Showing results by narrator "Seán Barrett" in All Categories

At Police Scotland HQ, Grace Macallan has pitched up in Counter Corruption. But the demons of her past are never far behind. Meanwhile, Edinburgh's gangland is in turmoil, with territory battles causing serious havoc. Into the war steps DI Janet Hadden. An ambitious risk-taker, she knows how to throw opponents off balance. When she's thwarted, Hadden seeks help from a notorious underworld fixer - only for Grace to start an investigation that threatens to uncover all Hadden's secrets.

The second novel in Wilbur Smith's The Courtneys series, The Sound of Thunder is a powerful story of family tragedy set against the backdrop of the ravages of the Second Boer War. 'Only once in his life had Sean met a man whose strength matched his own - and now, again, they were pitted against each other....' Sean Courtney, impulsive adventurer of When the Lion Feeds, returns from the wildnerness a rich man - until he is robbed by the Boers of his wagons, his gold and the girl he loves.

The world at the beginning of the 20th century seemed, for most of its inhabitants, stable and relatively benign. Globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War.

Prague, 1599. Christian Stern, a young doctor, has just arrived in the city. On his first evening, he finds a young woman's body half buried in the snow. The dead woman is none other than the emperor's mistress, and there's no shortage of suspects. Stern is employed by the emperor himself to investigate the murder. In the search to find the culprit, Stern finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of the emperor's court - unspoken affairs, letters written in code, and bitter rivalries. But can he unmask the killer before they reach their next victim?

Escaping the guillotine, Victor Frankenstein is now posing as Doctor Stein, altruistic patron of the hospital for the poor. But in a secret basement laboratory he is harvesting body parts from his helpless patients, using them in his twisted experiments in a bid to create the perfect man. And this time he has help from a would-be pupil. His pupil seeks knowledge, but Frankenstein desires vengeance against all those who have tried to stop his terrifying work. The first time he tried, it ended in bloody mayhem, but now he is determined that nothing will go wrong.

The peaceful life of a village in Wiltshire is suddenly shattered by a disaster which strikes without reason or explanation, leaving behind it a trail of misery and horror. A yawning, bottomless crack spreads through the earth, out of which creeps a fog that resembles no other. Whatever it is, it must be controlled; for wherever it goes it leaves behind a trail of disaster as hideous as the tragedy that marked its entry into the world. The fog, quite simple, drives people insane.

A country left in ruins after the fall of the Roman Empire is plundered and broken. Saxon hordes have invaded and conquered the East coast of Britain in a blood-soaked Great War which tore the old kingdoms apart. From Bernicia to Kent, land and kingdoms are now under Saxon rule. But these new conquerors want more…Britain's remaining kingdoms are jaded by the constant threat of war, their Kings old, alliances fickle and frayed. It seems Britain must fall enslaved to the brutal and marauding conquerors from across the sea.

A naked woman is perched on the edge of Clifton Suspension Bridge weeping into a mobile phone. Clinical psychologist Joseph O'Loughlin is only feet away, desperately trying to talk her down. She whispers, 'you don't understand,' and jumps. Later, Joe has a visitor - the woman's teenage daughter, a runaway from boarding school. She refuses to believe that her mother would have jumped off the bridge - not only would she not commit suicide, she is terrified of heights.

If life in the Intelligence Service has taught John Bachelor anything, it's to keep his head down. Especially now, when he's living rent-free in a dead spook's flat. So he's not delighted to be woken at dawn by a pair of Regent's Park's heavies, looking for a client he's not seen in years. John doesn't know what secrets Benny Manors has stolen, but they're attracting the wrong attention. And if he's to save his own skin, not to mention safeguard his living arrangements, John has to find Benny before those secrets see the light.

All over Britain, POW camps are filling up with defeated German soldiers. But only the most dangerous are sent to Camp 21 - 'black' prisoners - SS diehards who've sworn death before surrender. As one fanatic plots a mass breakout and glorious march on London, Max Hartmann dreams of the oath he pledged to the teenage bride he scarcely knows and the child he's never met. Where do his loyalties really lie?

Francia AD 853. After a failed Viking raid on the Frankish coast over 20 years ago, Jarl Sven the Boar is forced to leave his only son, Torkel, as a hostage and warned never to raid Francia again or his son will die. In Hügelburg, a small town in East Francia, Torkel and his 9-year-old son Charles are ambushed at home. Before dying, Torkel thrusts a package into young Charles’s hands and tells him to flee Francia for Denmark in search of his grandfather Sven the Boar’s protection.

A long buried and shocking secret has been uncovered. In 1940, President Roosevelt and Canada's Mackenzie King secretly agreed to abandon the Allies and make peace with Hitler if the Nazis successfully invaded Britain. Decades later, Soviet agents are ready to use this information to shatter the NATO alliance and use the ensuing geopolitical chaos to strengthen their position in Europe. Only one man stands in their way.

During the long, hot summer of 1900, young Leo Colston is invited to stay for a month at a lordly, aristocratic manor in Norfolk. There he falls in love with his friend's older sister, who commissions him to ferry secret messages to the local farmer, her lover. His naiveté sustains their affair until ultimately leading to an event that will change their lives irrevocably.

Georges Simenon's autobiographical notebooks, in which he recorded his observations, experiences, anxieties and 'all the silly ideas that pass through my head', are one of the most candid self-portraits of a writer ever put to paper. Here, as the celebrated author ruthlessly examines his tortuous writing methods, his past, his fame, his intimate relationships and his fears of ageing, the result is an unsparing, often painfully revealing insight into a man trying both to find and to escape himself.

When Sienna Hegarty turns up at his family home one night, covered in blood and frozen in shock, psychologist Joe O'Loughlin finds himself drawn deep into her world, trying to unearth the dark secrets her mind has buried. The police find a major piece of the puzzle at Sienna’s house: her father, a retired cop, is face-down in a pool of his own blood, his throat slashed and his skull caved in. The blood covering Sienna was his.

When 16-year-old Dísa is given five bitcoin by her divorced father she is unimpressed. But a year later, when her grandparents are about to lose their farm near the Icelandic village of Dalvik, quiet, unassuming Dísa is able to rescue it with the profits from her astute trading of her father's gift. Unknown to Dísa, her mother Helga catches the cryptocurrency bug. Not only does Helga invest in Thomocoin, a new cryptocurrency sweeping Iceland, but she persuades many of her neighbours in Dalvík to invest too, taking a cut for herself.

I close my eyes and feel my heart begin racing. Someone is coming. They're going to find me. A mother and her teenage daughter are found brutally murdered in a remote farmhouse, one defiled by multiple stab wounds and the other left lying like Sleeping Beauty waiting for her Prince.

Tamworth, Mercia AD 825. The once-mighty kingdom of Mercia is in perilous danger. Their king, Beornwulf, lies dead, and years of bitter in-fighting between the nobles and cross-border wars have left Mercia exposed to her enemies. King Ecgberht of Wessex senses now is the time for his warriors to strike and exact his long-awaited bloody revenge on Mercia. King Wiglaf has claimed his right to rule Mercia, but can he unite a disparate kingdom against the might of Wessex who are braying for blood and land?

Old crimes, new consequences. In wartime Reykjavik, a young woman is found strangled behind the National Theatre, a rough and dangerous area of the city known as 'the shadow district'. An Icelandic detective and a member of the American military police are on the trail of a brutal killer. A 90-year-old man is discovered dead on his bed, smothered with his own pillow. Konrad, a former detective now bored with retirement, finds newspaper cuttings in the dead man's home reporting the shadow district murder....

It is Midsummer's Eve. Three young friends meet in a wood to act out an elaborate masque. But, unknown to them, they are being watched. Each is killed by a single bullet. Soon afterwards, one of Inspector Wallander's colleagues is found murdered. Is this the same killer, and what could the connection be? In this investigation, Wallander is always, tantalisingly, one step behind.