Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

The world at the beginning of the 20th century seemed, for most of its inhabitants, stable and relatively benign. Globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War.

Lennox liked Quiet Tommy Quaid. Perhaps it's odd for a private detective to like - even admire - a career thief, but Quiet Tommy Quaid was the sort of man everyone liked. Amiable, easygoing, well dressed, with no vices to speak of - well, aside from his excessive drinking and womanising, but then, in 1950s Glasgow those were practically virtues. And besides, throughout his many exploits outside the law, Quiet Tommy never once used violence.

Barnaby Rudge, one of only two historical novels by Dickens, deals with the "Popery" riots of 1780. It is read here by one of Britain's most popular readers, Sean Barrett, whose reading of Bleak House was widely praised. This recording is part of the extended Dickens collection offered in both abridged and unabridged form by Naxos AudioBooks.

Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes or filled with bean bags and children's drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied and stuffed full of incident. In this, the first major history of its kind, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen explore the contested and dramatic history of the library

Vlado Petric, former detective in war-torn Sarajevo, has left his beloved homeland to join his wife and daughter in Germany, where he scratches a meagre living in the building sites of the new Berlin.When Petric returns to work one evening, he finds an enigmatic American investigator waiting for him in the small apartment he and his wife share. The investigator (Pine) works for the International War Crimes Tribunal, and he tells Petric that they want him to return to Croatia

When Ates Bocuk, son of a feared Istanbul gang leader, is arrested for the brutal murder of his Roma lover, feelings of vengeance are ignited among rival Turkish gangs and the Roma community. Forensic evidence is stacked against him, but Ates refuses to speak, and Inspector Suleyman suspects that there is more to the case than meets the eye. Then Cetin Ikmen discovers that Ates is psychotic and believes that everyone in his life is an imposter, which suggests that Ates might in fact be a victim of a far more sinister game.

Glasgow, 1953, is a hard city at a hard time. The war may be over but the battle for the streets is just beginning, and shady investigator Lennox is the man in the middle. The McGahern twins were on the way up until Tam, the brains of the outfit, becomes the victim of a vicious contract killing. Tam's brother Frankie turns to Lennox to find out who killed his twin. Lennox refuses. Later that night, Frankie turns up dead, and Lennox finds himself in the frame for murder.

Once a successful surgeon, Frederick Welin now lives in self-imposed exile on an island in the Swedish archipelago. Nearly twelve years have passed since he was disgraced for attempting to cover up a tragic mishap on the operating table. One morning in the depths of winter, he sees a hunched figure struggling towards him across the ice. His past is about to catch up with him.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Shadow Killer by Arnaldur Indridason, read by Sean Barrett. Reykjavík, August 1941. When a travelling salesman is found murdered in a basement flat, killed by a bullet from a Colt .45, the police initially suspect a member of the Allied occupation force. The British are in the process of handing over to the Americans, and the streets are crawling with servicemen whose relations with the local women are a major cause for concern.

May 1940. Britain is at war, European democracies are falling rapidly and the public are unaware of this dangerous new world. Just days after his unlikely succession to Prime Minister, Winston Churchill faces this horror - and a sceptical King and a party plotting against him. He wonders how he can capture the public mood and does so magnificently before leading the country to victory.

The arrest of a Finnish contract killer and the subsequent murder of an Edinburgh reporter seem unconnected—until a ghost from the past appears in the investigation. The horrors of past misdeeds in Northern Ireland, contract killers, military secrets and organised-crime feuds collide on the streets of Edinburgh and the Irish Republic, drawing Detective Grace Macallan into brutal score-settling on Dublin's streets and a life-or-death race against time.

After a tip-off, a man's body is exhumed from a shallow grave in Edinburgh. Murder surely, yet he died from natural causes, so, case closed? Indeed was there ever a case? But Chief Constable Skinner and his people keep on digging. Who was the man, why was he buried so reverentially, and by whom? Meanwhile corruption is discovered within the force, and an investigation launched.

The first ever collection of poems by the acclaimed author of the Aubrey/Maturin series of Napoleonic naval adventures. As we have stood with Jack and Stephen on the deck of the Surprise and other ships, listeners around the world have been transported to a place and time at once familiar and exotic, routine and dramatic. At all times, Patrick O’Brian’s deep knowledge of the period and profound empathy with the landscape of the sea has ensured there is always a firm hand on the tiller.

October 1914: the destroyer Svea emerged from the Stockholm archipelago bearing south-south-east. On board was Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, a naval engineer charged with making depth soundings to find a navigable channel for the Swedish navy. As a child Tobiasson-Svartman was fascinated by measurement; nothing is as magical as exact knowledge.

Here is the extraordinary true story of a British soldier who marched willingly into Buna-Monowitz, the concentration camp known as Auschwitz III. In the summer of 1944, Denis Avey was being held in a POW labour camp, E715, near Auschwitz III. He had heard of the brutality meted out to the prisoners there and he was determined to witness what he could. He hatched a plan to swap places with a Jewish inmate and smuggled himself into his sector of the camp.

Jack Solomon is a messenger of death. Working in the fractured remains of Yugoslavia, his task is to identify the victims of ethnic cleansing and to tell families that their loved ones are gone. Years of working in the killing fields have desensitised the former London policeman to the horrors of war, but when a truck containing 26 bodies is pulled from a lake, Solomon is unable to walk away from the case. He sets out to find the only survivor of the massacre, a young girl on the run from the killers. From the brothels of Sarajevo to the high-stakes world of Internet prostitution, Solomon discovers that the killers are closer to home than he thinks....

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.

A collection of folk stories about cats from around the world. There are many folk tales involving cats from every corner of the world. This collection offers 8 of them, some gentle, some amusing, some very dark.

After the tragic death of his lover, Helen Flemming, Eisenmenger throws himself back into his work as a forensic pathologist. The newly promoted Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton brings him in to help on the grisly discovery of a severed head in a local farmyard. When a headless – but female – body then turns up in a dustbin, they must acknowledge that this shows all the signs of the work of a serial killer.

This is the incredible story of 89-year-old Chelsea Pensioner Sergeant Major Colin Thackery who, in 2019, made history by becoming the oldest person to win Britain's Got Talent. The show gave a glimpse into Colin's history, but the truth of his unique and eventful life is far more gripping and surprising than viewers could have imagined.