Showing results by narrator "John Telfer" in All Categories

'When Spirits Steal’ features regular protagonists from Philippa Forest: businessman Peter Carwell and artist Wilton. Wilton recalls a holiday in Somerset where they encountered Mary, a young girl with a nervous disposition whose sleepwalking and vivid dreams lead Carwell to believe she is being possessed by a spirit.

Inspired by a sketch of a poor woman driven to madness by artist Cecchino, wealthy Madame Krasinska attends a ball in fancy dress mocking the old woman. But after the ball, she is overcome by severe depression. Could the old woman be haunting her as punishment?

When Carstone visits his old friend, Brendan, one night, he is intrigued by the empty house next door, which is said to be haunted. Despite his host telling him many of the spooky tales that surround the old house, he accepts a dare to spend the night at The Gables, but his bravado soon falters....

Phantom Death is an imaginative story about a painting that has perplexed crowds across Europe. The painting must be viewed in solitude and is presented in a dark room, draped in black silken rope. When the unnamed narrator views the painting for himself, though, he is interrupted by another, setting off an unexpected chain of events.

C. N. Barham served as a minister but was also an amateur hypnotist, and in this short story, he explores how clairvoyance might be used to track lost ships at sea by regaling the story of Audacious, a brig which never reached its destination.

When a petrol yacht catches fire in the South Atlantic, its lone survivor, Patterson, swims to safety. He is relieved when he washes up on a tropical island inhabited by four other ship-wrecked characters. But when he discovers one of the men was cast adrift by the Titanic, he is forced to question where he really is and if he will be able to escape.

A Swedish freighter is on a special mission to locate and survey a number of wrecks after the First World War. The first on their list was torpedoed exactly one year to the day, and this proves to be no coincidence when the commander is suddenly tormented by an impossible Morse code transmission from beyond the grave.

Keen to escape London to work on their respective music scores and novel, two cousins stumble across a rural holiday let that is well below their budget. But it soon proves too good to be true when something on the top landing starts spooking them and their staff.

Harry Pershore knocks down a wall to create a secret garden, despite warnings from his friend who has spotted that the patch of land has been walled off for a reason and is actually an altar of sacrifice. Pershore ignores his friend’s advice and it’s not long before strange things start happening in the garden.

A grisly spirit turns travelling companion for an unwitting traveller on the top deck of a London bus one bleak winter’s night in this short story.

No other group of animals has had such a complex and lengthy relationship with humankind as birds. They have been kept in cages as pets, taught to speak and displayed as trophies. More practically, they have been used to tell the time, predict the weather, foretell marriages, provide unlikely cures for ailments, convey messages and warn of poisonous gases. When There Were Birds is a social history of Britain that charts the complex connections between people and birds, set against a background of changes in the landscape and evolving tastes, beliefs and behaviours.

Thomas Oulton has worked for a London banking house for 30 years and is widely respected by his colleagues, so when he seemingly disappears with a client’s money, everyone is shocked, none more so than his manager, Louis Carrington. When a friend comes to spend the weekend with Louis and his family at their Surrey home, a series of strange phenomena leads the narrator to discover what’s happened to Oulton.

'A Winter Morning' is a dark story of longing and regret. It sees a widower, mourning both his wife and son, recall his son’s final moments and contemplate life and death.

Based on IWM's ground-breaking new Second World War and Holocaust Galleries, this audiobook examines the development of the Holocaust as it appeared to those who witnessed it. By telling the story of the Holocaust through objects and their owners, this audiobook highlights the devastating human cost of the genocide and helps listeners to understand one of the darkest periods in modern history.

A new edition of Cecil Lewis's 1944 aviation classic. Over the course of one night in 1942, the crew members of Wellington bomber 'P for Pathfinder' each reflect on the paths of their own lives, as they embark on a fateful mission deep into the heart of Nazi Germany. Cecil Lewis's novel examines the life of every man in turn, rendering a moving account of each as not merely a nameless crew member, but as an individual with a life lived, 'a life precious to some, or one...these men with dreams and hopes and plans of things to come'.

Voices from the Blue tells the story of the hundred years of service of female police officers within the Metropolitan Police through the voices of the women who fought their way towards equality and won the respect of both their colleagues and the public. The authors have interviewed hundreds of former and serving policewomen and with the co-operation of the Metropolitan Police and the Women's Police Association now have access to the files and stories of thousands of former officers who served over the past hundred years.

For some, Barcelona is a European enchantress of nouveau architecture, fusion tapas, and fine cava. To others, it’s a Gothic labyrinth of tiny streets to lose oneself in; hashish-clouded after-hours bars to forget the time; dimly lit plazas with global bohemians squatting, prostitutes tempting. But come morning, its cold cobblestones and misty beachfronts have even darker stories to tell.

For three decades the Windrush was the maritime Zelig of the 20th century, playing different roles in the most turbulent years in modern times. Designed in 1930 in the Hamburg boatyard of a Jewish shipbuilder to ferry Germans to a new life in South America, it wasn't long before Goebbels requisitioned her as one of his ‘Strength Through Joy’ vessels. However, her duties soon darkened: she became a Nazi troop carrier, a support vessel for the pocket battleship Tirpitz and a prison ship transporting Jews to Auschwitz.

Three Men on a Diet is the very funny and brutally honest story of three mighty men with nothing to gain and so much to lose: a diet book with a difference. Three Men on a Diet is the story of George, Reggie and Sebastian, three middle-aged friends and food- and drink-lovers, learning how to lower their calorie intake without losing their joie de vivre. Determined to improve his looks and health before it's too late (and after being told that he looked like a pregnant bulldog), Reggie persuades the others to join him on a five-month quest to shed three stone.

The Agile Leader exposes how leaders can safely guide their teams to organizational stability and prosperity through agile leadership and building an agile culture. By adopting agile ways of working that focus on facilitating mental agility, ruthlessly prioritizing, devolving decision-making, and investing in customer research, leaders will allow organizational learning and drive innovation, thus enabling their teams to flourish in this new uncertain world.