Showing results by narrator "Greg Wagland" in All Categories

In the historic summer offensive of 1943, the Allies stand ready to invade Sicily. The cost will be high in lives and time, unless the Sicilians themselves can be persuaded to rise against their Nazi oppressors. Only the Mafia can command an uprising - and the Godfather refuses to fight. Desperate action is needed to dent Hitler's evil pride. Someone who understands Mafia ways, and knows how to earn the loyalty the Allies crave. Someone who isn't afraid of killing his own.

In 1970, Harold Stamp, a retarded 20-year-old, was convicted on disputed evidence and a retracted confession of brutally murdering his grandmother. Less than three years later he is dead, driven to suicide by isolation and despair. Thirty years on, Jonathan Hughes, an anthropologist specialising in social stereotyping, comes across the case by accident. He finds alarming disparities in the evidence and has little doubt that Stamp's conviction was a terrible miscarriage of justice. But how far is Hughes prepared to go in the search for justice?

Herbert George Wells was one of the most prolific and visionary British writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. H. G. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels, although he wrote across many genres, including nonfiction. His fiction embraces history, science fiction, horror, satire, fantasy, and social commentary. Wells was also a futurist, foreseeing air travel, tanks (as in “The Land Ironclads” - part of this anthology) space travel, nuclear weapons, and even satellite television.

It’s 1944 and Germany is facing its final defeat. 5,000 miles across the Allied dominated Atlantic, 22 men and five nuns aboard the Barquentine Deutschland are battling home to Kiel. Among them are a U-boat ace captured in a raid on Falmouth. A female American doctor caught in the nightmare of flying bombs. A gunboat commander who’s fought from the Solomons to the Channel and a rear admiral desperate to get some of the action. Allies and enemies, men and women, the hunters and the haunted all drawn into the eye of the storm.

For Harry Youngblood, escaping from prison is going to be easy. But escaping his past could cost him his life.... Twenty years inside for one-third of a million pounds: that was the price Harry Youngblood was paying. Drummond is Youngblood’s cellmate. He is also intelligence agent Paul Chavasse, working undercover. And when Youngblood is broken out, Chavasse tags along for the ride. His objective is to break the crime ring headed by the Baron, to whom Youngblood is indebted. But Chavasse will have to get past a psychopathic henchman named Vaughan if he is to succeed....

When theatregoers are treated to the gruesome spectacle of an actor’s lifeless body hanging on the stage, DI Stewart Gardener is immediately called in to investigate. Is the killer still in the audience? A lockdown is set in motion, but it is soon apparent that the murderer is able to come and go unnoticed. How do they do it? Is the killer a theatre worker or an actor? And what kind of grudge do they have to bear?

H. G. Wells' classic science fiction work, first serialized in 1897, is one of many invasion narratives prevalent in British literature towards the end of the 19th century. However, The War of the Worlds not only introduces the extraterrestrial element of brutal Martian forces on the rampage but also explores many other contemporary issues and themes.

The Powder of Death opens with a returned envoy to China meeting an English scholar in Oxford in the mid-13th century; their purpose is to share a deadly secret. They vow that the knowledge of gunpowder must die with them. The audiobook tells the story of its rediscovery, one man's obsession with the powder of death, and Edward III's determination to use it to his advantage. The nature of warfare is changed forever, and the world hears the death knell of knightly chivalry.

Can DCI Dan Hellier decipher the twisted mind behind the ritualised burning of homeless men on Devon’s beaches before more people are sacrificed? When images from the burning appear all over social media, Hellier realises that he is dealing with a cult and a mystery that will lead back to the Irish Troubles. Hellier is forced to battle a bitter man who has plotted revenge for more than 20 years, without a care for the lives he will destroy.

When DI Bliss prevents 15-year-old Molly from jumping from a hotel roof, he has no idea their paths will cross again. A county-lines mule, Molly is questioned by the drugs squad, but Bliss becomes convinced she is in danger and attempts to have her relocated. A local drug dealer and a London-based enforcer have other ideas. Meanwhile, the remains of a freelance Journalist are discovered alongside an archaeological find, which brings an old flame back into Bliss’ life.

The murder of professional astrologer Andrew Gorman seems a straightforward case for DCI Kenny Murrain – a tragic death resulting from an interrupted burglary. But when Gareth Clayburn, assistant to stage medium Justin Bannerman, is found dead in identical circumstances, Murrain begins to suspect the murders are linked. Meanwhile, Geoff Nolan, television personality and professor of psychology, is developing a new series exploring the psychology of the paranormal. Starting with Bannerman's work as a supposed spiritualist.

A missing child's body is found on the edge of the Peak District. As DCI Kenny Murrain and his team investigate, more attempted child abductions are reported. Murrain's instincts tell him this is a community with secrets, and those secrets have their roots deep in the past. Unexpected connections surface as he uncovers mysteries long buried. A motorcycle accident in the nearby hills. The unexplained death of a local prison governor. And a high-profile child killing two decades before.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s An Inland Voyage is his first published book (1878). It is a travelogue, a pioneering work of touristic adventure, which records his canoeing holiday in the summer of 1876, with a friend (Sir Walter Grindlay Simpson), through the waterways of Belgium and France. RLS, then 26 years old, is The Arethusa, named after his vessel, and his friend, The Cigar. It is, for the most part, a gentle journey, written in the Romantic style, full of humour, philosophical reflection, bygone charm and very frequent rain.

The new best-seller from the author of Zero Six Bravo. By 2007 Viktor Bout had become the world's foremost arms dealer. Known as the Merchant of Death, he was both public enemy number one to the global intelligence agencies and a ruthless criminal worth around $6 billion. For years Bout had eluded capture, meanwhile building up a labyrinthine network of airlines selling weapons to order to dictators, rebels, despots and terror groups worldwide.

It is the 21st century, and on Mars a dedicated group of pioneers - among them some of Earth's finest brains - struggle to change the face of the planet. Science fiction writer Martin Gibson finally gets a chance to visit the research colony on the Red Planet. It's a dream come true - until he discovers the difficulties and perils of survival on another world...and the very real terror it holds.

Bramfield, near Leeds, a sleepy little market town nestled on the borders of West and North Yorkshire. Detectives Stewart Gardener and Sean Reilly discover the naked corpse of Alex Wilson, nailed to the wall of a cellar in his uncle's hardware store. His lips are sewn together, and his body bears only one mark, a fresh scar near his abdomen. Within 48 hours, their investigation results in dead ends, more victims, no suspects and very little in the way of solid evidence.

Following many years of war with Rome, Carthage is exhausted. Yet the trouble is not yet over. As mercenaries land in Carthage to claim payment for services rendered, they do not receive what they expect. Lacking a shared culture, structure and even language, this band of warriors has taken up residence in Carthage and is becoming increasingly angry.... Meanwhile, veteran Roman sailor and prefect Atticus Perennis is fighting pirates in the seas around Sicily. Perpetually an outsider due to his Greek heritage, Atticus is a fine Roman warrior with several points to prove.

Evie and Thomas experience a very different war. Frustrated by life as a privileged young lady, Evie longs to play a greater part in the conflict - but how? - and as Thomas struggles with the unimaginable realities of war, he also faces personal battles back home, where War Office regulations on press reporting cause trouble at his father's newspaper business. Through their letters Evie and Thomas share their greatest hopes and fears - and grow ever fonder from afar. Can love flourish amid the horror of the First World War, or will fate intervene?

After a young woman is found strangled to death, Bliss is called to the scene. When he learns that one of his business cards was found among the victim's clothing and he is told what was written on the back of it, Bliss is immediately troubled. The card was one of five he handed out to trafficked young women he and his team had previously rescued from a shipping container.

Tono-Bungay is very possibly H. G. Wells' finest novel, bringing together so many strands of his work: that of the novelist, the scientific romancer, the humorist, the historian, and the prophet-like sociologist. It was published in 1909, and although Wells was disappointed by its poor sales, Arnold Bennett praised it thus: "When with the thrill of emotion that a great work communicates I finished reading Tono-Bungay, I was filled with a holy joy because Wells had stirred up the dregs again and more violently than ever....