Showing results by narrator "Simon Slater" in All Categories

During a blistering summer, drought has depleted Thornfield Reservoir, uncovering the remains of a small village called Hobb's End - hidden from view for over 40 years. For a curious young boy, this resurfaced hamlet is a magical playground...until he unearths a human skeleton. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is given the impossible task of identifying the victim - a woman who lived in a place that no longer exists, whose former residents are scattered to the winds.

The 26th instalment of the internationally best-selling DCI Banks series. When the body of a teenage boy is found stuffed into a wheely bin on the East Side Estate, Banks and Annie have a homegrown murder case to solve. But Banks' attention is also on Zelda, who, in helping him track down his old enemy, has put herself in danger and alerted the stone-cold Eastern European sex traffickers who brought her to the UK.

A disgraced college lecturer is found murdered with £5,000 in his pocket on a disused railway line near his home. Since being dismissed from his job for sexual misconduct four years previously, he has been living a poverty-stricken and hermit-like existence in this isolated spot. The suspects range from several individuals at the college where he used to teach to a woman who knew the victim back in the early '70s at Essex University, then a hotbed of political activism.

If your children were forced to testify against you, what terrible secrets would they reveal? Moscow 1945. As Stalin and his courtiers celebrate victory over Hitler, shots ring out. On a nearby bridge, a teenage boy and girl lie dead. But this is no ordinary tragedy and these are no ordinary teenagers, but the children of Russia’s most important leaders who attend the most exclusive school in Moscow. Is it murder? A suicide pact? Or a conspiracy against the state?

The eighth book in the dramatic and intriguing story about the colonisation of Australia: a country built on blood, passion, and dreams. The new governor leads the colony with great efficiency, yet, life is still hard and burdensome. Once again, an attempt must be made to conquer the Blue Mountains — because beyond the large mountains, it is said that there are fertile plains and plentiful pastures. This had been Jenny's life-long dream, and now, her son Justin was on his way there. Was the dream finally about to come true?

Playing with Fire is the 14th novel in Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks series, following on from The Summer That Never Was. In the early hours of a cold January morning, two narrow boats catch fire on the dead-end stretch of the Eastvale canal. When signs of accelerant are found at the scene, DCI Banks and DI Annie Cabbot are summoned. But by the time they arrive, only the smouldering wreckage is left, and human remains have been found on both boats.

Late November, 1980. Student Nick Hartley returns from a lecture to find his house full of police officers. As he discovers that his ex-girlfriend has been found murdered in a nearby park, and her new boyfriend is missing, he realises two things in quick succession: he is undoubtedly a suspect as he has no convincing alibi, and he has own suspicions as to what might have happened. Late November 2019. An dig near Scotch Corner unearths a skeleton that turns out to be far more recent than the Roman remains the archaeologist is looking for.

The Summer That Never Was is the 13th novel in Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks series, following on from Aftermath. A skeleton has been unearthed. Soon the body is identified, and the horrific discovery hits the headlines. Fourteen-year-old Graham Marshall went missing during his paper round in 1965. The police found no trace of him. His disappearance left his family shattered and his best friend, Alan Banks, full of guilt.

WITH PASSION AND DARING, THEY SEIZED THE PROMISE OF A NEW LAND... The seventh book in the dramatic and intriguing story about the colonisation of Australia: a country built on blood, passion, and dreams. The upheavels in the new colony are frequent and radical. A governor has recently been fired, a rebel government has been forced to retreat, and a new governor has arrived in Australia. Will this mean redemption for the freed prisoners in the exile colony? The country needs its loyal fighters — and Jenny Hawley and her family certainly belong there in spite of their past.

At the American Academy of Classical Art, popular opinion has it that the school's handsome and mysterious founder, Raphael Sinclair, is a vampire. It is a rumor Rafe does nothing to dispel. Scholarship student Tessa Moss has long dreamed of the chance to study at Rafe's Academy. But she is floundering amidst the ups and downs of a relationship with egotistical art star Lucian Swain. Then, one of Tessa's sketches catches Rafe's attention: a drawing of a young woman in 1930s clothing who is covering the eyes of a child.

A faceless corpse is discovered in a tranquil, hidden valley below the village of Swainshead. And when Chief Inspector Alan Banks arrives, he finds that no-one is willing to talk. Banks's frustration only grows when the identity of the body is revealed. For it seems that his latest case may be connected with an unsolved murder in the same area five years ago. Among the silent suspects are the Collier brothers, the wealthiest and most powerful family in the area.

Opening with the notorious bonfires of 'un-German' and Jewish literature in 1933 that offered such a clear signal of Nazi intentions, Burning the Books takes us on a 3,000-year journey through the destruction of knowledge and the fight against all the odds to preserve it. Richard Ovenden, director of the world-famous Bodleian Library, explains how attacks on libraries and archives have been a feature of history since ancient times but have increased in frequency and intensity during the modern era.

What can Roger Federer teach us about the secret of longevity? What do the All Blacks have in common with improvised jazz musicians? What can cognitive neuroscientists tell us about what happens to the brains of sportspeople when they perform? And why did Johan Cruyff believe that beauty was more important than winning? Matthew Syed, the Sports Journalist of the Year 2016, answers these questions and more in a fascinating, wide-ranging and provocative book about the mental game of sport.

Light in the Darkness examines how mankind has always looked to the skies, mapping the journey from millennia ago when we turned our gaze to the heavens, to modern astrophysics. Heino Falcke and Jorg Romer entertainingly and compellingly chart the breakthrough research of Falcke's team, an unprecedented global community of international colleagues developing a telescope complex enough to look directly into a black hole - a hole where light vanishes, and time stops.

The fourteenth book in the dramatic and intriguing story about the colonisation of Australia: a country made of blood, passion, and dreams. Against overwhelming odds they fought to tame a savage land, now they must fight to keep it. Dora Lucas, Francis De Lancey, the Yates brothers and Luke Murphy meet in the goldfields near Bathurst. All with different motives, but all drawn to the opportunities of the gold rush. Meanwhile, in Ballarat, trouble is brewing amongst the miners. Will they find riches and reach their goals or will the chaotic tide of the gold rush lead to unexpected places.

In the form of several journeys, beginning in January 2019, Neil Ansell returns for solitary walks to the New Forest in Hampshire, close to where he was born. With beautiful sightings and observations of birds, trees, butterflies, insects and landscape, this is also a reflective memoir on childhood, on the history of one of the most ancient and important natural habitats in the United Kingdom and on the Gypsies who lived there for centuries - and were subsequently expelled to neighbouring cities.

It was 2:47 a.m. when Chief Inspector Alan Banks arrived at the barn and saw the body of Keith Rothwell for the first time. Only hours earlier two masked men had walked the mild-mannered accountant out of his farmhouse and clinically blasted him with a shotgun. Clearly this is a professional hit - but Keith was hardly the sort of person to make deadly enemies. Or was he? For the police investigation soon raises more questions than answers. And who, exactly, is Robert Clavert?

The seventeenth book in the dramatic and intriguing story about the colonisation of Australia: a country made of blood, passion, and dreams. Destinies intertwine and brutal battles ensue to secure a brighter future. During the 1860s, Australian settlers, among them Lady Kitty Broome and Adam Vincent, venture out on new, exciting adventures which will lead to a war between cultures, friends and lovers, as they fight for the future of their world.

The '80s were about big ideas writ large - new money, new style, gender fluidity, gay pride, attritional politics, the 'special relationship', nuclear fear, AIDS, cocaine, ecstasy, tabloid royalty, the rise of urban pop and ultimately geopolitical chaos. Using a big narrative approach, Dylan Jones' history of the decade in pop frames the decade through some of its most important and popular hits, choosing records that either epitomised their time or ushered in a new cultural shift.

The twentieth book in the dramatic and intriguing story about the colonisation of Australia: a country made of blood, passion, and dreams. Jon Fisher and Harry Ryan return to Australia. At their return, Jon Fisher learns of the problem that his family are facing with the conflict of the wealthy squatters and the so-called 'selectors'. The threat of war and internal fighting looms over the family as we near the turn of the century.