Showing results by narrator "Mark Meadows" in All Categories

I'm Daphne Wood, the bookseller of Castle Combe. My life was peaceful until the best-selling author Gill Holland moved to town. He bought the house next to mine, the late Bettie's place, and became my new neighbour. The girls from the book club envied my luck. I thought so too, until I started seeing the most disturbing things. They didn't know Gill Holland like I did.

Taita is a humble slave, an expert in art, poetry, medicine and engineering as well as keeping important secrets. He is the most treasured possession of Lord Intef. Yet when Intef's beautiful daughter, Lostris, is married to the Pharaoh, Taita is commanded to follow her and swiftly finds himself deeper than he ever could have imagined in a world of deception and treachery. But outside the palace, the great kingdom of Egypt is divided and in even greater danger. Enemies threaten on all sides, and only Taita holds the power to save them all....

Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories is a brilliant collection of short stories, personally chosen by Andrea Camilleri, following Inspector Montalbano from his very first case in Vigàta, in which he stumbles upon a young girl lurking outside a courthouse with a pistol in her handbag. When she is taken in for questioning and won't utter a single word, Montalbano must find another way to learn whom she is trying to kill and why.

She is omnivorous. No matter age or appearance, physical frailty or imperfection. It is not their flesh that feeds her appetites, but their souls. She devours young and old, men and women. She leaves only a desiccated husk. An unspeakable evil. An impossible gift. Renowned magus Taita is now over 100 years old and has ascended to a new level of wisdom and understanding about his world. But he must prepare himself for the biggest threat Egypt has ever faced: the great plagues and the failure of the Nile, brought about by the fire witch Eos, an ancient force of sheer evil.

Enjoy learning your letters with the help of songs! Sing along to your favourite tunes - while learning the alphabet too! Jam-packed with fun, you'll find questions to test your learning. Have fun with phonics! Learn the alphabet through the sounds of each letter, from A all the way to Z. Learning the alphabet - it's as easy as ABC! Suitable for pre-school and Key Stage 1.

In 1641, England exits a plague-ridden and politically unstable summer having reached a semblance of peace: the English and Scottish armies have disbanded, legislation has passed to ensure Parliament will continue to sit and the people are tentatively optimistic. But King Charles I is not satisfied with peace – he wants revenge. Why did the English Civil War break out? The Blood in Winter tells this story: that of an English people’s great political awakening.

Even before he could move, the full realisation of what confronted him blazed in the Pharaoh's mind. This was the foul and loathsome thing that Taita, with his clairvoyant powers, had smelt in the air. The light was strong enough for him to make out every detail of the enemy he had loved as a friend. The magic of the gods. The treachery of man. In his long life, Taita has gone from slave to warlock, and now his wisdom and abilities are known throughout the kingdom. But even his immense skills cannot protect those close to him from the evil that lurks at the heart of Egypt.

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old history teacher, but he’s been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to Jazz-Age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen it all. As long as he keeps changing his identity, he can stay one step ahead of his past – and stay alive. The only thing he must not do is fall in love. But what if the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him?

When Royan Al Simma is the victim of a vicious attack that leaves her husband dead, her only thought is that she must continue their joint work: to use the secrets of the seventh scroll to find the hidden tomb of Pharaoh Mamose and its untold trove of lost Egyptian riches. To do so, she must bury her grief and partner with the eccentric aristocrat Nicholas Quenton-Harper, a man who shares her passion for the ancient world. But the men who killed her husband are not yet finished.

It is 1866 and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.

In 480 BC, Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For 70 years, victory had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. In the space of a single generation, they had swept across the Near East, shattering ancient kingdoms, storming famous cities, putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. Yet somehow, astonishingly, against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks of the mainland managed to hold out.

A glimpse into the extraordinary world of ambulance driving from the man behind the wheel. ‘Heart-stopping, eye-opening and jaw-dropping. Sometimes painful, sometimes sad, often very, very funny’ Craig Brown An S&M party gone horribly wrong A dead man locked in a car with a hungry bull...

The Cook of the Halcyon is the twenty-seventh Inspector Montalbano mystery from the master of Sicilian crime, Andrea Camilleri. Moments later the all-white schooner, which looked like a hospital ship, began to pass ever so slowly before him, as if wanting to show itself off in all its beauty...

Bestselling historian and broadcaster Tom Holland gives a thrilling panoramic account of the birth of the new Western Europe in the year 1000 'An exhilarating sweep across European history either side of the year 1000; riveting' ALLAN MASSIE, SPECTATOR 'I relished the blood and thunder narrative...

For over fifty years Egypt has known nothing but war and devastation at the hands of the Hyksos, a bloodthirsty barbarian people from the distant east who continue to advance, crushing armies in their wake. Times are desperate, but throughout the conflict, a brave resistance fights on under the great Taita, a slave who has risen far beyond his ranks. Piay, entrusted into Taita's care by his parents at the age of just five, has been trained to become a great spy, unmatched by any other. Determined to prove his worth, he embarks on a dangerous mission to the lands in the north.

There's no place like home. Or is there? After an 'incident' one wet Friday night where he is found walking naked through the streets of Cambridge, Professor Andrew Martin is not feeling quite himself. Food sickens him. Clothes confound him. Even his loving wife and teenage son are repulsive to him. He feels lost amongst an alien species and hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton, and he's a dog. Who is he really? And what could make someone change their mind about the human race?

Meet the Hunter family: Adam, Kate and their children, Hal and Charlotte. And Prince, their black Labrador. Prince is an earnest young dog, striving hard to live up to the tenets of the Labrador Pact (Remain loyal to your human masters, serve and protect your family at any cost). Other dogs, led by the Springer Spaniels, have revolted. As things in the Hunter family begin to go badly awry - marital breakdown, rowdy teenage parties, attempted suicide - Prince's responsibilities threaten to overwhelm him, and he is forced to break the Labrador Pact.

The Shape of Water is the first in Andrea Camilleri's wry, brilliantly compelling Sicilian crime series, featuring Inspector Montalbano. The goats of Vigàta once grazed on the trash-strewn site still known as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sort flourishes: drug dealers and...

Both Sides is Nicklas Bendtner's shockingly honest memoir of both the bright and dark sides of his personality and the football industry and what really happens when you give a troubled, overconfident teen millions to spend. It's about growing up in a working class neighbourhood and never denying your roots while living a dramatically changed life. It's about fighting to reach the top in the worlds' toughest league but having no respect for hierarchy. It's about friendship, rivalry, loneliness, failing father figures and the constant quest for an adrenaline kick

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...