Showing results by narrator "Gordon Griffin" in All Categories

Thomas Chaloner, spy for the King's intelligence service, has just returned from thwarting a planned revolt in Dublin, but soon realises that England's capital is no haven of peace. He is ordered to investigate the shooting of a beggar during a royal procession. He soon learns the man is no vagrant, but someone with links to the powerful company of Barber-Surgeons. His master, the earl of Clarendon, is locked in a deadly feud with the earl of Bristol, and an innocent man is about to be hanged in Newgate.

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.

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.

A beautiful death. A perfect murder. A sexual predator is at large on the streets of Imperial Vienna and Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt appeals to his friend, psychoanalyst Dr. Max Liebermann, for assistance. Early signs indicate that the killer is no ordinary 'lust murderer' but an entirely new phenomenon, his particular deviance revealing the darker preoccupations of the age.

Consisting of articles taken from his popular column in The Yorkshire Post, Julian Norton's The Diary of a Yorkshire Vet On Call features anecdotes from his veterinary work in North Yorkshire. From hairy pigs near Helmsley to a bullock with an enormous eye at Old Byland, these true stories bring to life the drama and humour in the daily routine of a rural vet. Along the way, Julian deals with llamas near Brimham Rock, greedy sheep in Cold Kirby, eagles, seals, alpacas and Geoffrey Boycott.

The English novelist Patrick O’Brian is much admired for his best-selling Aubrey-Maturin series of sea novels - the unexpected success of the series secured his place in literary history. Far less is known about O’Brian’s personal life, largely because he preferred to keep it that way. In A Very Private Life, O’Brian’s stepson Nikolai Tolstoy draws upon his stepfather’s archives and papers to faithfully capture a life dedicated to the written word.

With some trepidation Nigel Derry approaches the country house of his enigmatic and unpredictable aunt Gwenny for an Easter holiday visit. After a tense few days in which her guests' interactions range from awkward dinners to a knife fight, a disgruntled aunt Gwenny departs for Europe. Receiving a telegram from Le Touquet inviting him to join Gwenny in the south of France, Nigel finds himself on a vacation cut short by murder as a cold shadow of suspicion eclipses the sunny beauty of the Côte d'Azur.

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.

In 523 BC, the Persian pharaoh Cambyses dispatched an army across Egypt's western desert to destroy the oracle at Siwa. Legend has it that somewhere in the middle of the Great Dune Sea his army was overwhelmed by a sandstorm and lost forever. Two and a half millennia later, a mutilated corpse is washed up on the banks of the Nile at Luxor, an antiques dealer is savagely murdered in Cairo, and a British archaeologist is found dead at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.

While our understanding of the Holocaust is well developed, we know little about everyday life in Nazi Germany. In this vivid and important study, Roger Moorhouse portrays the German experience of the Second World War from the viewpoint of the capital's streets and homes, raising issues of consent and dissent, morality and authority, and charting the violent humbling of a once-proud metropolis.

Drawing on extensive archival sources and hundreds of interviews, Timothy Brennan’s Places of Mind is the first comprehensive biography of Said, one of the most controversial and celebrated intellectuals of the 20th century. In Brennan’s masterful work, Said, the pioneer of post-colonial studies, a tireless champion for his native Palestine and an erudite literary critic, emerges as a self-doubting, tender and eloquent advocate of literature’s dramatic effects on politics and civic life.

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.

Former inspector Sir John Appleby is worried about his friend Charles Vandervell. An elderly philosopher who lives alone on the Cornish coast, his nephew has expressed concern about his melancholic state. But when Appleby drops by to visit Vandervell, he is surprised to find him entertaining his female neighbour. And then a week later, Vandervell disappears leaving what seems like a suicide note....

At the Central Criminal Court, an eager crowd awaits the trial of Victoria Lamartine, an active participant in the Resistance during the war. She is now employed at the Family Hotel in Soho, where Major Eric Thoseby has been found murdered. Thoseby is believed to have fathered Lamartine's child, and the prosecution insist that his death is revenge for his abandonment of Lamartine and her arrest by the Gestapo. A last-minute change in Lamartine's defence counsel grants solicitor Nap Rumbold just eight days to prove her innocence.

1917. The Lotus Hotel offers sanctuary for its exclusively female clientele, attracting the cream of London's society. But a dead body found in one of its rooms is hardly good for business, and when it is discovered that the woman was neither a guest nor a member of staff, the Lotus' reputation as a safe haven is cast in doubt. Inspector Marmion and Sergeant Keedy are dispatched to look into the events at the hotel and soon suspect foul play.

London in the spring of 1665 is a city full of fear. There is plague in the stews of St Giles, the Dutch fleet is preparing to invade, and a banking crisis threatens to leave Charles II's government with no means of paying for the nation's defence. Amid the tension, Thomas Chaloner is ordered to investigate the murder of Dick Wheler, one of the few goldsmith-bankers to have survived the losses that have driven others to bankruptcy - or worse.

Much-loved Calleshire research chemist Derek Tridgell has been ill for some time. On his deathbed, his incessant but unintelligible mutterings culminate in a cry of murder. Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby are brought in to investigate whether these are just the ramblings of a man at death's door or a real confession at the final hour. Their enquiries uncover three tragic deaths that may be linked to the deceased's last words: an accidental drowning at a rival chemist manufacturer, an old friend of Derek's killed in a caving expedition and his son walking away unscathed from a fatal car accident. It’s a complex case for Sloan and Crosby.

Adam Cassidy is one of Brunton’s most famous residents. For the past few years he has played the lead role in a TV detective show that has been a worldwide success. He now believes it is his time for a crack at Hollywood, and, as plans are made for the fifth series, he doesn’t care who he has to betray in order to fulfill his dream. Meanwhile, DCI Percy Peach, now happily married to Lucy Blake, is at a loose end and is in danger of being drawn into the ongoing, and unpopular, local anti-terrorism initiative.

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. 'It’s a very rare thing for a murder to be committed actually in the presence of a police officer.' Or so it was thought.... After the police fail to trace the writer behind a series of threatening letters to wealthy industrialist Sir Charles Leighton, he demands constant police protection. And thus it is up to Inspector Lang to accompany the man to a bridge party on New Year’s Eve - and track down his killer....

Having just returned from a clandestine excursion to Spain and Portugal on behalf of the queen, Thomas Chaloner finds London dank and grey under leaden skies. He finds many things changed, including the government slapping a tax on printed newspapers. Handwritten news reports escape the duty, and the rivalry between the producers of the two conduits of news is the talk of the coffee houses with the battle to be first with any sort of intelligence escalating into violent rivalry. And it seems that a number of citizens who have eaten cucumbers have come to untimely deaths.