Showing results by narrator "Steve West" in All Categories

With the beautiful and cunning Poppaea at his side, Nero Augustus commands the Roman Empire, ushering in an unprecedented era of artistic and cultural splendour. Although he has yet to produce an heir, his power is absolute. But in the 10th year of his reign, a terrifying prophecy comes to pass and a fire engulfs Rome, reducing entire swaths of the city to rubble. Rumours of Nero's complicity in the blaze start to sow unrest among the populace - and the politicians.

In this groundbreaking new work, Professor Hawking and renowned science writer Leonard Mlodinow have drawn on 40 years of Hawking's own research and a recent series of extraordinary astronomical observations and theoretical breakthroughs to reveal an original and controversial theory.

Luke Kanowski is a young playwright: Intense, magnetic, fleeing a disastrous upbringing in the North East. Arriving in London, he meets Paul Driscoll, an aspiring producer, and beautiful, fiery Leigh Radley, the girl Paul loves. Luke, Paul and Leigh set up a radical theatre company, living and working together, forging a connection in the smoky late nights of Chelsea’s run-down flats and damp rehearsal rooms above pubs, candlelit during power cuts, where a new generation of writers and directors is fighting for its place.

Although Father Tom Christmas serves his little church in enchanting Thornford Regis with a glad and faithful heart, he never expects to find himself skydiving to raise money for it. Nor, safely back on the ground, to see two of the other divers leap from the plane, then tangle in a midair punch-up and begin falling to the earth.

Hanna Donnelly is the station captain's pampered daughter, and Nik Malikov is the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. Together they struggle with the realities of life aboard the galaxy's most boring space station, blissfully unaware that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall with news of the Kerenza invasion.

Imagine you looked up at just the right moment and saw something completely unexpected. What if it was something so marvelous that it transformed time and space forever? The Body in the Clouds tells the story of one such extraordinary moment - a man falling from the sky and surviving - and of the three men who see it, in different ways and at different times, as they stand on the same piece of land.

From the New York Times and internationally best-selling authors of The Illuminae Files comes a new science fiction epic.... It's 2380, and the graduating students of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Tyler Jones has been a star pupil who hopes to recruit the squad of his dreams but ends up with a mixed and volatile crew. And Ty's squad isn't even his biggest problem - that'd be Aurora Jie-Lin O'Malley, the girl he's just rescued from interdimensional space.

In 1924, the English mountaineer Ashley Walsingham dies attempting to summit Mount Everest, leaving his fortune to his former lover, Imogen Soames-Andersson - whom he has not seen in seven years. Ashley's solicitors search in vain for Imogen, but the estate remains unclaimed. Nearly 80 years later, new information leads the same law firm to Tristan Campbell, a young American who could be the estate's rightful heir. If Tristan can prove he is Imogen's descendant, the inheritance will be his.

For Alex Mercer his wife, Millicent, and their precocious 11-year-old son, Max, are everything - his little tribe that makes him feel all's right with the world. But when he and Max find their enigmatic next-door neighbor dead in his apartment, their lives are suddenly and irrevocably changed. The police begin an extremely methodical investigation, and Alex becomes increasingly impatient for them to finish. After all, it was so clearly a suicide.

First, the bad news: an ancient evil - you know, your standard consume-all-life-in-the-galaxy deal - is about to be unleashed. The good news? Squad 312 is standing by to save the day. They've just got to take care of a few small distractions first. Like the clan of gremps who'd like to rearrange their favourite faces. And the cadre of illegit GIA Agents with creepy flowers where their eyes used to be, who'll stop at nothing to get their hands on Auri. Then there's Kal's long-lost sister, who's not exactly happy to see her baby brother and has a Syldrathi army at her back.

There's a lot Jean hasn't said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with accusing glares and anonymous harassment. Now her husband is dead, and there's no reason to stay quiet. People want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them there were secrets. There always are in a marriage. The truth - that's all anyone wants. But the one lesson Jean has learned in the last few years is that she can make people believe anything.

Poppy is a quiet girl, right up until she steals a car and drives it through a shop window. Max is a nice guy, but then he kills his whole family. Just for fun. Amar always seems so happy, so why is he trying to jump to his death from the school roof? No one can figure out why teenagers are behaving so strangely - and dangerously. Stories of impossible car accidents, random attacks, even cold blooded murder make Miss Quill's class sit up and take notice. Kids are going berserk, and some of them are even dying.

A damp, dark cellar holds two cages. And for the women behind the bars, their worst nightmares are about to come true. When Louise Russell goes missing from her home, D.I. Sean Corrigan from South London's Murder Investigation Unit immediately senses foul play. For Corrigan's own dark childhood has given him the ability not only to recognize evil in those who prey upon the innocent, but also to see a crime scene from the eyes of the perpetrator.

Marian Halcolmbe finds and marries her true love, Theo Camlet. But when Theo’s first wife, who everyone believed to be dead, reappears, Marian and her brother-in-law, Walter, must delve into the darkest and most dangerous corners of London to save Theo from accusations of bigamy and murder, as well as the hangman’s noose. Victorian literature's most exciting heroine, Marian Halcombe, stars in Brenda Clough’s thrilling and romantic sequel to Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White.

Tim Diamond - the world’s worst private detective - takes on his most dangerous case yet, and it’s going to be up to his brother to keep him out of trouble. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

As a boy, Nero's royal heritage becomes a threat to his very life, first when the mad emperor Caligula tries to drown him, then when his great aunt attempts to secure her own son's inheritance. Faced with shocking acts of treachery, young Nero is dealt a harsh lesson - it is better to be cruel than dead. While Nero idealises the artistic and athletic principles of Greece, his very survival rests on his ability to navigate the sea of vipers that is Rome. Most lethal of all is his own mother, Agrippina, whose only goal is to control the empire.

Gilbert has led a sedate life in the country, but now, in his advancing years, he feels the urge to experience, if vicariously, the extremes of human feeling - love and passion, in particular - along with something much more sinister. He asks Richard to serve as his proxy and to write to him of his city adventures, and his ward believes he has no option but to accept. It quickly becomes clear that Gilbert desires correspondence of a titillating nature - tales of carousal, seduction, and excess.

Everyone knows Hawkins is not the reporter his father - a famous war correspondent - was. Hawkins’s fondness for drink disqualifies him from the kind of reporting that is his birthright. But with a father like his, the newspaper cannot let him go. Instead, the board has asked him to write a biography of his father - a fluff project designed to keep Hawkins out of trouble. But the assignment leads to unsuspected, shocking revelations.

Everyone says that Caro is bad ...but Jamie can't help himself. He thinks of her night and day and can't believe that she wants to be his girlfriend. Gorgeous, impulsive and unconventional, she is totally different to all the other girls he knows. His sister, Martha, hates her. Jamie doesn't know why, but there's no way he's going to take any notice of her warnings to stay away from Caro. But as Jamie falls deeper and deeper under her spell, he realises there is more to Caro - much more.

Rob has always loved Anna, but she never wanted him. He paints her portrait over and over again. Now one night, she phones him, desperate for help. He rushes to her place, but when he gets there she's dead—sprawled across her living-room floor, a crimson gash in her chest. Now he’s the prime suspect for her murder. Her face on his canvas. Her kiss goodbye on his lips. Her blood on his hands. No one believes him, and does he even trust himself?