Showing results by narrator "Gareth Armstrong" in All Categories

The discovery of Bradley Pines body off a busy road signals the end of his bid to win a local election. But why would the killer risk dumping the body so publicly? With the election looming, and Charlie Woodends old enemy Marlowe replacing Pine as candidate, Woodend is required to produce a result.

Dark Echo is an unlucky boat. Despite this knowledge, Martin Stannard falls under her spell and prepares to sail her across the Atlantic with his father. But his lover, Suzanne, is uneasy and begins exploring the yacht's past. What she finds is terrifying. Dark Echo isn't just unlucky, it's evil. It was built for Harry Spalding, a soldier and sorcerer who committed suicide yet still casts his malevolent spell nearly a century after his death.

Terry Walton has kept an allotment for over 50 years - man and boy - in the Rhondda valley in South Wales. He started when he was 4, helping on his dad's plot on the side of the mountain, when he was sent to cut bracken and collect sheep manure by the bucketful to feed the rows of vegetables. By the time he was 11 he had his own plot - the youngest ever to do so - and while still in his teens established an allotment empire to grow the vegetables and flowers he sold to local customers.

It is August 1616. The whaling ship Heartsease has ventured high into the Arctic, and the crew must return home before the ice closes in. All, that is, save Thomas Cave. He makes a wager that he will remain there alone until next season, though no man has yet been known to have survived a winter this far north. So he is left with provisions, shelter, and a journal - should he not live to tell the tale.

When Francis Armstrong moves into his fussily designed Victorian house in the heart of the Vale of York, his August stretches before him in a haze of leisurely house refurbishment. His decision to move a pile of rubble, however, brings DCI Hennessey and Sergeant Yellich springing to the scene at the double. Louise D'Acre helps them with the examination of the skeleton that has been uncovered, and everything seems to point to the murder of a woman who was reported missing 19 years previously.

In 10 powerful stories, Victoria Hislop takes us through the streets of Athens and into the tree-lined squares of Greek villages. As she evokes their distinct atmosphere, she brings vividly to life a host of unforgettable characters, from a lonesome priest to battling brothers, and from an unwanted stranger to a groom troubled by music and memory. These bittersweet tales of love and loyalty, of separation and reconciliation, captured in Victoria Hislop's unique voice, will stay with you long after you reach the end. Three of these stories appeared previously published in Victoria Hislop's collection, One Cretan Evening.

It is night in the South Seas near Tahiti, and the ship HMS Bounty has begun the long voyage home to England. But the sailors on the ship are angry men, and they have swords and guns. They pull the captain out of bed and take him up on deck. He tries to run, but a sailor holds a knife to his neck. "Do that again, Captain Bligh, and you’re a dead man!" he says.

Roger Dykmans, a university student, is living with his brother Hans, an international emissary who's secretly working against the Nazis. As time goes by, Roger finds himself increasingly drawn to Magda, Hans' Jewish wife. But their secret world is turned upside down when Magda and her young daughter, Anna, are arrested by the Nazis. The Gestapo make a deal with Roger: if he hands over information about Hans' operations, they'll set Magda and Anna free. Suddenly, Roger is faced with an impossible decision....

DS Charlie Woodend has a murder to solve. Trouble is, nobody seems to want him to solve it. Not Eddie, a Liverpudlian thug sent to threaten him; not DCI Bentley; not Deputy Commissioner Naylor, whose word is law in Scotland Yard; not even the dead girl's mother herself. But Woodend cares. He will find the murderer, he promises himself, even if that means putting his career and perhaps even his own life on the line.

A brilliant new serial killer thriller from a hugely talented British author to rival the best from Mark Billingham, Peter James and Peter Robinson. When four Derby College students are reported missing, few in Derby CID, least of all DI Damen Brook, pay much attention. But then a film on the internet is discovered purporting to show the students committing mass suicide. If it's real, why did they kill themselves when they had such bright futures ahead of them?

A hugely entertaining career autobiography from a true legend of Welsh rugby, and a genuine cult figure. In rugby, there are the Flash Harrys and the Glory Boys: the fly-halves who run, kick and dazzle; the scrum-halves who nip and dart; the wingers who step and glide. These are the players who get the crowd on their feet, who set stadiums abuzz. But they only get to do these things because other, less glorified figures do all of the donkey work. Adam Jones is one such figure.

One in eight UK males will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, more than 130 new cases are discovered each day and, on average, one man dies from the disease every 45 minutes. Despite these statistics, and the fact that there are getting on for half a million men living with, or in remission from, prostate cancer in the UK, the condition is rarely discussed publicly and most men ignore the warning signs. Graham Sharpe wants to help change that.

One of our finest narrative historians, and journalist for the Sunday Times and Literary Review, Lawrence James, has written a genuinely new biography of Winston Churchill, set within a fully detailed historical context, but solely focusing on his relationship with the British Empire. As a young army officer in the late 19th century, Churchill's first experience of the Empire was serving in conflicts in India, South Africa and the Sudan.

Prepare to discover a fascinating country; a land buffeted for centuries by power-struggles and revolts, lorded over by Turks, carved up by its neighbours, and subsumed into the Soviet Union. Yet also a land of proud and resilient people, of crawfish hunters and bagpipe makers, shepherds and gypsies, in which daily life goes on.

Welsh surgeon Daffyd Woodruff's life is blown apart by the arrival of unexpected news. In the remote town of Moose Creek where he lived and worked fifteen years before, he's told he fathered twins. Dafydd knows it cannot be true - but DNA tests don't lie. From nowhere the past has a stranglehold on Daffyd, threatening to unravel everything he's built up - his marriage, his career.

Nostradamus wrote 1000 prophecies. Only 942 have survived. What happened to the missing verses? This mystery drives two very different men. Adam Sabir is a writer desperate to revive his flagging career; Achor Bale is a member of an ancient secret society dedicated to the "Three Antichrists" foretold by Nostrodamus: Napoleon, Adolf Hitler - and "one still to come". As Sabir is drawn into the hidden world of France's gypsies, Bale is on his trail. A terrifying hunt begins...

He may have prevented the world from falling into ruin, but Alex knows his work is not done yet. There’s still a controlling intelligence out there, pulling together the strands of a new and even more destructive conspiracy. Battling with personal tragedy on one hand, and the intrusion of new-found celebrity on the other, Alex must re-emerge from self-imposed exile to reunite with Mariam–the woman he loves–and Amaury–his truest friend–to face the fight of their lives.

A young woman leaves her home, summoned to the emperor's court and a husband she barely knows. On the other side of the world, a famous scholar is sent to find and collect the mysterious beasts of legend in the unknown lands of the East. He takes with him an interpreter, Venn, famous for his special gift with language.

This is a story about a woman. And the truck driver who mistook her for a prostitute. The old man she robbed and the hunters who smuggled her across the border. The woman whose name she stole, the wife who turned a blind eye. This is the story of a mother searching for her child. This is a story you cannot stop thinking about.

August, 1098. After countless battles and sieges, the surviving soldiers of the First Crusade are at last within reach of their ultimate goal: Jerusalem. But rivalries fester, and new enemies are amassing against them in the Holy Land. Demetrios Askiates, the Emperor's spy, has had enough of the Crusade's violence and hypocrisy. But when a routine diplomatic mission leads to a deadly ambush, he realises he has been snared in the vast power struggles which underlie the Crusade.