Showing results by narrator "Andrew Cullum" in All Categories

Droitwich, April 1890. A nine-year-old girl vanishes without a trace from the local churchyard. Her father, the salt tycoon Sir Charles Chilton, is beside himself. There's no price he won't pay for his daughter's safe return. AND SOMEONE OUT THERE IS COUNTING ON IT. Sir Charles calls on Detective Inspector Ravenscroft and Constable Tom Crabb to investigate.

Before Jack the Ripper terrorised London, Police Inspector Samuel Ravenscroft patrolled the streets of Whitechapel. Clever and hard-working, Ravenscroft nonetheless has the worst record in the force. He lets a murderer escape during a chase and is banished to the spa town of Malvern for a water treatment to cure his asthma. Ravenscroft accepts a dinner invitation from a new acquaintance, Jabez Pitzer. Before dinner, the maid finds Pitzer slumped over his desk - dead. Ravenscroft immediately recognises the signs - Pitzer has been poisoned.

A mysterious stranger arrives in the small Herefordshire market town of Ledbury. He offers a solicitor, Anthony Midwinter, a generous sum to look after a package for him until spring, no questions asked. The stranger warns that it must remain sealed or else the very stability of England will come under threat. The Ledbury Lamplighters see out the year with a public ceremony extinguishing the town's lamps, a local tradition. A prominent local businessman is brutally murdered in full view of the revellers.

March 1889. Midnight. Six strangers meet for the first time outside the great door of Tewkesbury Abbey. They are searching for the tomb of the medieval crusader knight, Sir Roger de la Pole. What they find inside is unexpected and deeply shocking. They were seeking holy relics. But the body they uncover is barely cold. And Sir Roger’s ancient bones are missing. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft and Constable Tom Crabb are called on to solve the crime. They must decipher the strange coded letters on the outside of the Templar's tomb.

Pershore, 1890. Talbots' Lodging House is renowned for its revolting fare. But no one ever died from dining there—until now. Everyone who tasted the chef's soup is left with a nasty case of food poisoning. BUT THE MAN WHO REFUSED IT IS FOUND DEAD. Detective Inspector Samuel Ravenscroft and Constable Tom Crabb are called in to investigate.

1855: the Industrial Revolution is in full swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his analytical engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. Three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with the future: Sybil Gerard - fallen woman, politician’s tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator; Edward Leviathan Mallory - explorer and palaeontologist; Laurence Oliphant - diplomat, mystic and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched engine cards of unknown origin and purpose.

1941. Dieter Merz is the Reich's most celebrated fighter ace, and his aerial prowess has brought him into close contact with the top echelons of Hitler's regime. But everything in the Nazi state still comes at a price. If Dieter wants help for an injured friend, he must inform on the modest, lifelong confidant always at Hitler's side: Rudolf Hess. Meanwhile, Scotsman and ex-marine Tam Moncrieff is working for MI5, attempting to sound out Germany's intention of withdrawal. With most of Europe already fallen to Hitler's armies, Germany considers the war won.

January 1945. Wherever you look on the map, the Thousand Year Reich is shrinking. Even Goebbels has run out of lies to sweeten the reckoning to come. An Allied victory is inevitable, but who will reap the spoils of war? With the Red Army about to fall on Berlin, Stalin fears his sometime allies are conspiring to deny him his prize. He needs to speak to Goebbels—and who better to broker the contact than Nehmann, Goebbels' one-time confidant?

Written early in this century by Rev. A. G. Sertillanges, a priest who lived in Jerusalem, this acclaimed devotional classic gives you vivid and dramatic details not included in the Gospel: With Jesus, you'll be jostled by crowds as you enter Jerusalem, choke on the dust of the narrow streets, experience the exotic oriental smells of the city at festival time, share the Last Supper with the disciples, stare into the face of Jesus' accusers, and be there as he dies on the Cross.

Blackstone and the Rendezvous with Death is an expertly plotted Victorian mystery that will keep listeners guessing to the last minute. The body of a young man fished out of the Thames is of little interest to Londoners caught up in the excitement of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Yet to Inspector Sam Blackstone, the case is as puzzling as any he has ever come across. Why should a corpse dressed in the rags of a commoner have the face of a gentleman? And if this man does belong to noble stock, why has no one come forward to claim the body?

Announced in 1912, the Schneider Trophy was a series of glamorous air contests, popularly known as races, that captivated both sides of the Atlantic. While there were many other aviation competitions, the Schneider proved to be, after a rocky start, by far the most memorable attracting a hugely popular and glamorous following whether Trophy races were held in Monaco, the Venice Lido, the Solent or Chesapeake Bay.

October 1891. A stranger is discovered hanging from a tree in the Malvern Hills. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft and Constable Crabb are called in to investigate. But how can they solve the murder if no one can identify the victim? Whoever killed the man must have really wanted him dead—they strung him up and watched as he suffocated. This may be the most dangerous case Ravenscroft has ever worked. Will the Herefordshire Hangmen ever be brought to justice?

Three journeys. One road. England, 1348. A gentlewoman flees an odious arranged marriage, a Scots proctor sets out for Avignon and a young ploughman in search of freedom is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais. Coming in their direction from across the Channel is the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe.

Summer 1942. Abwehr intelligence officer Wilhelm Schultz is baiting a trap to lure thousands of Allied troops to their deaths. George Hogan is a devout young Canadian journalist who has caught the eye of press baron Lord Beaverbrook. Now he faces an assignment that will test his faith to breaking point. Jackie Wrenne, meanwhile, is working in Lord Louis Mountbatten's cloak-and-dagger Combined Operations headquarters and is privy to the boldest cross-Channel raid yet conceived. Three lives are interlinked by a name and a date that no Canadian will ever forget: Dieppe, 19 August 1942.

In Dieter's hands, the Messerschmitt Bf-109 is as graceful as a matador's killing strike: la estocada. Scotsman and ex-marine Tam Moncrieff is recruited by a nameless intelligence agency in London to go to Germany and sound out Hitler's resolve. Does he really intend to invade Czechoslovakia? Do his generals support him? Can the march to war be stopped?

On Sunday 22nd June 1941, at 03.05, three and a half million Axis troops burst into the Soviet Union along a 1,800-mile front to launch Operation Barbarossa. The southern thrust of the attack was aimed at the Caucuses and the oil fields beyond. Kyiv was the biggest city to stand in their way. Within six weeks, the city was under siege. Surrounded by Panzers, bombed and shelled day and night, Soviet Commissar Nikita Krushchev was amongst the senior Soviet officials co-ordinating the defence.

Underlain by an acute sense of ethics, this provided the basis for his strongly declared, wide-ranging views on many subjects: prohibition of cock-fighting, liberty of the press, universal suffrage, the removal of religious tests for office and even hunting. All were radical ideas for his time. He also proposed the decriminalisation of homosexuality, though even he did not dare to publish his essay on this subject during his lifetime. But An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation was his major work.

When the police are unable to find a body, they are forced to dismiss a homeless veteran’s claim that he witnessed a homicide. But after he is found murdered in the same spot two days later, DI Bliss and the Major Crime Unit set their sights on catching a ruthless killer. Elsewhere, when the daughter of a cuckooed family is reported to have attempted suicide, Jimmy Bliss and DC Penny Chandler have their doubts and vow to uncover the truth. But the situation is about to get much worse, and violence is certain to erupt on the city streets.

Worcester, April 1893. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft receives a strange note from a lonely old woman fearing for her life. But when he visits her, she is already dead. Did Miss Maud Fincher's heart give out or was she scared to death? Maud Fincher was part of a group of locals trying to speak to their deceased loved ones through the medium of séance. Ravenscroft thinks this is harmless nonsense . . . until the old lady's last surviving heir is murdered.

With the Battle of Britain won, Winston Churchill and his military chiefs faced an even more fearsome challenge in the Battle of the Atlantic. Thwarted in his plans to invade, Hitler decided he would starve Britain into submission instead. Operating in conjunction with U-Boats, long-range Condor aircraft manned by élite German airmen attacked Allied ships far beyond the range of any land-based RAF fighters, with devastating results.