Showing results by narrator "Peter Noble" in All Categories

It's 17 September 1944. The Allies launch the largest airborne offensive in history, delivering 36,000 troops by parachute and glider to the Dutch/German border. In nine days' time, half of them will be casualties of war. Among their number is Theo Trickey, a young paratrooper so dreadfully injured he is not expected to survive. Under the care of Medical Officer Captain Daniel Garland, Trickey is shipped to Germany as a prisoner of war.

From the author of The Girl from Lace Island and A Twist of Fate. When five random people simultaneously receive 'the key', they don't realise that their lives are about to change forever. Shrouded in secrecy, the mysterious silver key is delivered to each of them along with a code, a web address and a promise that - if used wisely - it can unlock a door to luxury and privilege beyond their wildest dreams. However, as each of them begins to use the key, they are propelled into a world of hazy moral choices and soon start to question their enigmatic gift.

Why do bookshops matter? How do they filter our ideas and literature? In this inventive and highly entertaining extended essay, Jorge Carrion takes his listeners on a journey around the world via its bookshops. His travels take him to Shakespeare & Co in Paris, Wells in Winchester, Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Librairie des Colonnes in Tangier, the Strand Book Store in New York and provoke encounters with thinkers, poets, dreamers, revolutionaries and readers.

England, 1315. Famine and unrest spread across the country, and when Sir William Bradshaigh joins Adam Banastre’s rebellion against their overlord, the earl of Lancaster, things do not go to plan. Sir William is lucky to escape with his life after a battle at Preston and, as a wanted man, has no choice but to become an outlaw. Meanwhile the lands at Haigh are forfeit to the king and are given to Sir Peter Lymesey for a year and a day, and Lady Mabel Bradshaigh must make a hard choice if she is to protect her children and herself.

Young paratrooper Theo Trickey has had a remarkable war. Boy soldier, commando, intelligence officer - fighting from northern France to the African desert and in the mountains of Italy. He has already done more than should be asked of any man in war. But D-Day is looming and British intelligence have one more misson for Trickey: to negotiate with his extraordinary old acquaintance, General Erwin Rommel. There are rumours that Germany's greatest general wants to save the Fatherland by any means possible....

Dreadfully injured in the Arnhem landings, paratrooper Theo Trickey was never expected to survive. Medical Officer Captain Daniel Garland pulled Trickey's comatose body from a pile of corpses, keeping him alive as they were shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. As Garland discovers, Trickey has had a remarkable war. Boy soldier, commando, paratrooper, intelligence officer - fighting from northern France to the African desert. But that's not all. What was Trickey's connection with Germany's greatest general, the recently deceased Erwin Rommel?

One missing person. Endless buried secrets... When a man vanishes after embezzling funds for a secret rendezvous in Berlin, Ravn is drawn into a chilling investigation by the man's sister, Louise. The mystery deepens as Ravn discovers a pattern of lonely men disappearing under mysterious circumstances, a trail leading back to the dark days of Stasi-Germany. As he gets closer to the truth, Ravn finds himself caught in the crosshairs, stirring up horrors better left buried.

David Sarac is a police officer who has done something unforgiveable. But how can he atone for his crimes when he can't remember the victims? When David Sarac wakes up from a car crash in Stockholm, all he knows is that he is a police officer, he has done something unforgiveable, and he needs to protect his informant, Janus. Natalie Aden is recruited to investigate Sarac. She becomes his confidante - the only person he trusts to help him piece the clues together.

Books v Cigarettes is a funny and irreverent essay comparing the costs of reading to other forms of recreation including smoking. Originating from the experience of an editor friend who was firewatching during the Second World War, who was told by factory workers that they had no interest in literature because they could not afford books, the essay first appeared in Tribune in 1946.

Published a mere two and a half months after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Orwell’s 'You and the Atomic Bomb' is notable as one of the first efforts to divine the social and political implications of a new weapon of previously unimaginable power. Its fame arises from Orwell’s coinage of a new term for the permanent standoff the bomb would foster between two great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union: the 'cold war'.

At the end of the 18th century, a giant strides the Cape Colony frontier. Coenraad de Buys is a legend, a polygamist, a swindler and a big talker; a rebel who fights with Xhosa chieftains against the Boers and British; the fierce patriarch of a sprawling mixed-race family with a veritable tribe of followers; a savage enemy and a loyal ally. Like the wild dogs who are always at his heels, he roams the shifting landscape of southern Africa, hungry and spoiling for a fight. This is his story; the story of his country, and of our blood-soaked history.

Ethan Scofield returns to the place of his birth to bury his father. Hidden in one of the upstairs rooms of the old man’s house, he finds a strange manuscript, a collection of stories that seems to cover the whole of his father’s turbulent life. As his own starts to unravel, Ethan works his way through the manuscript, trying to find answers to the mysteries that have plagued him since he was a child.

There is more than one way for animals to prepare for winter. Some, such as mice, foxes, and moose, simply tolerate the cold. Of course, black bears hibernate, but chipmunks, wood frogs, and garter snakes do, too. And then there are the creatures that migrate, including hummingbirds, blue whales, and even earthworms!

In Battle of Britain: The Pilots and the Planes That Made History, Ed Gorman and Simon Pearson paint a vivid picture of the men and their machines as the battle for air superiority over Britain is played out across the skies of Europe, from western Ireland to the German capital. They tell remarkable stories involving hitherto unknown airmen from across the world who flew aircraft, including some that will be new to many listeners....

Armadillo and Hare are the best of friends. They live together in a little house in the Big Forest. It's normally very quiet in the Big Forest. Hare likes music and excitement. Armadillo like it when it's quiet. Today there's a lot of bashing and crashing going on! Someone is playing the drums. Very loudly. It's Bear! What will our friends make of their new arrival? Return to the Big Forest for even more fun, friendship - and cheese!

In 1922, Paul Beckermann arrives at the Bauhaus art school and is immediately seduced by both the charismatic teaching and his fellow students. Eccentric and alluring, the more time Paul spends with his new friends the closer they become, and the deeper he falls in love with the mesmerising Charlotte. But Paul is not the only one vying for her affections, and soon an insidious rivalry takes root.

From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to analyse the air to war generals floating across enemy lines, Richard Holmes takes to the air in this heart-lifting history of pioneer balloonists. Falling Upwards asks why they risked their lives and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet. The stories range from early ballooning rivals to the long-distance voyages of American entrepreneurs; from the legendary balloon escape from the Prussian siege of Paris to dauntless James Glaisher, who, in the 1860s, flew seven miles above the earth - without oxygen.

Thomas knows there is something he needs to say to his mother before she dies but will he reach her in time and will he have the courage to say what he couldn't say before? His phone is buzzing and his mind is racing and he can't concentrate on the significance of what is happening. Should he try to solve his friend's family crisis? Should he reconsider the separation from his wife? Why does he feel so utterly confused and paralysed?

Two children are abducted on their way home from school and are still missing after several weeks - no one knows whether they are alive or dead. The police are certain that ruthless local gangster Vince Formosa is behind the kidnapping, but have no proof. Forced to resign following an accidental death in police custody, former Detective Inspector Sep Black knows he's been set up. But how can he prove it? Convinced that Formosa has a mole within the police, Black sets out to expose the traitor and clear his name.

The Tsar's Dragons series follows the epic tale of 19th-century industrialist John Hughes, who founded a city on the Russian steppe. For people like Hughes' right-hand man, Glyn Edwards, who has found love in a new country, and Anna Parry, a Welsh orphan who has found fulfilment working in Hughesovka's hospital, the city is a chance to build a new life, but fresh arrivals from their hometown threaten the peace and stability of that new existence. Meanwhile, for ambitious Russians like Alexei Beletsky, the city offers a chance to change their homeland for the better.