Showing results by narrator "Sam Devereaux" in All Categories

If running extreme distances is as much about mental endurance as physical, how do you keep going when your internal monologue turns against you? That was the simple question Ira Rainey faced when the darkness of depression cast its long shadow over his life. It turned out the answer was far from simple.

The resurgence of the Irish brotherhood. An unidentified woman's body spilling out of a steamer trunk with freezer burn on her arms. The beginning of a new export industry for New Zealand that brought the country out of recession. An untimely earthquake. And a case with too many threads for Mr. Hardy.

In Extreme, Emma Barrett and Paul Martin explore the challenges that people in extreme environments face, including pain, physical hardship, loneliness, and friction between individuals, and the approaches taken to overcome them. Using many fascinating examples and personal accounts, they argue that we can all benefit from the insights gained.

A Study in Scarlet was the career-starting, first Sherlock Holmes story published by Arthur Conan Doyle. Set in 19th-century London, it follows Dr. John Watson, a war veteran, and the enigmatic young Sherlock Holmes, a uniquely gifted detective. Two murders in London have Scotland Yard confounded, and the solution Holmes illuminates transports the listener to America’s Wild West of the 1850s, and beyond.

Bob Shepton is an ordained minister in the Church of England in his 70s, but spends most of his time sailing into the Arctic and making first ascents of inaccessible mountains. No tea parties for this vicar. Opening with the disastrous fire that destroyed his yacht whilst he was ice-bound in Greenland, the book travels back to his childhood growing up on his family's rubber plantation in Malaysia, moving back to England after his father was shot by the Japanese during the war, boarding school, the Royal Marines, and the church.

Dave Pigeon and his best friend Skipper are taking in the sights of London. Whilst pecking around the gates of the Royal Palace, looking for high-brow snacks to feast on, they meet Prince Raju Pigeon, one of the Queen's personal birds from the Royal Lofts. Raju is tired of royal life and longs to see life beyond the palace gates. Dave suggests they swap places for a short while! Raju will get to see how normal pigeon lives and Dave will be pampered in the Royal Lofts. Of course, this all goes to Dave's head and as he laps up the royal treatment becoming more unbearable than ever.

Dave Pigeon and his best friend Skipper are traveling in a box to Pawsville Vets . . . maybe Dave will finally get his broken wing fixed. The pet shop is full of new friends . . . Jet the dog, Cricket Ball Face the hamster . . . and with friendship comes a bit of healthy competition, and what could be better than a race for a racing pigeon? But the only animal who thinks Dave is capable of going up against the infamous Mickey Lightning is Dave himself.

Trapped by floods on their horse farm, Frank and Mette Hardy offer shelter to two other families. But when one of their guests is found with a carving knife from their own kitchen in his neck, they must keep themselves alive until help comes. Who among the small group of people trapped on the farm by floods is the killer? It seems that everyone has a reason to kill the man who died, and when Frank is sickened by poison, he makes a decision that almost kills his pregnant wife.

After Sergeant Frank Hardy watches the invasion of a peaceful Māori village by the Armed Constabulary, with crops destroyed and innocent men imprisoned, he lays down his rifle and swears never to shoot in anger again. Then he learns that a contract killer has come from America to avenge the death of a crooked detective from San Francisco. The killer is targeting the Hardy family. Can Frank save his wife and children without relying on his weapons?

The temperance movement has taken hold in New Zealand, and the country is locked in the depths of a depression as a new land war threatens. When Sergeant Hardy and his new wife find themselves in financial straits, Hardy takes on Dead Shot, a thoroughbred stallion from a town near the front. But the horse has been targeted by a brutal Australian gang trying to take over the racing world. Murder soon follows. When Hardy's wife disappears, apparently kidnapped by the gang, Hardy must track down the mysterious leader of the gang and take him out of commission.

Sergeant Frank Hardy and his new wife Mette attempt to solve two real mysteries from 19th century New Zealand: the whereabouts of Peter Kane who left his home to look for work and did not return and the brutal murder of an accommodation house owner who was splitting palings in the bush. Were they connected? If so, how?

Bloody partisan fights rage in the Balkans. Grenades rain down over the streets. From the rooftops, a heavy machinegun fire strikes down on the hunting battalion. Moaning, the injured soldiers crawl for cover. Molotov cocktails explode with hollow roars, and the burning liquid splash up on humans and materiel. - Partisan, the major stutters terrified and jumps off the vehicle. Porta salutes him with an idiotic smile. - Reporting to the Major that they will probably make it hot for us!

The Legionnaire swings the MG-muzzle. The smoke eats its way into the officers’ stomachs. They drop to the snow-covered ground, coloring it red. Bestial shrieks sound from the woods as a wave of fur clad soldiers storm out. They are near the Finish-Russian frontline. The machine guns snarl till the magazines are emptied. Old Man’s platoon, with Tiny the giant and Porta in the lead, fights a rough battle behind Russian lines.

In the gold mining town of Greymouth, where drunks fell asleep smoking and burned down their houses, the town was constantly inundated with floods, and 57 hotels had sprung up in a year to accommodate the hordes of miners and gold thieves, Inspector William Henry James was tasked with keeping the town safe with a small force of troopers. In 1888, forced into retirement by government cuts, James walks home beside the Whanganui River remembering his association with a series of murders by the notorious Burgess gang: back in 1866 he had forced the gang to leave Greymouth.

Sergeant Frank Hardy and his wife Mette travel to the southernmost point of New Zealand to chase gold thieves and to retrieve a manuscript for Mette to translate. But they have chosen to travel on an ill-fated voyage. Twenty miles from Bluff, on the south coast of the South Island of New Zealand, the SS Tararua hits a reef and sinks, with massive loss of life. This real event was the second-worst maritime disaster in New Zealand's history, in a country heavily reliant on shipping at that time. But the couple has more than a shipwreck to deal with.

The Afterlives of Doctor Gachet tells the story of Paul Ferdinand Gachet, the subject of one of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous portraits: one that shows what the artist called ‘the heartbroken expression of our times’. But what caused such heartbreak? This thrilling historical novel follows Doctor Gachet from asylums to art galleries, from the bloody siege of Paris to life with van Gogh in Auvers and from the bunkers of Nazi Germany to a reclusive billionaire in Tokyo, hoping to uncover the secrets behind that grief-stricken smile.

Richard Knox, freshly returned to active duty after a year out of the field, is ordered to uncover the invisible enemy that's infiltrated the Service in his absence. His quest takes him to Hong Kong, a city on the brink of chaos, where he discovers the lines between friend and foe have never been more blurred. Who is behind the assault on MI5? How long have they been operating in the shadows? And what is their endgame?

In India, Colvin used to be friends with an Englishman named Broughton. They both moved back to England, where Broughton settled down, married and moved into Thurnley Abbey, an ancient manor that was rumoured to be haunted. These rumours were fed by the previous owner, who hated people. Broughton doesn’t fully believe in the ghost, and even if it exists, he seems unworried.

A body plunging off a cliff, a new craze for pedestrianism or race-walking with gambling, a constable willing to make a gruelling 90 miles through the tree-covered ranges without a break, and a testing undercover assignment for Mr. Hardy.

A year has passed since the knights battled monsters on the mist-covered Orkney Isles. The knights have searched high and low for the elusive Queen Morgause, who is bent on destroying King Arthur and all of Camelot. Finally, a tip from the legendary Green Knight sends the heroes searching for the Faerie Realm, an eerie world where nothing is what it seems. Together, the knights will lose an old friend, discover a new ally, face a dangerous dragon, and learn what it means to be a legend.