Showing results by narrator "Mike Grady" in All Categories

The first book in The County Guides to Murder Series. The County Guides to Murder are a series of detective novels set in 1930s England. The books are an odyssey through England and its history. In each county, the protagonists - Stephen Sefton, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and his employer, the People's Professor, Swanton Morley - solve a murder. The first book is set in Norfolk. The murder is in the vicarage. There are 39 books - and 39 murders - to follow.

In Footprints, David Farrier explores what traces we will leave for the very deep future. From long-lived materials like plastic and nuclear waste, to the 50 million kilometres of roads spanning the planet, in modern times we have created numerous objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time. Our carbon could linger in the atmosphere for 100,000 years, and the remains of our cities will still exist millions of years from now as a layer in the rock.

The fifth collection of gripping short stories from the most acclaimed Science Fiction author of any generation.

Ash spewed into the sky. All eyes were on Vesuvius. Pliny the Elder sailed towards the phenomenon. A teenage Pliny the Younger waited. His uncle did not come back. In a dazzling new literary biography, Daisy Dunn introduces Pliny the Younger, the survivor who became a Roman lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, curator of drains, and representative of the Emperor. He was confidant and friend to the great and good, an unparalleled chronicler of the Vesuvius catastrophe, and eyewitness to the terror of Emperor Domitian.

The galaxy is at war and Jake Cutler is at the heart of it. With his friends and allies captured, it's up to teenage space pirate, Jake, to go into battle and take down the corrupt Interstellar Government once and for all. But in order to win this battle, Jake must find his father and confront secrets from his own past.

A magisterial life of Ted Hughes - identified recently as the only English poet since the First World War with a claim to true greatness and one of Britain's most important writers - to be published on National Poetry Day by prize-winning biographer Jonathan Bate. Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He is one of Britain's most important poets, a poet of claws and cages: Jaguar, Hawk and Crow. Event and animal are turned to myth in his work.

For four characters the 500 quid worry bead in their pocket may be both a blessing and a curse. For elderly Dr Zachary Busner, it's his lifeline to his autistic grandson Ben, whose own connection with technology is, in turn, a vital one. For MI6 agent Jonathan De'Ath, aka 'the Butcher', the phone may reveal his best kept secret of all: that Colonel Gawain Thomas is his lover.

It is no small matter, after all, to create something - to make it so only by setting down the words. We forget the magnitude, sometimes, of that miracle. Mr. Crowe was once the toast of the finest salons. A man of learning and means, he travelled the world, enthralling all who met him. Now Mr. Crowe devotes himself to earthly pleasures. He has retreated to his sprawling country estate, where he lives with Clara, his mysterious young ward, and Eustace, his faithful manservant.

October 1937. Swanton Morley, the People's Professor, sets off to Essex to continue his history of England, The County Guides. Morley's daughter, Miriam, continues to cause chaos, and his assistant, Stephen Sefton, continues to slide deeper into depression and despair. Morley is an honorary guest at the Colchester Oyster Festival. But when the mayor dies suddenly at the civic reception, suspicion falls on his fellow councillors. Is it a case of food poisoning? Or could it be...murder?

Set in 2276, Imperial Earth is the fascinating odyssey of Duncan Makenzie, travelling from Titan, a moon of Saturn, to Earth, as a diplomatic guest of the United States. Duncan’s initial challenge is to prepare for the 500-million-mile trip to Earth. Once there, he is caught up in a sweep of new experiences - including the social whirl of Washington, a strange visit to a carefully preserved ancient city, and a search for the woman he loves.

Before May 2011 the top demographics experts of the United Nations had suggested that world population would peak at 9.1 billion in 2100, and then fall to 8.5 billion people by 2150. In contrast, the 2011 revision suggested that 9.1 billion would be achieved much earlier, maybe by 2050 or before, and by 2100 there would be 10.1 billion of us. What's more, they implied that global human population might still be slightly rising in our total numbers a century from now. So what shall we do?

From the author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin; a heart-warming collection of stories inspired by life in an English village. Casting his mind back to the village where he grew up, Louis de Bernières brings us a forgotten England: where a lady might dress in plus fours, a retired general might give up wearing clothes and a spiritualist might live with her sister and the ghost of her husband. Here we find the atmosphere of those times as it was in the countryside, and the people whose lives are worth celebrating.

In 1992, after being fired from a secret nuclear facility, a KGB agent buried a nuclear suitcase. Sixteen years later he has found a buyer for it. Travelling to the exchange point with the buyer is an undercover policeman. But as their journey begins, it becomes clear that the agent may be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, putting the lives of millions across Europe at risk...

Trees can survive without humans, but we can't live without trees. Even if human-caused climate change devastates our planet, the trees will return – as they do, always and everywhere, even after ice ages, catastrophic fires, destructive storms and deforestation. It would just be nice if we could be around to see them flourish. A love letter to the forest and a passionate argument for protecting nature's boundless diversity – not only for the trees, but also for ourselves, The Power of Trees is forester Peter Wohlleben's follow-up to The Hidden Life of Trees.

A personal narrative blended with beautiful descriptions of gardening and the pleasures of losing yourself in the horticultural, Plot 29 weaves together memoir and memory from the author's childhood to the present day.

On a voyage toward the boundaries of the known universe, nine misfit academics seek out first contact with a shadowy alien race. But another enigma is the Nightflyer itself, a cybernetic wonder with an elusive captain no one has ever seen in the flesh. Soon, however, the crew discovers that their greatest mystery - and most dangerous threat - is an unexpected force aboard the ship wielding a thirst for blood and terror....

Cream teas! School dinners! Satanic surfers! Join our heroes as they follow up The Norfolk Mystery with a bad case of...Death in Devon. Swanton Morley, the People's Professor, sets off for Devon to continue his history of England, The County Guides. Morley's daughter, Miriam, and his assistant, Stephen Sefton, pack up the Lagonda for a trip to the English Riviera. Morley has been invited to give the Founder's Day speech at All Souls School in Rousdon.

A wife compulsively digs in her garden. Two brothers, long estranged, reunite for a terse, heady summer. A woman flies to Krakow to see her adult son. At dusk, a teenage girl pushes her dying mother out into the sea. A small boy sits on his own in the cinema, entranced by the cowboys who light up the screen. With these short stories, Tim Pears illuminates a series of blazing moments in quiet lives - the tragic, strange, funny and beautiful fragments that make and unmake us - and shines a light into the gulfs that lie between us and those who should know us best.

A biography of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Rome's first great poet, a dandy who fell in love with another man's wife and made it known to the world through his timeless verse. Famed for his lyrical, subversive voice, Catullus was Rome's first and foremost poet. Amid the death of the Roman Republic, his life, as told through his poetry, was beset with love, loss, political conflict and, above all, a desire for escape.

Jake Cutler is the 13-year-old ruler of the secret planet Altus, and he’s on the run from the Interstellar Navy. He and his crew are wanted over the disappearance of the ISS Colossus, the most powerful ship in the navy's fleet. But that's not the only reason Jake's being hunted. If he's found, he'll be forced to reveal the location of a fortune of crystals which the Interstellar Navy plans to start an intergalactic war with.... It’s up to Jake to stop them!