Showing results by narrator "Mark Meadows" in All Categories

Don Drake is living rough in a sink estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh, doing cheap spells for even cheaper customers while fending off the local lowlifes. Six months ago, Don fled from London to Glasgow to track down his old girlfriend Debbie the alchemist. With the Burned Man gradually driving him mad, Don meets with an ancient and mysterious tramp-slash-magician, with disastrous consequences. Now his old accomplices must step in to save Don from himself, before he damns himself for good this time.

Thomas More's Utopia stands out as one of the most striking political works ever written. Composed specifically as a response to Henry VIII's break with Rome, the book meditates on the perfect society while indirectly critiquing the political and social ills of Tudor England. Containing thoughts on religious pluralism, a welfare state, and women's rights, More's book was well ahead of its time, already hinting at later theories on communism and capitalism centuries before Marx, Engels, and Smith.

After a hectic morning involving two rather irritating cases of mistaken identity, Inspector Montalbano finally arrives in his office ready find out what's troubling Vigàta this week. What he discovers is unnerving. A woman on her way home from work has been held up at gunpoint, chloroformed and kidnapped, but then released just hours later - unharmed and with all her possessions - into the open countryside. Later that day, Montalbano hears from Enzo, the owner of his favourite restaurant, that his niece has recently been the victim of the exact same crime.

IWM was founded on 5th March 1917 when the War Cabinet approved a proposal by Sir Alfred Mond MP for the creation of a national war museum to record the events still taking place during the First World War. The intention was to collect and display material as a record of everyone's experiences during the war - civilian and military - and to commemorate the sacrifices of all sections of society.The First World War Retold tells the story of that war from a fresh perspective from IWM's unparalleled collections.

A young man named Antonio borrows money from a merchant of Venice named Shylock, so that he can court a fine lady he wishes to marry. When Antonio is late to repay his debt, Shylock has him arrested and demands that a terrible price must be paid...

Denis is searching for his mother’s past, knowing she had secrets. In Nice, he finds her friends, Monique and Clemence. In the 1950s, they were Matisse’s assistants when he was old and ill, pinning up his coloured paper shapes, putting the great cut-out works together. Monique inspired his great designs in the chapel at Vence, Clemence, in pursuit of love, was caught in an affair that led to violence and disaster. So they have their own intense and colourful past - but they hold the key to Denis’s past, too. He’s about to face the greatest challenge of his life.

A story of romance, humor, and true detective fiction, this novel begins with Arsène Lupin, a gentleman thief known for his strict moral code, forcing the French authorities to find an investigator who can put a stop to his dealings. In order to find a competitor keen enough, they must traverse the English Channel, where they find Herlock Sholmes and his assistant, Wilson - two of the most inquisitive and successful detectives in the world. Does Lupin stand a chance?

We are supposed to have more information at our disposal now than at any time in history. So why, in a world of rising sea levels, populist leaders, resurgent fascism, and a global pandemic, do so many people believe bizarre and untrue things about the world we live in? In After the Fact?, Marcus Gilroy-Ware shows us what really created the conditions for mis- and disinformation, from fake news and conspiracy theories, to bullshit journalism and the resurgence of the far-right, and why liberal newspaper columnists and centrist politicians are unable to turn back this tide.

Hitman Don Drake owes a gambling debt to a demon. Forced to carry out one more assassination to clear his debt, Don unwittingly kills an innocent child and brings the Furies of Greek myth down upon himself. Rescued by an almost fallen angel called Trixie, Don and his magical accomplice - the Burned Man, an imprisoned archdemon - are forced to deal with Lucifer himself whilst battling a powerful evil magician.

Taking a break from his holiday visiting his nephew, Jim, Athelstan Digby agrees to look after the old bookshop of Keldstone so that his hosts, the Lavenders, can attend their cousin's funeral. On the first day of his tenure, three suspicious characters enquire after a copy of The Life and Times of Mr Badman by John Bunyan.

As the rain falls, the nightmare begins. Blake Hudson is an environment officer who lives in a converted lighthouse on the southwest coast of England. Sky McPherson is a pathologist, recently assigned to the area. Both of them share a past.

Hamburg 1947: It is the year of extremes. After a bitterly cold winter of starvation, the bombed city groans under excruciating heat. And Chief Inspector Frank Stave is confronted with a new case. In the ruins of a shipyard, the corpse of a boy is found and Stave's hunt for the killer leads him into the world of "wolf children" - orphaned children who have fled from the Occupied Eastern Territories and are now united in gangs. When two more bodies are discovered Stave is under even increasing pressure....

German Detective Maier travels to Phnom Penh, the Asian kingdom's ramshackle capital, to find the heir to a Hamburg coffee empire. As soon as the private eye and former war reporter arrives in Cambodia, his search for the young coffee magnate leads into the darkest corners of the country's history, and through the history of the communist revolution to the White Spider, a Nazi war criminal, who hides amongst the detritus of modern Cambodia and reigns over an ancient Khmer temple deep in the jungle.

Brimming with wisdom and humour, David Kynaston’s diaries written over one football season offer up his most personal take on social history to date. David Kynaston was seven and a half years old when he attended his first Aldershot match in the early months of 1959. So began a deep attachment to the game and a lifelong loyalty to an obscure, small-town football club. Though as he sits down to write his diaries almost 60 years on, he reflects that life might have been simpler if his father had never taken him to that first match at the Rec....

The year is 1792, and Herbert Powyss is set on making his name as a scientist. He is determined to study the effects of prolonged solitude on another human being, though before now Powyss' sole subjects have been the plants in his greenhouse. He fills three rooms beneath Moreham House with books, paintings and even a pianoforte, then puts out an advertisement, hoping for a gentleman recluse to claim the substantial reward. The only man desperate enough to apply is John Warlow, a semi-literate farm labourer who needs to support his wife, Hannah, and their six children.

Haworth, West Yorkshire, 1848. Branwell Brontë - unexhibited artist, unacknowledged writer, sacked railwayman, disgraced tutor and spurned lover -finds himself unhappily back in Haworth Parsonage, to face the crushing disappointment of his father and his three sisters, whose own pseudonymous successes - allegedly kept secret from him - are only just becoming apparent.

DCI Mark Lapslie suffers from a rare neurological condition that ‘cross-wires’ his senses. The sickening clamour of sounds he can taste has smothered his marriage and stifled his career...and it’s getting worse. His colleagues have written him off as a drunk – or worse – and Lapslie has quarantined himself in an isolated Essex cottage. Carl Whittley has got his own problems to deal with too: he’s just tortured a minor TV celebrity to death and blown an apparently anonymous commuter to pieces.

What secrets lay buried in the heart of the forest? When Maya strays into the forest she also walks straight into a nightmare. It's not just the horrific discovery she makes among the trees, it's what's waiting for her at home. Something too terrifying to believe in. She's not even sure she believes it herself. Perhaps she's going mad, only imagining the sounds in the night and the feeling of being stalked.

You take one risk. Now those you love must pay.... Dom Turner is a dependable husband, a loving father. A man you can rely on. But it takes only one day to destroy a seemingly perfect life. Emma thought she could trust her husband, Dom. She thought he would always look after her and their daughter, Daisy.... Then one reckless act ends in two innocent deaths - and Dom's family becomes the target of a terrifying enemy. There's nowhere to hide. They're on the run for their lives.

Will lies in a deserted lane, his life slipping away. Against all the odds he survives but with an almost total loss of memory. At night he is tormented by visions, in the daytime by hostile strangers. Why does he have so many enemies? And who is the strange child who seems to have a story to tell him?