Showing results by narrator "Greg Wagland" in All Categories

Locked away inside the impregnable fortress of Schloss Neustadt, Father Sean Conlin, survivor of Dachau and lifelong champion of human freedom, is fighting to deny his jailers their ultimate goal. On this momentous day, when the whole world is watching, they must make him admit to being a CIA hireling. But the West is determined to save him, and, gambling with their lives, a small band of men begin a daring rescue mission that could change the course of history.

For Harry Youngblood, escaping from prison is going to be easy. But escaping his past could cost him his life.... Twenty years inside for one-third of a million pounds: that was the price Harry Youngblood was paying. Drummond is Youngblood’s cellmate. He is also intelligence agent Paul Chavasse, working undercover. And when Youngblood is broken out, Chavasse tags along for the ride. His objective is to break the crime ring headed by the Baron, to whom Youngblood is indebted. But Chavasse will have to get past a psychopathic henchman named Vaughan if he is to succeed....

It’s a trip that agent Paul Chavasse will never forget. His destination: the isolated republic of Albania on the Adriatic coast, at a time when the regime is at its most repressive and the people live in daily fear of the ruthless secret police. His job: to find a double agent whose cover has been blown and put him out of commission, permanently. But what Chavasse doesn’t know is that deep within the twisting channels of the perilous coastal marshes, someone has set a trap for him - someone who holds the keys of hell. 

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1896. It recounts the adventures of shipwrecked Edward Prendick, who is rescued only to be set adrift near the volcanic, tropical island of Doctor Moreau, an obsessive vivisectionist who 'artistically' carves human beings from animals.

John Forster’s The Life of Charles Dickens is the fount, the foundation stone of all subsequent Dickens’ biographies. Forster’s three volume work is a vivid and fascinating account of Dickens’ prodigiously productive and fascinating life. Wilkie Collins, the novelist, collaborator and close friend of Dickens observed: "The assertion that no letters addressed by Dickens to other old friends revealed his character so frankly and completely as his letters to Forster, it is not necessary to contradict.

Selected Poems by Robert Browning (1812-1889) is read by Greg Wagland for Magpie Audio. The selection is as follows: "The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St Praxed’s Church", "The Lost Leader", "Pictor Ignotus", "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister", "Love Among the Ruins", "Up at a Villa, Down in the City", "A Woman’s Last Word", "A Toccata of Galuppi’s", "Love in a Life", "Life in a Love", "Women and Roses", "Two in the Campagna", and more.

This wide-ranging collection comprises the following six short stories by Joseph Conrad: Youth: A Narrative (1902); Karain: A Memory (1898); An Outpost of Progress (1898); The Lagoon (1898); Amy Foster (1909); The Anarchist - A Desperate Tale (1903). 'Youth: A Narrative' is an epic tale of a perilous voyage under sail to Bangkok, with a cargo of coal, narrated by Charles Marlow.

From birth to death and through the exploration of topics such as disease, sex, mind, eating and drinking, Burch tracks the future of medicine by looking at what is already possible today. Weaving in insights from literature, art and history, The Shape of Things to Come considers the cultural complexity surrounding medicine as well as its impact on the humanities. As a specialist in geriatric medicine Burch writes with a keen understanding of the medical profession. 

David Hunter and his wife are found dead in a small Yorkshire village. The apparent victims of a hit-and-run. They led successful and quiet lives, so police are stumped when looking for a motive. DI Stewart Gardener and DS Sean Reilly have their work cut out, and soon some suspects emerge: a group of four closely connected individuals who are proving hard to trace. Convinced this was not a random killing, the Leeds detectives venture into unknown terrain, the web of lies, fake identities and cyber crime called the internet. 

Sally Summerby charges into a Leeds police station, utterly distraught. Her five-year-old daughter has gone missing, presumably abducted. Yet despite mobilising all of their resources, the police can find no sign of the child. DI Stewart Gardener gets wind of the case when investigating the murder of a woman in her rented suburban house. She has been pinned to the floor with a bayonet. Yet under her body is a photo of the child.

Keep Your Friends Close is the third story in Granelli's hard-hitting series of Mafia tales. Using the vibrant backdrop of Palermo, old characters reappear to continue the internecine struggles of the Tomasso Cruci Family, where double-dealing, treachery, and violent retribution seem the norm. Granelli also brings in a police element for the first time in the form of Carlo 'CC' Carpanini and his memorable sidekick Leo Bracchi. It seems they are up against insurmountable odds.

Mario and Luciano are twin brothers trying to scratch a dishonest living in the slums of Palermo. Mario is wild, dangerous, and a natural leader; Luciano is his brother's nervous shadow, reluctantly following him in all things. When the twins rob and kill a shopkeeper, Mario thinks they are going up in the world. He longs to be recognized by the Mafia hierarchy and will do anything to achieve his aim. The brothers move on to an ambitious bank heist and a bloody shootout in the streets of Palermo.

Baptiste Molino has devoted his life to other people's happiness. Moored on his houseboat, he helps his clients navigate the waters of contentment yet remains careful never to make waves of his own. However, it is Baptiste's new client, the elegant and enigmatic Amandine Rousseau, who is the puzzle he longs to solve. But when his mysterious birth mother's legacy finally reveals itself, he finds himself torn between pursuing his own happiness and safeguarding that of the one he loves.

A Little Book of Eastern Wisdom is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection of spiritual and meditative gems by mystics, prophets, poets, and philosophers, mainly from the Middle East, ordered here into thematic sections by translator and author Claude Field. It was first published in 1910 by George G. Harrap & Co.

Franz Kafka's profound and disturbing novella Metamorphosis was first published in German in 1915. In this recent translation by David Wyllie, Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, wakes to find himself "transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin". How he, his family, and others deal with this untoward situation is subsequently revealed.

Darkus Knightley is used to expecting the unexpected. An extraordinary solver of crimes, with immense powers of deduction, and regularly found bedecked in tweed, Darkus is anything but the average 13-year-old. But he is the person to call when strange goings-on are afoot! Despite trying to leave his detective ways behind to lead a normal teenage life, when his father's loyal housekeeper, Bogna, goes missing, Darkus must return to the family fold and follow the clues to America and the bright lights of Las Vegas.

The First Men in the Moon, published in 1901, is the gripping tale of man's first journey to the moon, undertaken by one Mr. Bedford, a bankrupt businessman; and the eccentric scientist Mr. Cavor. Here they discover a sophisticated civilization, dominated by an insectlike race they call the Selenites. It is exciting, funny, profound and tragic by turns: a beautifully written scientific romance, in fact. It is read by Greg Wagland.

H. G. Wells' novel of 1895 popularised the idea of vehicular time travel in this classic sci-fi tale. The eponymous hero finds himself in the land of the Eloi and the Morlocks. In some ways these encounters foreshadow another, less remote future which George Orwell conjures in Nineteen Eighty-Four: that of the nascent rift between the proles and the Party elite.

Darkus Knightley, tweed-wearing, mega-brained, thoroughly logical 13-year-old investigator of the weird, was just getting used to having his dad back in his life. Then Alan Knightley went off-radar, again, leaving Darkus with a traumatised ex-bomb-disposal dog as his only partner in crime-solving. Now things are getting even stranger. Family pets are being savaged by a beast at a top London beauty spot. Policemen have been tracked and attacked by a particularly aggressive canine.

In a series of revolts starting in 1820, four military officers rode forth on horseback from obscure European towns to bring political freedom and a constitution to Spain, Naples, and Russia; and national independence to the Greeks. The men who launched these exploits from Andalusia to the snowy fields of Ukraine - Colonel Rafael del Riego, General Guglielmo Pepe, General Alexandros Ypsilanti, and Colonel Sergei Muraviev-Apostol - all hoped to overturn the old order.