Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Campion's glorious summer in Pontisbright is blighted by death. Amidst the preparations for Minnie and Tonker Cassand's fabulous summer party a murder is discovered and it falls to Campion to unravel the intricate web of motive, suspicion, and deduction with all his imagination and skill.

The fourth book in Mark Dawson's action-packed Charlie Cooper Thrillers.

The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, Shadrapar is a museum, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new is Stefan Advani: rebel, outlaw, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts and into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld.

Judge not, lest ye be judged. This timeless wisdom has guided the Anglican Church, fostering a certain tolerance of eccentricity among its members. Good thing, too. The 'Mermaid of Morwenstow' excommunicated a cat for mousing on a Sunday. When he was late for a service, Bishop Launcelot Fleming commandeered a navy helicopter. 'Mad Jack' swapped his surplice for a leopard skin and insisted on being carried around in a coffin. And then there was the man who, like Noah’s evil twin, tried to eat one of each of God’s creatures....

The fourth chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew continues the adventures of the 14th-century Cambridge physician when he is called to attend to two deaths from some poisoned wine. The opening of a new and very well-endowed college has created petty infighting amongst the academics as new appointments are made. The winter and spring have been appallingly wet, there is a fever outbreak amongst the poorer townspeople and the country is not yet fully recovered from the aftermath of the plague.

Ellen's therapist told her to forget the past, but the life she’s left with is boring. All she wants is to be happy and normal, but the approaching long, bleak nights of winter loom heavy before her, especially as she'll be alone. But when the secrets her mother put in place to protect her are exposed, Ellen learns the frightening truth. Her history is darker than she imagined. She's not who she thinks she is, and the real her is a very different person to the one whom others have mistreated and exploited.

As the Masonic Lodge Ladies' Night comes to a close and the guests drift away, a man is found in the car park, garroted at his steering wheel. Murder is no laughing matter, of course, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? DI Percy Peach has always taken a special pleasure in taunting his superior, Superintendent Tucker, about the indiscretions of his fellow Masons - now he's been given a free hand to dig up any amount of dirt about the secret order.

A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn't have prevented it. Could she? In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief, and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever. Slowly Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future.

Cambridge in 1352 is rife with terrible clashes between the fledgling university and the townspeople. Matthew Bartholomew, physician and teacher at Michaelhouse College, is trying to keep the peace when a student is murdered and the town plunges into chaos. At the same time, a skeleton is discovered that is rumoured to belong to a local martyr, and Bartholomew has his hands full investigating both deaths while the rioting intensifies....

After one win in 17 by the start of the summer of 2022, England needed something new. For 145 years, Test cricket was played mainly in one way: batters laid a foundation before daring to attack – and, even then, only if circumstances were favourable. Bowlers tried to bowl maidens, calculating that they would eventually force an error. But the old ways weren’t working. Then came ‘Bazball’, driven by new head coach in Brendon (‘Baz’) McCullum and captain Ben Stokes.

On top investment bank Bloomfield Weiss’ training programme in New York, Chris and Lenka had become part of a close-knit gang of ambitious trainees. But then one of the gang died during a drunken boat trip, and the rest were left to cover up the truth. Ten years later a helpless Chris watches Lenka die in a Prague street. With his friend and business partner dead, Chris not only has to fight to keep his company afloat in the face of nervous investors but must also discover who is behind Lenka’s murder.

When a man's wife leaves him under suspicious circumstances, he sets off in search for her, unprepared for the guilty secrets he's about to drag back into the light. A man is tempted by a luxury apartment with a top-of-the-range kitchen. But there is a heavy price to pay for this glamorous new life. And a couple with their marriage on the rocks go on a hike through the Derbyshire countryside as another way to avoid their real problems. Mick Herron's skill for tension, humour and memorable twists are captured in his short stories, collected here for the first time.

Meet John Milton. He considers himself an artisan. A craftsman. His trade is murder. Milton is the man the government sends after you when everything else has failed. Ruthless. Brilliant. Anonymous. Lethal. You wouldn't pick him out of a crowd but you wouldn't want to be on his list. But now, after ten years, he's had enough - there's blood on his hands and he wants out. Trouble is, this job is not one you can just walk away from. He goes on the run, seeking atonement for his sins by helping the people he meets along the way.

Strange things happen in the picture-postcard English village of Lindsay Carfax. When a young man falls into a quarry, it takes nine days to find the body. When rowdy hippies descend on the village, they're given nine days to leave. When an outspoken schoolmaster is kidnapped for nine days, he stays eerily quiet after his release. Now Albert Campion has come to town - and he means to investigate all this strangeness. But whoever is behind the unusual goings - on quickly makes it very clear that his nosing around is not welcome.

In Hide My Eyes, Campion finds himself hunting down a serial killer. A spate of murders leaves him and his friend and colleague Inspector Luke, with only the baffling clues of a left-hand glove and a lizard-skin lettercase. However a chain of strange events leads them to an odd museum of curiosities hidden in a quiet London neighbourhood where there is more going on than meets the eye.

Group Fifteen operative and ex-MI6 officer Charlie Cooper is working undercover as a political negotiator. Attending a conference surrounded by diplomats, businessmen and lobbyists, nobody would suspect what he really does for a living. Also in their midst is Aisha, a Saudi activist whose protests against human rights abuses have made her an enemy of her country's regime.

Britain's empire has gone. Our manufacturing base is a shadow of its former self; the Royal Navy has been reduced to a skeleton. In military, diplomatic and economic terms, we no longer matter as we once did. And yet there is still one area in which we can legitimately claim superpower status: our popular culture.

In February 1915, the Great War is still raging on the Western Front, but in Westminster, at the centre of Hardcastle's bailiwick, a policeman is shot dead. At first, Hardcastle believes the murderer to have been a disturbed burglar. But as enquiries continue, attention focuses on an antiquarian bookseller, a struggling artist, a reporter, officers of the Royal Flying Corps, both in England and in France, and the activities of Isabel Plowman, the wife of one of them and the lover of others.

On a foggy night in Hampstead, London, a party has gathered in an artist's studio to weather the wartime blackout. A civil servant and a government scientist match wits in a game of chess while Bruce Manaton paints the portrait. In the kitchen, Rosanne Manaton prepares tea for the charlady of Mr Folliner. When the murder of 'Old Mr. F' is discovered by his Canadian infantryman nephew, it's not long before Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard is called to the scene.

Matthew Bartholomew, unorthodox but effective physician to Michaelhouse college in medieval Cambridge, is as worried as anyone about the pestilence that is ravaging Europe and seems to be approaching England. But he is distracted by the sudden and inexplicable death of the Master of Michaelhouse - a death the University authorities do not want investigated.