Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Lord James Harrington and his wife, Beth, happen upon a road accident where the driver, Bernard Potter, is seriously injured. While giving first-aid, Potter mumbles concerns about his daughter which James takes as the ramblings of a dying man. But, when visiting Mrs Potter, they realise that her husband, a police constable, was secretly investigating the goings-on at a local commune where his daughter lived.

What has counting meant to different cultures and different individuals? In this book, historian and mathematician Benjamin Wardhaugh explores stories from all over the world and from every period of human history, from the African Stone Age to cyberspace; from Assyrian kings to Chinese peasants. Weaving these histories together, Wardhaugh shows the ways in which counting has been continually reinvented over time, through language, writing, counters and machines.

Mr. Richard Dodsley, owner of a fine second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road, has been found murdered in the cold hours of the morning. Shot in his own office, few clues remain besides three cigarette ends, two spent matches and a few books on the shelves which have been rearranged. In an investigation spanning the second-hand bookshops of London and the Houses of Parliament - since an MP's new crime novel Death at the Desk appears to have some bearing on the case - John Ferguson's series sleuth MacNab is at hand to assist Scotland Yard in an atmospheric fair-play bibliomystery.

11th century Italy. The domination of the Normans is causing trouble. At their head is the feared Robert de Hauteville, the 'Guiscard', who has colonised much of Italy and commands the triple Dukedom of the extended Norman family. But Robert has made many enemies, including the ever-powerful papacy in Rome. The newly elected Pope Gregory exercises his vendetta against the Normans by encouraging them to sail to Byzantium and fight the Turks. But first he must deal with the Guiscard.

1096. The Pope has called for a crusade to free Jerusalem, and half the warriors of Europe have responded. Among them is the Norman, Count Bohemund, one-time enemy of Byzantium. In company with his warrior nephew, Tancred of Lecce, Bohemund must once more cross the Adriatic to the lands of the Byzantine Empire. His first task, pushing back the infidel Turks, calls for an uneasy alliance with old enemy Emperor Alexius. But can the Crusaders trust the wily Emperor?

Gayle is a teacher and each year she brings her class to the island to see the local flora and fauna, from sea birds to playful seals. Martin, the island's caretaker and only human resident, lives in and maintains the lighthouse, which opens to the public for just this one day a year. Gayle is effervescent but feels trapped, while Martin is lonely and isolated. As their love slowly builds over time, they both yearn for the annual field trip where they can finally see each other. Until one year Gayle doesn't come back, and Martin has to leave his island hideaway to find her.

The year is 1884. London is being terrorised by a series of bomb blasts - even within Great Scotland Yard! Reluctantly, Sergeant Cribb attends a course in the science of infernal machines in a bid to gain expert knowledge of explosives and beat the criminals at their own game. With Constable Thackeray the prime suspect, Cribb feels bound for professional and personal reasons to track down the truth at any cost. And very soon he is abducted at gunpoint by an Irish-American hammer-thrower and finds himself an unwilling but vital member of the Dynamite Party.

In Victorian London, race-walking, or 'wobbles', is all the rage. So on a Monday morning in November 1879, the crowds gather for Islington's bizarre six-day endurance walking race. By Tuesday, one of the contestants is dead. Tetanus from a blister is assumed, but then there is a second death, and this time it's definitely murder. A bemused Sergeant Cribb from Scotland Yard is called in, along with Constable Thackeray, and they soon discover that something foul is at play.

When their dog goes missing during a day trip to London, the Walker family are forced to accept that they may never see Henry again. But as the family search for their beloved pet, the reality of what has happened to Henry never even crosses their minds: Henry has been mistaken for one of the Queen's prized corgis.

Twenty-year-old Jenny is struggling to make friends at university and moves in to Sunset Promenade to escape her problems. Her roommates are a little older than she was expecting - Sunset Promenade is a private nursing home, taking in students to save money. At first the new residents clash, but when Jenny introduces a movie night the group realise they have more in common than they think....

As Hitler's bombs threatened London during World War II, eight-year-old David Merron was removed from his family and close-knit Jewish community in the East End and evacuated to the safety of the English countryside. Placed into the car of strangers, life was sometimes unpredictable and lonely. But, with time, the rural world became an exciting adventure playground in which he flourished.

Super Loud Sam is a smaller than the average boy with a louder than the average voice. Often people - his parents, teachers, random strangers - tell Sam to shush! But it’s impossible! When a sinister new teacher, Mrs Sandy Mann, starts at Sam’s school, he realises she wants to silence children and their creativity, energy and noisy zest for life - with a special sleep spell. Only Sam’s shouty voice can break through her spell and save his friends from her slumber.

Retired bank manager George Pearmain is apparently dead. According to the behaviour of everyone around him, it seems he is no more. Not only that, but his mother has also passed away – and on the eve of her 99th year. Not only that, it could be that they were both murdered. Apart from that he feels fine.

A Dead Man in Deptford re-imagines the riotous life and suspicious death of Christopher Marlowe. Poet, lover, and spy, Marlowe must negotiate the pressures placed upon him by theatre, Queen, and country. Burgess brings this dazzling figure to life and pungently evokes Elizabethan England.

Before dawn on a misty November morning in 1536, prominent mercer Robert Packington was gunned down as he crossed Cheapside on his way to early morning mass. It was the first assassination by handgun in the history of the capital and subsequently shook the city to its core.The identity of his assassin has remained a mystery. the first of a new series investigating real unsolved Tudor crimes, D.K. Wilson brings the streets of Tudor London to spectacular life as Thomas Treviot faces a fight to bring the truth to light.

DI McLusky has settled into his new job in Bristol but the severe freeze shows an unfamiliar side to the city. After the conviction of a drug baron earlier in the year a new kingpin secures the hub of drug crime in Bristol. But how secure is he? A series of seemingly unconnected murders, accidents and dying drug users slowly reveal the web of violence. Narrow strips of a cut-up photograph arriving piecemeal at the Bristol Herald's offices may hold vital clues, but will the completed puzzle reach McLusky in time?

What is it like to broadcast the fateful words "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday," then jump into the unknown? The members of one of the world's most unusual brotherhoods provide the answers in this incredible book. Formed during the Second World War to celebrate the survival of pilots who had been forced to bail out over water, the Goldfish Club has taken on new members ever since. They share one pivotal moment, but their experiences beyond this couldn't be more different.

In concise, immediate prose, Italian physicist and novelist Paolo Giordano explains how disease spreads in our interconnected world: why it matters, how it impacts us, how we must react. Writing from his home in Rome as Italy implements the largest peace-time lockdown ever recorded in a democratic country, Giordano expands his focus to other forms of contagion linked to this epidemic - fake news, the environmental crisis, nationalism and xenophobia, our lack of imagination in promoting a new kind of global community.

1950s Staffordshire. Within the clay tanks at the pottery company Shentall's, a body has been found. Amid cries of industrial espionage and sabotage of this leader of the pottery industry, there is a case of bitter murder to solve for Inspector Hedley Nicholson. Kelly's mystery won the CWA Gold Dagger Award in 1961 for its impeccable sense of place and detail, and for the emotional weight of its central crime. The novel is part of a shift from the cosiness of crime novels before to mysteries characterised by their psychological interest and affecting realism. An influential classic.

Twilit and sinister, oozing with ague, bad airs, boggarts and other spirits: in the mind’s eye marshes, bogs and swamps are dangerous, crepuscular—and only partly of this world. For centuries, wetlands, have been the object of our distrust: we’ve drained away their demons, encroached upon and denuded them, ripping away not only their fragile beauty, botany and birdlife but also the carefully calibrated lives of those that have come to understand and thrive in them. In Swamp Songs, Tom Blass takes us on a journey through these strange lands and waterscapes.