Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

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, a midden, 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, prisoner, survivor.

Hatushaly, last scion of the Firemane dynasty; his beloved Hava, and their dubious friend Donte have been transported across space and time from their war-torn world of Garn to the relative peace of Midkemia. There, on Sorcerer’s Isle, under the guidance of the great magician Magnus and his reincarnated father Pug, Hatu will explore and expand his unique magical abilities: for if Garn is to be saved, they will be needed.

After the fall of Raven Rock, the Outcasts are adrift with bonds broken and warriors lost. Erroh and Lea must forge their own paths back to the front lines while in the looming shadow of Spark City, Uden's reign intensifies. Meanwhile, amidst shifting sands and seas, Magnus and Elise resurrect their legends.

A violent encounter forces Kane to emerge from a life in hiding, where he had hoped his wife and children would be safe. He must go on the run and fight for the lives of those he holds most dear. The forces out to kill him are skilled, well-armed, and his former colleagues in the Mjolnir Agency, a black-ops shadow section of MI6.

When a mud-splattered man staggers from Bacton Wood with a terrifying tale about being buried alive, DS Ashley Knight and her team are called in to investigate. Soon, another victim is found, and more men are missing – all with connections to the well-known Vialli family. The Major Investigation Team find themselves attempting to untangle a case that stretches from Eastern Europe through to North Norfolk.

Delve into the clandestine world of Group 15, the covert organization also featured in the acclaimed John Milton series. Charlie Cooper, an elite Group Fifteen agent, faces a complex mission: eliminate Igor Sidorov, a security-obsessed Russian oligarch implicated in international subterfuge. The only avenue to reach the paranoid Sidorov? Through Crispin Fairweather, the owner of a small yet influential reputation management firm.

City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. As their legions scour the world of superstition with the bright flame of reason, so they deliver a mountain of ragged, holed and scorched flesh to the field hospital tents just behind the frontline. Which is where Yasnic, one-time priest, healer and rebel, finds himself. Reprieved from the gallows and sent to war clutching a box of orphan Gods, he has been sequestered to a particularity unorthodox medical unit.

A man falls to his death in Western Scotland. From a distance another man watches. He approaches the body, tucks a book into the dead man's pocket, and leaves. When the Scottish police show visiting detective chief inspector Domenic Jejeune the book, he recognises it as a call for help. Back in Saltmarsh the brutal murder of a researcher has everyone looking at the man's controversial studies as a motive.

A childhood accident robbed Vinnie of his memories, making him sensitive and anxious, and his difference soon attracted bullies. If it wasn’t for his family and his brother, Frank, Vinnie wouldn’t have survived. But as the boys grow up, and after the devastating loss of their parents, Vinnie finds himself increasingly involved in violent situations whenever he’s with Frank. When Vinnie is accused of a terrible crime and looks set for a long stretch behind bars, fragments of his memory start to return and he begins to unravel his past.

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.

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. In this second dip into his case files (see 1000 Yards for a further novella), Milton is sent to Italy to investigate the death of a colleague from Group 15.

Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.

Cloud Atlas features six characters in interlocking stories, each interrupting the one before it: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death row; and Zachry, a young Pacific islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation.

There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse. What will be the spark that lights the conflagration? Despite the city's refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the Anchorwood–that dark grove of trees, that primeval remnant, that portal, when the moon is full, to strange and distant shores.

Henri Koskinen firmly believes in the power of common sense and order. That is until he moves in with Laura Helanto and her daughter. As Henri realises he has inadvertently become part of a group of local dads, a competing adventure park is seeking to expand their operations, not always sticking to the law in the process. Is it possible to combine the increasingly dangerous world of the adventure-park business with the unpredictability of life in a blended family? At first glance, the two appear to have only one thing in common: neither deals particularly well with a mounting body count.

A journey through life, the universe and everything. From what actually happened in the big bang to the accidental discovery of Post-it notes, science is packed with surprising discoveries. Did you know, for instance, that if you were to get too close to a black hole it would suck you up like a noodle (it's called spaghettification), why your keyboard is laid out in QWERTY (it's not to make it easier to type) or whether the invention of the wheel was less important to civilisation than the bag (think about it)? New Scientist does.

December 1940. With the Luftwaffe pounding the city nightly, Londoners seek refuge in underground stations. Aldwych has been taken out of service to provide shelter for the British Museum's priceless Elgin Marbles, as well as civilians escaping the bombing. When the body of a young man is discovered on the tracks, wearing evening dress but barefoot, Detective Chief Inspector Coburg and Sergeant Lampson are on the case. Before long, more bodies are discovered, and Coburg's wife Rosa becomes a target for the brutal killer.

September 1940. The height of the Blitz. When the Savoy advertises its series of underground shelters, a crowd of people from East London arrive at the hotel and demand entry. There they find a shelter worthy of the Savoy's clientele, but the next morning, after the air raid and when the Stepney protestors have left, it is discovered that one of the hotel's guests is dead, stabbed through the heart.

December 1940. Down Street underground station, in the heart of London's Mayfair, is now a secret retreat for Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his cabinet from the relentless air raids overhead. In this supposedly secure location, the body of a woman is found, stabbed in the heart. The victim, fortune-teller Lady Za Za, did not see this one coming. Chief Inspector Coburg and Sergeant Lampson are called to investigate but whispers of treason and corruption succeed in muddying the waters of the case.

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....