Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Hardcastle is sent to investigate the murder of Colonel Sir Adrian Rivers, Bt. It seems the baronet's second wife, much younger than Rivers, is neither distressed by the murder, nor able to assist in the investigation. It is up to the dogged Hardcastle, aided by DS Charles Marriott, to question an array of characters and narrowly avoid being killed in a Zeppelin raid, before the killer is eventually unmasked.

Tub wants a pet but he's not happy about the strange cat shape with the staring eyes that sits outside his apartment after midnight. And his friends Skid and Lippy don't even believe that its there. But Tub will show them. That is, if the cat's ghost owner doesn't show up.... A spine-tingling story for 7-11 year old's.

Justinian, the Byzantine emperor, is desperate to revive the empire's glory. Among his actions to this effect is the dispatch of his brave general, Belisaurius, to fight the Persians in the East. But Justinian fights paranoia and grows concerned that Belisaurius will become a threat to his power and person.

Twin Lakes is a complex of holiday homes in a scenic part of England. “Rest Assured”, says the sign at its entrance. And the people fortunate enough to occupy the luxury homes are indeed able to relax in a beautiful setting. Then a series of mysterious threatening notes are delivered to one of the lakeside homes. DS Bert Hook conducts an informal investigation and the notes cease to appear. All is peaceful once more until a brutal death shatters the peace.

Nic Lamparelli works for a leading US investment bank in London. Starting at the bottom, he rises rapidly through the ranks to reach the pinnacle of his profession. Even at the top, he holds true to his principles while those around him abandon theirs. And that’s what makes him special. Soon he has it all: a beautiful girlfriend, a high-flying career, an overpaid City job with a reputation as one of the bank’s star analysts. Then one day he wakes up to find that things can go wrong - fast.

Reporter Rex Tracey has just recovered from his affair with Lithuanian artist Milda Majauskas when she disappears. He’s got other concerns, not least an anti-immigration group spreading hate across his beloved Tottenham and a string of attacks on young women at the local beauty spot, Alexandra Palace. But when Rex himself becomes a suspect, he is forced to seek answers amongst the teahouses and tower blocks of this little-glimpsed, ever-changing quarter of London.

Spring, 1648. When Thomas Hill, a bookseller living in rural Hampshire, publishes a political pamphlet, he has little idea of the trouble that will follow. He is quickly arrested, forced on a boat to Barbados and condemned to life as a slave to two of the island’s most notoriously violent brothers. In England war has erupted again, with London under threat of attack.

Finn Oliver knows he'll never come to terms with his father's death, but joy-riding over the moors in his mum's beat-up old car is a quick fix of freedom and forgetting. Until the accident happens …and Finn finds himself hurtling through the water-thin divide between the worlds of the living and the dead ...

The Odd Squad are back! After taming the school’s biggest bully, Nick, Molly and Karl expect to bask in Safety Patrol glory. But without a bully to set straight, all they’re left with is helping sixth graders cross the hall and reminding everyone that Jell-o meat stains. Enter new kid Simone, who shakes up the team. Soon Nick is facing trouble. Big trouble. Explusion-level trouble.

Department K didn’t tell John Craig why Kaplan was important. That wasn’t his business. His business was to get Kaplan out of Turkey despite the very hostile attentions of competing intelligence services, including his own! Very quickly Craig realises that there is no-one he can trust on this violence-strewn journey except himself; and that there are probably no innocent bystanders.

Nineteen twenty-nine. On receipt of an unexpected inheritance, small-time crook Horace Butterfield buys a large house in rural Essex. Buying an enormous antique chandelier in order to enhance his brand-new ballroom, he is intrigued by the dealer's story behind its provenance: a young woman who was forsaken by her lover is said to have hanged herself from it. But tragedy is set to strike. Horace's marriage collapses when he embarks on an ill-advised affair with a pretty young fortune hunter.

Unpick the complexities of our digital world and discover how to live well within it. Over the last decade, through digital media, we have crossed a number of significant thresholds: the interconnection of over half of the world’s adult population through mobile telephony and the internet and the devotion of more than half the waking hours of a western generation to mediated experience.

Summer, 1643: England is at war with itself. King Charles I has fled London, his negotiations with Parliament in tatters. The country is consumed by bloodshed. For Thomas Hill, a man of letters quietly running a bookshop in the rural town of Romsey, knowledge of the war is limited to the rumours that reach the local inn. When a stranger knocks on his door one night and informs him that the king's cryptographer has died, everything changes.

A distinguished senator has gone into hiding after being accused of treachery, leaving his family to fend for themselves. His elder son Quintus has become a gladiator, while young Lucius works as a servant in the gladiator school. When the gladiator troupe is sent to Pompeii to take part in the games, Lucius is befriended by Valens, the sponsor of the games, who offers to help him find his father. Meanwhile, strange rumblings and tremors are felt in the town, and a seer is warning that the ‘end of days’ is approaching.

The Real Crime. Hans Holbein, King Henry VIII's portrait painter, died in the autumn of 1543. A century later a chronicler reported that the artist had succumbed to plague, yet there is no contemporary evidence to support this. Suspicions have been raised over the centuries, but the mystery of what actually happened remains unsolved to this day. Our Story. Young London goldsmith Thomas Treviot is awaiting a design for a very important jewellery commission from Hans Holbein.

Ruari, son of Irish media owner J J Breslin, is in desperate danger, at the mercy of ruthless kidnappers making impossible demands. His terrified mother contacts the only person she knows can help her son: Harry Jones, her former lover, who she walked out on many years ago. Now memories of their passionate affair, the guilt, hurt, anger, and humiliation come flooding back.

When Jack Colby hears a rumour that Old Herne’s, the club for aviation and classic car veterans, is closing, he is appalled. He has been commissioned to investigate the theft of the Porsche car belonging to its manager, the popular Mike Nelson, but now far worse problems threaten the club when brutal murder proves to be on the agenda. Jack finds himself caught between two families.

Patrick, a 50-year-old professor of American studies, drinker, and womaniser, has been given six months to live. In a rural part of Cambridgeshire, a teenager dies in a motorcycle accident. When his heart is transplanted into Patrick's chest, the lives of two strangers are forever conjoined. Patrick makes a good recovery from surgery, but has the strange feeling that his old life "won't have him". He discovers that his donor's name was Drew Beamish, and becomes intensely curious, not only about Drew but what shaped him.

Skeletons have a habit of revealing themselves eventually.... When a human skeleton is discovered on the boundary of a 20-year-old property development, it seems there are a large number of people who may know the identity of the corpse and how it got there. But 20 years is a long time, and those individuals were very different people back then. Skeletons are being revealed in all senses, and there are many prominent local figures who are beginning to feel uncomfortable and afraid.

She was the daughter of a preacher and a gypsy. A strange and elusive child with powers of prophecy, she grew into an even stranger woman. From those around her she inspired love and admiration or furious hatred. Nothing in between. And somehow Jassy could transform even those who loved her into her enemies. Barney Hatton, the dispossessed heir of Mortiboys, loved her but not enough. Lindy, a girl who worked there, loved her too much.