Showing results by narrator "Bill Wallis" in All Categories

The Old Inn clings precariously to a cliff top above a storm-lashed ocean. Ethan and Cathy are sick. Their father has left them to fetch a doctor... but they are not alone for long. A visitor comes begging for shelter, and so the children, who have an unnatural appetite for stories of a macabre persuasion, sit out the throes of the storm in the company of a sailor with more than enough grisly tales to satisfy them.

When the middle-class Empsons move from London to picturesque Winterleaf Gunner, they find themselves totally unprepared for country life - and utterly reliant on Winston. Handyman, village poacher, scholar, gentleman romantic and out-and-out rogue, Winston transforms their lives, fixing up their dilapidated house, introducing them to the works of Kingsley Amis - and giving Nancy a lesson in love.

In 'Rumpole and the Boy', Rumpole has recently concluded a blackmail case when he finds himself babysitting a small boy. Edmund turns out to have a keen interest in criminal cases and he throws some unexpected light on the case Rumpole has just tried. Bill Wallis reads this special seasonal story starring Horace Rumpole, scourge of all QCs and friend of the criminal classes.

Murder comes in two familiar forms. Whether as a crime of passion with high emotions or a cold dispassionate plot to take life in order to gain in some way, the act strikes us all as somehow inhuman. Beneath us as civilised beings. But however we cloak our animal instincts the need to remove a human being and gain relief from abuse or gain from money, the term is just the same – MURDER. Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, W W Jacobs and many others bring their literary heft to bear in as calculating a way as any killer could.

Christopher Marlowe turns government spy in these four comedy crime dramas. Murder and intrigue are all in a day's work for Kit Marlowe, England's leading playwright and undercover agent in Her Majesty's Secret Service. Amid the squalor and splendour of Elizabethan London, he probes a series of baffling mysteries, aided by his trusty underworld accomplice Bartholomew Ratsbane.

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.

This collection of short stories contains several gothic tales to bear macabre and chilling witness to writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft. 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.

When a body is found on the new electric railway line, Owen has to discover whether this is just another of Egypt's revenge killings or whether the murdered man had got caught up with the power groups jostling for position around the new railway.

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.

From the author who brought the world Paddington Bear, comes the new book in the delightful Parisian mystery-series featuring Monsieur Pamplemousse and his canine partner, Pomme Frites. In this latest adventure, they must get to the bottom of a mystery surrounding the tarnishing of the integrity of Le Guide - France's premier hotel and restaurant guide. What they couldn't anticipate was that the case would involve a nun who is in the habit of joining the Mile High Club...

A BBC Radio 3 full-cast dramatisation of Shakespeare’s classic ‘Cymbeline’, starring Bill Wallis. Originally broadcast in December 2006 as part of the ‘Drama on 3’ collection.Shakespeare's play, set during the Roman invasion of Britain, centres around the banishment of the man who has incurred the wrath of the king by secretly marrying his daughter. Confusion follows in an intricate plot in which nobody is quite who they seem to be.

Ratbridge residents are clamouring for miracle medicine Black Jollop, but a shortage calls for action! The Nautical Laundry must journey afar to gather its secret ingredient.But things aren’t what they seem... and soon the ship is under attack. Can Arthur and his friends triumph and return to Ratbridge with a cure for all its ills? A fantastically funny tale of pirates, poison and monsters from bestselling author Alan Snow.

Shakespeare's sonnet about the comfort brought by dwelling on the one he loves, read by Bill Wallis.

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.

John Donne's famous poem about two lovers surprised by the astonishingly rapid arrival of sunrise, read by Bill Wallis.

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.

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.

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?

Fed up with questions about what he was going to do when he retired, Edward decided to get on his bicycle and ride from Le Havre to the Mediterranean. He struggled in Normandy to get directions from old men tipsy on Calvados by 9 am, passed by prairies of corn and acres of sunflowers, and hit his stride on the towpath of the Burgundy canal. He explored the mystery of what an ouvrier eats for lunch, and was barred from a swimming pool because his trunks were too decent.

Robert Harper is going back to school, and it is the first railway journey he has ever made alone. And it is not a very usual sort of railway journey. The train stops at the tunnel’s mouth and in order to help whileaway the time, a strange woman dressed in white tells Robert stories. But these are not the kind of stories normally told to a child. Soon Robert is both entranced and terrified by the strange woman and her macabre stories.... Eleven more spine-chilling tales for older children from bestselling author Chris Priestley.