Showing results by narrator "Peter Wickham" in All Categories

Sent by the French government to examine the American prison system, Alexis de Tocqueville spent nine months touring the United States between 1831 and 1832. However, fascinated by the success of America's democratic system, de Tocqueville took advantage of his stay to examine the country's foundations and glean ideas that might rescue his homeland from the manacles of social inequality. He leaves no stone unturned, exploring each branch of government, the constitution, economics, religion, race, the judiciary, laws, principles, education, culture, and views on wealth and poverty.

Privateersman Harry Ludlow and his partner and younger brother, James, find that murder and intrigue take up more of their time than the hunt for fat trading vessels. Arriving in the squalid, seething port of Genoa, they find it a tinderbox of tension, fed by the discovery of a hanged British sea captain and packs of English and French sailors at each other's throats.

The school outing to the Museum of the Moving Image is not an unqualified success. For in the darkened cinema complex of MOMI, two members of the party disappear without trace....

Intended to be a defense of the Christian religion, Pensées is a penetrating collection of thoughts on faith, reason, and theology. Unfinished at the time of Pascal's death, the book consists of philosophical fragments on the "wretchedness" of man and the controversial schisms of the church at the time. It includes the philosopher's infamous wager encouraging belief over agnosticism, as well as his thoughts on numerous other topics. Endlessly quotable, Pensées overflows with pearls of wisdom, each elusive sentence pregnant with a universe of thought.

Dave Aston is a dead man walking. He was a member of the elite British SAS. Black Ops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Until that final mission into bandit country. Unauthorised, with no back up. That was when his luck ran out ...Now, he's returned home to an alien civilian life. Everything is lost: his marriage, his home and his self-respect. Down and out on the cold, mean streets of his homeland. There he discovers that the astonishing circle of deceit is complete. But is he just too far down to fight back against a new evil force at work in his own back yard?

It is 1795. As war spreads across the globe, Harry Ludlow joins the struggle for the richest trade in the world. When half his crew is illegally pressed into the Royal Navy by the vicious Captain Toner, Harry sets off in pursuit. Toner's ship reaches the West Indies with Harry close behind, and they sail into a maelstrom of piracy, corruption, and murder, stirred up by a French privateer. Soon, the British officer in charge of the station calls upon each man to help as best he can.

Through a particularly tragic series of events, couch potato Maeve Kelly has been forced to sign up for the Other Half, Bath's springtime half-marathon. What Maeve doesn't know is just how brutal some of the other runners are. As race day draws closer, an Albanian refugee named Spiro makes a run for freedom on the other side of town, escaping the chain gang that has held him hostage and its murderous foreman, who is known to his charges as 'The Finisher'.

In the peaceful seaside town of Broadgate, an impossible crime occurs. The operator of the cliff railway locks the empty carriage one evening; when he returns to work next morning, a dead body is locked inside - a man who has been stabbed in the back. Jimmy London, a newspaper reporter, is first on the scene. He is quick on the trail for clues and agrees to pool his knowledge with Inspector Shelley of Scotland Yard, who is holidaying in the area.

John Pearce, having negotiated the highly questionable sale of the two French prizes taken in The Devil to Pay, has left HMS Flirt, as well as the crew and the wounded Henry Digby in Brindisi, and is headed for Naples to see his lover. In an uncomfortable journey, he seeks to work out a way to best both Admiral Sir William Hotham and Captain Ralph Barclay, men who are his sworn enemies. All his calculations are thrown into turmoil when he discovers that Emily is pregnant.

Julius Hutch has planned to spend his retirement years 'pottering' and worrying about his bills, but wakes one morning to discover a foreign merchant bank has put four million pounds into his account—and won't take it back. So Julius, a humble man, sets out to spend the money helping other people, and wooing Pauline, the local bank teller. Up against an enormous banking corporation and an unsavoury property developer, Julius soon discovers that rather than being crushed by these financial giants as he would have been in the past, he is rendered rather more delightfully impervious.

In a sunlit, secret valley in the green mountains of central Italy, two people meet away from the horrors and clamour of battle. David Hopkins, a young fisherman from West Wales, and Kate Medhurst from a genteel town in the Thames Valley embark upon an idyllic love affair away from the conflict that surrounds them. However, they cannot escape the war forever, and when they are targeted by a single enemy aeroplane their dreams are destroyed.

The position of Assistant Headteacher has become available at Leighford High, but Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell won't be applying. He has his hands full juggling his beloved Sixth Form, fatherhood and impending marriage. When a member of staff dies after a special lunch for the prospective Assistant Headteachers, Maxwell's hopes for a quiet term, followed by a quiet wedding, are swiftly shattered, as he finds himself embroiled in yet another sinister murder case.

It is 1932, and John Madden, former Scotland Yard inspector, is now a farmer in the peaceful Surrey countryside. However, his peace is shattered when he discovers the disfigured body of a young girl hidden in a wood and is convinced the killer has struck before.... When a second body is found, Madden knows there is a multiple killer at large. Allying himself with his old colleagues, and against the wishes of his anxious wife, he immerses himself in one more case.

New Orleans, 1795. The discovery of an abandoned Spanish merchant ship off the coast of America plunges the Ludlows into a far-reaching conspiracy fuelled by jealousy, ambition and nationalistic fervour. The Bucephalas lies trapped under the gaping muzzles of the 32-punder Spanish guns of New Orleans’ harbour fort. It quickly becomes clear that the corridors of the governor’s residence are just as busy with treachery, double-dealing, and murder as the back alleys of the sweltering city outside.

They are the Pessarane Behesht. Sons of heaven. Spawned in war-torn Beirut. Nurtured in revolutionary Iran to wreak vengeance on the enemies of Allah. When the freighter Clarion Call disappears mysteriously in the Gulf, she is carrying a secret consignment of French arms for the Pessarane Behesht in return for the release of a diplomat held hostage. Ex-SAS Major Robert D'Arcy, whose international security firm was protecting the ship, finds himself in the midst of a deadly battle of wills.

The Dark Angels Legion is couched in layers of mystery and secrecy, harkening back to the days of the knightly orders of Caliban that helped to raise their infant primarch. But Lion El'Jonson's greatest strength often proves to be one of the most divisive issues amongst his sons - rarely can any two commanders agree upon one single course of action from the start. As they seek to bring the world of Byzanthis to compliance, Chapter Masters Astelan and Belath are among those with very different notions of what victory might require.

Charged with treason under Theodoric the Great in sixth-century Rome, Boethius served one year's imprisonment, awaiting trial and eventual execution. During this time, he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, which would go on to be one of the most popular philosophical works of all time, contributing much to medieval thought and influencing the likes of Dante and Chaucer, as well as Renaissance writers, such as Milton and Shakespeare.

The young orphan Oliver Twist flees a cruel workhouse for the dirty streets of London, where he falls in with a nefarious gang. As the shrewd Artful Dodger, the menacing Fagin and the vicious Bill Sikes lead Oliver deeper into a criminal life, a dark conspiracy is revealed around him.

1794...Returning to England, Harry and James become embroiled in a vicious struggle between rival smugglers played out in the English Channel. Witnesses to a bloody confrontation, they flee to Deal - only to find that, behind its picturesque facade, the town is a haven for traders in contraband, seething with corruption and violence.

The Beecheys were a close-knit family, eight brothers and five sisters under the loving eye of their widowed mother, Amy. As the First World War raged across Europe and beyond, the brothers were one-by-one swept up into its devastating path.