Showing results by narrator "Seán Barrett" in All Categories

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Shadow Killer by Arnaldur Indridason, read by Sean Barrett. Reykjavík, August 1941. When a travelling salesman is found murdered in a basement flat, killed by a bullet from a Colt .45, the police initially suspect a member of the Allied occupation force. The British are in the process of handing over to the Americans, and the streets are crawling with servicemen whose relations with the local women are a major cause for concern.

May 1940. Britain is at war, European democracies are falling rapidly and the public are unaware of this dangerous new world. Just days after his unlikely succession to Prime Minister, Winston Churchill faces this horror - and a sceptical King and a party plotting against him. He wonders how he can capture the public mood and does so magnificently before leading the country to victory.

Upon inheriting the Moonstone, a huge and priceless diamond, Rachel Verinder's delight turns to dismay when the gem suddenly disappears. But this is no ordinary theft. Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard is called in and immediately suspects an intricate plot. However, not even his powers of detection can penetrate fully the mysteries surrounding the diamond.

Oliver Reed may not have been Britain's biggest film star - for a period in the early 70s he came within a hairsbreadth of replacing Sean Connery as James Bond - but he is an august member of that small band of people, like George Best and Eric Morecambe, who transcended their chosen medium, became too big for it even, and grew into cultural icons. For the first time Reed's close family has agreed to collaborate on a project about the man himself.

Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler, long considered the bible of fishing, is a joyful celebration of the English countryside and the relaxed and reflective lifestyle of the devoted fisherman. Through dialogue between teacher and student, the book sheds a unique light on fishing, baiting, and cooking, including an original recipe for trout. Its music, rhymes, poetry, and humor are all brought to life by a full cast.

Britannia, 58 AD. Fergus MacAmergin is a man out of place. An Irish Celt, he passes as a Gaul and rides with the Roman cavalry, affirming Nero's control over the province. Fergus dreams of escaping the fetters ofhis birth and living freely as a citizen of Rome. When Fergus's commander makes a battlefield error, Fergus is blamed. He and his men are given a thankless task: a quest that spells danger, despair, and near-certain death. The mission: to find the Holy Lance, the spear that wounded Christ on the Cross.

The arrest of a Finnish contract killer and the subsequent murder of an Edinburgh reporter seem unconnected—until a ghost from the past appears in the investigation. The horrors of past misdeeds in Northern Ireland, contract killers, military secrets and organised-crime feuds collide on the streets of Edinburgh and the Irish Republic, drawing Detective Grace Macallan into brutal score-settling on Dublin's streets and a life-or-death race against time.

FreeFlow is a group of activists dedicated to freedom of information. They have evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and are preparing to unleash it. On the glacial rim of an erupting volcano, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later, one of them is murdered. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects but he’s getting little help - for a group dedicated to transparency, they’re a secretive bunch. But they are not the only ones with secrets. Asta, a newly qualified priest, has contacted FreeFlow with damning information about the former Bishop of Iceland.

June 1941: Nazi troops surround the city of Leningrad, planning to shell and starve the people into submission. Most of the cultural elite is evacuated, but the famous composer Shostakovich stays behind to defend his city. That winter, the bleakest in Russian history, the Party orders Karl Eliasberg, the shy, difficult conductor of a second-rate orchestra, to prepare for the task of a lifetime. He is to conduct a performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, a haunting, defiant new piece.

In the backstreets of Istanbul, a young woman's body is found. Dumped in a dustbin and covered in cut flowers, she is the victim of a frenzied and vicious stabbing. Inspector Ikmen discovers that the woman was well known in Istanbul. Newspapers had been calling her the blessed woman, cured of cancer in a Christian miracle and a proclaimed messenger of the Virgin Mary.

In Istanbul - the golden city on the Bosphorus - ancient myths and modern evils are at work.... On a buzzing street in the fashionable district of Beyoglu, a young man drops dead. Ümit Kavas' death was natural, but the autopsy betrays a shocking truth: his last meal was human flesh. Under desperate pressure from their superiors, Inspector Cetin Ikmen and his colleague, Mehmet Süleyman, begin their most obscure investigation yet.

When historian Suzan Tan is asked to examine the contents of a derelict villa on the Bosphorus, she is intrigued to discover a Ouija board among the artefacts. Forty years ago, a young girl was found with a knife in her heart in this villa. It is said that before her death this very Ouija board spelled out her name. The verdict was suicide - but what if it was a brutal act of murder and her killer was still walking free? Suzan asks Ikmen to solve the case, and despite his reluctance to get involved, he soon finds himself drawn into the mystery.

The life of Franz Schubert has been a gift to romantically inclined biographers: the beautiful, brilliant, modest boy who sprang to fully fledged genius at the age of sixteen; the quintessential ‘artist in a garret’, entirely consumed by his art and living a hand-to-mouth existence in Vienna (home of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven); the gentle, cheerful, convivial young man who prized friendship almost as highly as music itself; the unworldly poet from whom great music poured like water from a fountain; the unrecognized master who died almost penniless at the age of 31.

When an old college friend pays Alex Calder an unexpected visit, he is drawn once more into the City's shady underbelly. For Kim is married to Todd, son of South African newspaper tycoon Cornelius van Zyl. Todd wants Alex's help to investigate the mystery of his mother's murder 18 years previously. It was assumed Martha was shot by guerrillas, but the recent discovery of a letter sent shortly before her death now suggests a crime far closer to home.

Thomas Cale has been running from his enemies. Raised and trained in an underground programme - the Sanctuary - he was sent to destroy God's greatest mistake, mankind itself. Cale is a paradox: arrogant and innocent, generous and pitiless. Feared and revered by those that created him, he has already used his terrifying talent for violence and destruction to bring down the most powerful civilisation in the world. But Thomas Cale has been caught.

When a newborn baby is found drowned in the shallow waters of the Golden Horn, all-out warfare threatens to erupt between rival criminal gangs. Inspector Kerim Gürsel is assigned to the case and he must tread carefully when DNA tests reveal that the baby's father is Görkan Paşahan, Istanbul's most feared Mafia boss. But the identity of the infant's mother is yet to be discovered. Meanwhile, Çetin İkmen and Mehmet Süleyman attend the winter festival known as Bocuk Gecesi, held on the darkest night of the year, and witness a magic trick whereby a young man, Emir Kaya, disappears.

At a costume party with the dubious theme of 'famous murderers and their victims', the know-it-all amateur criminologist Roger Sheringham is settled in for an evening of beer, small talk and analysing his companions. One guest in particular has caught his attention for her theatrics, and his theory that she might have several enemies among the partygoers proves true when she is found hanging from the 'decorative' gallows on the roof terrace. Noticing a key detail which could implicate a friend in the crime, Sheringham decides to meddle with the scene.

When a polar bear is sighted in a sleepy Icelandic fishing village, then shot dead by local policeman Constable Halldór, it triggers a debate in the local community. Was Halldór a hero for killing the bear, or should the animal have been protected? Animal rights activists in the area see the constable as a villain, and when, days later, the dead body of Halldór is discovered at a remote beauty spot, the activists are immediately under suspicion.

The Dhammapada is the single most important extant Buddhist text. It is unquestionably 'the voice of the Buddha' where many of his key ideas are presented in a cogent verse form. It opens: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought", and each of the following sections gives clear guidance on how to change our thought. Also included on this recording are other key Buddhist concepts illustrated by original texts.

Glasgow, 1953, is a hard city at a hard time. The war may be over but the battle for the streets is just beginning, and shady investigator Lennox is the man in the middle. The McGahern twins were on the way up until Tam, the brains of the outfit, becomes the victim of a vicious contract killing. Tam's brother Frankie turns to Lennox to find out who killed his twin. Lennox refuses. Later that night, Frankie turns up dead, and Lennox finds himself in the frame for murder.