Showing results by narrator "Stephen Thorne" in All Categories

A young London engineer, contracted to service a hydraulic press at a country house, discovers that the owner is using the machine for illegal purposes. After confronting the owner, the engineer narrowly escapes death and loses a thumb when the owner turns on him. Sherlock Holmes deduces the actual use of the machine and sets off to bring the evildoers to justice.

In "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", Violet Hunter asks Sherlock Holmes whether she should accept a job with very strange conditions. She has been offered £120 per year as a governess, but only if she will cut her long hair short. This is only one of many peculiar conditions to which she must agree. The employer, Jephro Rucastle, seems pleasant enough, yet Miss Hunter obviously has her suspicions. After a fortnight, Miss Hunter beseeches Holmes to come and see her in Winchester, as the situation has become even stranger. This is the last of the 12 stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

A banker, Mr. Alexander Holder, makes a loan of £50,000 to a socially prominent client, who leaves a beryl coronet - one of the most valuable public possessions in existence - as collateral. Feeling that he must not leave this rare and precious piece of jewelry in his personal safe at the bank, he takes it home with him. Awakened by a noise in the night, he is horrified to see his son playing with the coronet and apparently trying to bend it. Three beryls are now missing from it. In a panic, Mr. Holder travels to see Holmes, who agrees to take the case.

In The Adventure of the Speckled Band, Sherlock Holmes and Watson come to the aid of Helen Stoner, who has reason to fear her life is being threatened by her abusive stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott. Her sister, who died two years before, spoke of a "speckled band" right before she died in mysterious circumstances. To solve the mystery of the "speckled band", Holmes and Watson stake out Miss Stoner's room and make a momentous discovery. The eighth of the 12 stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle considered it the best of the Holmes stories.

In "A Case of Identity", Miss Mary Sutherland, a woman with a substantial income, is engaged to a quiet Londoner who has recently disappeared. Of the fiancé, Mr. Hosmer Angel, Miss Sutherland only knows that he works in an office in Leadenhall Street. All his letters to her are typewritten, even the signature, and he insists that she write back to him through the local Post Office. The climax of the sad liaison comes when Mr. Angel abandons Miss Sutherland at the altar on their wedding day. Holmes reaches a conclusion quite quickly and advises his client to forget Mr. Angel.

Venture back in time to Victorian London to join literature's greatest detective team, the brilliant Sherlock Holmes and his devoted assistant, Dr. Watson, as they investigate a dozen of their best-known cases. Originally published in 1892, this is the first and best collection of stories about the legendary sleuth. The collection includes one of the author's personal favorites: A Scandal in Bohemia, in which a king is blackmailed by a former lover and Holmes matches wits with the only woman to attract his open admiration.

While the hyper-partisanship in Washington that has stunned the world has been building for decades, Ira Shapiro argues that the US Senate has suffered most acutely from the loss of its political center. In Broken, Ira Shapiro, a former senior Senate staffer and author of the critically-acclaimed book The Last Great Senate, offers an expert's account of some of the most prominent battles of the past decade and lays out what must be done to restore the Senate's lost luster.

In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known novelists in Britain. House Mother Normal: A Geriatric Comedy is Johnson's most richly characterised, humane and sympathetic work. Eight residents in a home for the elderly sit down to dinner, along with the House Mother herself, and each takes it in turn to relay the proceedings of the evening from their own, individual perspective.

Long, long ago on the great plains of Asia Minor, two mighty armies faced each other in mortal combat. The armies were the Greeks and the Trojans and the prize they were fighting for was Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. To the Greeks it seemed the city of Troy was impregnable and only a miracle could bring them success. And then help comes to them in a most unexpected way as a strange blue box materializes close to their camp.

Fascinating, frightening or just plain frustrating? These eight gripping stories show detective work as it really is - and sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. Hear about the ghostly dream that helped to solve a baffling murder mystery, some clever detectives' tricks that led to the conviction of the 'Laurel and Hardy' jewel thieves, and the crafty blackmailer who nearly got away with the perfect crime.

Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular composers of all time. His melodies are known to many people who may never have heard his name. They crop up on mobile telephones, alarm clocks and answering machines as often as on records and concert programs. Like his music, the man himself was widely loved, but his inner life was fraught with sufferings, confusions and a deep vein of self-doubt. The drama of his emotional life is vividly reflected in his music, letters and diaries, all of which play a major part in this intimate portrait-in-sound.

What is war really like? Here are stories of sacrifices and massacres, of battles fought on horseback and in the trenches, at sea and on land. Find out about the savage school teacher who betrayed his students to the Roman soldiers, the American hero who led his country to independence only to be abandoned after the battle was won, and the football game between two fierce enemies that halted the First World War for a day. Discover how people survive in times of war in these incredible but true war stories.

What would you do if disaster struck? Would you be a hero...or a coward? These are the true stories of people involved in many different kinds of disaster, and how they behaved in life-or-death situations. Hear about a single act of revenge that sacrificed hundreds of lives; how a tragic disaster at sea turned one man into a hero; the train crash that should never have happened and other real-life dramas.

A train bound for a mysterious destination stops in the middle of a meadow. As the hours pass and the cause of the delay remains unknown, we meet the various passengers. There is a priest, a former president, a lonely waitress, an elderly couple, and a young orphan boy, each pondering the significance of the journey thrust upon them and what awaits them at their destination. Will they find order? Loneliness? Love?

Two people are kidnapped and used in horrific experiments by hideous, lizard-eyed aliens. Strange beings descend in a beam of light to rescue a girl and her father. An alien space craft crashes in Roswell, USA...but some people seem determined to keep it a secret. Is there intelligent life on other planets? Have beings from outer space visited Earth? Look at the facts and make up your own mind: Is there really someone out there?

Included in this collection: "Who Killed Zebedee" by Wilkie Collins, read by Sean Barrett; "Blue Suit" by Edgar Wallace, read by Paul Panting; "A Mysterious Case" by Anna Katharine Green, read by Liza Ross; "The Crooked Man" by Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Stephen Thorne; "Vendetta" by Guy de Maupassant, read by Liza Ross; "The Sapient Monkey" by Headon Hill, read by Paul Panting; and more....

Minerva Parkinson has just received distressing news: she's dying. Though she and her husband Henry have been married for many years, their marriage has grown listless, and she therefore chooses to keep her dire prognosis to herself. With the hopes of leaving Henry with fond memories of her, she buys a houseboat to fulfill his dream of a riverboat trip, and they set off down the Missouri River. Things are looking good until they meet two strangers, a young woman named Nora and a mysterious man named Mr. Mortimer, who possesses knowledge beyond the worldly realm.

This fantastic audiobook includes a wonderful interview conducted by Maggie Norden with her father asking him to recount for us all the wonderful anecdotes that Denis writes about in the book. Reminsicing these memories conjures up a very amusing and touching half hour interview before Denis hands over to Stephen Thorne or as Denis puts it "an old friend-so Stephen...Chapter One?"

Michael Morpurgo is a national treasure. With books such as Private Peaceful, Kensuke’s Kingdom, and The Wreck of the Zanzibar, he has enchanted a whole generation of children. His is a rare gift. In a unique collaboration, Maggie Fergusson explores Michael Morpurgo’s life through seven biographical chapters, to which he responds with seven autobiographical stories of his own. The portrait that emerges is one of light and shade: the light very bright, the shade complex and often painful.

On a cold morning in Grimsby, Albert Hardcastle wakes up to the first day of his retirement. His days of working in a shop are behind him, and he and his wife, Alice, decide to celebrate by taking the luxury cruise of which they always dreamed. Meanwhile, on the Essex coast, Rear Admiral Sir Benbow Harrington, a retired Royal Navy officer, is trying to assemble a fleet of passenger ships. His newest vessel, the Golden Handshake, is ready for its maiden voyage.