Showing results by narrator "Ben Onwukwe" in All Categories

Best mates Karl and Abu are both 17 and live near King's Cross. It's 2011 and racial tensions are set to explode across London. Abu is infatuated with gorgeous classmate Nalini but dares not speak to her. Meanwhile, Karl is the target of the local "wannabe" thugs just for being different. When Karl finds out his father lives in Nigeria, he decides that Port Harcourt is the best place to escape the sound and fury of London, and connect with a Dad he's never known. Rejected on arrival, Karl befriends Nakale, an activist who wants to expose ecocide....

Red Card to Racism is not only a welcome addition to the ongoing debate surrounding ending prejudice within football but also a timely and necessary addition to the wider discussion of the need within our evermore global multicultural society for all people, whatever their beliefs, gender, identity, sexuality or ethnic background, to be treated with equity, humanity and respect.

St Pauls, Bristol, 1980. Joseph Tremaine Ellington, now 57 years old, has long abandoned his former career as an enquiry agent for the safety of teaching. But his old life draws him back. One of the very few lights from Ellington’s dark and violent past has flickered out. His fiancée, Ruth Castle, is dead - leaving him again heartbroken and alone to bring up his 15-year-old niece, Chloe. Ellington’s days are long and lonely, his nights tormented by old ghosts.

Share looks at how new business models are being created based on the disruptive idea of ‘sharing’. Uber, Airbnb, Skype, Alibaba, Google, Netflix and WeChat (China’s answer to Whatsapp) are all based on the sharing of information, assets and human capital, and a new and dynamic economy is already emerging. Traditional consumer and industrial models of Western capitalism are having to adapt to the ‘sharing’ concept, but few traditional organisations seem to understand the implications of the ‘share’ mindset for how they operate and compete. 

Patrick Vernon's landmark 100 Great Black Britons campaign of 2003 was one of the most successful movements to focus on the role of people of African and Caribbean descent in British history. Frustrated by the widespread and continuing exclusion of the Black British community from the mainstream popular conception of 'Britishness', despite Black people having lived in Britain for more than 1,000 years, Vernon set up a public poll in which anyone could vote for the Black Briton they most admired.  

In this timely and very listenable new work, Walvin focuses not on abolitionism or the brutality and suffering of slavery but on resistance, the resistance of the enslaved themselves - from sabotage and absconding to full-blown uprisings - and its impact in overthrowing slavery. He also looks at the whole Atlantic world, including the Spanish Empire and Brazil.   

Theo, an aging Parisian cartographer, is desperately searching for the woman he once loved before Alzheimer’s takes his memories of her. Elise, his estranged daughter, moves in to take care of him. She still blames him for the tragic loss of her mother and is struggling with this new forced intimacy. Nebay, an Eritrean refugee, becomes Theo’s carer and friend. Unbeknownst to Elise, Nebay does not have a visa for France and is working illegally in order to support his sister.

Kevin Maxwell was a dream candidate for the police force: he had a long-held desire to serve his community, a strong moral compass and a clear aptitude for both the strategic and practical aspects of policing. And, as a gay black man from a working-class family, he could easily have been a poster boy for the force's stated commitment to equal opportunities. Joining just after the 9/11 attacks, Kevin entered policing determined to keep communities safe in the face of a changing world. But instead he came up against entrenched prejudice, open racism and homophobia.

1970, Bristol. What's buried doesn't always stay buried. It's a new decade, and J.T. Ellington has taken himself out of the investigation game. But when an old friend asks him to help a doctor whose son disappeared hours after his wedding, J.T.'s commitment to a life lived under the radar is tested. His quest hurls him back into the underworld he's worked so hard to leave behind. Charred remains in a churchyard, the savage beating of a Hindu priest and a series of cold-blooded threats are stark warnings to J.T. and to everyone he holds dear.

It is the 1920s in the Trinidadian capital, and Haynes' world has been upended. His mother has passed away, and his carefully mapped-out future of gleaming opportunity has disappeared with her. Unable to afford his former life, he finds himself moving into Minty Alley - a bustling barrack yard teeming with energy and a spectacular cast of characters. In this sliver of West Indian working-class society, outrageous love affairs and passionate arguments are a daily fixture and Haynes begins to slip from curious observer to the heart of the action.

Detective J. T. Ellington returns in this slick and fast-paced follow up to the critically acclaimed Heartman. 'It's quite simple Mr Ellington. When you find Fowler, just ask where we can find the truth.' With these words, private detective J.T. Ellington embarks on a seemingly simple case of tracking down a local GP with a dubious reputation and retrieving a set of stolen documents from him. For Ellington, however, things are rarely straightforward.

Alex Locke is desperately trying to hold on to the disparate threads of the complex web of time he has created. He travels to the First World War, living through the horrors of trench warfare in order to befriend a young soldier crucial to his story, then to the 1930s to uncover the secrets of a mysterious stage magician. He moves back and forth in time, always with the strange and terrifying Dark Man on his heels, gradually getting closer to uncovering the true nature of his destiny with the obsidian heart.

Transported through time to the dank streets of Victorian London, Alex Locke seeks to unravel the mysteries of the Obsidian Heart, the enigmatic object to which his fate is inextricably bound. When a string of grisly murders takes place across the capital, Alex follows a trail that will lead him through the opium dens of Limehouse, into the dark and twisted world of the Society of Blood and ever closer to unlocking the secret of the Heart.

Alex Locke is a reformed ex-con forced into London's criminal underworld for one more job. He agrees to steal a priceless artefact - a human heart carved from the blackest obsidian - but when the burglary goes horribly wrong, Alex is plunged into the nightmarish world of the Wolves of London, unearthly assassins who will stop at nothing to reclaim the heart. As he races to unlock the secrets of the mysterious object, Alex must learn to wield its dark power - or be destroyed by it.

Charlie will do anything to keep Beverly away from drugs and on the straight and narrow. So his arrangement with Lennie Slaughter seems to be the ideal solution: Charlie robs the houses, and with the proceeds, Lennie makes sure Beverly has the best treatment money can buy. But at what cost?

Torn from his father and a loving sister, the young student Zuba is imprisoned for a crime he has not even thought about committing. His misfortune: to live in a world where corruption is rife and honest and law-abiding people are crushed by the wheels of a blind, unscrupulous bureaucracy. What seems at first to be an irksome judiciary misunderstanding gradually becomes a journey through the hell of Nigerian prisons.

Zambawi, a banana republic in sub-Saharan Africa, is on the verge of revolution. President Adini clings to power whilst his soldiers switch sides so often they don't know which uniform to wear. It is here that student teacher Jim Tulloh arrives to indulge in a spot of character building. Then Jim is kidnapped from his bush school by the rebel Black Boot Gang and his fate takes a very unexpected turn...

Just when Inspector Daniel Jouma believes calm has returned to Mombasa, all hell breaks loose. Bodies are piling up in the morgue and Jouma's new boss wants answers. Meanwhile, Jake Moore faces up to the might of Kenya's most ruthless - and dangerous - property developer. Then a chilling secret, long thought to be buried, brings the crime-busting duo together once again.

Intrigued by other sailors’ superstitions of a cursed island, Sam Lenartson rows out to see for himself. Once there, he discovers an abandoned house with a mysterious tenant.

Rogue assassin Josh Thane is an artist in murder. His next target is a British microbiologist suspected of creating devastating chemical weapons. Breaking into her house, he discovers someone has beaten him to it - she’s already dead. In a moment of weakness, he saves the life of her son. A single mistake that destroys everything he’s worked for and puts him and the boy in immediate danger. When Josh embarks on an international quest to find the real killer, he uncovers a criminal conspiracy with truly terrifying consequences.