Showing results by narrator "Bill Wallis" in All Categories

Translated by Sandra Smith, with an introduction by Patrick Marnham.In 1929, 26-year-old Irène Némirovsky shot to fame in France with the publication of her second novel David Golder. At the time, only the most prescient would have predicted the events that led to her extraordinary final novel Suite Française and her death at Auschwitz. Yet the clues are there in this astonishingly mature story of an elderly Jewish businessman who has sold his soul.Golder is a superb creation.

Cairo of 1908 lives by and in its cafes. Now, suddenly, Cairo's cafe culture is threatened by gangs in the protection business. The task falls to Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt and head of the secret police, to find out who is behind this threat to Cairo.

With the help of Willbury Nibble QC, some friendly boxtrolls and cabbage-heads, Marjorie the frustrated inventor, and the rats and pirates from the Ratbridge Nautical Laundry, can Arthur thwart the Snatcher's evil plans to take over the world?

Having delivered a particularly stirring speech at his recently deceased colleague's funeral, Monsieur Pamplemousse is more than a little disturbed when the coffin explodes during the ceremony. Luckily, his faithful hound Pommes Frites gave out a warning cry just in time, so there were no casualties. But, who exactly is behind this explosion? And was the same person responsible for his late co-worker's demise?

Award-winning author Lynne Reid Banks is perhaps best known for her classic children's book The Indian in the Cupboard. But it was her groundbreaking debut novel for adults, The L-Shaped Room, that made her name. First published in 1960, it was an instant success and has been in print ever since. This collection contains both The L-Shaped Room and sequel The Backward Shadow, as well as two stories specially written for BBC radio and a bonus edition of Bookclub.

Elizabethan England, and a dastardly Spanish plot to take over the throne is uncovered. It's up to Agent Archie Noble to save Queen and country in this saucy and swashbuckling romp from the bestselling author of The Flashman Papers and The Pyrates. Spoiled, arrogant, filthy rich, and...

During his time as an inspector with the Paris Sûreté, Monsieur Pamplemousse had been 'in at the death' on more than one occasion, but even he had to admit that the phrase took on an entirely new meaning when he was present at the spectacular ending to Cuisine de Chavignol, France's premier television cookery programme.

When it comes to motives for crime, the past can never be forgotten. Sara Hirsch is a nervous elderly spinster who still lives in the flat above a long-standing Florentine antiquities shop in which she was raised. Frightened, she calls Marshal Guarnaccia for help, sure that strangers have been in her apartment. The marshal knows she is a lonely old woman but he is preoccupied with an investigation into an Albanian prostitution ring. Before he can respond to her latest alarm, she is found dead.

This is a story of impossible misfortune and improbable good luck - the compelling and uplifting account of the boy who made it out of the ghetto, survived Auschwitz and Stutthof, and endured the Dresden bombing before escaping to England.

Naples, 1913. Sun-baked, blue-skied, and with its amazing bay it is one of the most beautiful spots in Italy. But it’s also one of the most corrupt. A new arrival here is a junior British official, Scampion, who has already been banished from Florence. Scampion, however, brings with him a new craze that is sweeping Italy: bicycling. But one day as he walks home after a bicycle race, he is stabbed to death. That happens all the time in Naples, but remarkably his wallet was not taken.

Edward Enfield came to his three quarters of an acre knowing nothing about growing anything, and this book is an account of his horticultural successes and failures, inventions and frustrations, discoveries and developments. With wry humour, he leads us through the thorny subject of roses, counts the blessings of keeping chickens, and exposes the perfidy of gardening copywriters, while offering wise and witty tips on how best to enjoy the fruits of your labour.

Following the best-selling Summer of a Dormouse, Sir John Mortimer - playwright, novelist, octogenarian, and erstwhile QC - offers up more lessons in living and growing old disgracefully. What would we like to leave to our descendants? Not a third-rate painting or our PEPS, according to Sir John, but a love of Shakespeare, a taste for alcohol, the ability to defeat boredom, the importance of never locking the lavatory door, and so on.

These four stories test Father Brown in many ways, creating headaches a plenty. However, Father Brown is nothing if not redoubtable and whilst Chesterton's stories are, in his own words, "very slight and improbable", his method is all his own. Bill Wallis captures perfectly the mood and tone of Father Brown in this collection.

The undersecretary of the British embassy in Istanbul has died while attempting to swim the Dardanelles Straits. The circumstances of his death have to be investigated, so the Foreign Office sends out an officer: Sandor Seymour, an unobtrusive Special Branch detective.

Shakespeare's most famous sonnet, in which he tries, and fails, to find an apt comparison in nature, read by Bill Wallis.

Gareth Cadwallader Owen is the Mamur Zapt, the Head of the Khedive's Secret Police. However, unlike his British colleagues, Owen works for the Khedive. It's not a comfortable perch, as agitation for political and social restructuring grows. Furthermore, Owen is married to a pasha's daughter, Zeinab, herself straddling a cultural divide.

i>Le Guide, France’s top gastronomic guide, is failing to whet the appetite of its audience in America. Bribed by the director with offers of some time off, Monsieur Pamplemousse agrees to flex his literary muscles in a bid to address the problem by writing a play. The result is the ex-detective’s directorial debut, complete with walk-on part for faithful bloodhound Pommes Frites. But disaster strikes on opening night....

The outrageous and irrepressible Baroness (Ida 'Jack') Troutbeck, Mistress of St Martha's, has another cultural battle to win against the British Establishment: this time, against the horror of modern art, as demonstrated by the likes of Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. But shortly after she enthusiastically announces this war to her close friends, Baroness Troutbeck is kidnapped. Panic spreads throughout the London art world when they realise nine more victims are missing,

This collection of short stories contains several gothic tales to bear macabre and chilling witness to writers as diverse as Charles Dickens, HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Jerome K Jerome. These tales are designed to unsettle you, just a little, as you sit back, and take in their words as they lead you on a walk to places you’d perhaps rather not visit on your own.

This collection of short stories contains several gothic tales to bear macabre and chilling witness to writers as diverse as Rudyard Kipling, Guy De Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe, Arnold Bennett, Daniel Defoe, Edith Nesbit and M.R. James. These tales are designed to unsettle you, just a little, while you sit back, and take in their words as they lead you on a walk to places you’d perhaps rather not visit on your own. Our stories include "My Own True Ghost Story" by Rudyard Kipling, "The Horla" by Guy De Maupassant, and more.