Showing results by narrator "Leighton Pugh" in All Categories

Brimming with gluttony, booze and lust, Roger Micheldene is loose in America. Supposedly visiting Budweiser University to make deals for his publishing firm in England, Roger instead sets out to offend all he meets and to seduce every woman he encounters. But his American hosts seem made of sterner stuff. Who will be Roger's undoing? Irving Macher, the young author of an annoyingly brilliant first novel? Father Colgate, the priest who suggests that Roger's soul is in torment? Or will it be his married ex-lover Helene? One thing is certain - Roger is heading for a terrible fall.

The oak is our most beloved and most common tree. It has roots that stretch back to all the old European cultures, but Britain has more ancient oaks than all the other European countries put together. More than half the ancient oaks in the world are in Britain. Many of our ancestors - the Angles, the Saxons, the Norse - came to the British Isles in longships made of oak. For centuries the oak touched every part of a Briton's life - from cradle to coffin. It was oak that made the 'wooden walls' of Nelson's navy, and the navy that allowed Britain to rule the world.

Jungle tells the remarkable story of the world's tropical forests, from the arrival of the first plants millions of years ago to the role of tropical forests in the evolution of the world's atmosphere, the dinosaurs, the first mammals and even our own species and ancestors. Highlighting provocative new evidence garnered from cutting-edge research, Dr Roberts shows, for example, that our view of humans as 'savannah specialists' is wildly wrong, and that the 'Anthropocene' began not with the Industrial Revolution, but potentially as early as 6,000 years ago in the tropics.

Welcome to Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in England. It's 1926. Sarah Grey has a new job - assistant to Harry Price, London's most infamous ghost hunter. Harry has devoted his life to exposing the truth behind England's 'false hauntings', and never has he left a case unsolved. They are invited to Borley Rectory - a house so haunted that objects fly through the air. But when night falls, they're forced to confront an uncomfortable possibility: the ghost of Borley Rectory may be real.

Whatever happened to Oskar and Eli? And what became of the beleaguered families in Handling the Undead? Find out in Let the Old Dreams Die. In other tales from this collection, a woman finds a dead body and decides to keep it for herself, a customs officer has a mysterious gift that enables her to see what others hide, and a man believes he knows how to deceive death. These are the stories of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s rich imagination. They are about love and death, and what we do when the two collide and the monsters emerge.

In a moment of suspense that will affect many thousands of lives, a handful of people will converge on a barren stretch of Yemeni desert. Corrie Rankin is already a legend at MI6 when he is sent to take down a high-value player in the war against Al Qaeda. This is Jericho's War. The weapons it deploys and the brutal aims it pursues are state of the art. The fear it breeds and the raw bravery it demands are as timeless as the desert itself.

The Kalashnikov AK47. A weapon with a unique image. A symbol of freedom fighters and terrorists across the globe. Undercover officer Andy Knight has infiltrated an extremist group intent on bringing the rifle to Britain - something MI5 have been struggling for years to prevent. He befriends Zeinab, the young Muslim student from Yorkshire who is at the centre of the plot. All Zeinab needs to do is travel to the impoverished high-rise estates of Marseilles and bring one rifle home on a test run. Then many more will follow - and with them would come killing on an horrendous scale.

From the two-time winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award, the first full depiction of the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms that followed the Russian Revolution and how they laid the groundwork for the Holocaust.

A gripping thriller full of twists you won't see coming... Seven years ago, psychiatrist Dr Claps assisted police in capturing Giacomo Riondino, a man accused of abducting, torturing and murdering two women. On arrest, tests had revealed that Riondino suffered from a rare and disturbing psychiatric condition and was sectioned. Six years later, Riondino is on the run after escaping from a rehabilitation centre, leaving a trail of bloody murders in his wake.

The search for a missing child reveals she is not the only one... In a little village in Lombardy, it's a cold November morning when Ami steps out of her house to go to school... and never comes back. As soon as her father raises the alarm, a frantic search begins. The investigation is led by Police Commissioner Sensi. His men immediately find a trail to follow, but it soon proves to lead nowhere. Three months later, Police Commissioner Sensi decides to visit Dr Claps, an old friend and a renowned criminologist, who guesses from his first few words the real reason for the visit.

When an aircraft piloted by Ben's former army comrade Nick Chapman crashed off the Cayman Islands killing everyone on board, the official line was that Chapman committed suicide. But things don't add up, and soon unfolding events point to something far more sinister going on. Following the trail of clues from the rugged Welsh borders to the Caribbean, Ben quickly discovers that some kinds of knowledge will get you killed - fast.

You won't remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, before you took the plunge and bought it. But all these years later, he still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.

Ben Messina is a certified maths genius and romance sceptic. He and Trix are constantly quarrelling, not least because of Ben’s decision to end their relationship! Charming Claudio Messina, is as different from his brother as it is possible to be. But his pursuit for perfection may end in a disaster that will see both him and Trix’s best friend, Henrietta, starting from zero once again?

Susan Hill meets Alfred Hitchcock in Alison Littlewood's latest chiller. Asylum doctor Nathaniel is obsessed with the beautiful Mrs Harleston - but is she truly delusional? Or is she hiding secrets that should never be uncovered? Haunted by his father's suicide, Nathaniel walks away from the highly prestigious life of a consultant to become an asylum doctor. He takes up a position at Crakethorne Asylum, but the proprietor is more interested in phrenology and his growing collection of skulls than the patients' minds.

For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned once again to live in a landscape where turtle doves purr and nightingales sing, as they did almost everywhere in his childhood. He wanted to be self-sufficient, to make his own wine and learn the secrets of truffle farming. And so, buying an old honey-coloured limestone house with bright blue shutters, the Lewis-Stempels began their new life as peasant farmers.

The gum that comes from the wonderful bubblegum trees that grow in the Indian jungle has not been delivered for two months. Without this secret ingredient, there'll be no more Gopal's Best Pink Bubblegum, and even more importantly, no more Bubblegummies - the people who live in the trees and harvest the gum. It's not an easy mystery to solve - and soon the friends are involved in a bungee-jumping, tiger-trouncing, woodcutter-walloping, bubblegum-blowing adventure!

Kovalyov wakes one morning to discover that his nose has disappeared! It has mysteriously found its way into a loaf of bread on the barber Yokovlevich's breakfast table. The barber tries to get rid of it, but when Kovalyov steps out onto the St Petersburg streets, he finds his nose, now the size of a human, wearing a gold-embroidered uniform and travelling around in a carriage....

Skylarks are the heralds of our countryside. Their music is the quintessential sound of spring. The spirit of English pastoralism, they inspire poets, composers and farmers alike. History has seen us poeticise and musicise the bird, but also capture and eat them. We watch as they climb the sky, delight in their joyful singing, and yet, we harm them, too. The Soaring Life of the Lark explores the music and poetry; the breathtaking heights and struggle to survive of one of Britain's most iconic songbirds.

1939. As Europe teeters on the brink of war, Alfred Kendall is tasked with carrying out a minor mission for the British Intelligence Service. Travelling to Prague, he takes his troubled young son, Hugh, as cover. When Hitler invades Czechoslovakia, Alfred is given an ultimatum by the Czech Resistance. They will arrange for him to return to England, but only if he leaves his son Hugh behind as collateral. Hugh is soon taken under the wing of a Nazi colonel - Helmuth Scholl.

It has never been more important for business leaders to look to the future. Yet, when we are living through some of the most uncertain times we have ever faced, it can feel daunting to know where to start.