Showing results by narrator "Terry Wale" in All Categories

February 1381. A ruthless killer known as the Ignifer - Fire Bringer - is rampaging through London. He appears to be targeting all those involved in the recent trial and conviction of the beautiful Lady Isolda Beaumont, burned at the stake for the murder of her husband. As the late Sir Walter Beaumont was a close friend of the Regent, John of Gaunt orders Sir John Cranston and Brother Athelstan to investigate. In the dead man’s possession was a copy of the mysterious Book of Fires, containing the secret formula of a devastating weapon....

David Rogers was a doctor, handsome, charming and rich. He lived the lifestyle of the consultant - expensive clothes, top restaurants, exclusive clubs - until someone killed him in the hallway of his lovely million-plus-pound house. Was he killed for passion, professional jealousy, or plain old money? Bill Slider and his firm are thrown into the mystery, but they soon discover that nothing is as it seems, for though David’s girlfriends are plenty, none of them can tell Slider anything about where he worked or exactly what it was he did.…

1689: The Restoration enabled the Morland family to restore their own fortune, but now the Jacobite Rebellion brings another threat to their security. Annuciata Morland, fiercely loyal to the Stuart cause, follows her beloved king, James II, into exile. She leaves her gentle grandson, Matt, to oversee Morland Place in her absence. Without her wise presence, Matt finds himself in an arranged marriage to India Neville and at the mercy of a woman as heartless as she is beautiful.

May 1381.The Great Revolt draws ever nearer. The Upright Men openly roam the streets of London, waiting for the violence to begin. Their mysterious envoy, the Herald of Hell, appears at night, terrifying those who oppose them. But who is he? When his chancery clerk is found hanged in a notorious Southwark brothel, Brother Athelstan is summoned to investigate. In the dead man's possession was a manuscript containing a great secret which he had been striving to decipher. Can he crack the code before the Great Revolt begins?

June 1381. The rebel armies are massed outside London, determined to overturn both crown and church. Brother Athelstan, meanwhile, has been summoned to the monastery at Blackfriars, tasked with solving the murder of his fellow priest, Brother Alberic. Athelstan would rather be protecting his parishioners at St Erconwald's. Instead, he finds himself investigating a royal murder whilst the rebel leaders plot the present king's destruction. What does the fate of the King's great-grandfather, Edward II, have to do with the murder of Brother Alberic more than 50 years later?

The year is 1820. The landscape of England is undergoing sweeping change as the country pioneers the steam-driven machine age. The Morlands, too, face change: Cousin Africa returns from St Helena to startle society with her unconventional ideas, and Lucy brings her sons home from their Grand Tour, brimming with ideas for their future. In Manchester, Sophie and Jasper meet fierce opposition to their plans for re-housing the factory hands, while in London, Rosamund enters a bizarre agreement.

1659: Cromwell's protectorate is drawing to a close, and the restoration of the monarchy can only improve the fortunes of the Morland family. The years of civil war and their aftermath have left Morland Place in dire straits, but with the return of the King, Ralph Morland believes he can rebuild the family estates. For his beautiful and ambitious cousin, Annunciata, the Restoration means a journey to London - one that leads to the amours and intriges of Charles's court and to the unlocking of her mysterious past.

1670: King Charles II's reign has brought peace and prosperity to the Morland family, but James II's ascent to the throne will shatter their restored fortunes. In Yorkshire, Morland Place has flourished during the Restoration, and in London the beautiful and sprited Annunciata, is now Countess of Chelmsford, a wealthy and well-connected woman, intimate with the Royal Family. But storm clouds gather over them all when the reign of James II brings rebellion and discord.

The bloody revolution in France causes upheaval in the Morland family. Henri-Marie Fitzjames Stuart, bastard offshoot of the Morland family, strives to protect his daughter, Heloise; his mistress, Marie-France; and their son, Morland. To this end, he binds Heloise to a loveless marriage with a Revolutionary, and allies himself with the great Danton.

But in the bloodbath of the guillotine and the fall of Danton, Henri-Marie loses his head and Heloise flees to England.

A middle-aged man jumps under a tube train at Shepherd's Bush station, and a teenage girl is killed in a hit-and-run in a country lane puzzlingly far from her home on the White City Estate: two unrelated incidents which occupy DCI Bill Slider and his team during a slack period. At least it's a change of speed after the grind of domestics, burglaries and Community Liaison. But links to a cold case - another dead teenager, pulled out of the River Thames - create doubts as to whether they are indeed unrelated.

India, 1922. In Panikhat, 50 miles from Calcutta, the wives of officers in the Bengal Greys have been dying violently, one every year and always in March. All the deaths are bizarre and seem accidental. The only link between them is the small red roses that mysteriously appear on the women’s graves on the anniversaries of their deaths. The first victim perished in a fire, the second was bitten by a cobra, another was thrown off her horse into a ravine, while the fourth drowned.

The late Mr Lionel Bygood, who looks, to all intents and purposes, like an old-fashioned sort of gentleman, has been bashed in the head with a bronze statue, in what Doc Cameron describes as 'our old friend the Frenzied Attack'. It soon emerges that Mr Bygood was a philanthropist, well-known locally for giving help and advice to all who needed it, from all walks of life.

Admiral Nelson has sent Captain Nathan Peake on a desperate journey to convey a grim warning to British India. Bonaparte's army is poised to deliver a fatal blow by marching overland to India. Arriving in Bombay, Nathan takes command of the East India Company's naval wing - the Bombay Marine - an under-armed and poorly crewed flotilla.

Folies Bergère, Paris, 1927. Joe Sandilands hurries to the assistance of an old friend who has been arrested for murder. In a cell of the Quai des Orfevres he meets with Sir George Jardine, still in the evening dress stained with the blood of the dead man. The only other witness, a blonde who was sharing the victim's box, has vanished.

When Melanie Hunter goes missing it is completely out of character for the polite, friendly palaeontologist, and the men in her life come under suspicion. And there’s plenty to suspect: lies, half-truths, deceptions.... It soon becomes clear that there are secrets in Melanie’s past, and pain she tried to hide from the world. Bill Slider and his team investigate, and if they are to succeed then they will need to find the answer to two questions: Who loved Melanie? And who loved her too much?

Britain stands alone against the forces of Revolutionary France. A victorious French Army, led by the youthful Napoleon Bonaparte, is poised to invade Britain. And in his country's darkest hour, Captain Nathan Peake finds himself imprisoned by his own side on the Rock of Gibraltar - charged with treason. To prove his innocence Nathan must uncover the great deception that masks the French war aims. Is the great armada being assembled in Toulon bound for the shores of Great Britain - or Egypt?

Simla 1922, and the summer capital of the British Raj is fizzing with the energy of the Jazz Age. Simla is where detective Joe Sandilands is heading as the guest of Sir George Jardine, the Governor of Bengal. But when Joe’s travelling companion, a Russian opera singer, is shot dead at his side in the Governor’s car, he finds himself plunged into a murder investigation. Confronted by the mystery of an identical unsolved killing a year before, Joe realizes that Sir George’s hospitality comes at a high price.

A young couple discover human remains buried in the garden of their new house. Could this be the resting place of 14-year-old Amanda Knight, who disappeared from the same garden two decades before and was never seen again? The problem comes almost as a relief to DCI Slider, still suffering from the fallout of his previous case. He is not popular with the Powers That Be, and his immediate boss, Detective Superintendent Porson, reckons that at least this little puzzle will keep Slider out of trouble.

Newly-promoted Captain Nathan Peake is despatched to the Caribbean to take command of the British navy's latest frigate, the 32-gun Unicorn. But the Unicorn already has a tragic history of mutiny - and murder. And her previous captain has washed up in New Orleans with his throat cut. Meanwhile the Revolutionary authorities in Paris have sent the best frigate in the French fleet, the 44-gun Virginie, on a secret mission to spread war, rebellion and mayhem from the shores of Cuba to the swamps of the Mississippi Delta.

Events that took place on the Northwest Frontier of India in 1910 are resurrected for Joe Sandilands 12 years later. On a welcome break from his duties, he is spending a fortnight with his old army friend James Lindsay, commander of the British army's fort at Gor Khatri on the Afghan border. There is an uneasy peace in operation, but into the delicate situation is injected an ill-assorted group of visitors. After a skirmish that results in the death of a Pathan prince and the taking of hostages, Joe and James are given a week in which to find the killer.