Showing results by narrator "John Telfer" in All Categories

In the early eighteenth century, the British army led by John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, were the leaders of a wide-ranging and very successful alliance. Jack Steel, maverick gentleman, superb soldier, was in the middle of any fight.

You could say it started with vanity. We believed we were special. But the truth is we were simply vulnerable. One of them is lying. One of them is guilty. No one is safe. Months after landing their dream job, five brilliant young minds are sent on a remote retreat. But when one of them disappears, they're forced to question why they were brought here in the first place - and how far they'd go to get what they want. And for the first time in their lives, they realise too much knowledge can be deadly.

Antarctica is the coldest, most isolated place on earth. Luke Searle, maverick glaciologist, has made it his home. But soon his survival skills will be tested to the limit by a ruthless mercenary who must win at any cost. The white continent is under attack. The Australian team is being hunted down. Can Luke stay alive long enough to raise the alarm? Can he avert a global catastrophe? The countdown has begun. T minus five days, two hours and 53 minutes....

It's 1944. The Second World War is going the way of the Allies. Major Bill Evans is an intelligence officer in London working on the crucial Operation Overlord - the Allied invasion of Western Europe. When a monitored German agent goes missing, suspicion falls on the agent's landlady - and on Helen Duncan, a well-known medium the landlady has been consulting. Duncan seems to know more than a Scottish housewife should about certain aspects of the war. Is it her supposed access to the spirit world, or is she something more sinister - a Nazi sleeper agent?

Dr Malcolm Goldblatt has one last chance in the NHS. As the temporary senior registrar of a London hospital, he needs to prove to the medical establishment he can toe the corporate line. But this new hospital is all rather depressingly familiar - from Dr Madic's ferocious aversion to work, Dr Burton's knife-in-the-back ambition, right up to the pathologically insecure yet monstrously vain Professor Small, it is an environment of short tempers, back-biting and office politics - a place in which caring for patients seems secondary to caring for professional reputations.

The greatest writer of them all, brought to glorious life. How well do you know the man you love? How much do you think you know about Shakespeare? What if they were one and the same? He is an ordinary man: unwilling craftsman, ambitious actor, resentful son, almost good-enough husband. And he is also a genius. The story of how a glove-maker from Warwickshire became the greatest writer of them all is vaguely known to most of us, but it would take an exceptional modern novelist to bring him to life.

Jolly Wicked, Actually is a wonderfully entertaining compendium of the 100 words and phrases that have, over the last century, become the cornerstones of modern spoken English. Despite attempts by politicians and writers, despite lessons in citizenship enshrined in the national curriculum, we have famously never been able to define for posterity precisely what Englishness is. Jolly Wicked, Actually takes certain well-loved and crucial expressions such as sorry, nice, common, posh, cuppa and chippy, explores their strange and wonderful origins, and demonstrates with wit and charm how they are emblems essential to all our notions of Englishness.

Thomas Oulton has worked for a London banking house for 30 years and is widely respected by his colleagues, so when he seemingly disappears with a client’s money, everyone is shocked, none more so than his manager, Louis Carrington. When a friend comes to spend the weekend with Louis and his family at their Surrey home, a series of strange phenomena leads the narrator to discover what’s happened to Oulton.

'A Winter Morning' is a dark story of longing and regret. It sees a widower, mourning both his wife and son, recall his son’s final moments and contemplate life and death.

C. N. Barham served as a minister but was also an amateur hypnotist, and in this short story, he explores how clairvoyance might be used to track lost ships at sea by regaling the story of Audacious, a brig which never reached its destination.

In 1774, Josiah Wedgwood, master craftsman possessed with a burning scientific vision, embarks upon the thousand-piece Frog Service for Catherine the Great. Josiah's nephew Tom journeys to America to buy clay from the Cherokee for this exquisite china. Tom is caught up in the American rebellion, and falls for a Cherokee woman who will come to play a crucial role in Josiah's late, great creation: the Portland Vase.

September 1920. A young bride is discovered dead at a country house on her wedding day. Has she fallen victim to the deadly Withington curse, which strikes down any woman who marries into the family? Forensic Pathologist Dr Bernard Spilsbury doesn't believe in such superstitions, and suspects a more earthly reason for Theodora Tupper's death. But as he and his trusty assistant Violet investigate, they soon discover that there are indeed ghosts at Withington Hall. And they, too, have a story to tell.

'When Spirits Steal’ features regular protagonists from Philippa Forest: businessman Peter Carwell and artist Wilton. Wilton recalls a holiday in Somerset where they encountered Mary, a young girl with a nervous disposition whose sleepwalking and vivid dreams lead Carwell to believe she is being possessed by a spirit.

Phantom Death is an imaginative story about a painting that has perplexed crowds across Europe. The painting must be viewed in solitude and is presented in a dark room, draped in black silken rope. When the unnamed narrator views the painting for himself, though, he is interrupted by another, setting off an unexpected chain of events.

When Major Mercer visits his old friend Lionel Deacon and his family in the country, his visit is hampered with heavy rain. As soon as there is a break in the weather, though, he heads into the village for a walk. Across the river, he sees a mother and a child, but when he returns to the Deacons, they assure him that he cannot possibly have seen who he thinks he saw.

London, 1920. There's a killer on the streets of Camden Town, and no woman is safe. When a woman's body is dragged from the Regent's Canal on a freezing January night, eminent forensic pathologist and criminal sleuth Dr Bernard Spilsbury immediately detects foul play. And when a second woman washes up dead under similar circumstances, police realise they are looking for a dangerous predator. Is someone luring lonely spinsters to their deaths through a newspaper Lonely Hearts column? And can they be stopped before they strike again?