Showing results by narrator "Mark Meadows" in All Categories

When the Turin Shroud is stolen in a violent assault, archaeologist and former spy Ava Curzon is plunged into a desperate struggle against an apocalyptic Russian cult. Recruited by the UK's clandestine MI13 intelligence agency and aided by the Vatican's security division and her former colleague Ferguson, Ava is sucked into a world of dark extremism and Biblical secrets.

Bergen Private Investigator Varg Veum is perplexed when two wildly different cases cross his desk at the same time. A lawyer, anxious to protect her privacy, asks Varg to find her sister, who has disappeared with her husband, seemingly without trace, while a ship carrying unknown cargo is heading towards the Norwegian coast, and the authorities need answers. Varg immerses himself in the investigations, and it becomes clear that the two cases are linked, and have unsettling - and increasingly uncanny - similarities to events that took place 36 years earlier.

Summer, 1943. Daniel Berkåk works as a courier for the Press and Military Office in Stockholm. On his last cross-border mission to Norway, he carries a rucksack full of coded documents and newspapers, but before he has a chance to deliver anything he is shot and killed and the contents of his rucksack are missing. The Norwegian government, currently exiled in London, wants to know what happened, and the job goes to writer Jomar Kraby, whose first suspect is a Norwegian refugee living in Sweden, whose past that is as horrifying as the events still to come.

Everyday Lou Suffern battled with the clock. He always had two places to be at the same time. He always had two things to do at once. When asleep he dreamed. In between dreams, he ran through the events of the day while making plans for the next. When at home with his wife and family, his mind was always someplace else.

Motionless, Montalbano waited for the surf to enter his brain and wash it clean with each breaker. At last the first light wave came like a caress, swiiissshhh, and carried away, glugluglug, Elena Sclafani and her beauty while Michela Pardo's tits, belly, arched body and eyes likewise disappeared. Once Montalbano the man was erased, all that should remain was Inspector Montalbano - a kind of abstract function of the person who was supposed to solve the case and nothing more, with no personal feelings involved.

Elizabeth Haynes' new psychological thriller is a brilliantly suspenseful and shocking story in which nothing is at it seems, but everything is at stake. Sarah Carpenter lives in an isolated farmhouse in North Yorkshire, and for the first time after the death of her husband some years ago and her children, Louis and Kitty, leaving for university, she's living alone. But she doesn't consider herself lonely. She has two dogs, a wide network of friends and the support of her best friend, Sophie.

This gripping and vivid book is the first comprehensive world history of the most important transport innovation of the modern age. Steven Parissien examines the impact, development and significance of the automobile over its turbulent and colourful 130-year history, but this is not just the story of horsepower and performance. It is a tale of people, of flamboyant entrepreneurs, shrewd businessmen and gifted engineers; of outstanding success and abject failure.

When a young woman's body is discovered on a popular jogging trail in Birmingham, Detective Inspector Bernard Watts and his team are plunged into a disturbing murder investigation. Not only has the woman been violently stabbed - her head is missing. When a close examination of the crime scene results in a shocking discovery linking the present murder to a past crime, criminologist Will Traynor is brought in to assist the police. Aware of Traynor's troubled past, Watts is sceptical that he will bring anything useful to the investigation. He's about to be proved very wrong.

Exploding the tired stereotypes of autism, Daniel Tammet - an autistic savant himself - reaches across the divides of age, gender, sexuality and nationality to draw out the inner worlds of his subjects. Portraying a range of experiences as richly diverse as the spectrum itself, this illuminating, life-affirming work of narrative nonfiction celebrates the power and beauty of the neurodivergent mind, and the daring freedom with which these people have built their lives.

Montalbano's gruesome discovery of a naked young woman suffocated in her bed immediately sets him on a search for her killer. Among the suspects are her aging husband, a famous doctor; a shy admirer, now disappeared; an antiques-dealing lover from Bologna; and the victim's friend Anna, whose charms Montalbano cannot help but appreciate. But it is a mysterious, reclusive violinist who holds the key to this murder....

Florence. Spring, 1537. When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city’s northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets. His case becomes far more complicated when a naked man’s body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer. Meanwhile, Constable Carlo Strocchi finds human remains pulled from the Arno that belong to an officer of the law missing since winter.

The woman lies dead at the foot of the stairs. It's obvious what happened: she tripped and fell. But PC D'Arblay, called to the dilapidated West London villa by an anonymous tip-off, can't shake the feeling that's exactly what someone wants him to think. It was the deep head wound that killed her - but her dying fall left no blood trail. DCI Slider, of the Shepherd's Bush murder squad, is soon convinced D'Arblay's right. But with no motive, no murder weapon and no idea even who the victim is, Slider faces steep odds to get a result.

When Thomas Harding discovered that his mother's family had made money from the slave plantations worked by people of African descent, what began as an interrogation into the choices of his ancestors soon became a quest to learn more about Britain's role in slavery. It was a history that he knew surprisingly little about. In White Debt, Harding vividly brings to life the story of the uprising by enslaved people that took place in the British colony of Demerara (now Guyana) in the Caribbean in 1823.

A brilliant new translation of one of Simenon's best loved masterpieces. 'A certain furtive, almost shameful emotion...disturbed him whenever he saw a train go by, a night train especially, its blinds drawn down on the mystery of its passengers.' Kees Popinga is a respectable Dutch citizen and family man. Then he discovers that his boss has bankrupted the shipping firm he works for - and something snaps.

Florence, 1691. The Renaissance is long gone, and the city is a dark, repressive place, where everything is forbidden and anything is possible. Knowledge is still the property of the few, and they guard it fiercely. Art, sex and power - these, as always, are the obsessions. Facing criminal charges, Gaetano Zummo is forced to flee his native Siracusa at the age of 20, first to Palermo, then Naples, but always has the feeling that he is being pursued by his past, and that he will never be free of it.

At each abandoned crime scene there's a hidden clue: a tiny metal cog, almost invisible to the naked eye. Someone is sending Detective Sam Berger a message, someone who knows that only he will understand the cryptic trail. When another teenage girl disappears without trace, Sam must convince his superiors that they’re dealing with a serial killer. As the police continue the hunt to find the latest victim, Sam is forced to unearth long-buried personal demons. He has no choice if he is to understand the killer's darkly personal message before time runs out.

Authors Chris Clark and Tim Hicks provide the fullest possible account of the crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, including those he was not charged with and has never previously been connected to. The police believed Sutcliffe was operating only in the Greater Manchester Police, South Yorkshire Police and West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police force areas, using his car. In fact, Sutcliffe was operating nationally and internationally, using his employer’s lorry to commit attacks.

1943, the North African desert. Major Tim Sheldon, exhausted and battle weary, is tasked with carrying out a futile and unexpected patrol mission. Fred Majdalany's intimate, tense novel puts this so-called minor action centre stage, as over the course of the day and through the night of the patrol itself, Sheldon reminisces about his time as a soldier, his own future and what it means to confront fear.

The lazy, slow month of August at the height of the Sicilian summer is, Inspector Montalbano assures his girlfriend, Livia, as they prepare for a relaxing holiday in a villa he has found for them, far too hot for any murders to be committed. But when Livia's friends' young son goes missing, a chain of events is sparked which will certainly ruin the Chief Inspector's pleasant interlude. A secret apartment and a grisly find in an old trunk are just the beginning as Montalbano navigates his way though the case and copes with the heat.

Winter 1264. England is in turmoil. King Henry III's reign is under threat. In Oxford the barons prepare to challenge his rule. Searching for his lodgings down a dark alley, young student Thomas Symon hears a scream. It's a young girl, her throat slit. Mistaken for the fleeing killer, Thomas is saved from a vengeful town mob by a stranger pulling him into a dark passageway. The man is his new university tutor, renowned academic Regent Master William Falconer.