Showing results by narrator "Philip Franks" in All Categories

When a spinster of the parish is found bludgeoned to death in St John's, and the church's most valuable possession, the Lydmouth chalice, is missing, the finger of suspicion points at the new vicar, who is already beset with problems. The glare of the police investigation reveals shabby secrets and private griefs. Jill Francis, struggling to find her feet in her new life, stumbles into the case at the beginning. But even a journalist cannot always watch from the sidelines.

Trapped in a London flat, Beth remembers a transgressive love affair in 1960s Paris. The most famous writer in Russia takes his last breath in a stationmaster’s cottage, miles from Moscow. A father, finally free of his daughter’s demands, embarks on a long swim from his Canadian lakeside retreat. And in the grandest house of all, Danni the Polish housekeeper catches the eye of an enigmatic visitor.Rose Tremain awakens the senses in this diverse collection of short stories.

In 1946, June and Bernard set off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion for one another, they had planned an idyllic holiday, but in France they witness an event that alters the course of their lives entirely. Forty years on, their son-in-law is trying to uncover the cause of their estrangement and is led back to this moment on honeymoon and an experience of such darkness it was to wrench the couple apart.

Love and need make unexpected bedfellows, and both are blind. As the grip of a long hard winter tightens on Lydmouth, a dead woman calls the dying in a seance behind net curtains. Two provincial newspapers are in the throes of a bitter circulation war. A lorry driver broods, and an office boy loses his heart. Britain is basking in the warm glow of postwar tranquillity, but in the quiet town of Lydmouth, darker forces are at play. The rats are fed on bread and milk, a gentleman's yellow kid glove is mislaid on a train and something disgusting is happening at Mr Prout's toy shop.

One of Ngaio Marsh’s most famous murder mysteries, which introduces Inspector Alleyn to his future wife, the irrepressible Agatha Troy. It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model’s pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been reenacted in earnest: the model is dead, fixed forever in one of the most dramatic poses Troy has ever seen. It’s a difficult case for Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn.

An Englishwoman is found dead in a house near Rome. Her distraught husband enlists the help of his closest friend, Chris Bronson, who discovers an ancient inscription on a slab of stone above their fireplace. But who are the liars? And what is it they are lying to protect? Pursued across Europe, Bronson uncovers a trail of clues that leads him back to the shadowy beginnings of Christianity; to a chalice decorated with mysterious symbols; to a secret code hidden within a scroll. And to a deadly conspiracy which – if revealed – will rock the foundations of our modern world.

August 1914: In the sweltering heat, the fate of Europe hangs in the balance. Germany is hurling her forces into a carefully planned invasion of Belgium and France. Bound by an 1839 treaty to protect Belgium from any invader, Britain came to its defence. With the British Expeditionary Force numbering just 120,000 men, and dwarfed by the vast manpower of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II remains unfazed by this ‘contemptible little army'. But the BEF was, man for man, the best trained army in Europe.

In these 17 essays (and one short story) the 2011 Man Booker Prize winner examines British, French, and American writers who have meant most to him, as well as the cross-currents and overlappings of their different cultures. From the deceptiveness of Penelope Fitzgerald to the directness of Hemingway, from Kipling's view of France to the French view of Kipling, from the many translations of Madame Bovary to the fabulations of Ford Madox Ford, from the National Treasure status of George Orwell to the despair of Michel Houellebecq, Julian Barnes considers what fiction is.

On November 12, 1912, a rescue team trekking across Antarctica's Great Ice Barrier finally found what they sought - the snow-covered tent of the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Inside, they made a grim discovery: Scott's frozen body lay between the bodies of two fellow explorers. They had died just eleven miles from the depot of supplies which might have saved them.

In 1964, a young artist sat sketching former prime minister Winston Churchill. The Sunday Times refused to print the resulting drawing of this frail, aged figure - so far from the public image of the man - it was too truthful. In Long Drawn Out Trip, Gerald tells his life story for the first time. With captivating, often thrilling stories, he takes us back to his wartime childhood and the terrible curse of asthma, through his days as an advertising draughtsman, to his field reporting in Vietnam and the giddy highs of rock 'n' roll.

Dr Alex Hoffman is a legend. An American physicist once employed on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, he now uses a revolutionary and highly secret system of computer algorithms to trade on the world’s financial markets. None of his rivals is sure how he does it, but somehow Hoffman’s hedge fund – built around the standard measure of market volatility: the VIX or 'Fear Index' – generates astonishing returns for his investors.

Telling the Story shows how leaders affect our understanding of what is possible and desirable through the stories they tell. It opens a door into the world of narrative leadership: what stories are and how they work, when to tell a story and how to tell one well, and how the language and metaphors we use influence our actions and change how we think about the world.

Author, bookseller, spy-breaker, killer. Enter the world of Russell Stickles. Not since George Harvey Bone in Hangover Square has there ever been a singular protagonist as compelling. As sickly. As sick. From the creator of Dead Funny: Horror Stories by Comedians comes a stunning novel that re-invents the tale of the empty man.

These 25 new stories mark Graham Swift's return to the short form after seven acclaimed novels and confirm him as a master storyteller. They unite into a richly peopled vision of a country that is both a crucible of history and a maze of contemporary confusions.

What if the villain of your childhood turned out to be someone really rather extraordinary? A disgraced politician, Sir James Hastings is living out his retirement in a secluded Surrey village. He is unmoved by his centenarian mother's death - a woman he emotionally buried upon her abandonment. Raised by his father, a charismatic war-hero turned racing driver, the young James, torn between self-blame and longing, eventually dismissed her.

Avid antiques collector Pierre-Francois Chaumont unearths the find of a lifetime at a Paris auction house: an 18th-century portrait of a gentleman who looks just like him. Researching into the painting's history, he has the chance to abandon his tedious existence and walk into a brand new life.

The Psychology of Conflict is a timely new contribution on the unique benefits of applying philosophy and psychology to mediating between people in conflict. Following his previous book with Dr. Freddie Strasser - Mediation: A Psychological Insight into Conflict Resolution - Paul Randolph here examines the application of existential philosophy to the psychology of conflict, particularly as seen in mediation.

The Royal British Legion was founded in 1921. It is now the country’s leading charity providing financial, social and emotional support to those who have served or who are currently serving in the British Armed Forces and their dependants. The RBL is behind the annual Poppy Appeal, the highest profile charity appeal in Britain.

In the mid-20th century the relationship between America and Britain had a chequered past. Theirs was a history of protection and oppression, of rebellion and ultimately war. But then the shared crisis of the Second World War brought Britain and America closer than ever before or since and saw an unprecedented level of military cooperation. How was such a radical shift possible?

Stephen Narth steht das Wasser bis zum Hals. Wenn er nicht in kürzester Zeit 50.000 Pfund auftreibt, ist seine Firma am Ende. Hoffnung keimt auf, als ein Testament ihm Reichtum verspricht, wenn er eine nahe Verwandte zur Ehe mit einem Unbekannten zwingt.