Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Retired bank manager George Pearmain is apparently dead. According to the behaviour of everyone around him, it seems he is no more. Not only that, but his mother has also passed away – and on the eve of her 99th year. Not only that, it could be that they were both murdered. Apart from that he feels fine.

A bold new dramatisation of Thomas Hardy’s classic, giving his story a 21st-century resonance. Tess Durbeyfield is driven by poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urberville family. But meeting her cousin Alec proves to be her downfall. This classic criticism of social convention is given a new treatment in this full-cast adaptation which blows away the shepherd's pipe and heritage stereotype, foregrounding Hardy's social and sexual radicalism.

When the police are called to the report of a late-night shooting, they expect it to be drugs or gang-related. They don’t expect to find a young student executed on his way home. Jordan Radley was an aspiring journalist: hard working, well-liked, dedicated. His first major story - looking at the fallout following the closure of a major local factory - had run recently and looked to be the first step in his longed-for career. Even after the story ran, Jordan continued to stay in contact with those he interviewed: he was on his way back from their social club the night he was murdered.

She was the daughter of a preacher and a gypsy. A strange and elusive child with powers of prophecy, she grew into an even stranger woman. From those around her she inspired love and admiration or furious hatred. Nothing in between. And somehow Jassy could transform even those who loved her into her enemies. Barney Hatton, the dispossessed heir of Mortiboys, loved her but not enough. Lindy, a girl who worked there, loved her too much.

The Steampunk Pirates get a taste of their own medicine when their ship is raided by a sea monster that’s greedy for gold. But when the rusty robots race to get their treasure back, they sail straight into a trap. Can they dodge the creature's twisting tentacles or will they be next on the monster’s menu?

A Greek gangster arrives in Stockholm only to be murdered in a macabre fashion at Skansen zoo, his body consumed by animals. As the Intercrime Unit - a team dedicated to solving international violent crime - investigate what brought him to Sweden, eight Eastern European women vanish from a refugee centre outside the city while an elderly professor, the tattooed numbers on his arm hinting at his terrible past, is executed at the Jewish cemetery.

Moreish digs into the unseen triggers, secret influences and mysterious motivations hovering above the table every time we get peckish. Explore the impact of words in menu construction alongside the power of comfort food; why the first bite is not always with the eyes; and how the worlds of sex, symbolism and animal instinct are simmering just beneath the surface in all of us. Continually eye opening and perceptive, often witty and entertaining, Moreish sets a place for persuasive packaging, in your face pop songs, underhand menu writing and over the top advertising.

As Hitler's bombs threatened London during World War II, eight-year-old David Merron was removed from his family and close-knit Jewish community in the East End and evacuated to the safety of the English countryside. Placed into the car of strangers, life was sometimes unpredictable and lonely. But, with time, the rural world became an exciting adventure playground in which he flourished.

Private Investigator Makana has a new client: the powerful art dealer Aram Kasabian. Kasabian wants him to track down a priceless painting that went missing from Baghdad during the US invasion. The art world is a far cry from the Cairo that Makana knows, but he discovers that this side of the city has its own dark underbelly. Before long he finds himself caught between dangerous enemies on a trail that leads him into the darkness of war and which threatens to send the new life he has built for himself up in flames.

The Victorian era saw orchids become one of the most expensive and collectable plants, and this short story follows orchid collector Wedderburn, who gets more than he bargained for with his latest floral specimen.

Prior to assuming his new role with a different constabulary, Danny Maik has taken a holiday in Singapore to reconcile with an old friend, Guy Trueman. When a street brawl turns deadly, Danny is facing a charge of manslaughter, but when evidence emerges that he may have planned the victim's murder, Maik is looking at the death penalty. Back in Norfolk, Maik's replacement is trying to resurrect his career after an earlier serious error. At first, the signs are promising. His astute observations turn the apparent suicide of a local pheasant farmer into murder.

Super Loud Sam is a smaller than the average boy with a louder than the average voice. Often people - his parents, teachers, random strangers - tell Sam to shush! But it’s impossible! When a sinister new teacher, Mrs Sandy Mann, starts at Sam’s school, he realises she wants to silence children and their creativity, energy and noisy zest for life - with a special sleep spell. Only Sam’s shouty voice can break through her spell and save his friends from her slumber.

A severed head washes up on the banks of the Nile. The police turn a blind eye. It is just another victim in a series of ritual killings of refugees. Distracted from his hunt for a missing boy, Makana feels the pull of his Sudanese past and is impelled to seek justice for the murdered emigrants.

March 1946. The railways are falling apart, rationing is getting worse and black marketeers are at work. For Violet McIntyre, a dressmaker living in Woodford Halse, it is a struggle to make ends meet. Her life becomes inextricably linked to an investigation that Detective Inspector Charles Vignoles of the Railway Detective Department is pursuing.

Department K didn’t tell John Craig why Kaplan was important. That wasn’t his business. His business was to get Kaplan out of Turkey despite the very hostile attentions of competing intelligence services, including his own! Very quickly Craig realises that there is no-one he can trust on this violence-strewn journey except himself; and that there are probably no innocent bystanders.

Lord Oliver Marsden has a secret. He's been in love with his childhood friend for years, though Vincent's never shown an interest in him beyond friendship. Ruggedly handsome, wealthy, and successful, Vincent is everything Oliver is not. And Vincent doesn't prefer men. Then Oliver discovers Vincent hires a man during his visits to a London brothel. Desperate to be with Vincent, Oliver orchestrates a deception, switching places with the brothel's employee.

Twilit and sinister, oozing with ague, bad airs, boggarts and other spirits: in the mind’s eye marshes, bogs and swamps are dangerous, crepuscular—and only partly of this world. For centuries, wetlands, have been the object of our distrust: we’ve drained away their demons, encroached upon and denuded them, ripping away not only their fragile beauty, botany and birdlife but also the carefully calibrated lives of those that have come to understand and thrive in them. In Swamp Songs, Tom Blass takes us on a journey through these strange lands and waterscapes.

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Whilst John and Olga Hitchman are at the Theatre Royal enjoying their usual box, they become the victims of a professional thief who has his eye on their Fabergé egg as an Easter gift for his partner. Known only as 'Macavity', the name given to him by the press, this thief thinks he’s untouchable. But that was before he had detective Peter Diamond on his tail.

When Mina, a Kurdish student activist, plunges in flames from the top floor of Wood Green Shopping City, it’s widely assumed to be a political protest. But local reporter Rex Tracey, who knew the dead girl, doesn’t buy it. His suspicions mount when a council whistleblower meets a similarly ugly end. As he investigates, the sleuthing journalist with the chequered past and the penchant for Polish lager is sucked into a world of honour killings, corrupt officials, and clashing traditions.

Stories by: Desmond Barry, Ken Bruen, Stewart Home, Barry Adamson, Michael Ward, Sylvie Simmons, Daniel Bennett, Cathi Unsworth, Max Décharné, Martyn Waites, Joolz Denby, John Williams, Jerry Sykes, Mark Pilkington, Joe McNally, Patrick McCabe, and Ken Hollings. Cathi Unsworth moved to Ladbroke Grove in 1987 and has stayed there ever since. She began a career in rock writing with Sounds and Melody Maker, before co-editing the arts journal Purr and then Bizarre magazine. Her first novel, The Not Knowing, was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2005.