Showing results by narrator "David Timson" in All Categories

The Uncommercial Traveller is the persona of Dickens for this collection of semi-autobiographical sketches. A kind of Victorian blogger, he is funny and affecting by turns as he recounts what he sees and wonders at its meaning. Whether laying bare ‘a wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger’ or musing on the ‘moodiness’ of tom-cats; recounting Mr Indignation Cocker’s sherry bill or simply taking us by the hand as he goes about his ‘no-business’ in London and further afield, he brings the warmth, compassion and fleet-footed wit that infuse his novels.

A Swedish crime writer as thrilling as Mankell, a detective as compelling as Wallander . . . Håkan Nesser's third title in the Van Veeteren series is the dark and compelling The Return. An unmissable hospital appointment is looming for Inspector Van Veeteren when a corpse is found rolled in a...

Dombey and Son is vintage Dickens and explores the classic themes of betrayal, cruelty and deceit. Dombey's dysfunctional relationships are painted against a backdrop of social unrest in industrialized London, which is populated by a host of fascinating and memorable secondary characters. The complete and unabridged novel is brought spectacularly to life by veteran reader David Timson.

In the little hamlet of Wyvern’s Cross, where good manners, tennis and tea are pivotal to the functioning of society, little Dr Bickleigh has a rather large problem: he needs to erase his insufferable wife. His meetings with Ivy are becoming tiresome, and although his burning passion for Gwynyfryd Rattery does not play out as imagined in the toolshed, there is now the infinitely superior Madeleine Cranmere to be worshipped… Resourceful but impulsive, Dr Bickleigh is consumed with the image of his goal.

Upon inheriting the Moonstone, a huge and priceless diamond, Rachel Verinder's delight turns to dismay when the gem suddenly disappears. But this is no ordinary theft. Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard is called in and immediately suspects an intricate plot. However, not even his powers of detection can penetrate fully the mysteries surrounding the diamond.

A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and...

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is the classic working-class novel. It was written in 1906 by an impoverished house painter, Robert Tressell, and within its framework contains a manifesto for socialism. It tells of the appalling working conditions of a group of painters and decorators and their struggle to survive at the most basic level. It is moving, grimly humorous and tragic. It has sold over six million copies worldwide since it was published, and has the power to change lives.

Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea at Margate. For reasons best known to herself, Jack’s widow, Amy, declines to join them. On the surface a simple tale of an increasingly bizarre day’s outing, this Booker Prize-winning, internationally acclaimed novel is a resonant and classic exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives.

While the war rages on across the galaxy, for many on the Throneworld of Terra it exists only in hearsay. But in the course of her daily duties, humble adept Katanoh Tallery discovers evidence of a conspiracy within the monolithic Administratum - surely, this can only be the precursor to a traitor attack on the Solar System itself? Fleeing into the shadows, she soon finds herself at the mercy of the mysterious Knight Errant Nathaniel Garro. Will this stalwart defender of mankind be her saviour, or her executioner?

What if I were to tell you that a psychopathic arsonist might also be the person most likely to save you from a burning building? This book is about a special kind of persuasion: 'flipnosis'. It has an incubation period of just seconds and can instantly disarm even the most discerning mind. Flipnosis is black-belt mind control. It doesn't just turn the tables; it kicks them over.

Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the Inspector's investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vicar, whose boat the body was found in, is clearly withholding information, and the victim's niece has disappeared. There is clearly more to this case than meets the eye - even the identity of the victim is called into doubt.

Award-winning author Dame Susan Hill is best known for her hit ghost story The Woman in Black and her popular ‘Simon Serailler’ detective series, but she has also written extensively for radio. This audio anthology includes full-cast adaptations of two of her early novels, plus an additional 12 BBC Radio plays, many of them available for the very first time since their original broadcasts.

In the fighting pits of the Conqueror, Khârn and his fellow World Eaters compete in ever-bloodier contests of carnage and mayhem. As the Butcher's Nails dig ever deeper into their brains, the Legion have forsaken the Crimson Path. Now they walk a darker, more dangerous road: the Eightfold Path.

Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë—the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist—is a true classic. It transports us with a deft hand straight into 19th-century Haworth, Yorkshire and crafts an extensive account of Brontë’s life, quoting throughout from letters she sent and received. From her challenging, isolated childhood to her death shortly before the age of 39, newly married and pregnant, the enigmatic author of Jane Eyre is portrayed with enormous care.

First appearing in 1782, Dangerous Liaisons is one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The plot unfolds through a series of letters as the two main protagonists, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, attempt to bring about the seduction of a young woman. The epistolary nature of the novel gives a multi-faceted perspective of the action, which places the book firmly in the tradition of libertine literature.

In the comfortable English Dorsetshire village of Anneypenny in the 1930s, fruit farmer Douglas Sewell–narrator of the story–sees his friend John die in agony. The death certificate states gastric ulcers but the post mortem’s revealing of poison punctures Anneypenny’s idyllic backdrop. Soon every friend and neighbour seems to harbour something suspicious. Douglas challenges his readers, or listeners, to answer the key questions before throwing out several scenarios and turning them upside-down in a tantalising path to the truth.

Becalmed in the backwater Phall system, the Imperial Fists' relief fleet originally headed for Isstvan III has been waiting out the warp storms that waylaid them so many months ago. Under the assumed command of Captain Alexis Polux and seemingly forgotten by the rest of the Imperium, they hope yet to complete their mission and report back to their primarch Rogal Dorn, so that they might return to the greater conflict.

The Roman historian Tacitus was a successful politician who eventually became governor of the province of Asia. He is thought to have died around AD 120 and benefitted from the patronage of the Flavian emperors. The Histories, of which only just over four out of 14 books survive, covers the years following the assassination of the Emperor Nero: Rome was plunged into further civil war with the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69), which culminated in the accession of Vespasian, the first of the Flavians.

Some 250 years after its first publication, Gibbon's Decline and Fall is still regarded as one of the greatest histories in Western literature. He reports on more than 1,000 years of an empire which extended from the most northern and western parts of Europe to deep into Asia and Africa and covers not only events but also the cultural and religious developments that effected change during that time.

The third volume of this gripping family saga, End of the Chapter, shifts to the Cherrells - cousins of the Forsytes by marriage. Young Dinny Cherrell in particular cherishes their ancestral home, Condaford Grange, which represents stability in a rapidly changing world. Through his depiction of the lives and loves of this family, Galsworthy throws a brilliant spotlight on the social and political upheavals of the 1930s.