Showing results by narrator "Andrew Cullum" in All Categories

Before Jack the Ripper terrorised London, Police Inspector Samuel Ravenscroft patrolled the streets of Whitechapel. Clever and hard-working, Ravenscroft nonetheless has the worst record in the force. He lets a murderer escape during a chase and is banished to the spa town of Malvern for a water treatment to cure his asthma. Ravenscroft accepts a dinner invitation from a new acquaintance, Jabez Pitzer. Before dinner, the maid finds Pitzer slumped over his desk - dead. Ravenscroft immediately recognises the signs - Pitzer has been poisoned.

The new edition of The Cambridge History of Warfare, written and updated by a team of eight distinguished military historians, examines how war was waged by Western powers across a sweeping timeframe beginning with classical Greece and Rome, moving through the Middle Ages and the early modern period, down to the wars of the 21st century in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

Blackstone and the Rendezvous with Death is an expertly plotted Victorian mystery that will keep listeners guessing to the last minute. The body of a young man fished out of the Thames is of little interest to Londoners caught up in the excitement of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Yet to Inspector Sam Blackstone, the case is as puzzling as any he has ever come across. Why should a corpse dressed in the rags of a commoner have the face of a gentleman? And if this man does belong to noble stock, why has no one come forward to claim the body?

The year is 1342. The English, led by Edward III, are laying waste to the French countryside. The army may be led by the King, but it is the archers, the common men, who are England's secret weapon. The French know them as Harlequins. Thomas of Hookton is one of these archers. But he is also on a personal mission: To avenge his father's death and retrieve a stolen relic.

David Lloyd George is at Chequers for the weekend with his mistress Frances Stevenson, fretting about the fact that his involvement in selling public honours is about to be revealed by one Victor Grayson. Victor is a bisexual hedonist and former firebrand Socialist MP turned secret service informant. Intent on rebuilding his profile as the leader of the revolutionary Left, he doesn't know exactly how much of a hornet's nest he's stirred up. Doesn't know that this is, in fact, his last day.

The first book in Bernard Cornwell's best-selling series on the American Civil War. It is summer 1861. The armies of North and South stand on the brink of America's civil war. Nathanial Starbuck, jilted by his girl and estranged from his family, arrives in the capital of the Confederate South, where he enlists in an elite regiment being raised by rich, eccentric Washington Faulconer.

Spring 1915. Secret service spy Jack McColl is in India, defending the empire against Bengali terrorists and their German allies. In England, meanwhile, journalist Caitlin Hanley is rebuilding her life after the execution of her brother - an IRA sympathiser whose terrorist plot was foiled by Caitlin's ex-lover, the very same Jack McColl. The First World War is giving fresh impulse to those causes - feminism, socialism and Irish independence - which she has long supported. But the threat of a rising in Dublin alarms McColl's bosses as much as it dazzles Caitlin. If another Irish plot brings them back together, will it be as enemies or lovers?

The Loch Ness monster: a creature that should have died out with the dinosaurs or a legend built on hoaxes and wishful thinking? Sir Peter Scott, internationally renowned naturalist and president of the World Wildlife Fund, was convinced that the monster existed. So were senior scientists at London's Natural History Museum and Chicago University; they lost their jobs because they refused to renounce their belief in the creature.

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the best-selling Harlequin, this is the second installment in Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest series. It is 1346. While King Edward III fights in France, England lies exposed to the threat of invasion. Thomas of Hookton, archer and hero of Crécy, finds himself back in the north just as the Scots invade on behalf of their French allies. Thomas is determined to pursue his personal quest: to discover whether a relic he is searching for is the Holy Grail.

Worcester, 1888. Nicholas Evelyn, the elderly cathedral librarian, has disappeared. A priceless medieval manuscript has been stolen. Its glass case smashed with a candlestick. Ravenscroft is sent from the grimy streets of Whitechapel to investigate. Aided by his trusty companion Constable Tom Crabb, Ravenscroft soon discovers that behind the cathedral’s facade lurks a dark world of death and deceit. Could the murder relate to an unsolved mystery dating back nearly 40 years?

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the number one best seller Vagabond, this is the third instalment in Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest series, in a bright and bold repackage. It is 1347. The Hundred Years War has been suspended. The truce releases English archer Thomas of Hookton to pursue his arch enemy and resume his quest for the most prized relic in Christendom: the Holy Grail. Heading south, Thomas and his men-at-arms begin lightning raids to draw out his enemy.

The Cleaves family gather in a small country churchyard for their son's funeral. But they don't recognize the dead man in the coffin. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft is alarmed by the behavior of the Upton Undertakers. What are they hiding? And who killed this man? Then another member of the Cleaves family is found dead. Ravenscroft begins to suspect something grisly is afoot—could someone be involved in body snatching?

First published in March 1722, 57 years after the event that struck more than 100,000 people, Journal of the Plague Year is a compelling portrait of life during London's horrific bubonic plague. Through the eyes of H.F. (speculated to be Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe, from whose journals the book was supposedly adapted) we witness great grief, depravity and despair: crazed sufferers roam the streets, unearthly screams resound across the city, death carts dump their grisly loads into mass graves, and quackery and skulduggery feed on fear. But there is kindness and courage too, as mutual support and caring are upheld through the worst of days.

The fourth volume of Bernard Cornwell's best-selling series on the American Civil War and featuring rebel Nathaniel Starbuck - a yankee fighting for the Southern cause. It is late summer 1862 and the Confederacy is invading the United States of America.Nate Starbuck, a northern preacher's son fighting for the rebel South, is given command of a punishment battalion - a despised unit of shirkers and cowards.

Scores of innocent women died during the Suffolk witch trials. Fear and uncertainty swept the land. Years later and two unexplained deaths in the village of Fressingfield stir up rumours of witchcraft again. Private Detective Lawrence Harpham agrees to investigate. But Lawrence is still tormented by the loss of his family in a house fire. Can he overcome his own demons and discover who is behind the flurry of deaths? The sins of the fathers return to haunt in this intricately plotted Victorian murder mystery.

When the police are unable to find a body, they are forced to dismiss a homeless veteran’s claim that he witnessed a homicide. But after he is found murdered in the same spot two days later, DI Bliss and the Major Crime Unit set their sights on catching a ruthless killer. Elsewhere, when the daughter of a cuckooed family is reported to have attempted suicide, Jimmy Bliss and DC Penny Chandler have their doubts and vow to uncover the truth. But the situation is about to get much worse, and violence is certain to erupt on the city streets.

October 1891. A stranger is discovered hanging from a tree in the Malvern Hills. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft and Constable Crabb are called in to investigate. But how can they solve the murder if no one can identify the victim? Whoever killed the man must have really wanted him dead—they strung him up and watched as he suffocated. This may be the most dangerous case Ravenscroft has ever worked. Will the Herefordshire Hangmen ever be brought to justice?

1855: the Industrial Revolution is in full swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his analytical engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. Three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with the future: Sybil Gerard - fallen woman, politician’s tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator; Edward Leviathan Mallory - explorer and palaeontologist; Laurence Oliphant - diplomat, mystic and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched engine cards of unknown origin and purpose.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics represent, in many ways, the Western classical springboard for the systematic study and implementation of ethics, the optimum behaviour of the individual. (By contrast, Aristotle’s Politics concerns the optimum blueprint for the city-state.) It is in the hands of each individual, he argues in these books on personal ethics, to develop a character which bases a life on virtue, with positive but moderate habits.

A mysterious stranger arrives in the small Herefordshire market town of Ledbury. He offers a solicitor, Anthony Midwinter, a generous sum to look after a package for him until spring, no questions asked. The stranger warns that it must remain sealed or else the very stability of England will come under threat. The Ledbury Lamplighters see out the year with a public ceremony extinguishing the town's lamps, a local tradition. A prominent local businessman is brutally murdered in full view of the revellers.