Showing results by narrator "Gordon Griffin" in All Categories

There was a time when Simon Knapp wouldn't have dared go near Edgfield House. As a teenager, he'd only had the nerve to snoop around the grounds. But now, returning 50 years later, he marches straight up to the derelict 18th-century stately home and pushes open the front door. But curiosity killed the cat. When the police arrive, it is with a similar carefree spirit that they carry out a routine search of the house. And they, too, come across something they were not looking for.

A fiercely intelligent and moving second novel from the author of the acclaimed The Wilderness. Leonard Deppling returns to the capital from Scotland, where he has spent the past year nursing his dying father. Missing from the funeral was his younger brother William, a former lecturer and activist who lives with his wife and two young sons. Leonard is alone and rootless, he moves in with William hoping to unite their family and renew their friendship.

A tip-off leading to the discovery of a young woman's body throws Harry Vicary and his team into another perplexing murder investigation. Big Andy Cragg's drunken disclosure to an undercover police officer in a West London pub that he was once party to the disposal of the body of a murder victim sets a sinister and disturbing chain of events in motion for Harry Vicary and his team.

Suddenly, there was a high voice screaming in the darkness: "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" It was Long John Silver’s parrot, Captain Flint! I turned to run . . .’But young Jim Hawkins does not escape from the pirates this time. Will he and his friends find the treasure before the pirates do? Will they escape from the island, and sail back to England with a ship full of gold?

It is 1827, and in the town of Redditch life is harsh for the poor. When a young serving woman is found drowned in the canal, her widowed mother believes her daughter has been murdered and appeals to the Parish Constable, Thomas Potts, for help. Physically weak and bookish by nature, Tom Potts is to many people an object of derision. But concealed behind his timid façade is intelligence, experience and a fierce passion for justice.

When Matthew Hopkins left his hellhole council flat to seek out funding for his heroin addiction, he spotted a plastic bag on the landing outside. Pouncing on it hopefully, he found it contained only a number of bones. Human bones, but from a number of different people, all victims of the same killer. Both the bags and the bones open up more than enough avenues of investigation for Chief Inspector Hennessey and Sergeant Yellich.

The first installment of a page-turning trilogy set against the backdrop of the English Civil War. September 1625: Plague-cart driver Matthew Neave is sent to pick up the corpse of a baby. Yet on the way to the plague pit, he hears a cry - the baby is alive. A plague child himself and now immune to the disease, Matthew decides to raise it as his own. Fifteen years on, Matthew's son, Tom, is apprenticed to a printer in the city.

Lord Thurlby can only ever recall previous visits of Lavinia Muir, his mother’s goddaughter, with a shudder. So it is with undisguised horror that he hears she is to come and stay again. Her arrival on the common stage, accompanied by the flirtatious Isobel Macclesfield, does nothing to allay his fears. When he learns that Lavinia has become entangled with the rakish Lord Riseholm, his reservations appear to be justified.

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. When Alfred Caithness extends his stay at Dingle House for Christmas, it is not only due to the bad weather. He is in need of a loan from his wealthy cousin Herbert, and he is in love with his wife, Barbara. But events take a dark turn after Herbert refuses to help him....

Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin never knew that five short lines could change his life - until he receives a notice announcing his sudden death on Midsummer's Eve. Someone wants him dead and he has only seven days to find out who it is.

Between 1881, when Churchill was just six, and 1921, the year of his mother's death, Winston Churchill and Jennie Jerome were prolific and energetic correspondents. Their exchange of letters has never before been published as a volume of correspondence, and many of these intimate letters - between two highly gifted writers - are being published here for the first time. A significant addition to the Churchill canon, Darling Winston traces Churchill's emotional, intellectual and political development as confided to his main mentor.

Five years after Duncan Percival is left in a vegetative state following a vicious attack, he finally dies. The case has now become a murder investigation, and DCI Hennessey and DS Yellich are brought in to renew the evidence and re-interview the suspects. As they delve deeper, bodies start turning up, and the detectives are drawn into York’s criminal underworld where grasses are punished and the gruesome Chelsea Smile is the favoured method of retribution…

An anonymous letter sent to Larkwood's Prior accuses Peter Henderson, an academic celebrity renowned for daring ideas, of a grotesque murder: the calculated killing of Jenny, his disabled partner, believed by everyone to have died peacefully two years previously from a sudden attack of cancer. But for this letter there is no evidence, no suspect and no crime.

Never again confuse your vintage with your viticulture, your ullage with your oenology, your sabrage with your cepage. Bask in the admiration of your fellow drinkers, pronounce confidently on the provenance of whatever is in your glass (or your mouth) and hold your own against the most sneering of sommeliers. Written by experts and offering listeners the opportunity to pass off appropriated knowledge as their own, the Bluffer's Guides provide hard fact masquerading as frivolous observation in one witty, easy listen.

Ex-Met officer John Cannon is entangled in trouble from the moment he vaults a stile on an early morning run and becomes ensnarled in a discarded fishing-line. The macabre discovery at the far end of this lines leads John into a search for a missing au pair, conflict with the local newspaper and international crime. He follows the trail of a ruthless Portuguese businessman who owns a local Health Spa, where much is concealed and a team of security guards with dogs patrol the grounds.

Published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in April 2016, a breathtaking exploration into Shakespeare as a global poet. Whilst travelling in Luxor, Edward Wilson-Lee encountered a man who called out to him from the summer shade with lines from Shakespeare's Macbeth: 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...' Unable to resist the temptation, Wilson-Lee responded with the next line, and so began a fascination with unexpected cultural encounters.

Following the split from her husband, Helen Pascoe decides to take her children away from London to live in a lovely old house near Falmouth. The family are beginning to feel happy and settled, when the local community is stunned by a murder. A young man has been found stabbed at the crossroads of two narrow lanes - a place where legend says a gibbet once stood. It is DCI Channon's territory, and he soon finds that the victim is connected to the Pascoe family, as well as to other residents of the once humble fishing village.

The Mallorcan police receive an anonymous call to say that a body has been found at the foot of a steep wall of rock. Hoping it is an accident, Alvarez makes cursory enquiries only to find that the medical evidence reveals this could be a murder. Alvarez uncovers several possible motives seeming to draw in just about every English person on the Island – but he refuses to countenance that Mary, the dead man’s niece, to whom he becoming uncomfortably close, could be guilty.

As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all England is heading for Epsom Downs - high life and low life, society beauties and Whitechapel street girls, bookmakers and gypsies, hawkers and acrobats, punters and thieves. Whole families stream along the Surrey back-roads, towards the greatest race of the year. Hopes are high, nerves are taut, hats are tossed in the air - this is Derby Day.

Thousands of short stories were published during the First World War, which coincided with the heyday of the fiction magazine in Britain. Much of this material has never been republished since the end of the war and is virtually lost to the modern audience. This new collection is an important work of recovery, introducing little-known magazine short fiction - which was primarily written for a civilian readership - by major writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle as well as more neglected authors.