Showing results by narrator "Jot Davies" in All Categories

'I believe, from what I can hear, that either my daughter or my wife has just been attacked. I don't know the outcome. The house is silent.' Fourteen years ago two teenage lovers were brutally murdered in a patch of remote woodland. The prime suspect confessed to the crimes and was imprisoned. Now, one family is still trying to put the memory of the killings behind them. But at their isolated hilltop house... the nightmare is about to return.

Not far from London, there is a village. This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England's mysterious past and its confounding present. It belongs to Mad Pete, the grizzled artist. To ancient Peggy, gossiping at her gate. To families dead for generations, and to those who have only recently moved here. But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort who has woken from his slumber in the woods. Dead Papa Toothwort, who is listening to them all.

London is special. For centuries, it has been amongst the greatest cities of the world. But a city is nothing without its people. This sparkling new history of London, told through a relay-race of great Londoners shows in one, personality-packed book that the ingenuity, diversity, creativity and enterprise of London are second to none. Boris Johnson believes that in order to understand London one has to know about its past. The heart and spirit of London lies in its people, in the range of its cultures.

A wonderful story written by the children's laureate Michael Morpurgo.One morning, while chopping wood in the forest, Tod notices a small white fawn fleeing the King’s hunt. Swiftly, Tod gathers the fawn into his arms and runs back to his father’s cottage. As the years go by, the fawn grows into a magnificent white stag, and the bonds between boy and deer grow strong. But Tod has yet to face a great test of his devotion to the The King in the Forest.

Do the impossible or lose your family forever.... Edgar Hill, unsympathetic husband and halfhearted father, finds himself in a hopeless situation. Despite all his best efforts, he hasn't managed to keep his family together. In fact they are further from him than ever - 550 miles, to be precise. And in a world near annihilated by a terrible disaster, leaving the UK harsh and brutal, uncrossable by car or bike, his journey to find his loved ones will be fraught with challenges.

When 18-year-old Michael visits the Hanbury's remote family home, he is captivated by their bohemian lifestyle. Years later, when he marries the strong-willed, beautiful Rebecca, he is secretly hoping to create his own version of that free-thinking family, but after the birth of their first child, their marriage begins to flounder. The chance to escape once more to his friend's country house comes as a welcome relief, until he discovers a family changed and his own romantic notions of country life begin to disintegrate....

When 14-year-old Jacob misses his connecting flight in Chicago, he tries to complete his journey to LA by Greyhound bus. But on board he meets American teenager Jennifer, who is carrying a mysterious package and being chased by an enigmatic pursuer known only as ‘the Cowboy’...And she needs a partner in crime. The unlikely pair soon find themselves on the road-trip of a lifetime – a funny, filmic adventure.

Meet Jack: Dadness. Women have a sixth sense for it. But, lately, as I've looked around, all I've seen is temptation. From random women in the pub to my foxy new boss...they've left me doubting whether I've really been put out to pasture at all.... Meet Amy: Motherhood, I've discovered, is the great leveller. Having kids automatically makes me the same as all the other mums in 'The Coven' up the park. And being 'the same' makes me want to do something terribly rash - like rediscover the impulsive person I used to be.

Billionaire train enthusiast August Reza has invited Harrison Beck and Uncle Nat on the maiden voyage of the Solar Express–the winning design of his Reza’s Rocket competition. But during the journey, they discover the train has been sabotaged, hurtling passengers into a heart-stopping, action-packed, thrill ride across the Australian Outback. Can Hal find the saboteur and stop the runaway train before disaster strikes?

Harrison Beck and his Uncle Nat are on the journey of a lifetime aboard the Safari Star - a luxurious steam train that will take them from Pretoria to the stunning Victoria Falls. Close encounters with the amazing animals and landscape of Southern Africa are adventure enough, but things get mysterious when a passenger is found dead inside a locked compartment. Is it just a terrible accident, or is something more suspicious afoot? It’s up to train detective Hal and his new friend Winston to find out.

This Christmas, a little dog is in for a big adventure.... Meet Claude. He's a loveable, big-eared, permanently hungry French bulldog who loves his humans - the McCawley family of number 11 Maple Drive, to be precise. When Daisy and Oliver McCawley start using new words like, ferry, chateau and France, Claude realises they won't be spending this Christmas at home. Only, when he finds himself on the street as the family car pulls away, Claude realises he is alone.

Kenneth Clark was the grandest figure in the arts in Britain in the 20th century. Museum director, patron, pioneer of television, cultural panjandrum, he effortlessly dominated the art world for over half a century. Clark belonged to that stratum of society that used to be called "the top people" and was befriended by both the Queen Mother and Winston Churchill. His closest friendships, however, were amongst writers and artists, men such as John Betjeman, Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore and John Piper.

In a secret supernatural battle that's been raging for over a century, the stakes have just been raised - and they're not wooden anymore. When Jamie Carpenter's mother is kidnapped by strange creatures, he finds himself dragged into Department 19, the government's most secret agency.

Two teenagers form an unlikely friendship in pre-War Philadelphia. Al is obsessed with lifting weights, looking good and chasing girls. Birdy is obsessed with flight.Birdy’s passion becomes all-encompassing. Birdy wants to fly. A few years later these young men find themselves emotionally and physically scarred by Word War Two. Al is called to an army psychiatric hospital to help the doctors there treat his friend, who he finds squatting on the floor of his cell and acting like a bird.

There's a village an hour from London. It's no different from many others today: one pub, one church, red-brick cottages, some public housing, and a few larger houses dotted about. Voices rise up, as they might anywhere, speaking of loving and needing and working and dying and walking the dogs. This village belongs to the people who live in it, to the land, and to the land's past.

It is a well-known fact that fairies are born from a baby's first laugh. What is not as well documented is how monsters come into being. This is the story of a creature who is both strange and unique. When he hatches down in the vast underground lair where monsters dwell, he looks just like a human boy - much to the disgust of everyone watching. Even the grumpy gargoyles who adopt him and nickname him ‘Imp’ only want him to steal chocolate for them from the nearby shops. He’s a child with feet in both worlds, and he doesn’t know where he fits.

The thrilling debut from comedy writer and stand-up star Will Smith - a novel about loneliness, about not belonging, and about the corroding effects of keeping secrets. It's Jersey in 1987, and the storm clouds are gathering over Colin Bygate. Sitting on a headland, stewing over the discovery that his wife used to date Rob de la Haye, a brash hotelier who is everything that Colin is not, he spots a pupil near the edge of the cliff.

For fans of Gillian Flynn, Laura Lippman, and Paula Hawkins comes Holly Seddon's arresting fiction debut: an engrossing thriller full of page-turning twists and turns, richly imagined characters, and gripping psychological suspense. Some secrets never die. They're just locked away. Alex Dale is lost. Destructive habits have cost her a marriage and a journalism career. All she has left is her routine: a morning run until her body aches, then a few hours of forgettable work before the past grabs hold and drags her down.

A mysterious letter from an old friend asks Hal and Uncle Nat to help investigate a spooky supernatural mystery. Legend has it the Kratzensteins, a family of rich and powerful railway tycoons, are cursed, but there is no such thing as a curse, is there? Hal and Nat take the night train to Berlin and go undercover. From a creaking old house at the foot of the Harz mountains, they take the Kratzenstein family's funeral train to the peak of the Brocken Mountain. Can Hal uncover the secrets of the Brocken railway and the family curse before disaster strikes?

Harrison Beck and Uncle Nat climb aboard the night train to Narvik, travelling to the Arctic Circle to see the northern lights for Christmas. But as their train leaves Stockholm, Hal and Uncle Nat realize they’re being followed by a sinister figure, and Hal’s powers of observation are tested when Uncle Nat’s past comes back to haunt him. Journeying into the never ending night of the arctic winter, our railway detectives must outsmart an assassin in their most chilling adventure yet, in which nothing is as it seems.