Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Identifying the murderer of the Chancellor of the university is not the only challenge facing physician Matthew Bartholomew. Many of his patients have been made worse by the ministrations of a 'surgeon' recently arrived from Nottingham, his sister is being rooked by the mason she has commissioned to build her husband's tomb and his friend, Brother Michael, has been offered a bishopric which will cause him to leave Cambridge.

Escaping the rat race for a few happy weeks, Tom Chesshyre indulges in the freedom of the tracks. From France (dogged by rail worker strikes) through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland he goes, travelling as far east as Odessa by the Black Sea in Ukraine. With no set plans, simply a desire to let the trains lead the way, his trip takes him onwards via Hungary, the Balkans and Austria. Along the way he enjoys many an encounter, befriending fellow travellers as well as a conductor or two. This is a love letter to Europe, written from the trackside.

Over the years, authors, artists and amblers aplenty have felt the pull of the Thames, and now travel writer Tom Chesshyre is following in their footsteps. He's walking the length of the river from the Cotswolds to the North Sea - a winding journey of over 200 miles. Join him for an illuminating stroll past meadows, churches, palaces, country (and council) estates, factories and dockyards.

Believers in the theory of nominalism have set some Cambridge colleges at the throats of those who believe them to be heretics, and Michael, the senior proctor, has his work cut out to keep the peace. When a nominalist is murdered during a riot, Michael is certain he will easily find the killer amongst the Dominicans, but before he can get any sense out of them his junior proctor, Walcote, is found hanged, and he discovers that his trusted ally had arranged secret meetings at the St Ragelund Convent....

Fact catches up with fiction when the secret of telepathic communication is discovered. But the device at the centre of the mystery is in the possession of two schoolboys and whether they stole it or invented it, there are powerful interests who will kill to get hold of it. Albert Campion faces as deadly a challenge as any in his career.As urbane as Lord Wimsey.as ingenious as Poirot. Meet one of crime fiction's Great Detectives, Mr Albert Campion.

Break free of your destructive relationship with money, and learn how money can make you happy. Our relationship with money is one that lasts a lifetime. It can be as important as family life, as competitive as work, and as exciting and secretive as love. Yet books about money tend to take one of two routes: a) how to get more, or b) how to deal with less. This book turns these questions upside down, and looks not at money itself, but at the way we view it. How does money drive us? How does it frighten us?

The fourth chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew continues the adventures of the 14th-century Cambridge physician when he is called to attend to two deaths from some poisoned wine. The opening of a new and very well-endowed college has created petty infighting amongst the academics as new appointments are made. The winter and spring have been appallingly wet, there is a fever outbreak amongst the poorer townspeople and the country is not yet fully recovered from the aftermath of the plague.

John Milton's life is about to change. The former government assassin follows a lead to Manila that he hopes will transform everything. But things don't go to plan. He never expected to wake up in an unfamiliar hotel room beside a dead body. And, unfortunately for him, Milton doesn't remember a thing about the night before.... Thrown into a gruesome Filipino prison, he puts together the clues of his betrayal. With no allies and even less hope, Milton must use his wits to escape and take revenge....

Living under new identities in rural France, trained killer Isabella Rose and her former handler Michael Pope are trying to lay low. Tired of hiding, all Isabella wants is the chance to live an ordinary life. But Isabella is an extraordinary young woman and the people pursuing her will never, ever, give up. Her unique abilities have attracted the attention of the Academy of Military Science in Beijing. And it’s not only Isabella who needs to stay in the shadows.

When Albert Campion is called in by the fiancee of an old college friend to investigate the disappearance of her uncle, he little expects the mysterious spate of death and dangers that follows among the bizarre inhabitants of Socrates Close, Cambridge. He and Stanislaus Oates must tread carefully, and battle some complex family dynamics, to solve the case.

John Tradescant the Younger has inherited his father’s unique collection of plants along with his unerring ability to nurture them. But as gardener to Charles I, he confronts an unbearable dilemma when England descends into Civil War. Fleeing from the chaos, John travels to the Royalist colony of Virginia in America. But the virgin land is not uninhabited. John’s plant hunting brings him to live with the native people, and he learns to love and respect their way of life just as it is threatened by the colonial settlers.

Jack Kane is a man on a mission; a secret agency wants him dead... and his family is in the firing line. The Valknut Group, a state-funded private military group, has taken an interest in a UK Lithium mine. MI6 is concerned about that interest and Valknut's wider ambitions to undermine Western powers. Jack Kane and Frank Craven are tasked with travelling to Cornwall on Britain's south-west coast to investigate. A violent encounter ensues, and Kane is forced into battle against skilled and well-armed enemies.

Catherine has been enjoying the single life for long enough to know a good catch when she sees one. Gorgeous, charismatic, spontaneous – Lee seems almost too perfect to be true. And her friends clearly agree, as each in turn falls under his spell. But there is a darker side to Lee. His erratic, controlling and sometimes frightening behaviour means that Catherine is increasingly isolated. Driven into the darkest corner of her world, and trusting no one, she plans a meticulous escape.

When DI Barton is asked to investigate a seemingly innocuous fire that kills, he believes it's either children fooling around or a worrying racially motivated crime. As he delves deeper into the case, he soon realises that there is a history of similar blazes spread out over many years, all within a close area. An idea suggested by pathologist Mortis makes Barton suspect he has the arsonist’s motives wrong.

Massacres, invasions, plots. An Emperor on the edge. An Empire in peril. Caracalla is on the warpath. Time, he has decided, to put his enemies in their place. To invade the Parthians at the edge of the Empire. To destroy everything in his way. For Imperial Assassin Silus, this is a time of crisis. Forced to guard the Emperor as part of his elite bodyguard, Silus knows that the situation is untenable. As everything threatens to crumble, Silus must make the ultimate choice... and face the ultimate sacrifice.

Campion investigates once more, but this time he is on the run from the police - classic British crime writing at its best. Celebrated amateur detective Albert Campion awakes in hospital accused of attacking a police officer and suffering from acute amnesia. All he can remember is that he was on a mission of vital importance to His Majesty's government before his accident. On the run from the police and unable to recognise even his faithful servant Lugg or his own fiancée

Matthew Bartholomew, doctor of medicine and fellow of Michaelhouse, Cambridge, is travelling with a party from the college to accept the gift of the living of a parish in Suffolk. One of his companions, Unwin, an unworldly scholar, is to be installed as priest. Their journey is not without incident - they are chased by footpads, pass through an eerie village abandoned after the recent plague and find a man barely alive on a gibbet - so they reach their destination with some relief. But their thoughts of recovering while enjoying the local Pentecostal Fair are soon curtailed.

What do you do when your wife takes your child and leaves you alone in a city of ghosts? Dutch banker Hans ver den Broek chooses cricket. But New York cricket is a long way from the tranquil sport he grew up with. It's a rough, almost secret game, played in scrubby marginal urban parks by people the city doesnt see - people like Chuck Ramkissoon.

John Milton is used to operating in the shadows, weaving his way through dangerous places behind a fake identity. Now, to avenge the death of a close friend, he must wear his mask of deception once more. Beau Baxter was brutally murdered by a drugs cartel but that doesn’t stop Milton from blaming himself for his friend’s death. With the help of a trusted team of undercover experts and Beau’s son, Milton is determined to track down the killers. And he isn't just after the man who gave the order. He’s heading right for the top.

In 1358, over a century after its foundation in Cambridge, the college of Michael House is facing a serious shortfall of funds and competition from upstarts rivals such as Zachary Hostel. Their problems are made no easier by the hostility of the town's inhabitants, who favour the university moving away to the Fens. This simmering tension threatens to break into violence when a well-known tradesman is found dead in one of the colleges.