Showing results by narrator "Mark Meadows" in All Categories

Five strands of high-voltage wire, 200 yards of bare ground and double barbed wire fences patrolled by armed guards with dogs separated Mordon Research Centre from the outside world. Yet behind the locked doors of E block, a scientist lies dead, and a new toxin of terrifying power has vanished.

Taking a break from his holiday visiting his nephew, Jim, Athelstan Digby agrees to look after the old bookshop of Keldstone so that his hosts, the Lavenders, can attend their cousin's funeral. On the first day of his tenure, three suspicious characters enquire after a copy of The Life and Times of Mr Badman by John Bunyan.

When one of London's best-known Literary Agents is found dead in strange circumstances, having fallen headlong from his office window, DCI Slider is under pressure from the Borough Commander to confirm a case of accidental death. But when the evidence points to murder, Slider and his team find themselves uncovering some decidedly scandalous secrets in the suave and successful Ed Wiseman's past.

The Taliban have disappeared from Kabul's streets, but the long shadows of their brutal regime remain...In his short life, 11-year-old Fawad has known more grief than most: his father and brother have been killed; his sister has been abducted; and Fawad and his mother, Mariya, must rely on the charity of family to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence. But despite their struggles, Fawad's love of life never fades.

King Richard the Lionheart is dead, and his brother, John Lackland, sits uneasily upon the throne of England. Across the sea, Prince Louis, heir to the powerful King Philip Augustus of France, looks to King John’s crown with a covetous eye. But King John must be wary of rebellion, as well as invasion, for even his own barons would see their king unseated, and the French pretender put in his place. Thrust amid this tumult is young Estienne Wace, orphan squire to Earl William Marshal – the greatest knight to ever serve the kings of England.

After a South London man is shot and killed at home, his wife swears that the offender had no feet. Even stranger, when a teacher is murdered at a local school, her pupils insist they saw disembodied feet dangling from their classroom ceiling. All across the country, victims claim the assailant was missing a body part, while others stumble upon the severed appendages. It's clear these murders are neither straightforward nor easily explained, which means there are only two people fit to investigate: DS Jamila Patel and DC Jerry Pardoe, who are used to tracking spirits intent on causing mayhem.

The Voice of the Violin by Andrea Camilleri is the fourth novel in the wryly humorous Inspector Montalbano series. The commissioner kept looking at him with an expression that combined contempt and commiseration, apparently discerning unmistakable signs of senile dementia in the inspector. "I'm...

Nick Paleologus is summoned to the unyielding bosom of his family to help resolve a dispute which threatens to set his brothers and sisters against their aged and irascible father. Michael Paleologus, retired archaeologist and supposed descendant of the last Emperors of Byzantium, lives alone at Trennor, a remote and rambling house on the Cornish bank of the Tamar. A ridiculously generous offer has been made for the house, but he refuses to sell despite the urgings of his children, for whom the proceeds would solve a variety of problems.

PI Varg Veum has returned to duty following a stint in rehab, but his new composure and resolution are soon threatened when three complex cases arrive on his desk in quick succession. A man is found dead in an elite swimming pool and a young woman has gone missing. Most chillingly, Varg Veum is asked to investigate the ‘Camilla Case’: an eight-year-old cold case involving the disappearance of a little girl who was never found.

Former chief investigator Jan Kalisz lives a dangerous double life, forced to work with the occupiers as he gathers information for the fledgling Polish resistance. Even his family cannot be told his true allegiance. When the niece of a Wehrmacht general is found terribly mutilated, Jan links the murder to other killings that are of less interest to his new overlords. Soon, he finds himself on the trail of a psychopathic killer known as The Artist. But, shunned as a Nazi collaborator, can he solve the case before another innocent girl is taken?

In Electronic Dreams, Tom Lean tells the story of how computers invaded British homes for the first time, as people set aside their worries of electronic brains and Big Brother and embraced the wonder technology of the 1980s. This book charts the history of the rise and fall of the home computer, the family of futuristic and quirky machines that took computing from the realm of science and science fiction to being a user-friendly domestic technology.

When a wealthy woman comes to her untimely demise, Lord Peter Wimsey dives into the case—despite his lack of evidence or suspects. Just as Wimsey is getting familiar with the case, the woman's maid becomes the next victim. With two victims and no suspects, Wimsey is at his wit's end trying to prevent the next murder from happening. As senseless crime brings a dark shadow over this beautiful Hampshire village, will Wimsey be able to solve this case in time?

July 1932. When a drowned man is found in a freight elevator in Haus Vaterland, the giant pleasure palace on Potsdamer Platz, Inspector Gereon Rath is called in to investigate. It’s not that Rath hasn’t problems enough. His hunt for a mysterious contract killer has been stalled for weeks, and his on-off lover, Charlotte Ritter, has just begun her probationary year with Berlin CID.

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.

Rounding the Mark is the seventh darkly humorous novel in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series. Increasingly disillusioned with his government and the world in general, Inspector Montalbano is considering retirement. He is starting to feel his age, and even his favourite restaurant has...

The Scent of the Night is the sixth comic detective novel in the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri. Montalbano learned how hard it was to put on a wetsuit while in a dinghy speeding over a sea that wasn't exactly calm. Mimì, at the helm, looked tense and worried. "Getting seasick...

A new, fun way to teach yourself the times tables! Enjoy learning your times tables - with the help of songs! Catchy tunes in different musical styles, such as blues, rock, reggae, folk, funk, soul and country, help the times tables to stick in your brain. There’s even a cool way to see if you’ve remembered them - there are gaps where you can call out the answers and show how smart you are! So don’t be at sixes and sevens, join in with these great songs. Learning has never been so much fun!

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.

We might think we are through with the past, but the past isn't through with us. Tragedy permits us to come face to face with the things we don't want to know about ourselves, but which still make us who we are. It articulates the conflicts and contradictions that we need to address in order to better understand the world we live in. A work honed from a decade's teaching at the New School, where Critchley on Tragedy is one of the most popular courses, Tragedy, the Greeks and Us is a compelling examination of the history of tragedy.

Zach and his sister Annis, uprooted from their comfortable home to a remote and half-built barn in France, are just trying to keep everything together. When Zach enters a dangerously derelict building nearby, the tottering wall falls and buries him. As Annis races towards him, unbelievably, Zach moves. How could he have survived such a terrible accident?