Showing results by narrator "Gordon Griffin" in All Categories

Set in the reign of Queen Anne, Thackeray's novel follows the troubled progress of Henry Esmond Esq, a gentleman and an officer in Marlborough's army. Enamoured of the Jacobite Lady Castlewood and her wayward daughter Beatrix, he distinguishes himself in Marlborough's campaigns against Louis XIV, but comes to grief in an ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to depose George I in favour of the Old Pretender.

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him further insight into human behavior. Presented through Swift's satiric hall of distorting mirrors, mankind is cast as diminished, magnified, and bestial - the composite of which is an uncompromising reflection of human nature.

The captain of the Newhaven to Dieppe steamer spots a small pleasure yacht lying motionless in the water and, on closer inspection, sees a body lying on the deck. When members of his crew go aboard the yacht, they find not one male corpse but two. The dead men were chairman and vice chairman of Moxon General Securities, one of the largest financial houses in the country. Inspector Joseph French of Scotland Yard is called in. French soon discovers that Moxon's is on the brink of collapse.

George Surridge, director of the Birmington Zoo, is a man with many worries: his marriage is collapsing; his finances are insecure; and an outbreak of disease threatens the animals in his care. As Surridge's debts mount and the pressure on him increases, he begins to dream of miracle solutions. But is he cunning enough to turn his dreams into reality - and could he commit the most devious murder in pursuit of his goals?

May 1915. As zeppelin bombs fall on London and with the sinking of the Lusitania, anti-German hysteria reaches fever pitch and attacks on German immigrants surge. Not even the West End of London is immune. Jacob Stein's bespoke tailoring business comes under brutal attack, leaving his safe ransacked, his daughter, Ruth, raped and Jacob dead.

January 1916. Britain is on the brink of enforcing conscription. Eligible young men who have not yet signed up to fight are despised as ‘conchies’ and ‘shirkers’, subjected to hatred and verbal abuse. Cyril Ablatt, leader of Shoreditch’s group of conscientious objectors, makes a rousing speech at a meeting of the No-Conscription Fellowship, refusing to be ‘an instrument of slaughter in a khaki uniform’.

Jim Henderson is one of six guests summoned by the mysterious Edwin Carson, a collector of precious stones, to a weekend party at his country house, Thrackley. The house is gloomy and forbidding, but the party is warm and hospitable except for the presence of Jacobson, the sinister butler. The other guests are wealthy people draped in jewels; Jim cannot imagine why he belongs in such company. After a weekend of adventure with attempted robbery and a vanishing guest, secrets come to light, and Jim unravels a mystery from his past.

1916. As thousands of Brits are fighting on the Front Line, a new breed of women emerges to hold the Home Front together. Fiercely independent and fiery-spirited, the munitionettes, or ‘canaries’, are easily recognisable with their chemically-stained yellow faces. Among the raucous group of women is Florrie Duncan, who plans to celebrate her birthday in style at the Golden Goose pub. But the celebrations are cut short when all but one are killed in a brutal explosion.

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. In this festive short story featuring Francis Durbridge’s favourite debonair amateur detective, Paul Temple journeys to Switzerland to identify an elusive criminal.

London, Autumn 1916. When he slips out of a house in the early hours, Simon Wilder is too preoccupied to realise that he is being stalked. As he walks along the street, lights begin to dim as a warning that there's another Zeppelin attack. British aeroplanes attack the Zeppelin. Suddenly, it bursts into flame and lights up the whole sky. The crowds cheer as the great fireball drops slowly down and crashes in a field but the one person unable to watch is Simon Wilder.

The Odyssey is an epic poem, written by the ancient Greek philosopher Homer, and considered to be the second oldest piece of western literature still in existence. Scholars believe it was written at the end of the eighth century BC. Still heavily used in schools because of its unique literary makeup and historical value, the poems follow Greek hero Odysseus, as he journeys home after the 10-year long Trojan War. His journey home takes another 10 years, and Odysseus encounters many obstacles.

Superspy of Restoration London, Thomas Chaloner foils an uprising in his eighth outing. Five years after Charles II's triumphant return to London, there is growing mistrust of his extravagant court and of corruption among his officials - and when a cart laden with gunpowder explodes outside the General Letter Office, it is immediately clear that such an act is more than an expression of outrage at the inefficiency of the postal service.

Forced to flee Revolutionary France after the brutal guillotining of her beloved father, Isabella de Savigny arrives at Nethergate, the Suffolk house of her cousin, hoping for sympathy and succour. Instead, as a poor relation, she is forced to live the life of a servant and suffer the casual cruelty of lady’s maid Martha Pratt. When she is seduced and abandoned by the son of the house, Isabella is forced to marry Martha’s brother, and her struggle to survive truly begins. However, her misery is lessened when her daughter is born....

The plague has struck London once again but so has opportunity for theatre company Lord Westfield’s Men. Invited to perform at the wedding celebrations of Sophia Magdalena, the fair maid of Bohemia, the company’s bookholder Nicholas Bracewell and his acting troupe begin the long journey across Europe. Confident they will arrive safely and deliver Lord Westfield’s secret missive to an alchemist in the Imperial Court, Nicholas is unaware what danger travels with them.

This audiobook chronicles the triumphs and failures of his surgical life. Having spent his childhood in the backstreets of a northern steel town, he went on to become one of the world's foremost heart surgeons. His drive for perfection in his profession took him to the world-renowned Harefield Hospital, the foremost heart surgery centre in Birmingham, Alabama and the newly-created Cardiothoracic Centre in Oxford. Then in 2019 in Wuhan he was the first Western doctor to learn about Covid-19 before the virus was identified.

1664. There is an electric air of foreboding on the streets of London. An atmosphere Thomas Chaloner fears will only take a small spark to ignite into another civil war.... Thomas Chaloner has forged a living as spy to the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Clarendon, since the early days of the Restoration. Now, in February 1664, he is aware of an undercurrent of restlessness on the streets of London. The coffee houses are thick with rumours. There is anger at the new laws governing church attendance and a deepening contempt for the loucheness of the court. And there is murder.

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. A locked-room mystery that will delight Agatha Christie fans. Dramatist Trevor Lowe and his friend Detective Inspector Shadgold board the Western Express to spend Christmas in the little Cornish village of St Merryan. Heavy snowfall forces their journey to an abrupt halt and, after seeking refuge in a local pub, one of their fellow passengers is found stabbed to death, clutching half a Christmas card. Is the murderer in their midst?

Born at the beginning of the 20th century, Raphael Ignatius Phoenix is determined to take his own life as the new millennium begins and he turns 100 years old. But before he ends it all, he wants to get his affairs in order, and that includes making sense of his own life. He decides to write it down, remembering the experiences, the myriad encounters and, of course, the 10 murders he committed along the way.

An anonymous letter sent to Larkwood's Prior accuses Peter Henderson, an academic celebrity renowned for daring ideas, of a grotesque murder: the calculated killing of Jenny, his disabled partner, believed by everyone to have died peacefully two years previously from a sudden attack of cancer. But for this letter there is no evidence, no suspect and no crime.

February 1918. Detective Inspector Harvey Marmion and Detective Sergeant Joe Keedy are pulled from their beds to attend a sinister siege involving three burglars where one policeman has already been shot dead. Attempts at talking the men in the house into surrender are met with stony silence so the police proceed to batter down the door and Keedy bravely leads the way. A gunshot is heard. Keedy is hit. As Keedy is rushed to hospital, Marmion is on the trail of the men who fled the scene and startling revelations emerge.