Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 4 we bring you the classics 'The Eve of St Agnes' by John Keats; 'Flodden' by Sir Walter Scott; 'The Ballad of Agincourt' by Michael Drayton; 'Tam O'Shanter' by Robert Burns; and 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' by Robert Browning.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 3 we bring you the classics 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rosseti; 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 'The Raven' by Edgar Allan Poe; 'Morte D'Arthur' by Alfred Lord Tennyson; and from 'Horatius' by Thomas Babington Maculay.

Paganini – showman, womaniser, dazzling virtuoso – is one of the most fascinating characters in the history of classical music. His violin is now kept in Genoa, where it is played once every two years by the winner of an international competition. This year, an unsavoury art dealer is found dead in his hotel room the day after the concert. Clutched in his fist is a scrap of sheet music torn off a page that belongs to the competition winner. But how did the dead man get hold of it? And why?

At three p.m. on a Saturday afternoon in 1911, Oskar Johansson is caught in a blast in an industrial accident. The local newspaper reports him dead, but they are mistaken. Because Oskar Johansson is a born survivor. Though crippled, Oskar finds the strength to go on living and working. The Rock Blaster charts his long professional life - his hopes and dreams, sorrows and joys. His relationship with the woman whose love saved him, with the labour movement that gave him a cause to believe in, and with his children, who do not share his ideals.

It is a sweltering July in the mid-1970s, and for Will Flemyng, foreign office minister, the temperature is rising with each passing hour. A mysterious death has exposed secret passions in government, bringing on a political crisis that will draw him back into a familiar world of danger and deceit. For Flemyng has a past. He was trained as a spy for a life behind enemy lines and now he's compelled to go back.

When policewoman Eva Perry goes deep undercover to help bring a vicious local crime ring to justice, both she and her boss - Chief Detective Inspector Beverley Wharton - know there are huge risks involved. A series of unexplained and bizarre suicides forces Beverley into close contact with her former lover, the renegade forensic pathologist John Eisenmenger, who is already investigating the sudden suicide of his colleague Daisy Pemberton.

As Jan Fabel, of the Hamburg murder squad, interprets this twisted imagery at a crime scene, it becomes clear that each new crime is a grisly reference to folk stories collected by the Brothers Grimm. The hunt is on for a serial killer who is exploring the darkest, most fundamental fears hidden in ancient fairy tales.

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.

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.

Vlado Petric, former detective in war-torn Sarajevo, has left his beloved homeland to join his wife and daughter in Germany, where he scratches a meagre living in the building sites of the new Berlin.When Petric returns to work one evening, he finds an enigmatic American investigator waiting for him in the small apartment he and his wife share. The investigator (Pine) works for the International War Crimes Tribunal, and he tells Petric that they want him to return to Croatia

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.

The House of Four is the brand-new Istanbul crime thriller featuring Inspector Ikmen, from Barbara Nadel. Perfect for fans of Donna Leon. Everyone in the Istanbul neighbourhood of Moda knows the Devil's House. A crumbling Ottoman mansion, and once the home of a princess, it is a place associated with ill fortune. The princess' four children, now in old age, still live in separate apartments on different floors and are rumoured never to speak to each other.

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.

Grace Macallan is at breaking point, and a new investigation is testing her to the limit. An undercover officer is missing and a woman is washed up, traumatised and barely alive, on the shores of Berwickshire. As she untangles the woman's story, Grace is drawn into a cold-blooded criminal world headed by Pete Handyside, a notorious gangland boss who will fight hard and dirty to control his empire. But a traitor in his midst is intent upon betrayal, triggering an uncontrollable wave of violence. As she hones in on crucial evidence, Grace knows that one wrong move could end in tragedy.

Sasha Grover-Williams hated her wealthy father's dubious business affairs - and ended up dead on a railway track. But did she jump or was she pushed? That's the burning question for Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton. She and her pathologist lover, Dr John Eisenmenger - an expert in forensics - are immediately plunged into a messy world of corruption and violence. Who is the father of the Sasha's foetus that unexpectedly comes to light? How can Beverley be mired in the charge of collusion?

Through a 'leaking' of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees are metamorphosed into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Fearing this transformation as a herald of the apocalypse, most flee the area in terror, afraid to face a catastrophe they cannot understand. But some, dazzled and strangely entranced, remain to drift through this dreamworld forest.

When jeweller Fahrettin Muftugolu is found dead in his apartment in the Istanbul district of Vefa, it looks like suicide. Searching the jeweller's home, Inspector Mehmet Suleyman and his team come across a hoard of extraordinary artefacts including solid gold religious relics and a mummified human head. But are they real and, if so, who owns these priceless possessions?

A nine-to-five job away from the frontline isn't all it's cracked up to be for Grace Macallan. So when she's sent to investigate a suicide at Glasgow's notorious Barlinnie prison, Grace gladly escapes her desk. The dead inmate is Tommy McMartin, heir to a ferocious criminal family - though his murder conviction for killing his gay lover saw him cast out. The investigation drags Grace into contact with old McMartin adversaries - but the dynasty is under threat, and as it topples, buried secrets are unearthed.

It was a mistake for Ben to tell the Hunter that there were still wolves in Surrey. For the Hunter was a fanatic, always on the lookout for unusual prey. Driven by an ambition to wipe out the last English wolves, the Hunter set out on his savage quest.