Showing results by narrator "Gordon Griffin" in All Categories

It is 1827, and in the town of Redditch life is harsh for the poor. When a young serving woman is found drowned in the canal, her widowed mother believes her daughter has been murdered and appeals to the Parish Constable, Thomas Potts, for help. Physically weak and bookish by nature, Tom Potts is to many people an object of derision. But concealed behind his timid façade is intelligence, experience and a fierce passion for justice.

There was a time when Simon Knapp wouldn't have dared go near Edgfield House. As a teenager, he'd only had the nerve to snoop around the grounds. But now, returning 50 years later, he marches straight up to the derelict 18th-century stately home and pushes open the front door. But curiosity killed the cat. When the police arrive, it is with a similar carefree spirit that they carry out a routine search of the house. And they, too, come across something they were not looking for.

A story from Night in the Front Line, a collection of Second World War short stories. 'I Had to Go Sick' tackles army bureaucracy as we follow an unnamed narrator through the army medical system during WW2 and the mounting ridiculousness of the rules and regulations for soldiers to be declared fit for service.

Cast to the edge of the Empire, the Sarmatian army must fight in defence of Rome in the second of a new trilogy set in the second century AD, from the author of Smile of the Wolf. In the hard, unforgiving land at the northernmost point of the Roman Empire lies a great wall. Once, the edge had...

Eleven-year-old Billy Clegg and his big sister Peggy disappear from their home in Leeds after a suspicious fire in a local mill. The owner says the children caused it by lighting fireworks on Mischief Night. Their widowed mother, Betty, badly injured in the incident, doesn't know if her children are alive or dead. She prefers to think of them as being elsewhere. 

Good News, Bad News... a secret agent is trained to try to think of every possible outcome and eventuality. Who could have guessed, though, that a bureaucratic error would send two men to the same 'cover' job, working in a shabby photo-processing booth, where each must keep his real identity secret from the other, while awaiting orders. Or that those orders would be to assassinate... each other. Thrown together by this apparently ghastly mistake, Charlie and George decide to go on the run together. In the whole world, the only people they can trust are each other. Or can they?

He's respected - not very respected - chief had been grumbling all the way from London, and now the speeding Alvis was well into the wild and hilly country of Derbyshire, he was more caustic than ever. When Chief Inspector Bill 'Ironsides' Cromwell accepts an invitation to spend Christmas at his sergeant's family seat, Cloon Castle, he doesn't realise the mysteries he'll encounter. First, there is a mysterious figure who leaves no footprints, despite the heavy snow.

A note that is discovered hidden in a wall cavity of a London hotel leads Detective Inspector Harry Vicary and his team to a burial site containing the charred bones of two men. Their investigation into this startling find quickly leads them into a dark and brutal world, where men and women are used and abused by those who rule through fear and intimidation. But who were the dead men and how did they meet their fate?

Five years after Duncan Percival is left in a vegetative state following a vicious attack, he finally dies. The case has now become a murder investigation, and DCI Hennessey and DS Yellich are brought in to renew the evidence and re-interview the suspects. As they delve deeper, bodies start turning up, and the detectives are drawn into York’s criminal underworld where grasses are punished and the gruesome Chelsea Smile is the favoured method of retribution…

A raving, bedraggled girl is found sheltering in a barn near the Parish of Tardebigge in Worcestershire. Then the decomposing body of a small boy is unearthed by poachers in a nearby wood. Constable Thomas Potts is called upon to investigate both cases, which appear to be connected to a wagon-load of children known to have been abducted from the Poorhouse. Meanwhile Thomas’ engagement to buxom barmaid Amy Danks is threated by his widowed mother’s hatred of his sweetheart, and by the many duty calls upon his time.

When Mike Wakefield's business partner absconded with all the firm's money, Mike and his wife Stephanie feared bankruptcy. Detective Inspector Sloan is at first tasked with solving what appears to be a cut-and-dry case of embezzlement, but that is before unsettling events - tyres slashed, bricks through windows - make it clear that someone is gunning for the printing firm. Mike Wakefield is determined to finish a job that had been in hand for a while in time for a launch party at the grand surroundings of Ornum House. All is going according to plan until one of Mike's employees is found dead.

A moving, inspiring and thought-provoking collection of 50 coming-out stories from around the world. From the good, the sad, the surprising and the funny, no two stories are the same, yet all are by people who share the courage to be vulnerable, take huge risks to find love and acceptance and are brave enough to be their authentic selves. Whether you have any experience of coming out or not, these stories are incredibly powerful and moving.

Venice, 1468. Sosia Simeon is a lover of many men in the fabled city, though married to one she despises. On the edge of the Grand Canal, Wendelin von Speyer sets up the first printing press in Venice and looks for the book that will make his fortune. When he publishes Catullus, the poet whose unrequited love inspired the most tender and erotic poems of antiquity, a scandal is set in motion that will change all their lives forever.

February, 1927: The remains of a man are found in the grounds of Maxtead Court, home of the wealthy Scroope family. Meanwhile, Margaret Rees-Talbot is preparing for her wedding to the Rev Symon Scroope - to the disapproval of some residents of Folbury, who think it's too soon after the death of her father, Osbert, found drowned in his bath a few months previously. Before he died, Osbert had been writing an account of his experiences as a soldier during the Second Boer War. But what really happened in South Africa back in 1902?

November 1928. Family and friends have gathered at the Shropshire country home of Penrose Llewellyn to celebrate the retired wealthy businessman's 60th birthday. But the morning after what should have been a convivial supper party, their host is found dead in his bed - and the circumstances look decidedly suspicious.

A fiercely intelligent and moving second novel from the author of the acclaimed The Wilderness. Leonard Deppling returns to the capital from Scotland, where he has spent the past year nursing his dying father. Missing from the funeral was his younger brother William, a former lecturer and activist who lives with his wife and two young sons. Leonard is alone and rootless, he moves in with William hoping to unite their family and renew their friendship.

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. When the Russian Royal Family Jewels are put on display at Orbin’s department store in the fortnight leading up to Christmas, Mr Rossiter Payne can’t resist a present to himself. An inconspicuous London bookseller by day, an experienced jewel thief by night - can he pull off this latest festive heist?

With a penchant for wine and women, Tyler is not the kind of man to let the law stand in his way. Rich, arrogant and spoiled, when his love of wine and cognac leads to the death of a young couple walking along a country lane, he'll do anything to avoid the consequences - including driving his car to his property in Mallorca so the English police can't examine it.

Bloomsbury presents Thinking of Answers by A C Grayling, read by Gordon Griffin Thought-provoking short essays by Britain's leading public philosopher that show us how to discover our own answers to life's challenges ‘While most philosophy is written in abstruse and ponderous prose, Grayling's...

It is 1896. In an alternative history where Babbage’s difference engines have become commonplace, Captain Charles Maddox, wrongly convicted of a murder and newly arrested for treason, is rescued from execution by a covert agency called the Map Room. Maddox is given the choice of taking his chances with the authorities or joining the Map Room as an agent and helping them uncover a possible conspiracy surrounding the 1888 Ripper murders. Seeing little choice, Maddox accepts the offer and joins the team of fellow agents Church and Green.