Showing results by narrator "Philip" in All Categories

Dylan Thomas was the 20th Century's first rock star author, famed for his dazzling imaginative poetry and chaotic personal life. Best known for Under Milk Wood, he also wrote numerous poems, short stories and screenplays, and made regular BBC broadcasts. A legend in his own lifetime, he remained hugely popular after his death at the age of 39, influencing cultural icons from Bob Dylan to The Beatles....

A mistaken arrest puts Widow into the Miami criminal system. A mysterious phone call from the US Secret Service and Widow is on his way to DC to face a covert emergency.

When a spinster of the parish is found bludgeoned to death in St John's, and the church's most valuable possession, the Lydmouth chalice, is missing, the finger of suspicion points at the new vicar, who is already beset with problems. The glare of the police investigation reveals shabby secrets and private griefs. Jill Francis, struggling to find her feet in her new life, stumbles into the case at the beginning. But even a journalist cannot always watch from the sidelines.

Mike Walker's epic chronicle of the Habsburg dynasty, one of the most influential and distinguished royal houses of Europe which was to rule most of Europe, as well as much of the New World, for 600 years. Hawk Rising: Brugg, 1230. Duke Rudolf of Habsburg is determined to become Holy Roman Emperor and to found a dynasty. But then a stranger arrives at the Castle of the Hawk as tutor to his son.

In AD 60, Boudica, war leader of the Eceni, led her people in a final bloody revolt against the occupying armies of Rome. It was the culmination of nearly 20 years of resistance against an occupying force that sought to crush a vibrant, complex civilisation and replace it with the laws, taxes and slavery of the Roman Empire.

An Englishwoman is found dead in a house near Rome. Her distraught husband enlists the help of his closest friend, Chris Bronson, who discovers an ancient inscription on a slab of stone above their fireplace. But who are the liars? And what is it they are lying to protect? Pursued across Europe, Bronson uncovers a trail of clues that leads him back to the shadowy beginnings of Christianity; to a chalice decorated with mysterious symbols; to a secret code hidden within a scroll. And to a deadly conspiracy which – if revealed – will rock the foundations of our modern world.

At the dawn of the last millennium in the year 1000, Europe was one of the world's more stagnant regions-an economically undeveloped, intellectually derivative, and geopolitically passive backwater, with illiteracy, starvation, and disease the norm for almost everyone.Yet only three centuries later, all of this had changed. A newly invigorated cluster of European societies had revived city life, spawned new spiritual and intellectual movements and educational institutions, and had begun, for reasons both sacred and profane, to expand at the expense of neighbors who traditionally had expanded at Europe's expense.

1600: A new century dawns. War with Spain has dragged on for 15 years, the conflict in Ireland for six. Unease stalks England in the dying years of Elizabeth I’s reign, and Elizabethan intelligencer Martin Marbeck is bored. Then a message from his spymaster, Sir Robert Cecil, arrives: the existence of a spy has been discovered, code-named Morera, and Marbeck must uncover the true identity of this traitor quickly, before rumours of the young King Philip III forming a new Armada prove themselves to be true.

Ed finally meets his daughter's boyfriend for the first time. Smart, successful and handsome, Ryan appears to be a real catch. Then Abbie announces their plan to get married. There's just one problem. Ed thinks Ryan is lying to them. All of Ed's instincts tell him his daughter is in terrible danger - but no-one else can see it. With the wedding date approaching fast, Ed sets out to uncover Ryan's secrets, before it's too late....

A cold night, in the middle of nowhere, in a vast county in New Mexico, a lone patrolwoman comes across a pair of dead cops sitting in their cruiser. And who does she find standing over their corpses? A giant, lone drifter with one stark trait; he is menacing like a nightmare. His name? Jack Widow. To find the real killer, she'll have to partner with Widow. What seems like an ambush and execution might turn out to be something conspiratorial and far more sinister.

BOHEMIA, 1741: on the northern banks of the Vltava River, an extraordinary event is taking place. Inside a private chapel, a high-born Hungarian lady is being laid to rest. But not before her heart is removed from her body, and she is buried beneath a layer of heavy stones - lest she rise again to prey upon her victims…VENICE, PRESENT DAY: in the world’s most beautiful city, something unspeakable is happening. An unnamed tomb has been opened revealing a female skeleton and a diary dating back hundreds of years.

The definitive insider narrative and the most fully characterised account yet of the chaos, scandal and destruction of Trump's first term, from two Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalists. Drawing on nearly three years of reporting, hundreds of hours of interviews and more than 200 sources, including some of the most senior members of the administration, friends and firsthand witnesses who have never spoken before, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig take us inside some of the most controversial moments of Trump's presidency.

Norway, AD 785. It began with the betrayal of a lord by a king.... King Gorm puts Jarl Harald's family to the sword but makes one fatal mistake - he fails to kill Harald's youngest son, Sigurd. His kin slain, his village seized and its people taken as slaves, Sigurd wonders if the gods have forsaken him. Hunted by powerful men, he is unsure who to trust, and yet he has a small band of loyal followers at his side.

Peregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of Macbeth, the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck. But one night the claymore swings, and the dummy's head is more than real: murder behind the scene. Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience....

The award-winning His Dark Materials trilogy is a breathtaking epic adventure spanning a multitude of worlds. Northern Lights, the opening installment, sees Lyra and her shape-changing daemon embark on a dangerous quest.

All his life, Philip Hoare has been obsessed by whales, from the gigantic skeletons in London’s Natural History Museum to adult encounters with the wild animals themselves. Whales have a mythical quality - they seem to elide with dark fantasies of sea-serpents and antediluvian monsters that swim in our collective unconscious. In Leviathan, Philip Hoare seeks to locate and identify this obsession.

Oxford, late summer, 1353. On hearing that his cousin is short-handed for the harvest, Nicholas Elyot takes a group of friends back to the family farm to help. When a deer hunt in Wychwood ends in tragedy, suspicion is directed toward the huntsman, a boyhood friend of Nicholas. But the victim has made many other enemies, any one of whom could have shot the fatal arrow. Can Nicholas uncover the real killer before it is too late?

Though The Arabian Nights are generally known as stories for children, they were originally tales for adults full of adventure, sexuality, violence, and the supernatural. They certainly inspired the imagination of Sir Richard Burton, the 19th century explorer, linguist, and erotologist who brought all his worldly experience and superbly expressive prose style to bear on the tales of Sindbad the Seaman and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

It all started with a contract signed by him, then by me, while our families watched. While my father sat silent, a man defeated, giving his daughter to the Benedetti monsters. I obeyed. I played my part. I signed my name and gave away my life. I became their living, breathing trophy, a constant symbol of their power over us. That was five years ago. Then came the time for him to claim me. For Salvatore Benedetti to own me. I had vowed vengeance. I had learned hate. And yet, nothing could have prepared me for the man who now ruled my life.

Long ago, humans betrayed dragons, stealing their magic and banishing them to a dying world. Centuries later, their descendants worship dragons as gods. But the 'gods' remember, and they do not forgive. Thief Arcady scrapes a living on the streets of Vatra. Desperate, Arcady steals a powerful artifact from the bones of the Plaguebringer, the most hated person in Lumet history. Only Arcady knows the artifact's magic holds the key to a new life among the nobles at court and a chance for revenge.