Showing results by narrator "Ben Onwukwe" in All Categories

Bristol in the early 1960s: Joseph Tremaine Ellington is a Barbadian ex-policeman who, like many of his generation in the West Indies, has come to the UK to make a new life in the mother country. But the land of opportunity is not all it is cut out to be. It is not just the weather that is cold: so is the welcome. Facing hostility and prejudice at every turn, Ellington struggles to make ends meet.

What if the fiasco of the 2022 mini budget was just a rehearsal for something much bigger? It is now costing the British government well over £100 billion a year just to pay the interest on its borrowings - more than it spends on either education or defence and around two thirds of what it...

In this timely and very listenable new work, Walvin focuses not on abolitionism or the brutality and suffering of slavery but on resistance, the resistance of the enslaved themselves - from sabotage and absconding to full-blown uprisings - and its impact in overthrowing slavery. He also looks at the whole Atlantic world, including the Spanish Empire and Brazil.   

Theo, an aging Parisian cartographer, is desperately searching for the woman he once loved before Alzheimer’s takes his memories of her. Elise, his estranged daughter, moves in to take care of him. She still blames him for the tragic loss of her mother and is struggling with this new forced intimacy. Nebay, an Eritrean refugee, becomes Theo’s carer and friend. Unbeknownst to Elise, Nebay does not have a visa for France and is working illegally in order to support his sister.

The real nightmare begins when the missing person returns. PC Gareth Bell is about to arrest a cocaine dealer on Brighton Marina, when he makes a shocking discovery that turns his world upside down: the dealer is his long-lost brother, Jake, someone he thought had died years ago. But their reunion is short lived. For Jake is on the run from a cold-blooded killer, whose network reaches all the way into the police force itself. Now that his brother’s life is on the line, Bell has only two choices. Family, or duty?

Detective J. T. Ellington returns in this slick and fast-paced follow up to the critically acclaimed Heartman. 'It's quite simple Mr Ellington. When you find Fowler, just ask where we can find the truth.' With these words, private detective J.T. Ellington embarks on a seemingly simple case of tracking down a local GP with a dubious reputation and retrieving a set of stolen documents from him. For Ellington, however, things are rarely straightforward.

A man is writing a book about prison life, using the first-hand stories of previously incarcerated women. Angered by his treatment of her, one of the women burns the manuscript—but she is later discovered murdered in the nearby woods. Detective Inspector Roberts is tasked with uncovering whether there is more to this case than meets the eye.

When two bodies are found brutally murdered at a building site in Battersea, DS Calil Drake is first to the scene. Assigned to work with the enigmatic forensic psychologist Dr Rayhana Crane, and on the hunt for an elusive killer, Drake’s investigations lead down the dark corridors of the past to the Iraq war and the destruction he and Crane witnessed there. With a community poised on the brink of violence, Crane and Drake must put their lives on the line to stop the killer before vengeance is unleashed.

In 1980s London, Black political leaders who can straddle the racial divide are a rarity. So when a rising Black politician, Aston Edwards, is murdered, the effects quickly ripple through London’s Afro-Caribbean community. Then a young Black boy is arrested for his murder, surrounded by rumours of an affair with Aston’s wife. Sammy Dean, journalist turned investigator, is determined to find the truth. When a Black activist’s death is written off as a suicide, Sam begins to think the two cases are linked. With tensions running high, can Sam find the truth before the city erupts?

Bloomsbury presents The Black Russian by Vladimir Alexandrov, read by Ben Onwukwe. The extraordinary story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, the son of former slaves who fled America to build a life in Tsarist Russia. 'A fascinating tale' Anne Applebaum 'Thoroughly enjoyable' Spectator 'Extraordinary...

Share looks at how new business models are being created based on the disruptive idea of ‘sharing’. Uber, Airbnb, Skype, Alibaba, Google, Netflix and WeChat (China’s answer to Whatsapp) are all based on the sharing of information, assets and human capital, and a new and dynamic economy is already emerging. Traditional consumer and industrial models of Western capitalism are having to adapt to the ‘sharing’ concept, but few traditional organisations seem to understand the implications of the ‘share’ mindset for how they operate and compete.

In the 1980s, London is a melting pot of cultures, but race and class create sharp divisions. Black British journalist Sam Dean looks for stories, not missing persons. When and old friend asks for help tracking down a White Conservative MP’s daughter, he feels he can’t say no. Virginia’s disappearance is tangled with the fate of Roy, a young mixed-race boy who reminds Sam of his own son, and Sam becomes determined to find the truth. 

Set along the Great Barrier Reef, ‘The Black Bell Buoy’ recalls the story of two members of the Marine Board who were sent to secure a giant buoy near a dangerous piece of coral. Only one man makes it home though as rumours of a hideous octopus abound.

Mining diamonds is a lucrative business, but it soon proves itself deadly. Shortly after Kubu joins the CID, the richest diamond mine in the world is robbed of 100,000 carats of diamonds in transit. The robbery is well-executed and brutal. Police immediately suspect an inside job, but there is no evidence of who it could be.

‘A page-turner of a crime thriller . . . This is a world conveyed with convincing, terrible clarity’ C. J. Sansom Blood & Sugar is the thrilling debut historical crime novel from Laura Shepherd-Robinson. June, 1781. An unidentified body hangs upon a hook at Deptford Dock – horribly...

International number one bestselling author Jeffrey Archer is a master of the short story form, creating classic tales beloved by his fans and hitting the top of the bestseller lists with his previous collections. The Short the Long and the Tall collects together twenty of Archer's most...

In recent years house histories have become the new frontier of popular, participatory history. People, many of whom have already embarked upon that great adventure of genealogical research, and who have encountered their ancestors in the archives and uncovered family secrets, are now turning to...

A Financial Times Music Book of the Year 2023 'Key to understanding black British history' - Sunday Times 'Sharp and still relevant' - Zadie Smith Recognized as one of the great poets of modern times, and as a deeply respected and influential political and cultural activist and social critic...

Robert Wedderburn (1762-1834/5) was one of the most charismatic, irascible, and radical intellectuals of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Born to an enslaved woman and a slavemaster in Jamaica, and moving in the radical working-class circles of London, Wedderburn made his name as a fiery political writer and orator—before dying, forgotten, in poverty. From award-winning scholar Ryan Hanley, this is the first full-length biography of a man increasingly recognized as central to Black radical political thought in the Revolutionary Atlantic.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation by Andy Barratt of Daniel Defoe's less famous sequel to the classic adventure 'Robinson Crusoe'. After returning to England from his island home, Robinson Crusoe sets sail once more in search of adventure. Starring Tim McInnerny as Robinson Crusoe, with...