Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Against all odds, Aydin Torkal - aka Sleeper 13 - broke free from the terrorist group that took him as a child and raised him into a life of violence and hate. In the two years since, he's been tracking and killing all those responsible. But he's not done yet. Now living a secret life in London, he receives a surprise visit from Rachel Cox of MI6. She needs his help to infiltrate a sinister new terrorist cell who've taken root in the USA. Aydin is initially reluctant.

A missile tears a passenger plane from the skies over London. Everyone onboard is killed, including 37 special children. As terror turns to international chaos, can the government survive?

The ordered calm of Gloucester Abbey is shattered by the murder of one of the monks. The Abbey becomes paralysed with fear and the Abbot is ill-equipped to deal with such a heinous crime, especially as suspicion inevitably falls on the brothers themselves. Ralph Delchard, a former soldier in the era-defining Battle of Hastings, and Gervase Bret, an accomplished lawyer, are investigating a local land dispute when news of the vicious murder reaches them.

The frontier zone of Archenfield in Herefordshire is a no-man's-land, which acts as a bulwark between Norman-controlled English soil and the Welsh border. Soldier Ralph Delchard and lawyer Gervase Bret arrive in Hereford for what looks like one of their more straightforward assignments from the crown, to settle conflicting claims to land in Archenfield. Ralph and Gervase are shocked to discover the murder of a principal witness, a wealthy landowner who was burned alive in his own home. No clues remain except an enigmatic red dragon cut into the turf in front of the house.

Soldier Ralph Delchard and lawyer Gervase Bret lead a group of the king's finest commissioners into the war-torn lands of Yorkshire to settle land claims and compile the Domesday Book. One island of wealth and luxury remains in Yorkshire: the castle of merchant Aubrey Maminot. There the commissioners learn of two great terrors: the rogue Olaf Evil Child, a hero of the poor and conquered Saxon people, and the ravenous lions Aubrey Maminot keeps as pets.

Every year the Grand National produces very different stories from jockeys and horses alike; uplifting scenes from a victor and heartbreak when a mere inch divides the loser from the winner at the end of nearly four-and-a-half miles and 30 challenging fences. The race has evolved over the years, but there is one constant: luck, or the lack of it. How fitting, then, that in 1839 the first winner was named Lottery.

A jam-fuelled week of disaster starts with a single doughnut! Roman Garstang is obsessed with food - particularly Squidgy Splodge doughnuts - but things are not always as sugar-coated as they seem. Because of his Monday-morning jam doughnut, Roman's week takes a sticky turn. By Friday he has been banned from eating for 24 hours, accidentally shoplifted, had a lift in a getaway van, styled his teacher's guinea pig with a blue Mohawk, started a riot...and barely managed a single doughnut.

On his way home from a remote Pacific island, Dr Saunders travels with two strangers: the treacherous Captain Nichols, and Fred, a handsome Australian with a shadowy past. Driven to shelter from a storm on the island of Banda, the trio meets good-natured Erik Christessen and his fiancée, the cool and beautiful Louise. A tense, exotic tale of love, jealousy, murder and suicide, which evolved from a passage in Maugham's earlier masterpiece, The Moon and Sixpence.

The year is 1210 and a black force is sweeping England. A vengeful King John has seized control of the Church, leaving corpses to lie in consecrated ground, babies unbaptized, and the people terrified of dying in sin. In the village of Gastmere, the consequences grow darker still when Elena, a servant girl, is dragged into a conspiracy to absolve the sins of the lord of the manor. In desperation she visits the cunning woman, who has been waiting for just such an opportunity to fulfil an ancient curse conjured at the gallows.

Darien is no longer a lost outpost of humanity, but the prize in an intergalactic power struggle. Hegemony forces have a stranglehold over the planet and crack troops patrol its hotspots while Earth watches, passive, rendered impotent by galactic politics. But its Darien ambassador will soon become a player in a greater conflict. There is more at stake than a turf war on a newly-discovered world. An ancient Uvovo temple hides access to a hyperspace prison, housing the greatest threat sentient life has ever known.

Sinclair Breckenridge is my husband. We’re up and coming leaders to The Fellowship and parents to be. But my new life doesn’t come easily. Not when long buried secrets––and far more than I bargained for––finally reveal my mother’s killer. Sin vows to do anything to keep our little ones and me safe, even if his promise means denying me of the one thing I want most in this world. He doesn’t understand it’s the death of my dream. And that’s a problem.

In a gloomy flat off Islington High Street, Chief Inspector Brett Nightingale and Sergeant Beddoes find an old woman dead. The Princess Olga Karukhin, who fled from Russia at the time of the Revolution, has lived in terror of being discovered ever since. Olga's grandson, Ivan, appears to have run from the scene but is later seen returning to the flat as though oblivious to the terrible crime. Taking place between 22nd and 24th December, Nightingale's enquiry takes him across London, culminating in the wrapping up of the mystery on Christmas Eve.

Beyond the lights of Spark City lies a town that bandits and mercenaries call home. Where darkest deeds are currency, and only the ruthless survive. But when the enigmatic and dangerous assassin Aurora arrives at their gates with a legion at her back, even the lawless rules of banditry are tested. Raven Rock's infamous inhabitants are no strangers to bloodshed, yet Aurora brings a storm of carnage and madness unlike any they have ever known, plunging the town into a siege that threatens to wipe it from the map.

The familiar call of the common cuckoo, "cuck-oo", has been a harbinger of spring ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa many thousands of years ago. However, for naturalist and scientist Nick Davies, the call is an invitation to solve an enduring puzzle: How does the cuckoo get away with laying its eggs in the nests of other birds and tricking them into raising young cuckoos rather than their own offspring?

The Warcage: 200 worlds harnessed to an artificial sun in a feat of unprecedented stellar engineering. Built to travel through space as a monument to peace between alien species, now its voracious rulers have turned it into a nightmarish wasteland, capturing new planets for slaves and resources then discarding the old. When a verdant agri-world is pulled out of its orbit, the captain of a smuggling ship must journey into the Warcage to rescue his crew.

The small village of Maldon is controlled by the wealthy and rapacious FitzCorbucion family, led by Hamo FitzCorbucion, the lord of Blackwater Castle. When his eldest son, Guy, is found murdered, an enraged Hamo demands justice. Into this charged atmosphere arrives a tribunal, led by soldier Ralph Delchard and lawyer Gervase Bret. Surveying the lands of Maldon, the tribunal detects irregularities in various deeds, and plans to call the FitzCorbucion family to account.

Ralph Delchard, a soldier who fought at the Battle of Hastings, and Gervase Bret, a talented lawyer, have been commissioned by William the Conqueror to look into irregularities brought to light during the compilation of the Domesday Book. A man’s body is found mutilated in Savernake Forest and the residents of Bedwyn sleep uneasy at night, fearing a monster stalking the town. When Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret arrive, they discover that the locals are harbouring dark secrets and that the real killer may be a little closer to home....

John Milton has been off the grid for six months. He surfaces in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and immediately finds himself drawn into a vicious battle with the narco-gangs that control the borderlands. Milton saves the life of an idealistic young journalist who has been targeted for execution. The only way to keep her safe is to smuggle her into Texas. Working with the only untouchable cops in the city, and a bounty hunter whose motives are unclear, Milton must keep her safe until the crossing can be made.

The Nightwatchman contains the very best of cricket writing from all over the world, produced in association with Wisden. It gathers together leading cricket journalists and well-known writers from other disciplines - mathematics, poetry, history and literature, to name but a few - to offer long-form original pieces about all aspects of cricket.

I’ve watched her from afar for weeks. And she has no idea. Bleu MacAllister ran from me three months ago. She thought she could disappear from my life. My beloved believed I’d let her go.