Showing results by narrator "Greg Wagland" in All Categories

In the historic summer offensive of 1943, the Allies stand ready to invade Sicily. The cost will be high in lives and time, unless the Sicilians themselves can be persuaded to rise against their Nazi oppressors. Only the Mafia can command an uprising - and the Godfather refuses to fight. Desperate action is needed to dent Hitler's evil pride. Someone who understands Mafia ways, and knows how to earn the loyalty the Allies crave. Someone who isn't afraid of killing his own.

A burglary, a murder and a killer who wears a mask. A woman is found dead in her bed, badly beaten. Precious items are missing from the house, including a Fender Stratocaster guitar belonging to her husband. Was it just a burglary gone wrong? Perhaps it is not a motive DI Stewart Gardener should be looking for, but a pattern. And he needs to get to the bottom of the mystery fast, before someone else is hurt.

Poems was published in 1920. The poems of that work are included here and are as follows: Strange Meeting; Greater Love; Apologia pro Poemate Meo; The Show; Mental Cases; Parable of the Old Man and the Young; Arms and the Boy;

Selected Poems by Robert Browning (1812-1889) is read by Greg Wagland for Magpie Audio. The selection is as follows: "The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St Praxed’s Church", "The Lost Leader", "Pictor Ignotus", "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister", "Love Among the Ruins", "Up at a Villa, Down in the City", "A Woman’s Last Word", "A Toccata of Galuppi’s", "Love in a Life", "Life in a Love", "Women and Roses", "Two in the Campagna", and more.

Alan Knightley is an expert in crimes too strange for Scotland Yard to handle, but four years ago the unexplained finally caught up with him - and he fell into a mysterious coma. His son Darkus is determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and find out what really happened. But when Alan suddenly wakes up, his memory is wonky and he needs help. The game is afoot for Knightley & Son - with a mystery that gets weirder by the minute, a best-selling book that makes its listeners commit terrible crimes, and a sinister organisation known as the Combination....

Herbert George Wells was one of the most prolific and visionary British writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. H. G. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels, although he wrote across many genres, including nonfiction. His fiction embraces history, science fiction, horror, satire, fantasy, and social commentary. Wells was also a futurist, foreseeing air travel, tanks (as in “The Land Ironclads” - part of this anthology) space travel, nuclear weapons, and even satellite television.

Tales of Troy and Greece by classicist and gifted storyteller Andrew Lang is an ideal introduction to the The Iliad and The Odyssey, recounting the Homeric legend of the wars between the Greeks and the Trojans. Paris, Achilles, the lovely Helen of Troy, Penelope, Hector, Ulysses, the Amazons, and the Wooden Horse all feature in this evocative introduction to one of the greatest legends ever told.

These two unabridged chapters from Charles Mackay’s two-volume evergreen work, Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) deal with the disastrous South Sea Bubble and the extraordinary outbreak of Tulipomania in Holland.

Everything about Lord Harry's easygoing life is about to change. After unexpectedly inheriting the title of duke of Sommersville, he's also discovered it comes with a load of debt. To save the estate, he's going to need money. Lots of it - and quick.

All the Malcolms have some magic, but Lady Felicity's ability to read people's emotions simply by touching them or their possessions overwhelms her. She's reached a marriageable age, but how can she ever wed when she can see so clearly a man's guilty secrets?

Following many years of war with Rome, Carthage is exhausted. Yet the trouble is not yet over. As mercenaries land in Carthage to claim payment for services rendered, they do not receive what they expect. Lacking a shared culture, structure and even language, this band of warriors has taken up residence in Carthage and is becoming increasingly angry.... Meanwhile, veteran Roman sailor and prefect Atticus Perennis is fighting pirates in the seas around Sicily. Perpetually an outsider due to his Greek heritage, Atticus is a fine Roman warrior with several points to prove.

In 1959, British agents masterminded the escape of the Dalai Lama from Tibet. Three years later, Paul Chavasse is doing it all over again.... A vitally important scientist, holding intelligence that could shift the balance of world power, is being held in China. British secret agent Paul Chavasse, responsible for extracting the Dalai Lama from under Chinese noses, is the perfect man to slip through the border, locate the scientist and bring him back to the West.

Lady Leila Staines has always felt like an outcast among her magically gifted sisters. Desperate to discover her own talent, she seeks out Dunstan Ives, a dark and brooding aristocrat with a scientific bent who may hold the key to unleashing Leila's hidden powers.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a chilling novella written by Robert Louis Stevenson and published in 1886. The subject matter may be partly that of a shilling shocker but the whole is executed with great panache and a fine Gothic sensibility. Lawyer Gabriel Utterson leads us apace through the rain-swept streets of Victorian London in pursuit of the diminutive but thoroughly monstrous Mr. Hyde.

The Prince, Machiavelli's 'little book', was written in 1513 and is dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici. It remains a compelling and controversial treatise on politics, dispensing often cynical, sometimes brutal advice on gaining power and retaining it. Essential listening for our masters perhaps, but most certainly for those of us who would not be mastered. The text used here is the unabridged and classic translation by W. K. Marriott.

A Personal Record is a "fragment of biography", an autobiographical work by Joseph Conrad, published in 1912. It is also a masterpiece of atmospheric writing and the main contemporary source to detail his early life. Conrad, Polish by birth, who goes on to become one of the greatest novelists of the English language, describes his childhood and adolescence, discusses his forebears, one of whom fought on the side of Napoleon and ate a Lithuanian dog, the exile of his parents, the death of his mother and his relationship with his Uncle Tadeusz.

In fading light on the Thames Estuary near London, as Charles Marlow and his companions relax on deck, waiting for the turn of the tide, he tells of the time he turned ‘freshwater sailor’ on the River Congo. His perilous journey upriver in a little steamboat with a band of white colonialists and a group of cannibals takes him closer to the coveted ivory, closer to Kurtz the rogue agent, closer to certain unspeakable rites and the heart of darkness.

Atticus Perennis, prefect of the Roman fleet, waits restlessly in Carthage. His crew is agitated, as they wait on edge for news from Rome, hoping the powers that be send more ships to help his Carthaginian forces put down a rebel mercenary army. When word reaches them that a fleet is on their way, it seems there might be an end in sight to the ceaseless violence. However, the optimism does not last long. When an act of treachery by the Carthaginian side is committed against their Roman brothers in arms, the wheels of counter-revenge, bloodshed and savagery are set in motion.

A murder with no weapon or motive. A detective on edge. A community that wants answers. Impurity is the first in a series of six books featuring Leeds based Detective Inspector Stewart Gardener. One fateful night, DI Stewart Gardener intervenes in a street brawl, and his wife is shot dead. Finding his wife’s murderer is never far from his mind, but with no leads and a hazy recollection of events, it seems hopeless. Soon he is presented with a shocking case. A man is found dead in a grubby apartment, and It is not long before another man meets the same fate.

Bramfield, near Leeds, a sleepy little market town nestled on the borders of West and North Yorkshire. Detectives Stewart Gardener and Sean Reilly discover the naked corpse of Alex Wilson, nailed to the wall of a cellar in his uncle's hardware store. His lips are sewn together, and his body bears only one mark, a fresh scar near his abdomen. Within 48 hours, their investigation results in dead ends, more victims, no suspects and very little in the way of solid evidence.