Showing results by narrator "Steve Hodson" in All Categories

Cloud Atlas features six characters in interlocking stories, each interrupting the one before it: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death row; and Zachry, a young Pacific islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation.

Lifelong fisherman Paul Knight knows the thrill of the chase, the one–on–one battle of endurance between man and beast that is sport fishing. Like Hemingway, and legions of others who've tested themselves against nature, author Paul Knight has traveled to remote parts of the globe to reel in stories of epic adventures with rod and line.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the most astonishing child prodigy in the history of music, is felt by many people to be the greatest composer who ever lived. Dominated and shaped by a highly intelligent but frustrated and ambitious father, his story sees the development of a unique genius, from precocious and often endearing childhood to liberated fulfillment, unexpected poverty, and a tragically early death. Generously illustrated by Mozart’s music, from his fifth to his final year, this portrait-in-sound reveals a fascinating yet elusive character, drawing richly on the words of the composer himself and those who knew him.

Tales of adventures on the high seas captivate both sailors and those who stand on the shore and gaze out across the oceans. In this original collection of sea stories, edited by veteran writer Dick Durham, the gamut of human experience is mirrored in a world of tragic shipwrecks and sea monsters, epic races and brave rescues, tall ships and tiny dinghies.

The second terrifying tale in the Spook's spin-off series from best-selling author Joseph Delaney. Thomas Ward was working as the new County Spook, fighting the Dark with his own apprentice. But a new enemy stirred in the north, and Tom's calling required him to leave his home and lead an uprising against a legion of beasts: creatures of the Dark intent on locking the whole Earth in a never-ending winter.

A collection of short stories from the master of space opera. Peter F Hamilton takes us on a journey from a murder mystery in an alternative Oxford in the 1800s to a brand new story featuring Paula Mayo, deputy director of the Intersolar Commonwealth’s Serious Crimes Directorate. Dealing with intricate themes and topical subjects, this top-10 best-selling author is at the top of his game.

Hague shows how Wilberforce, after his agonising conversion to evangelical Christianity, was able to lead a powerful tide of opinion, as MP for Hull, against the slave trade, a process which was to take up to half a century to be fully realised. Indeed, he succeeded in rallying to his cause the support in the Commons Debates of some the finest orators in Parliament, having become one of the most respected speakers of those times.

No great composer’s story is more predominantly happy than Haydn’s, though even his has its share of clouds. A classic rags-to-riches tale, it sees him move from humble beginnings through decades as a liveried servant to his emergence as the most popular and successful composer of his time. One of the healthiest and least neurotic artists in musical history, he did more than any other single figure to pioneer the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet - and he was the first truly great practitioner of each.

With the possible exception of Mozart, Verdi is the most popular opera composer who ever lived. Quite early in his career his tunes were being cranked out by barrel organs throughout Europe and were well known to many who may never even have heard his name. But the complex man behind them remains elusive and puzzling. In this portrait-in-sound, Jeremy Siepmann and a group of distinguished actors take an in-depth look behind the popular image of a man who was, and perhaps remains, the most enduring national hero in Italian history and a colossus in the history of music itself.

Nine-year-old Milo Moon has retinitis pigmentosa: his eyes are slowly failing and he will eventually go blind. But for now he sees the world through a pin hole and notices things other people don't. When Milo's beloved gran succumbs to dementia and moves into a nursing home, Milo soon realises there's something wrong at the home. So with just Tripi, the nursing home's cook, and Hamlet, his pet pig, to help, Milo sets out on a mission to expose the nursing home and the sinister Nurse Thornhill. 

At 75, Terry and Monica Darlington had done everything they could think of doing, including starting a business and becoming athletes and running a literary society. Lately they had become boating adventurers and Terry, a best-selling writer. But in their Midlands canal town in November, life was looking dull and short on surprises. Then their famous canal boat was destroyed by fire. Within a few days they had bought a new one and soon headed north in the Phyllis May 2.

Detective Inspector Peter Diamond is keen to get his teeth into a new case. So, when a call comes in that a woman's body has been found in one of Bath's parks, he arrives quickly at the scene - only to discover that the victim is his wife.

In the polluted and poverty-ridden Coketown, Louisa and Tom Gradgrind endure a cold and loveless childhood at the hands of their self-satisfied and unimaginative father, Thomas. Starved of affection, Louisa is forced into a miserable marriage with the self-made industrialist Josiah Bounderby, 30 years her senior, whilst Tom descends into a secret life of theft. Into such squalor and misery comes generous and spirited Sissy Jupe, a child of the circus whose ailing father, Sleary, has deserted her.

"An artist should not be troubled by the indifference of his contemporaries. He should go on working and say all that he is predestined to say. He should know that posterity alone can deliver a true and just verdict." So said Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and posterity has delivered its verdict. His music is glorious, uplifting, soulful, humourous and wonderfully melodic. Thchaikovsky regarded music as something to be savoured and shared, and he worked hard and long to that end.

It's summer in Cambridge, and the half-consumed body of a young man sticks out grotesquely from the mouth of a shredding machine! Does this death mark the beginning of an unprecedented crime wave in this well-heeled community...or something else?

Years after Alice Draper's death her murderer remains unpunished, and six of her lovers still have their lives blighted by suspicion. Exiled to the seaside town of Eddathorpe, DI Robert Graham expects to have lots of time to brood about his failed marriage and his formerly promising career. Instead, he finds himself drawn into the Draper case, and unwittingly takes the lid off of a surprising variety of scandals, some of which involve senior policemen.

George Worth is a grumpy lifestyle columnist. He hates fashion, mobile phones, computers and Young People. At night he goes home to a borrowed Labrador and feelings of guilt about his dead wife. Justin Smith is a Young Person. A bright newcomer, he’s always on his mobile to his girlfriend, surfing the Net and keeping abreast of the latest trends. Then comes the day when Justin’s girlfriend throws him out and he finds himself having to share a flat with George. As the women around them watch and wonder, both men start to work out what really matters among the distractions of modern life.

The UK is going to rack and ruin. There are strikes, the power facilities don't have enough technicians to continue running them, oppression and a terminal malaise afflicts the country and there seems no respite from the economic catastrophe. Then Bradley Ethan Murray opens a wormhole, a passage through to a new world and, potentially, a new world order. New Suffolk is available for all 'decent people' from the UK to start a new life - free from the troubles of the UK they will leave behind them.

When a Siddley-Lockheed CP-450 carrying a group of privileged pleasure-seeking Dynasty members is blown up over Nova Zealand, Senior Investigator Paula Myo of the Serious Crimes Directorate is called in to solve the terrible crime. A group called the Free Merioneth Forces have claimed responsibility but there had to be an individual at the end of that missile launcher and Paula is determined to find out who it was.

In this fine work of full-length fiction by award-winning author Ian R. MacLeod, a chilling alternate history unfolds.... An elderly English historian, swept along with the rest of his country by the march of history, sways between reminiscences of his life's true love and his efforts - in his own fumbling way - to change his nation's course. In this tale, Britain has lost the First World War and turned to fascism.