Showing results by narrator "Saul Reichlin" in All Categories

A servant to men for all her life, Mary Mackenzie is brought to Rome by her latest employer, the elderly Mr Carstairs. In the Babington Tea Rooms, she's introduced to the history of a painting that gives her pause for thought. Judith and Holofernes - The Holy Ferns, as Mary hears them - the story of one woman's battle against a tyrannical man. Is there a lesson there that the weak and submissive Mary can learn?

On 11 July 1982, Elisa Sordi was beautiful. Commissario Michele Balistreri was fearless. Italy was victorious. A killer was waiting. On 9 July 2006, with Sordi's case 24 years cold, and Balistreri haunted by guilt and regret, Italian victory returned. And so did Sordi's killer. But this time Michele Balistreri would be ready. This time he would fear no evil.

Having resigned from Bishkek Murder Squad, Akyl Borubaev is a lone wolf with blood on his hands. Then the Minister of State Security promises Akyl his old life back...if Akyl finds his vanished mistress. The beautiful Natasha Sulonbekova has disappeared in Dubai with information that could destroy the Minister's career. But when Borubaev arrives in Dubai - straight into a scene of horrific carnage - he learns that what Natasha is carrying is worth far more than a damaged reputation.

It's April 1948, and war hangs over Jaffa. One minute, seven-year-old Salim is dreaming of taking his first harvest from the family's orange tree; the next he is swept away into a life of exile and rage. Seeking a new beginning in swinging '60s London, Salim falls in love with Jude. The only problem? Jude is Jewish. Ishmael's Oranges follows the story of two families spanning the crossroad events of modern times and of the legacy of hatred their children inherit.

Truman evidently understood the terrifying power of atomic weaponry, but no one could have realised its full potential when he ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Those military attacks, along with the disasters at the Fukashima and Chernobyl nuclear reactors, might immediately spring to mind at the mention of nuclear destruction, but the vast majority of the events recorded in this audiobook are entirely unknown to most people.

This audiobook takes the listener on a grand musical tour from its origins in prehistory to the 21st century. It describes its roles in culture and religion in ancient China and the Middle East and how it developed in the Mediterranean world of classical Greece and Rome. Andrew Gant considers the evolution of music in medieval Europe and looks at what led to the astonishing revolution of musical forms and genres that took place in the Renaissance, first in Italy and then across the rest of Europe.

In the 1960s, post-colonial Libya fell prey to the sprawling industrial greed of the West, driven by the discovery of oil. While the modern quarter of Tripoli, built by the Italians, was small and affluent, the rest of the city - like the rest of the nation - was left to fend for itself amid the arid, sandy stretches of North Africa. As tensions mounted between Eastern and Western ideals, terror began to supplant justice, and acts of religiously motivated violence began to fill some of Tripoli's darkest corners.

Florence, 1429. Giovanni de Medici, the family patriarch, has been poisoned. In their quest for political power, the Medici have made bitter enemies in every corner of the republic. And now Giovanni's sons, Cosimo and Lorenzo, have become the hereditary dukes of a city where loyalty can always be bought. While Lorenzo hunts for their father's killer, Cosimo petitions their remaining allies as Italy heads towards civil war. But the Medici will need more than alliances to survive, otherwise their beloved Florence – and their dynasty – will drown in blood....

In April 2011, four soldiers - each a hero of recent conflicts who suffered devastating injuries in the line of duty - set out on a challenge that even an able-bodied athlete would balk at: a 200 mile trek, unsupported, to the North Pole. It was the culmination of a journey that began long before, when two friends decided to mount an expedition that would demonstrate how remarkable our armed forces are and raise funds for the rehabilitation of injured service men and women.

In April 2011, four soldiers set out on a challenge that even an able-bodied athlete would balk at: a 200-mile trek, unsupported, to the North Pole. It was the culmination of a journey that began long before, when two friends decided to mount an expedition that would demonstrate how remarkable our armed forces are and raise funds for the rehabilitation of injured service men and women. Little did they know that their idea would ultimately gain global attention.

Budleigh Salterton and Rexford Overstreet have been exiled by Cord Bangle, a creature from the fifth dimension, to a castle somewhere in time and space. Forced together, they quickly find they can’t escape each other let alone the castle walls, until a handy teddy bear changes everything!

Behind the famous rhyme lies a murderous conspiracy that goes far beyond Guy Fawkes and his ill-fated Gunpowder Plot. In a desperate race against time, spy Christian Hardy must uncover a web of deceit that runs from the cock-fighting pits of Shoe Lane, to the tunnels beneath a bear-baiting arena in Southwark, and from the bad lands of Clerkenwell to a brutal firefight in The Globe theatre. But of the forces ranged against Hardy, all pale beside the renegade Spanish agent codenamed Realm.

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.

One wet November in Florence a young widow of an eminent Jewish architect comes to visit Sandro Cellini, a disgraced ex-policeman and budding private detective, to ask him to investigate her husband's suicide. But the case abruptly turns into something grimmer and more urgent than he could have imagined.

Father of Lions is the story of Mosul Zoo. It survived under the stern hand of Abu Laith, the zookeeper, a man with an interesting past and a lifelong animal lover. His real name was Imad, but for as long as he could remember everyone had called him by his nickname, Abu Laith - 'Father of Lions'. And the lions and bears survived not only two years of Isis occupation, but starvation and bombardment by liberating forces.

Two little girls go missing on the same day in Stockholm. Their disappearances are never explained. In time, the investigations are abandoned. A chance discovery puts Detective Ewert Grens back on the trail five years later. His own personal trauma makes him determined to find out what happened to these children who were snatched from a supermarket and a car park and never seen again. His search leads him into the recesses of the dark web and the discovery of a paedophile ring that can only be cracked from the inside.

The death of his wife has left Michael Keats bereft; the subsequent discovery of her adultery devastates him. Michael resolves to discover the identity of her lover. That journey leads him to northern Italy where he becomes embroiled in a story of passion and treachery amongst the Partisans and villagers during the darkest days of World War II. As Michael gets closer to the truth he realizes that some secrets should never be told.

Every December, a huge Christmas tree arrives in Trafalgar Square. Bedecked in lights, it is a shimmering, festive beacon in the heart of London. But even more enchanting than the twinkling decorations and scented pine is the story behind the tree; a story of loyalty, friendship and resistance. On a cold evening in 1940, German warships made their way towards Oslo. It seemed inevitable that Norway, like so many other European nations, would soon submit to the Nazi regime. But the country's indomitable King Haakon VII refused to surrender.

As Sandro gets to grips with the dispiriting realities of life as a private detective, touting for business among old contacts and following errant teenagers, an old case comes back to haunt him... Loni Meadows - the glamorous, charming and ruthless director of an artistic Foundation based in a castle in the hills outside Florence - is found dead in circumstances Sandro cannot convince himself are accidental. He soon finds himself drawn into the lives of the castle's highly strung community and the closed world they inhabit in the Casentino's isolated hills.

The second instalment in a prize-winning series charting the rise of the House of Medici as they become Masters of Florence and progenitors of the Renaissance. Florence, 1469. The Medici family is preparing for the marriage of its son and heir Lorenzo. His heart belongs to another, but this union will strengthen the alliance with a powerful Roman family. Torn between love and power, the bounties and the compromises of governing, Lorenzo has become complacent. He has forgotten the bloody path he forged on his ascent to power and the enemies left in his wake.