Showing results by narrator "Keith Cruden" in All Categories

West Midlands 1980s, home to heavy metal. Black Sabbath and Judas Priest are household names, but over the smoking chimneys and factory yards, something new and equally ugly forms.... "Grebo" was a media-constructed music genre that even today sends a shudder down the spines of discerning music fans and critics. A homegrown proto-grunge, grebo was a British phenomenon that drew on an eclectic range of influences, from punk, '60s garage, and psychedelia, through to '70s heavy rock and thrash metal. It foreshadowed rave culture and was steeped in class politics.

When Ruby Parker, head of MI7’s Red Department, is hospitalized by a burglar, all is not as it seems. Her removal coincides with a series of catastrophes for British spies in hostile territories abroad, and some very shifty behavior by the new acting head of Red Department, Patrick Atherton. Atherton dislikes Red’s established hierarchy, which includes all its officers without exception, and possibly John Mordred in particular. The idea that there’s something fishy going on, and that all this is linked, seems intuitively obvious, and probably worth investigating.

A long list of dead-end jobs had left Joe with few prospects in life, but now things had to change. He had seen the woman of his dreams, and was determined to build himself a new life. Things start to look up for Joe when he walks into a pub looking for a job and ends up unofficially running it. With the help of his best buddy, Ernie, the pub starts to get very successful and busy, but becomes the haunt a few rather suspicious characters. Cash is still a problem for Joe until he overhears a conversation between two of his less respectable customers.

Mary Bell’s name to this day is infamous in Newcastle upon Tyne. Aged only 11 in 1968, she murdered two young boys, one aged three and one aged four, in Scotswood, an area of the West End of Newcastle upon Tyne. In both instances, Mary Bell told the victim that he had a sore throat, which she would massage to make them better before her hands became tighter when she would strangle them to death.

Allen Stanford is a man who lives by his own rules. From building an empire that conned people out of $8 billion to landing a helicopter in the center of Lord’s Cricket Ground, he has never done anything by halves. Throughout this book, we will take an always interesting, sometimes humorous, and plenty staggering look at the life of Sir Allen Stanford. We will cover his younger years at Baylor where he pretended he was related to the founder of Stanford University all the way up to his claimed amnesia soon after the FBI had cuffed him.

This book will be a testament to the people of the '80s who not only fought through hard times but came out the other side dancing. In a decade that gave us the glamour and intrigue of Madonna, Tom Cruise, Eddie Murphy, Back to the Future, Nintendo, and MTV, we also saw IRA bombings, Chernobyl, the crack cocaine epidemic, and the Hillsborough disaster. But like all decades before and after, the indomitable spirit of the human race prevailed, and art, culture, and charity shone through the darkness.

The '70s was a time when movies and music changed in ways that had never before seemed possible. Special effects and rock and roll excess only added to the explosive nature of one of history's most important decades. Among the chaos came monumental breakthroughs in technology, freedom, and science. But just underneath all this wonder, the Yorkshire Ripper was striking fear into the public’s hearts. In this book, we will take a stroll through the period of time that gave us punk, disco, Star Wars, Jaws, and the VHS tape.

The '60s will be forever known as one of the most important and influential periods of all time. A decade that gave us the Space Race, the Beatles, Martin Luther King, Jr., the ‘66 World Cup, Woodstock, and countless other iconic moments, the '60s became a time of almost mythical legend. In this book, we will take a leisurely stroll through the decade that gave us so many of the ideals we treasure today. Delivered in a conversational tone, it will provide facts and figures in a more smooth and casual way than your regular old history book.

The fifties were a time of rebuilding and coming together following the horror and destruction of the Second World War that left Europe divided between the capitalist West and communist East. It was a time when TVs started to appear in most households, and a little thing called rock and roll began to creep into the mainstream music charts. Most of all, it was a time when the world showed itself to be so amazingly resourceful. In a decade that gave us Elvis Presley and the Baby Boom, we can begin to see a theme growing already for what these years would have in store. 

At the edge of the Pennine Moors, Detective Sergeant Blackshaw and his rookie colleague, Detective Constable Lumb, are called to the scene of a double murder committed on a burial ground. They discover that the case is connected to an ancient Celtic cult. Desperate for career advancement and obsessed with solving the mystery, DC Lumb immerses himself in the group—and disappears. Amid a chain of unexplained deaths, the Sergeant Blackshaw attempts to unravel the plot. But with scarce evidence, can he prove his theory—or will he have to accept that there is no way to catch a phantom?

It started in London and spread across Great Britain within days. Nobody knew where it had come from—or did they? The country is divided, and mankind is turning on itself in a time when pulling together may be the only way they can salvage the lives they’re fighting so fiercely to protect. Two friends escaping confinement take to the road in a tense and dangerous adventure where they must evade detection at any cost.

West Berkshire, the 1970s. PC Don Barton is convinced that life has taken a turn for the better when he passes his promotion exam and becomes an acting sergeant. Things take a turn for the worse after a violent altercation with a local thug. Soon after, Don finds himself investigating a hit-and-run case. Somehow, international drug smugglers and the London gangland all seem to be involved. Don is determined to find out the truth, but the more he uncovers, the greater the danger becomes. Can he crack the case before more lives are lost?