Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Historical

The year is 1911. Chief Investigator Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn Detective Agency has had many extraordinary cases before. But none quite like this. Hired to find a young woman named Anna Pape who ran away from home to become an actress, Bell gets a shock when her murdered body turns up instead. Vowing to bring the killer to justice, he begins a manhunt which leads him into increasingly more alarming territory.

It is 1906, and in New York City, the Italian crime group known as the Black Hand is on a spree: kidnapping, extortion, arson. Detective Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn Agency is hired to form a special Black Hand Squad, but the gangsters appear to be everywhere - so much so that Bell begins to wonder if there are imitators, criminals using the name for the terror effect.

Penguin presents the audio edition of Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett, read by David Monteath. It is 1557, and legendary Scottish warrior Francis Crawford of Lymond is once more in France. There he is leading an army to rout the hated English from Calais. Yet while Lymond seeks victory on the battlefield he is haunted by his troubled past - chiefly the truth about his origins and his marriage (in name only) to young Englishwoman Philippa Somerville.

It is 1547 and, after five years imprisonment and exile far from his homeland, Francis Crawford of Lymond - scholar, soldier, rebel, nobleman, outlaw - has at last come back to Edinburgh. But for many in an already divided Scotland, where conspiracies swarm around the infant Queen Mary like clouds of midges, he is not welcome. Lymond is wanted for treason and murder, and he is accompanied by a band of killers and ruffians who will only bring further violence and strife. Is he back to foment rebellion? Does he seek revenge on those who banished him? Or has he returned to clear his name?

A century apart, Dirk Pitt and Isaac Bell team up to unlock the truth about the most famous maritime disaster of all time. In the present day, Dirk Pitt is must make a daring rescue from inside an antiquated submersible in the waters around New York City. His reward afterwards is a document left behind a century earlier by legendary detective Isaac Bell - a document that re-opens a historical mystery. In 1911 Colorado, Isaac Bell is asked to look into an unexplained tragedy at Little Angel Mine, a disaster in which nine people died.

Into this fevered forum, a child is born. His mother is Agrippina, granddaughter of Emperor Augustus. But their imperial blood is no protection. The closer you are to the heart of the empire, the closer you are to power, intrigue, and danger. She faces soldiers, senators, rivals, silver-tongued pretenders, each vying for position. One mistake risks exile, incarceration, execution. Or, worst of all, the loss of her infant son.

Inside the beleaguered city of Rome in 1944, the Contessa Giovanna Landini is a member of the band of Escape Line activists known as ‘The Choir’. Their mission is to smuggle refugees to safety and help Allied soldiers, all under the nose of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann. During a ferocious morning air raid a mysterious parachutist lands in Rome and disappears into the backstreets. Is he an ally or an imposter? His fate will come to put the whole Escape Line at risk.

Sixteen-year-old Philippa Somerville has left Constantinople intact. Returning to England as wife in name only to Francis Crawford of Lymond, she wastes no time in seeking the truth about her new spouse, even as she finds herself navigating the paranoid court of Queen Mary. Lymond, meanwhile, arrives in Moscow to assist its young Tsar Ivan to create a fledgling Russian army. But when he is tasked to visit London as Ivan's envoy, his path is bound to cross that of the wife he has sworn to divorce.

It is 1548, and seven-year-old Mary Queen of Scots, betrothed to her cousin the Dauphin, heir to the French throne, has been dispatched to France. But far from home and vulnerable, surrounded by the double-dealing and debauchery of a dangerous and unpredictable court, she suffers a series of 'accidents'. Her mother, Scotland's Queen Dowager, orders Francis Crawford of Lymond to protect Mary, believing that at the very heart of Henri II's glittering, decadent court is an assassin hired to kill the infant monarch. Lymond must secretly hunt down this individual before he himself is exposed.

Alex Cross is one of the nation's foremost detectives. But solving crime runs in the family - and it's time for Cross to tell his own children about their ancestors. He tells them the story of Ben Corbett, lawyer to the poor and downtrodden in 1900s Washington, DC - a disappointment to a family who wanted him to serve the powerful. Out of the blue, President Theodore Roosevelt invites Ben to the White House, charging him with investigating a resurgent Ku Klux Klan in Ben's own home town. The man who'll help him? Abraham Cross, great-uncle of Alex Cross.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Striker by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott, read by Scott Brick. It is 1902. Isaac Bell is a bright, inexperienced young detective. Hired to hunt for radical unionist saboteurs in the coal mines, he is witness to a terrible accident that makes him suspect that something else is going on - that provocateurs are at work and much bigger stakes are in play.

The boy Nero lives. His mother Agrippina has married her way to power, tangling the Emperor Claudius in her skirts. The emperor may have a son and heir of his own, but Agrippina sees no obstacles to her ambition. Rome is a path through a marsh, lit by torches. Those who walk it are always one step from disaster–and the road itself is treacherous, slippery with blood. Claudius may have the world at his feet, but he has Agrippina in his bed.

From the national best-selling author of The Serpent and the Pearl comes the continuing saga of the ruthless family that holds all of Rome in its grasp, and the three outsiders thrust into their twisted web of blood and deceit.…

As the cherished concubine of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI, Giulia Farnese has Rome at her feet. But after narrowly escaping a sinister captor, she realizes that the danger she faces is far from over - and now, it threatens from within. The Holy City of Rome is still under Alexander's thrall, but enemies of the Borgias are starting to circle.

Detective Isaac Bell's wife has said that he is always in the wrong place at the right time. This is certainly the case when Bell thwarts the attempted assassination of a United States senator shortly after meeting the man. This heroic rescue is just the start of the mystery for Bell, who suspects that the would-be assassins have a much larger and more dangerous agenda - one involving the nearly constructed Panama Canal. While the senator supports the building of the canal, there are many who never want to see the its completion.

Throughout the Roman Army, the brutal XIIth Legion is notorious for its ill fortune. For one young man, Demalion of Macedon, joining it will be a baptism of fire. And yet, amid all of the violence and savagery of his life as a legionary, he will come to love the Twelfth and the bloody-minded, dark-hearted soldiers he calls his brothers. But during the punishing Judaean campaign, the Hebrew army inflict a catastrophic defeat upon the legion - not only decimating their ranks, but taking away their soul - the eagle.

In AD 533, the last King of the Vandals still rules in northern Africa - but a prophecy reveals that his reign is doomed. Years before, sacred scrolls had been stolen from a high priestess, who cast a curse on the kingdom unless they were returned. The Vandal kingdom falls before the scrolls are ever found - leaving their location a mystery - and their discovery is the perfect challenge for Sam and Remi Fargo. However, before they can hunt for the scrolls, the Fargos must tend to problems within their charitable foundation.

It is 1552 and the royal galley Dauphine, under the command of Francis Crawford of Lymond, sails the glittering but dangerous Mediterranean looking for a lost son. Yet as the search grows more urgent, Lymond knows he is being drawn deeper into the intricate web of his enemy Gabriel, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St John, who is already weaving a subtle tapestry of revenge. It is a journey that will lead Lymond to Constantinople and the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, where a terrible game will be played with deadly and incalculable consequences....

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of A Fever of the Blood by Oscar De Muriel, read by Andy Secombe. New Year's Day, 1889. In Edinburgh's lunatic asylum, a patient escapes as a nurse lies dying. Leading the manhunt are legendary local detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray and Londoner-in-exile Inspector Ian Frey. Before the murder, the suspect was heard in whispered conversation with a fellow patient - a girl who had been mute for years.

Tudor England. The word treason is on everyone's lips. Arbella Stuart, niece to Mary, Queen of Scots, and presumed successor to Elizabeth I, has spent her youth behind the towering windows of Hardwick Hall. As presumed successor to the throne, her isolation should mean protection - but those close to the crown are never safe. Aemilia Lanyer, writer and poet, enjoys an independence denied to Arbella. Their paths should never cross. But when Arbella enlists Aemilia's help in a bid for freedom, she risks more than her own future.

Someone, or something, is haunting the Titanic. Deaths and disappearances have plagued the vast liner from the moment she began her maiden voyage on 10th April 1912. Four days later, caught in what feels like an eerie, unsettling twilight zone, some passengers - including millionaire Madeleine Astor and maid Annie Hebbley - are convinced that something sinister is afoot. And then disaster strikes.