hastily assembled, among them Charles Reid, Tom Mason and Michael Downe, for each of whom the advance is personal. Charles returns to the country where he lost the love of his life.

Bernt Lund harbours a sickness. He is a monster: in the mind of society, in the mind of his nine-year-old victims' parents, and in the mind of his fellow inmates. Lennart Oscarsson has a situation. The worst scenario imaginable for the head of Aspsås prison's department for sexual crimes. These two men's actions are about to hand DCI Ewert Grens the most profoundly sickening and impossibly sensitive case of his career, and in Stockholm's history.

Lydia Grajauskas will never forget the face. The face of the trafficker who brought her to Stockholm: the man responsible for three unrelenting years of forced prostitution and slavery. DCI Ewert Grens will never forget the name. The name of the prisoner the day his life was destroyed: the man responsible for 25 years of torturous heartache. Sweden will never forget their revenge....