Showing results by narrator "Seán Barrett" in All Categories

Oli and Magnus Jonson have spent decades trying to escape from the shadows of their past. Raised by their grandparents in Bjarnarhofn, a remote farmstead in Iceland, both brothers had to endure brutal violence at the hands of their grandfather. When Constable Pall Gylfason is called to investigate a suspected homicide in a remote farmstead, he is surprised to find Detective Magnus Jonson is already there.

The ballad is one of the oldest poetic forms in English and are simply poems or songs that tell a story. Maybe it’s because of childhood associations or that we all enjoy a cracking good story told in rhyme but as this volume demonstrates, the ballad has endless appeal. We include favourites such as Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee as well as classics such as Sir Patrick Spens, the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Wilde and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 2 we bring you the classics 'Sohrab and Rustum' by Matthew Arnold, 'The Prisoner of Chillon' by Lord Byron, and 'Faithless Sally Brown' by Thomas Hood. They are read for you by the renowned actors Sean Barrett and David Shaw-Parker.

When a covert police operation in Northern Ireland goes badly wrong, Grace Macallan is reassigned to the newly formed Lothian & Borders Major Crime Team and forced to rebuild her career and her reputation. But when a brutal attack on a prostitute turns into a series of murders, the Major Crime Team is under pressure. The tabloid headlines are lurid, and the team badly needs a result. With a new life to build in a new city, a new boss as smooth as an 18-year-old malt and a high-profile lawyer as the chief suspect, Grace begins to wonder if telling the truth is always the right thing to do.

In January 2014 I was informed that I had cancer. However, Quicksand is not a book about death and destruction but about what it means to be human. I have undertaken a journey from my childhood to the man I am today, writing about the key events in my life and about the people who have given me new perspectives. About men and women I have never met but wish I had. I write about love and jealousy, about courage and fear. And about what it is like to live with a potentially fatal illness.

It’s November 1956. The world is in turmoil, the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Uprising boiling away in the background. Lennox, though, has more immediate concerns, like getting his personal life and his business back on track. In a bid to stay out of trouble, he’s looking for more legitimate cases. Anything’s better than working for the Three Kings, the crime bosses who run Glasgow’s underworld. When a woman comes into his office and hires him to follow her philandering husband, it seems the perfect case. Straightforward, typical and, most of all, legal. As he begins to dig deeper, Lennox realizes this is no simple case....

Grace Macallan is at breaking point, and a new investigation is testing her to the limit. An undercover officer is missing and a woman is washed up, traumatised and barely alive, on the shores of Berwickshire. As she untangles the woman's story, Grace is drawn into a cold-blooded criminal world headed by Pete Handyside, a notorious gangland boss who will fight hard and dirty to control his empire. But a traitor in his midst is intent upon betrayal, triggering an uncontrollable wave of violence. As she hones in on crucial evidence, Grace knows that one wrong move could end in tragedy.

At three p.m. on a Saturday afternoon in 1911, Oskar Johansson is caught in a blast in an industrial accident. The local newspaper reports him dead, but they are mistaken. Because Oskar Johansson is a born survivor. Though crippled, Oskar finds the strength to go on living and working. The Rock Blaster charts his long professional life - his hopes and dreams, sorrows and joys. His relationship with the woman whose love saved him, with the labour movement that gave him a cause to believe in, and with his children, who do not share his ideals.

This audiobook wryly tracks Peter’s varied career moves, from flogging tickets for one of The Beatles' first major concerts, to getting inadvertently caught up in a New York family turf war while trying to buy a treated wood company. However, at the book’s heart is a serious mission to present a clear and galvanising case for strategic philanthropy, crucially with the founding of educational charity The Sutton Trust.

Who wanted him? What for? Why was Roger Farrar (if that was his name) on the run in Dublin? Was he a traitor and deserted? The innocent target of a kidnap plot? Or a lonely persecuted paranoiac? One thing is certain: he is likely to suffer a fate worse than death if he is caught by the gross villain who specialises in brain-washing.

A tender, impassioned and unforgettable story of a father's love and a daughter's ambition in the wake of devastating tragedy. It all starts with the death of Martijn van Vliet's wife. His grief-stricken young daughter, Lea, cuts herself off from the world, lost in the darkness of grief. Then she hears the unfamiliar sound of a violin playing in the hall of a train station, and she is brought back to life. Transfixed by a busker playing Bach, Lea emerges from her mourning, vowing to learn the instrument.

Scarred by the troubles in Belfast, Billy Nelson returns to his loyalist roots following his discharge from army service. But an outbreak of gang violence forces Billy to move on to Edinburgh, where he muscles in on the capital's drug trade. As the balance of power tips, underworld rivalries between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast spill onto the streets. With a spate of horrific incidents and a trail of victims, the pressure is mounting for Grace Macallan, new superintendent of the Crime & Counter Terrorism Directorate.

A Cologne detective asks Jan Fabel for his help in tracking down the Carnival Cannibal, a terrifying serial killer who kills at the start of the world-famous annual Carnival. Unknown to anyone, Fabel's deputy, Maria Klee, also heads for Cologne to hunt down a different, even more dangerous killer - one with whom she has a score to settle. Taras Buslenko, a Ukrainian special-forces commander, prepares his undercover unit for a "black" operation into Cologne.

A lavish and riveting thriller from one of Norway's foremost crime writers. A frozen body, a murdered biker and a lawyer with nothing left to lose. In the depths of the Norwegian winter, a woman's frozen corpse is discovered in the garden of a notorious ex-lawyer, Vilhelm Thygesen. She has been stabbed to death. A young biker, a member of a gang once represented by the lawyer, is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Thygesen starts receiving anonymous threats....

Nineteen-fifty-three is synonymous in the British memory with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June. But less well known is what happened in 10 Downing Street on 23 June. With Anthony Eden vying for power, the elderly prime minister, Winston Churchill, must maintain the confidence of his government, the press and the public. But after a diplomatic dinner at which he is in typically sparkling form, Churchill's Italian dining companions are rushed out of the building and his doctor called.

It is in Semana Santa - Holy Week - in Southern Spain, and the heat is building up in the city. When a hideous double murder is discovered on the first day, the men of the force - and a visiting female academic, Maria Gutierrez - know they are in for a long week.

London, June 1940. When the body of silent screen star Mabel Morgan is found impaled on railings, the coroner rules her death as suicide, but DI Ted Stratton of CID is not convinced. As he starts asking questions, it becomes clear that Morgan's fatal fall may have been the work of one of Soho's most notorious gangsters. When Stratton's path crosses with MI5 agent Diana Calthrop, they uncover a criminal network and a secretive pro-Fascist organisation.

Two high profile victims - a former left-wing radical turned environmental campaigner and a geneticist researching the possibility of inherited memory - are found murdered within 24 hours of each other. Both men have been scalped. Jan Fabel and his murder team have nothing to go on other than a single red hair left as a signature at each scene - each hair cut from the same head at least 20 years previously. Connections begin to appear: a long disbanded terrorist group; a mummified body; and a killer....

Nineteen stories of the supernatural: The Brazilian Cat by Arthur Conan Doyle Read by Paul Panting, Eveline’s Visitant by Mary E. Braddon Read by Hayward Morse, The Leopard Man’s Story by Jack London Read by Garrick Hagon, The Eyes of the Panther by Ambrose Bierce Read by Garrick Hagon, The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson Read by Sean Barrett, Oshidori by Lafcadio Hearn Read by Liza Ross, Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson Read by Paul Panting.

May, 1942. A group of soldiers uncover a tomb in Libya. Buried in the ancient dust they find a macabre crown of thorns and the devastatingly powerful Spear of Destiny. They've discovered the last resting place of Christ. Sixty years on, Gerald Usherwood and his old army pal Max Chippendale reunite with friends and family. Dark shadows visit them in the night and make them pay for the secrets they stole.