Showing results by narrator "Matt Bates" in All Categories

It's 1970. In an overcrowded Stockholm subway station, a harried father and his two boys are late for their train. Joel, the youngest, is howling in his stroller, and his seven-year-old brother, Kristoffer, refuses to take the elevator. A woman approaches and helpfully offers to lead Kristoffer up the stairs. Reluctantly his father agrees, but when he arrives on the platform Kristoffer and the woman have vanished without a trace. The kidnapping becomes a national sensation, but the boy is never found....

Join the art critic Ben Eastham on a private tour of an extraordinary, imaginary museum. Stand in front of some of the most incomprehensible art works in the world with an expert guide by your side, full of personal stories, expertise and human understanding. In a stunningly original memoir and art guide we find ourselves among outrageous artworks and we return again and again to the same question: But what does it mean?

m the killing fields of the East Midlands to the mean streets of London, from the jazz clubs and clip joints of Soho to the barren fenlands of East Anglia, this is a world of broken families and run-down estates, revenge killings and prostitution, drugs, guns and corruption; a world of overstretched police forces and underpaid detectives, men and women who strive nonetheless for a kind of justice; a world in which everything, even friendship, has a price. Featuring familiar characters including Frank Elder and Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick.

Spring, 1950. Alexandra de Falla, a half-English, half-Spanish young writer abandons her privileged but suffocating life in London and travels to Spain to be reunited with her long-estranged family. Instead of providing the sense of belonging she yearns for, the de Fallas are riven by seething emotions and in the grip of the wild customs and traditions of Andalucía, all of which are alien to Alexandra.

Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must.

Nominated for the prestigious 2010 CWA Gold Dagger award, Conman is the story of young Neil Martin, a kindly family man. A bit geeky, a bit nerdy. If you met him, you would assume he runs a failing comic memorabilia store in London's Soho. Which he does. In order to bail himself out of a huge stock-ruining, poster sopping basement flood, he needs to claim on his insurance. Which he would do - if he'd remembered to pay his premium.

In an overcrowded Stockholm underground station, a father and his two boys are late for their train. Joel, the youngest, is howling in his pushchair, and his seven-year-old brother, Kristoffer, refuses to take the lift. A woman approaches and offers to lead Kristoffer up the stairs. Reluctantly his father agrees, but when he arrives on the platform Kristoffer and the woman have vanished without a trace. Many years later Joel, now an adult, goes missing in suspicious circumstances.

A shameful act of drunken impetuousness results in Michael Henchard losing his wife and daughter in an auction. This evil deed remains secret for years, during which time Henchard climbs the social ladder from working as a roving hay-trusser to becoming the upstanding Mayor of Casterbridge.

A working-class orphan with aspirations for a university education, Jude Fawley is nothing if not ambitious. However, his class and economic situation drive him into a career as a stonemason, rather than to fulfil his scholarly leanings. It is a loveless marriage that finally propels him to pursue his dreams and find new love, but although his life follows a path that is dotted with joy, his ultimate fate is to suffer.