Showing results by narrator "John Lloyd" in All Categories

When a Cardiff hospital is inundated with patients that have fallen into coma-like trances, Torchwood move in to investigate. They find that the trances were triggered by phone calls, all of which were made from a number that hadn't been active for over 30 years. Determined to find out who's been calling the unfortunate victims, Jack rings the mysterious number - two, zero, five, nine - nothing. It's a dead line. Until it calls Jack back, he answers - and falls into a deep trance...

The Museum of Curiosity is BBC Radio 4's monumental comedy edifice, and the only one with gargoyles in the foyer. It allows nothing inside unless it makes you scratch your head, stroke your chin or, at the very least, go 'Hmm'. Secondly, it is almost completely empty. Fortunately, helping to fill its vacant plinths is a gathering of the world's most original minds.

Imagine a 1980s world of sumptuous hotel rooms, restaurants, New York City penthouses, and the powerful men who move easily between these pinnacles of luxury. They are music producers, rock stars, writers, and restaurateurs. They are household names like Billy Joel, Art Garfunkel, Eric Clapton, and Sting. And yet, each man has an entire aspect to his life that he doesn’t talk about publicly—his depression, his rocky marriage, his feelings of shame and failure, his private loss of faith. And now: The phone rings. Imagine the woman who has each of these men at her beck and call.

For The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries, writer and anthologist Michael Sims did not summon the usual suspects. He sought the unfamiliar, the unjustly forgotten, and little-known gems by writers from outside the genre. This historical tour of one of our most popular literary categories includes stories never before reprinted, features rebellious early “lady detectives," and spotlights former stars of the crime field—Austrian novelist Auguste Groner and prolific American Geraldine Bonner among them.

Is there really such a thing as a good luck charm? Ex-soldier Logan Thibault thinks he just might have found one. Haunted by memories of the friends he lost in Iraq, Logan knows how fortunate he is to be home. He believes that a photograph he carried with him, a picture of a smiling woman he's never met, kept him safe. Even though he knows nothing about this woman, he hopes she might hold the key to his destiny. Resolving to find her, Logan embarks on a journey of startling discovery.

Two decades after the Civil War, first-generation Irish-American Zachary O'Hara, son of a legendary Marine and a force of a man in his own right, finds himself playing a critical role as the very existence of the Marine Corps is being decided. If he can help persuade the Secretary of the Navy that the Marines will be crucial to America's security in years to come, all the while hefting a heavy, secret weight in his heart, he'll save the Corps and make his career.

Stranded in a hellish alien desert, stripped of their strategic systems, quick reaction force and supporting arms, and carrying only a day's water ration, Marine Staff Sergeant Charlie Bass and his seven-man team faced a grim future 75 light-years from home.

Moscow, the Cold War, 1961. Stalin has been dead for eight years. With the launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Union's international prestige is at an all-time high. Former CIA agent Francis "Frank" Weeks, the most notorious of the defectors to the Soviet Union, is about to publish his memoirs, and what he reveals is reportedly going to send shock waves through the West. Weeks' defection in the early 1950s shook Washington to its core.

Following on from the bestselling Next, Michael Crichton's new novel will repeat the winning formula established with novels such as Jurassic Park: to identify future trends in science and imagine the most astonishing - and terrifying - possibilities that they hold for Mankind. Always interesting, often controversial, Next and State of Fear put him straight back in the headlines - and bestseller charts - and reaffirmed his position as the thriller master.

The twelve stories in this collection run the spectrum of human emotions as they transport us from the fading majesty of the Old West to a small-town football field to the lonely canyons of one man’s mind. These classic tales of adventure, mystery, mysticism, and suspense epitomize the uniquely American yearning for connection and roots, justice and love, as only L’Amour can. Here is a diverse group of heroes and traitors, outlaws and lawmen—the innocent, the guilty, and those who operate in the shadowy territory outside the reach of justice.

No one more vividly captures the rugged majesty and enduring spirit of the American West than Louis L'Amour. Collected for the very first time are seven unabridged frontier tales from a legendary master of the genre. Volume One celebrates this remarkable voice in American fiction with a captivating blend of some of his best-loved work.

An instant classic in the vein of Jurassic Park, this boundary-pushing novel has all the hallmarks of Michael Crichton’s greatest adventures with its combination of pulse-pounding thrills, cutting-edge technology, and extraordinary research.

Prepare to have your synapses twisted into a string theorist's nightmare, as Professor Lloyd and his new curator, the startlingly insightful comedian Jon Richardson, hurriedly throw the dust covers off the Museum's clump of empty plinths for a brand new series of the BBC's most improving comedy panel show.

For the first time, one of America's greatest leaders tells his personal story - of his legendary family, politics, and 50 years at the centre of national events. Edward M. Kennedy is widely regarded as one of the great Senators in the nation's history. He is also the patriarch of America's most heralded family.

Sean Lock replaces Bill Bailey in this second series with Professor John Lloyd in a search for the universe’s most mind-boggling oddness’s. The Museum of Curiosity is BBC Radio 4’s monumental comedy edifice, and the only one with gargoyles in the foyer. It allows nothing inside unless it makes you scratch your head, stroke your chin or, at the very least, go ‘Hmm’. Secondly, it is almost completely empty. Fortunately, helping to fill its vacant plinths is a gathering of the world’s most original minds.

It is difficult to imagine now, but for all its gorgeous scenery, the American West might have been barren tundra as far as most Americans knew well into the 19th century. While the West was advertised as a paradise on earth to citizens in the East and Midwest, many believed the journey too hazardous to be worthwhile — until 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad changed the face of transportation.

More so than almost anyone outside of McCain’s immediate family, Mark Salter had unparalleled access to and served to influence the Senator’s thoughts and actions, cowriting seven books with him and acting as a valued confidant. Now, in The Luckiest Man, Salter draws on the storied facets of McCain’s early biography as well as the later-in-life political philosophy for which the nation knew and loved him, delivering an intimate and comprehensive account of McCain’s life and philosophy.

The day starts like any other in LA. The sun burns hot as the Santa Ana winds blow ash from mountain fires to coat the glittering city. But for Private Investigator Joe Pike, the city will never be the same again. His ex-lover, Karen Garcia, is dead, brutally murdered with a gun shot to the head.

My Thoughts Be Bloody, a sweeping family saga, revives an extraordinary figure whose name has been missing, until now, from the story of President Lincoln's death. Edwin Booth, John Wilkes's older brother by four years, was in his day the biggest star of the American stage. Without an account of Edwin Booth, author Nora Titone argues, the real story of Lincoln's assassin has never been told.

In The Messiah of Morris Avenue, Tony Hendra—the acclaimed satirist and New York Times bestselling author of Father Joe—poses the question: would we recognize the messiah if he appeared today? And delivers, in the words of Frank McCourt, “just what the country needs now—a good dose of...