Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

One of the wildest and most beautiful regions in Italy, known for its rugged coastline and mountains, Calabria is also home to the deadly ‘Ndrangheta'. An organised Mafia crime operation more feared in Italy than the Cosa Nostra or the Camorra, it is shrouded in mystery.Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara of Italy’s elite Anti-Mafia Investigation Department is tasked with investigating the deaths of several Calabria citizens – some in New York, some in the small, isolated villages that dot the Calabrian countryside.

What does a man do when he discovers a process like Omega Minus? He wishes he hadn't. Scientist James Hallet has the intelligence forces of all the world's major powers on his back, and they're not too particular about how they get their information. They wouldn't, for instance, baulk at the kidnap and torture of Hallet's beautiful blonde mistress. Not if it would give them Omega Minus.

Otto Laird is outraged . . .The peaceful, if slightly bemused, existence of this elderly, retired architect is rudely interrupted when he learns that his most significant and revolutionary building, Marlowe House, a 1960s tower block council estate in south London is to be demolished. Determined to do everything in his power to save the building, Otto returns to London for the first time in 25 years.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 3 we bring you the classics 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rosseti; 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 'The Raven' by Edgar Allan Poe; 'Morte D'Arthur' by Alfred Lord Tennyson; and from 'Horatius' by Thomas Babington Maculay.

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.

A collection of stunning short stories from the most acclaimed Science Fiction author of any generation. Arthur C Clarke is without question the world's best-known and most celebrated science fiction writer. His career, spanning more than sixty years, is one of unequalled success.

FreeFlow is a group of activists dedicated to freedom of information. They have evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and are preparing to unleash it. On the glacial rim of an erupting volcano, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later, one of them is murdered. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects but he’s getting little help - for a group dedicated to transparency, they’re a secretive bunch. But they are not the only ones with secrets. Asta, a newly qualified priest, has contacted FreeFlow with damning information about the former Bishop of Iceland.

In London, a newly-arrived Kurdish immigrant is brutally murdered by Turkish people-traffickers. The dead man’s wife, Irena, flees to East Anglia where she disappears into the murky world of illegal foreign workers. Reporter Joe Verdi goes undercover as a migrant worker to try to find Irena. But he’s not the only one looking for her – the Turks are also on her trail. Meanwhile, Joe’s colleague, Elli Mason, is following up the story of a typhoid outbreak. Three people have contracted the disease and the only link between them is a supermarket chain.

The first woman had her lungs ripped out. When the same gruesome ritualistic method was used again, it was clear that the same killer was responsible. But there is no precise evidence to link the two cases, except for a tantalising email. Kriminalhauptkommissar Jan Fabel (half-Scottish, half-German) is a man of conscience and imagination. In his desperate attempt to solve the case before more victims are discovered, he gradually uncovers layer upon layer of intrigue.

The ballad is one of the oldest poetic forms in English and are simply poems or songs that tell a story. Maybe it’s because of childhood associations or that we all enjoy a cracking good story told in rhyme but as this volume demonstrates, the ballad has endless appeal. We include favourites such as Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee as well as classics such as Sir Patrick Spens, the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Wilde and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats.

Iceland 1934: Two boys playing see something they shouldn't have. The consequences will haunt them and their families for generations. Iceland 2009: the credit crunch bites. The currency has been devalued, savings annihilated, lives ruined. Grassroots revolution is in the air, as is the feeling that someone ought to pay.... And in a country where everyone knows everybody, it isn't hard to draw up a list of exactly who is responsible. And then, one by one, to cross them off.

The First World War is often viewed as a war fought by armies of millions living and fighting in trenches, aided by brutal machinery that cost the lives of many. But behind all of this a scientific war was also being fought between engineers, chemists, physicists, doctors, mathematicians and intelligence gatherers. This hidden war was to make a positive and lasting contribution to how war was conducted on land, at sea, and in the air, and most importantly life at home.

Tea-Bag, a young African girl, has fled a refugee camp in Spain for the promise of a new life in Sweden. Tania has made a long and dangerous journey to escape the horrors of human trafficking. Leyla has come with her family from Iran. All of them are facing different challenges in their new home. Meanwhile, celebrated poet Jesper Humlin is looking for inspiration. Harried by his mother and girlfriend, misunderstood by his publisher and tormented by his stockbroker, Jesper needs a new perspective on life.

July, 1977. Lance’s eccentric father, the retired Dr Benjamin Elliott, has been running a Horticultural Club at local Bensham Manor School, a good deed he decided to take on to impress Ada Clarke, the head dinner lady at the school. One summer’s evening, Lance and his girlfriend Max turn up for the school’s parents evening to show their support of the elder Dr Elliott’s efforts.

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.

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

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.

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.

A bomb explodes in the centre of Florence, hitting the car of Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara of the elite Squadra Mobile. The attack rocks the ancient city to its foundations. Ferrara was clearly the target - and he did, after all, just controversially imprison notorious Mafia boss Salvatore Laprua. A week later, another bomb explodes - bringing tragedy for Ferrara and a determination to find the culprit. But that same morning, Salvatore Laprua is found dead in his prison cell.