Showing results by narrator "Damian Lynch" in All Categories

Based on a lifetime living in and reporting on Germany and Central Europe, award-winning journalist and author Peter Millar tackles the fascinating and complex story of the people at the heart of our continent. Focussing on nine cities (only six of which are in the Germany of today), he takes us on a zigzag ride back through time via the fall of the Berlin Wall through the horrors of two world wars and the patchwork states of the Middle Ages to the splendour of Charlemagne and the fall of Rome.

After the riotous civil war in Dark Sky, the crew of the Keiko decides to go on vacation at an illegal gambling port for a little fun. What they don't realise is that the casinos are run by an ex-client who didn't get his shipment due to the war. The mob boss decides to take Tamara Rouke, the Keiko's second-in-command, and hold her hostage until the crew raises enough money to pay him back for the lost shipment. If they don't pay up in time, Rouke will be killed.

It’s been five years since Detective Zac Boateng’s daughter was murdered, and her killer was never found. Now Zac is back working for the Metropolitan Police and is more determined than ever to bring the city’s killers to justice. When a man is found brutally murdered in a rundown south London shop, all fingers point to the highly intelligent and manipulative Darian Wallace. Two years ago, the victim helped send him to prison. And he’s just been released.

An adventure story set in the Solomon Islands sees Jack and Toni, childhood schoolmates, set out on a routine boat trip to a neighbouring island, but things go awry when they discover, due to an oversight by Toni, that they do not have enough fuel to make the journey and are stranded at sea. At first they are optimistic that they will be rescued within hours, but as the first days draw to an end they slowly begin to realise that the mistake has left them in serious jeopardy and they can see no end but their own demise in sight.

Barry J. Whyte examines the dangers of boxing’s 24-hour weigh-in by looking into the far-reaching consequences of a fight between Joey Gamache and Arturo Gatti in February 2000. He shines a light on a controversial system which allows boxers to ‘boil down’ for the weigh-in the day before the fight then pile the weight back on in the time left before stepping into the ring. He exposes the extreme physiological dangers both boxers are subject to under this flawed system.

Victorian adventure writer Henry Rider Haggard is most famous for his novel King Solomon’s Mines, which launched the ‘Lost World’ genre of SF, featuring the discovery of long-forgotten or legendary civilizations. His follow-up, She, was also hugely successful, and has been hailed as ‘one of the great classics of fantasy fiction’. The radio dramatisations of both tales are collected here, with casts including Tim McInnerny, Adjoa Andoh, Finlay Robertson, Oliver Chris and Mia Soteriou.

Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz and Steve May, these gripping plays take in all the famous Arthurian legends, from Lanslot’s tryst with Gwenfar to the quest for the Holy Grail. Ben Whishaw and Philip Glenister star as Arthur, with Ian McDiarmid as Merlin, Jane Lapotaire as Morgan, Eve Myles as Gwenfar and Andrew Scarborough as Lanslot.

Professor Hakim Adi draws on a variety of published works in Black Voices on Britain, all of which describe powerful experiences: James Gronniosaw and his family endure poverty, illness and unemployment; Mary Prince is driven out by her cruel owners and turns to London charities for help; Frederick Douglass, on a lecture tour around Britain, reveals how the Christian clergy built churches with slave-owners’ money and William Wells Brown gives his impressions of England as he travels around a country which welcomes him more readily than America.

Afghanistan, 2009. Eighteen-year-old squaddie Briggsy is just three weeks into his first posting in Helmand Province and he's thrilled to be part of the action. But when his Rifle Section loses a man in battle, Briggsy is forced to confront the realities of war. Also included is the fascinating interview with Andy McNab, in which he speaks to Jo Fidgen about his childhood, military career and writing.

In a mission that goes badly wrong, loyal assassin Brodie takes out the nephew of the criminal mastermind he works for - and the hitman suddenly finds himself in the firing line. Saved by the woman he was sent to kill, Brodie is injured and at her mercy. But Brodie and Karima know too much about unforgiving gangster Donny to remain alive. Brodie his gun for hire. Karima his accountant. They both know where the bodies are buried. And when Donny turns the might of his brutally violent empire on them, there’s only one thing to do: run.

As a detective in the Metropolitan police, Zac is no stranger to murder cases, but this one is different. This is his daughter’s murder. Years after Amelia died, Zac is still trying to trace the police officer involved in his daughter’s death. And whilst Zac is prepared to break every rule to find the man responsible, his young and ambitious deputy, Kat, is working on a high-profile case of her own. But she knows Zac is keeping secrets from his team, so she’s following his every move.

When Met Police Detective Troy McEwen is found dead in his home, the official verdict is suicide. But his friend and fellow detective Zac believes it was murder. And he thinks he might be next on the killer’s list. If Troy didn’t take his own life, then who did? As he investigates, Zac discovers a link to an incident from decades earlier. Mistakes were made that day. Lives were lost and secrets kept. Until now.... As more people who were there on that fateful day are found dead, Zac knows that the killer is closing in on him.

How do you identify a ruthless killer when you can’t even recognise your own face in a mirror? Returning to work following an accident, Detective Inspector Ray Patrick refuses to disclose he now lives with face blindness - an inability to recognise faces. As Ray deceives his team, he is pulled into a police operation that targets an international trade in human organs. And when he attempts to bring the organisation down, Ray is witness to a savage murder. But it’s a killer he will never remember.

The discovery of the partially clothed body of a teenage girl in the heart of Bristol's red light district indicates a tragic yet familiar scenario. But this marks the start of a baffling murder investigation where nothing is as it first appears. Fourteen-year-old Melanie Cooke told her mother she was visiting a school friend. Who was she really going to meet? Detective Inspector David Vogel is led towards three very different principal protagonists, each of whom grows increasingly chilling. But are they what they seem? And is any one of them capable of murder?

When the body of a woman is found stabbed to death, the blame falls to her twin sister. But who killed who? And which one is now the woman behind bars? Zara and Miranda have always supported each other. But then Zara meets Seb, and everything changes. Handsome, charismatic and dangerous, Seb threatens to tear the sisters’ lives apart - but is he really the one to blame? Or are deeper resentments simmering beneath the surface that the sisters must face up to?

Bodies surface and disappear, seduce and corrupt in these original stories by best-selling, award-winning female crime writers. Keep your eyes peeled, your ears cocked and your wits about you as 20 deliciously twisted tales take you to surprising places....

Both harrowing and life-affirming, the final novel from Carnegie Medal-winning author Mal Peet is the sweeping coming-of-age adventure of a mixed race boy transported to North America. Born from a street liaison between a poor young woman and an African soldier in the 1900s, Beck is soon orphaned and sent to the Catholic Brothers in Canada. Shipped to work on a farm, his escape takes him across the continent in a search for belonging.

A financially comfortable but troubled young London author, Alex Hargreaves stumbles across the work of an unknown writer from the early 1990s, Vernon Crane, and, presuming the missing Crane is dead, decides to pass the work off as his own. The problem is that the novel he wishes to plagiarise has been split among Crane's disparate and scattered group of friends....

When Colombia's 'King of Cocaine', Pablo Escobar, was killed, the world thought the cocaine industry would crumble. But ten years later the country's production had almost quadrupled, and for the last decade Colombia has produced more than 60 percent of all the cocaine consumed in the world. The drug is both a curse and a salvation for Colombians. Farmers grow coca for cash but fear discovery. Families must co-operate with drug-funded guerrillas or go on the run.

Crack House takes the listener into the dark heart of our cities' most violent and terrifying places, showing how the war on drugs can only be won by constant and forceful vigilance. The bastard offspring of cocaine, crack first entered the UK in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, Britain's inner cities were in the midst of a crack epidemic, with users being responsible for a massive proportion of crime. Communities, especially in London, were crying out for help, but there were only two specialist units in the whole of the capital.