Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

The first ever collection of poems by the acclaimed author of the Aubrey/Maturin series of Napoleonic naval adventures. As we have stood with Jack and Stephen on the deck of the Surprise and other ships, listeners around the world have been transported to a place and time at once familiar and exotic, routine and dramatic. At all times, Patrick O’Brian’s deep knowledge of the period and profound empathy with the landscape of the sea has ensured there is always a firm hand on the tiller.

Set in Italy in the Middle Ages, this is not only a narrative of a murder investigation in a monastery in 1327, but also a chronicle of the 14th-century religious wars, a history of monastic orders, and a compendium of heretical movements.

A collection of stunning short stories from the most acclaimed Science Fiction author of any generation. Arthur C Clarke is without question the world's best-known and most celebrated science fiction writer. His career, spanning more than sixty years, is one of unequalled success.

Arthur C Clarke is without question the world’s best-known and most celebrated science fiction writer. His career, spanning more than 60 years, is one of unequalled success. Clarke has always been celebrated for his clear prophetic vision, which is fully on display in this audiobook, but there are also many stories which show his imagination in full flight, to the distant future and to far-flung star systems. The second volume in a collection of five.

A Treacherous Paradise sees Henning Mankell turn his talents for writing gripping thrillers to a world where power and powerlessness meet and passion is a dangerous commodity. Hanna Lundmark escapes the brutal poverty of rural Sweden for a job as a cook onboard a steamship headed for Australia. Jumping ship at the African port of Lourenço Marques, Hanna decides to begin her life afresh. Stumbling across what she believes to be a down-at-heel hotel, Hanna becomes embroiled in a sequence of events that lead to her inheriting the most successful brothel in town.

Just as a major environmental summit is about to start in Hamburg, a massive storm hits the city. When the flood waters recede, a headless torso is found washed up. Initially, Jan Fabel fears it may be another victim of a serial rapist and murderer who stalks his victims, then dumps their bodies in waterways around the city. But the truth of the situation is far more complex. Fabel’s investigations lead him to a secretive environmental Doomsday cult called “Pharos”, the brainchild of a reclusive, crippled billionaire.

It was a mistake for Ben to tell the Hunter that there were still wolves in Surrey. For the Hunter was a fanatic, always on the lookout for unusual prey. Driven by an ambition to wipe out the last English wolves, the Hunter set out on his savage quest.

Internationally best-selling historian Antonia Fraser's new book brilliantly evokes one year of pre-Victorian political and social history - the passing of the Great Reform Bill of 1832. For our inconclusive times, there is an attractive resonance with 1832, with its "rotten boroughs" of Old Sarum and the disappearing village of Dunwich, and its lines of most resistance to reform.

After the tragic death of his lover, Helen Flemming, Eisenmenger throws himself back into his work as a forensic pathologist. The newly promoted Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton brings him in to help on the grisly discovery of a severed head in a local farmyard. When a headless – but female – body then turns up in a dustbin, they must acknowledge that this shows all the signs of the work of a serial killer.

In January 2014 I was informed that I had cancer. However, Quicksand is not a book about death and destruction but about what it means to be human. I have undertaken a journey from my childhood to the man I am today, writing about the key events in my life and about the people who have given me new perspectives. About men and women I have never met but wish I had. I write about love and jealousy, about courage and fear. And about what it is like to live with a potentially fatal illness.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 2 we bring you the classics 'Sohrab and Rustum' by Matthew Arnold, 'The Prisoner of Chillon' by Lord Byron, and 'Faithless Sally Brown' by Thomas Hood. They are read for you by the renowned actors Sean Barrett and David Shaw-Parker.

When a covert police operation in Northern Ireland goes badly wrong, Grace Macallan is reassigned to the newly formed Lothian & Borders Major Crime Team and forced to rebuild her career and her reputation. But when a brutal attack on a prostitute turns into a series of murders, the Major Crime Team is under pressure. The tabloid headlines are lurid, and the team badly needs a result. With a new life to build in a new city, a new boss as smooth as an 18-year-old malt and a high-profile lawyer as the chief suspect, Grace begins to wonder if telling the truth is always the right thing to do.

Set in the fictional city of Maardam, each story is linked by themes of secrets coming to light, lies being exposed and pasts coming back to haunt the people who thought they had fled them - all told in Håkan Nesser’s signature style of dark, cutting prose that displays a true understanding of human nature. The collection is the basis for a trilogy of international films - Dear Agnes, Death of an Author and Samaria - directed by Daniel Alfredson and starring Ben Kingsley and Gemma Chan.

Otto Laird is outraged . . .The peaceful, if slightly bemused, existence of this elderly, retired architect is rudely interrupted when he learns that his most significant and revolutionary building, Marlowe House, a 1960s tower block council estate in south London is to be demolished. Determined to do everything in his power to save the building, Otto returns to London for the first time in 25 years.

Oli and Magnus Jonson have spent decades trying to escape from the shadows of their past. Raised by their grandparents in Bjarnarhofn, a remote farmstead in Iceland, both brothers had to endure brutal violence at the hands of their grandfather. When Constable Pall Gylfason is called to investigate a suspected homicide in a remote farmstead, he is surprised to find Detective Magnus Jonson is already there.

It’s November 1956. The world is in turmoil, the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Uprising boiling away in the background. Lennox, though, has more immediate concerns, like getting his personal life and his business back on track. In a bid to stay out of trouble, he’s looking for more legitimate cases. Anything’s better than working for the Three Kings, the crime bosses who run Glasgow’s underworld. When a woman comes into his office and hires him to follow her philandering husband, it seems the perfect case. Straightforward, typical and, most of all, legal. As he begins to dig deeper, Lennox realizes this is no simple case....

Grace Macallan is at breaking point, and a new investigation is testing her to the limit. An undercover officer is missing and a woman is washed up, traumatised and barely alive, on the shores of Berwickshire. As she untangles the woman's story, Grace is drawn into a cold-blooded criminal world headed by Pete Handyside, a notorious gangland boss who will fight hard and dirty to control his empire. But a traitor in his midst is intent upon betrayal, triggering an uncontrollable wave of violence. As she hones in on crucial evidence, Grace knows that one wrong move could end in tragedy.

Iceland, 2017: When a young Italian tourist is found brutally murdered at a sacred church in northern Iceland, Magnus Jonson, newly returned to the Reykjavík police force, is called in to investigate. At the scene, he finds a stunned TV crew, there to film a documentary on the life of the legendary Viking Gudrid the Wanderer. Magnus quickly begins to suspect that there may be more links to the murdered woman than anyone in the film crew will acknowledge.

Nineteen-fifty-three is synonymous in the British memory with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June. But less well known is what happened in 10 Downing Street on 23 June. With Anthony Eden vying for power, the elderly prime minister, Winston Churchill, must maintain the confidence of his government, the press and the public. But after a diplomatic dinner at which he is in typically sparkling form, Churchill's Italian dining companions are rushed out of the building and his doctor called.

A tender, impassioned and unforgettable story of a father's love and a daughter's ambition in the wake of devastating tragedy. It all starts with the death of Martijn van Vliet's wife. His grief-stricken young daughter, Lea, cuts herself off from the world, lost in the darkness of grief. Then she hears the unfamiliar sound of a violin playing in the hall of a train station, and she is brought back to life. Transfixed by a busker playing Bach, Lea emerges from her mourning, vowing to learn the instrument.