Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Eddie thinks nowhere could be more boring than his hometown of the Wellcome Valley. Unfortunately he is about to be proved spectacularly wrong. Eddie’s problems start with the arrival of Scarlett, who seems rather too confident and mysterious for your average schoolgirl. She attracts trouble, and she’s apparently interested in only two very strange things - protecting the town’s local crackpot scientist and telling Eddie absolutely nothing about what’s going on.

John Motram has the chance of a lifetime. A cell biologist convinced that the Black Death was not caused by bubonic plague but by an unknown virus, he is asked to examine preserved bodies buried under the ancient abbey at Dryburgh. However, Motram’s excavations end up in disaster when he first becomes violent and then dangerously ill after entering the secret tomb.

Seven Bengal tigers are the star attraction of Carey's Circus. Their trainer is the fearless Anton, whose work demands absolute fitness and the steadiest of nerves. When Anton is found lying dead in the tigers' cage, it seems that he has lost control and been mauled by the tigers - but Detective Inspector Minto of Scotland Yard is not convinced. Minto's investigations lead him deep into the circus world of tents and caravans, clowns and acrobats, human and animal performers. No one is above suspicion.

Passengers boarding the 10.35 train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston have no idea that their journey is about to be brutally curtailed. Holly has just landed her dream job, and Jeff is heading for an interview after months of unemployment. They end up sitting next to each other.

Nick is stuffed in his locker. Again. It’s not so bad. Lockers are roomier than you’d think. Especially when you’re the shortest kid on the planet, which is exactly why Bully-Boy Roy stuffed him in there in the first place: He fits. The school counselor says Roy has issues. The only issue Nick can see is that Roy is a mutant troll. Nick’s friends, Molly and Karl, think the troll needs to be defeated. Together they are The Odd Squad.

Nic Cuaruana is 27, and he has served a prison sentence for killing someone when he was 17. Since his release, he has worked as a hit man-cum-cleaner-upper of various crime problems. An arms dealer called Pat employs Nic to find his missing teenage daughter Emma, and almost before he knows it Nic has fallen big-time into gangland London.

A thrilling World War One spy story from the author of the acclaimed Jack Haldean series .“There’s a spy in England. Frankie’s letter. Read Frankie’s letter... ” The last words said by a dying man to Anthony Brooke in Kiel in Germany during the height of World War One. But who is Frankie? With his cover blown and the German army at his heels, English secret agent Anthony Brooke’s search to discover the truth leads him to an innocent-seeming country house.

Fresh from the success of their first mission, the Spy Toys - Dan the Snugaliffic Cuddlestar bear, Arabella the Loadsasmiles Sunshine Doll and Flax the custom-made police robot rabbit - are ready for their next task. This time, the secret code that controls every Snaztacular Ultrafun toy has been stolen, and all over the world toys are revolting and turning against the children who own them. Can the Spy Toys save the day?

Strange things happen in the picture-postcard English village of Lindsay Carfax. When a young man falls into a quarry, it takes nine days to find the body. When rowdy hippies descend on the village, they're given nine days to leave. When an outspoken schoolmaster is kidnapped for nine days, he stays eerily quiet after his release. Now Albert Campion has come to town - and he means to investigate all this strangeness. But whoever is behind the unusual goings - on quickly makes it very clear that his nosing around is not welcome. 

London, 1888. Though the beautiful Miriam Cromer has confessed to the murder of her husband’s assistant, she is still confident of her acquittal. But then, she is sentenced to hang. She blames her husband, but he has an alibi. Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray must discover what really happened at Park Lodge on 12th March, 1888, and quickly.

London, 1889: After Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat became a Victorian best seller, rowing on the Thames was the great craze of 1889. When an elementary school teacher in training takes a midnight swim in the Thames and witnesses a body being dumped, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackerey are called to investigate. They uncover strange parallels with the enormously popular Victorian novel, but nobody will take them seriously. Following their instincts, they stick doggedly to the trail, which leads upstream to Oxford.

London, 1884: A series of bomb blasts in public places is causing mayhem throughout the city. Even Scotland Yard’s CID office becomes a target, throwing suspicion on Constable Thackeray. The primary suspects are Irish terrorists seeking independence, but could the villain be someone else? A beautiful Irish woman? An American athlete? Sergeant Cribb reluctantly enrolls in a bomb-making course and infiltrates the Dynamite Party.

As the world moves from the industrial era to the digital age, power is shifting and fragmenting. Power is no longer about might and ownership; power in a digital world is about access. Existing businesses need to understand this shift and position themselves to survive and thrive in an environment where entrepreneurs and start-ups enabled by access to technology are genuine threats.

In Praise of Famous Horses is an A-Z companion to perhaps the most loved of all domesticated animals. The book's entries include a wealth of unexpected, fascinating and serendipitous information, from horse-slang phrases to horses in British pub signs and from the horse in advertising to the horse as a food item. Themes such as the horse in warfare and the horse in folklore abound.

The most famous sports book in the world, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack has been published every year since 1864. The selected writings from the 157th edition contained in this audiobook offer trenchant opinion, compelling features and an authoritative voice on the worldwide game. The Shorter Wisden is a compelling distillation of what's best in its bigger brother – and the 2020 edition of Wisden is crammed, as ever, with the best writing in the game. Wisden's audio version includes the influential Notes by the Editor and all the front-of-book articles.

Glasgow, 1898. A man is found stabbed to death in a tenement block. Juan Camerón, photographer-cum-sleuth, is drafted in in the hope he can bring to light what the eye may overlook. Yet Juan has problems of his own. Following the tragic death of his father in Cuba some months before, the man’s legacy is threatened by a plagiarism suit from a mysterious señora, and Juan’s hoped-for happiness with his fiancée, Jane, might be over before it’s even begun - even more so when a visiting professor is murdered and Jane is witnessed fleeing the scene.

Madeline Kramer has finally got her life back on track at top city law firm Sullivan, Blake, Monroe. But when two armed, masked men burst into a conference room one lunchtime, kidnapping a trainee and a partner, Maddy’s life is plunged into disarray once more - particularly when charismatic DCI Jake Carver, who caught a heartless killer when they last met and with whom Maddy shared a mutual chemistry, is called to the scene.

A killer is targeting former students of the Bloomsbury Academy of Law. The victims - all female - are gruesomely butchered according to a pattern corresponding with the legal syllabus. Even more disconcerting are riddles sent by the killer to investigating officer, Chief Inspector Jake Carver, offering clues as to who is next and where they will die.

Detective Jake Porter’s life was ripped apart by the hit-and-run driver that killed his wife. The life he has been building up piece by piece is rocked by the discovery of new evidence. At the same time, he has a volatile case to juggle. Ross Henderson was a Vlogger with over 10 million followers rallying against the growing tide of the far-right. As his audience tuned in to listen to Henderson tear apart more anti-immigrant vitriol, they watched in horror as he was brutally murdered during a live broadcast.

It is deep midwinter. Six ambitious vice presidents of Labouchere Associates are gathered together at an isolated mountain lodge in New Hampshire’s White Mountains for a weekend of corporate mind games. By Monday, one of them will become a partner and earn at least a million a year. And one of them will be dead.