Showing results by narrator "Mike Grady" in All Categories

October 1937. Swanton Morley, the People's Professor, sets off to Essex to continue his history of England, The County Guides. Morley's daughter, Miriam, continues to cause chaos, and his assistant, Stephen Sefton, continues to slide deeper into depression and despair. Morley is an honorary guest at the Colchester Oyster Festival. But when the mayor dies suddenly at the civic reception, suspicion falls on his fellow councillors. Is it a case of food poisoning? Or could it be...murder?

Ned and his family are trying to be ordinary except for the small fact that they aren't. At all. Because on the run-up to Christmas, everything is ruined when all the world's gold goes missing along with its leading scientists. Which doesn't really have anything to do with Ned...until it does. When an oily thief and his pet monster turn up at Ned's door, Ned finds himself on the run again...and racing to find out what this new villain wants.

When you are an inoffensive retired librarian with bitter personal experience of Evil Talking Cats, do you rescue a kitten from the cold on a December night? Do you follow up news items about cats digging in graveyards? Do you inquire into long-ago cats who voyaged around the world with Captain Cook? Well, yes. If you are Alec Charlesworth, that is precisely what you do - with unexpected and terrifying consequences.

Tom Karen is the Vimp, an Aircruiser and a Water Line Ship; he's a 'Big Fat Peace Bomb', a Bond Bug and the Marble Run; he's the Chopper bike and the 'man that designed the 1970s'; he's every one of his thousands of sketches contained in London's Victoria & Albert Museum - each a testament to a lifetime of artistry and creativity. He's also a living embodiment of a life immersed in inventiveness, imagination and thought.

Three brand-new adventures for glamorous bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori. 'Dead Drop' by Mark Wright. Dwarfed by the burning star of the Hyspero system, two devastating battle fleets face each other across the stars. On one side the Dyarid Primary Vanguard, commanded by Admiral Salaron aboard the starship Custodian. On the other a Chtzin battle cluster.

Fresh from finishing the Marathon des Sables, Ranulph Fiennes has become the oldest Briton to complete this ultimate endurance test. The world's greatest living explorer, he has travelled to some of the most remote, dangerous parts of the globe. Well known for his experiences at the poles and climbing Everest, he has also endured some of the hottest conditions on the planet, where temperatures regularly exceed 40 degrees and, without water and shelter, death is inevitable.

Ruth and Simon’s romantic break is shattered by the news that their daughter, Heather, on holiday in Cornwall, has disappeared. The loss is more than they can bear and they separate. In time Ruth remarries and has a second daughter, Beatrice. Then Beatrice goes missing. While DI Grayson leads the search for Beatrice, DS Helen Walker re-examines what happened to Heather years before.

Perilous Question features an eventful, violent often overlooked period of British history. On 7th June 1832, William IV reluctantly assented to pass the Great Reform Bill, under the double threat of the creation of 60 new peers in the House of Lords and of revolution throughout the country. This led to a total change in the way Britain was governed, a two-year revolution that Antonia Fraser brings dramatically to life.

A wife compulsively digs in her garden. Two brothers, long estranged, reunite for a terse, heady summer. A woman flies to Krakow to see her adult son. At dusk, a teenage girl pushes her dying mother out into the sea. A small boy sits on his own in the cinema, entranced by the cowboys who light up the screen. With these short stories, Tim Pears illuminates a series of blazing moments in quiet lives - the tragic, strange, funny and beautiful fragments that make and unmake us - and shines a light into the gulfs that lie between us and those who should know us best.

The Armstrongs are both predator and prey, hunting for clues to help them fight the Darkening King while constantly watching their backs. This time it’s not just the world of the Hidden searching for them: the Josser world is intent on capturing the family, too. Leading the search is the curious Mr Fox and his agents in grey, and they’ve found an ally who knows Ned’s every move.

For four characters the 500 quid worry bead in their pocket may be both a blessing and a curse. For elderly Dr Zachary Busner, it's his lifeline to his autistic grandson Ben, whose own connection with technology is, in turn, a vital one. For MI6 agent Jonathan De'Ath, aka 'the Butcher', the phone may reveal his best kept secret of all: that Colonel Gawain Thomas is his lover.

The galaxy is at war and Jake Cutler is at the heart of it. With his friends and allies captured, it's up to teenage space pirate, Jake, to go into battle and take down the corrupt Interstellar Government once and for all. But in order to win this battle, Jake must find his father and confront secrets from his own past.

It is no small matter, after all, to create something - to make it so only by setting down the words. We forget the magnitude, sometimes, of that miracle. Mr. Crowe was once the toast of the finest salons. A man of learning and means, he travelled the world, enthralling all who met him. Now Mr. Crowe devotes himself to earthly pleasures. He has retreated to his sprawling country estate, where he lives with Clara, his mysterious young ward, and Eustace, his faithful manservant.

Jake Cutler is the 13-year-old ruler of the secret planet Altus, and he’s on the run from the Interstellar Navy. He and his crew are wanted over the disappearance of the ISS Colossus, the most powerful ship in the navy's fleet. But that's not the only reason Jake's being hunted. If he's found, he'll be forced to reveal the location of a fortune of crystals which the Interstellar Navy plans to start an intergalactic war with.... It’s up to Jake to stop them!

Abandoned as a baby on the planet Remota, deep in the seventh solar system, Jake Cutler lives a sheltered life. But all that changes when his home is invaded by ruthless space pirates. Soon Jake is on the run with the suspicious-looking crew of a spaceship called the Dark Horse. Forced to contend with zero-gravity, shipwrecks and black holes, Jake must discover the truth about his past before he is hunted down and caught.

Thirty years ago, the Miners' Strike threatened to tear the country apart, turning neighbour against neighbour - enmities which smoulder still. Resnick had run an information-gathering unit at the heart of the dispute. Now, in retirement, and grieving over the death of his partner, the discovery of the body of a woman who disappeared during the Strike brings Resnick back, and forces him to confront his past.

Original Swedish crime stories from the masters of Nordic noir, including a never-before-published short story by Stieg Larsson. Ever since Stieg Larsson shone a light on the brilliance of Swedish crime writing, listeners have devoured this dark and compelling genre. Now the nation's best crime writers have been brought together to form the first-ever anthology of Swedish crime.

Nigel Jones depicts every facet of a year that changed Britain for ever. From gun-running in Ulster, to an attack by suffragettes on a Velasquez painting in the National Gallery; from the opening of London's first nightclub, to the embarking for Belgium of the British Expeditionary Force, he traces the events of a momentous year from its benign domestic beginnings to its descent into the nightmare of European war.

Before May 2011 the top demographics experts of the United Nations had suggested that world population would peak at 9.1 billion in 2100, and then fall to 8.5 billion people by 2150. In contrast, the 2011 revision suggested that 9.1 billion would be achieved much earlier, maybe by 2050 or before, and by 2100 there would be 10.1 billion of us. What's more, they implied that global human population might still be slightly rising in our total numbers a century from now. So what shall we do?

For 15 years, Janet has been married to her devoted and boring husband, Trevor. But their marriage was not as simple as it seemed. Now Janet is on the road, hurtling towards another man, and another life. Has she found freedom, and the strength to escape Trevor’s dominating fetishes? Or is there something far more sinister waiting for her at the crematorium?