Showing results by narrator "John Telfer" in All Categories

Detective Peter Porteous is called to Cranwell Lake where the body of a teenager has been discovered. After trawling through the missing persons files, he comes to the conclusion that the corpse is Michael Grey, an enigmatic and secretive young man who was reported missing by his foster parents in 1972. The news report that a body has been found leaves prison officer Hannah Morton in shock. Michael had been her boyfriend, and she had been with him the night he disappeared. And now the discovery is bringing back dreaded and long buried memories from her past.

Walk a day in a Roman's sandals. What was it like to live in one of the ancient world's most powerful and bustling cities - one that was eight times more densely populated than modern-day New York? In this entertaining and enlightening guide, best-selling historian Philip Matyszak introduces us to the people who lived and worked there. In each hour of the day, we meet a new character - from emperor to slave girl, gladiator to astrologer, medicine woman to water-clock maker - and discover the fascinating details of their daily lives.

A fascinating new portrait of Medieval Britain that brings together the everyday and the extraordinary. Using wide-ranging evidence, Martyn Whittock shines a light on Britain in the Middle Ages, bringing it vividly to life. Thus we glimpse 11th century rural society through a conversation between a ploughman and his master. The life of Dick Whittington illuminates the rise of the urban elite.

One fateful summer evening, businessman Robin Timariot meets a strikingly beautiful woman while out walking. They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable. A few days later, the newspapers are full of the rape and murder of Lady Louise Paxton - and to his horror, Timariot realises that this was the woman he met just hours before her death. A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a series of bizarre events begin to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems.

London, 1921. The Great War has recently ended and tensions in England are high. Now, prominent Cabinet minister Lord Amersham has been shot dead outside his Regent's Park home. The signs point to a professional hit. Charged with solving one of the most sensitive and high-profile cases Scotland Yard has ever faced, DCI Paul Stark is under pressure to get the job done quickly.

There's only one book that ever truly got inside the Beatles, and this is it. During 1967 and 1968, Hunter Davies spent 18 months with the Beatles at the peak of their powers as they defined a generation and rewrote popular music. As their only-ever authorised biographer, he had unparalleled access - not just to John, Paul, George, and Ringo, but to friends, family, and colleagues. He collected a wealth of intimate and revealing material that makes this the classic Beatles book - the one all other biographers look to.

Geoffrey Staddon turned his back on the best things in his life. He turned his back on the beautiful house Clouds Frome, his finest achievement as an architect. He turned his back on the woman he loved, Consuela Caswell, and who loved him in return. Twelve years later, amidst the tatters of his career and marriage, he is forced to contemplate the remorse and shame of his betrayal. But when he reads that Consuela has been charged with murder, he knows instinctively that she cannot be guilty....

Ashore on leave, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd learns of a dismal harvest and general hardship among the population. In Germany, Napoleon Bonaparte is celebrating victories that once again make his name feared throughout Europe. An armistice is signed and while the Allies lick their wounds Bonaparte sets to preparing for a grand advance. And, in a fragile peace, and saddled with huge war debts, the government has no choice but to place HMS Thunderer, along with many other Royal Navy ships, in reserve, until the Navy can decide what to do with their great fleets.

In the peaceful towns and villages of England, Cleaner Bob is washing windows, and people are dying in sudden and unexpected circumstances. When it becomes clear that the victims have a common history as Russian defectors, foul play is suspected and a hunt begins to locate their assailant, the lethal poison that killed them and the mole who is leaking their locations. In a race against time, only one man has the connections and experience to crack the case before more people perish.

In Elizabethan England, the Queen’s chief spymaster, Francis Walsingham, and his team of agents must maintain the highest levels of vigilance to ward off Catholic plots and the ever-present threat of invasion. One agent in particular - a young Cambridge undergraduate of humble origins, controversial beliefs and literary genius who goes by the name of Kit Marlowe - is relentless in his pursuit of intelligence for the Crown. When he is killed outside an inn in Deptford, his mysterious death becomes the subject of rumours and suspicion that are never satisfactorily resolved.

211 BCE. The Roman invasion from the western seas is imminent, and from the south the Spartans are burning and pillaging their way north. Battle-hardened Philopoemen believes the Achean League is facing annihilation if it does not arm. But without a formal army or cavalry, they don't stand a chance. Convincing his friend and healer Alexanor that the threat is real, together they begin to build a massive cavalry guard from the ground up - one that will fight on all fronts. It is the last roll of the dice for the Achean League.

Tristram Abberley was an acclaimed English poet of the 1930s whose legendary reputation was sealed when he died fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Nearly 50 years later, his sister Beatrix is brutally murdered in her seaside cottage. Her family are stunned by the crime - especially Beatrix's niece, Charlotte Ladram. But Charlotte has little time to mourn her aunt as 50 years of secrets begin to unravel.

The Royal Navy to which Admiral Lord Nelson sacrificed his life depended on thousands of sailors and marines to man the great wind-powered wooden warships. Drawn from all over Britain and beyond, often unwillingly, these ordinary men made the navy invincible through skill, courage and sheer determination.

This compelling collection brings Baker Street's celebrated resident and his cohort, Dr Watson, out of retirement to investigate seven of the most notorious mysteries in the annals of true crime, from the murder of a London prostitute to the 1907 theft of the Irish Crown Jewels.

Hampton Court has been an arc of monarchy, revolution, religious fundamentalism, sexual scandals, and military coups. In this rich and vivid history, Gareth Russell moves through the rooms and the decades, each time focusing on a different person who called Hampton Court their home. Fascinating and engaging, The Palace is as atmospheric as it is gossipy and through the many sovereigns and servants that lived and worked in its halls reveals the personal tragedy and political importance of this extraordinary place.

The first volume of Parade's End introduces the central characters: Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant, unconventional mathematician; his dazzling but unfaithful wife Sylvia; and the young Suffragette Valentine Wannop. It starts with the cataclysmic meeting of Tietjens and Valentine: a weekend whose violence prefigures the coming war.

Ancient Egypt wasn't all pyramids, sphinxes and gold sarcophagi. For your average Egyptian, life was tough, and work was hard, conducted under the burning gaze of the sun god Ra. During the course of a day in the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor), Egypt's religious capital, we meet 24 Egyptians from all strata of society - from the king to the bread-maker, the priestess to the fisherman, the soldier to the midwife - and get to know what the real Egypt was like by spending an hour in their company.

It is November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night, 1930. Bonfires are blazing, rockets burst. In a country lane, revellers discover a car that has been set on fire. At first they assume that this is the work of vandals taking the Guy Fawkes spirit a little too far, then they notice, sitting at the wheel, a body, charred beyond recognition. The initial assumption is that the owner of the car, Mr William Hodge, a successful travelling vacuum cleaner salesman has taken his own life by flooding the car with petrol and lighting a match.

Six new tales of crime presented by Dr Watson from the documents of Sherlock Holmes, which follow on from The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes. What were Holmes's views on Dr Crippen? What happened when Oscar Wilde visited Baker Street to seek advice? How did Holmes reveal a loving husband to be one of the most dangerous psychopaths of modern times? And just what horrors await Holmes in the darkened slums of Waterloo Road?

From the vaults of the British Library comes a new anthology celebrating the best works of forgotten, never-since-republished supernatural fiction from the early 20th century. Waiting within are malevolent spirits eager to possess the living and mysterious spectral guardians - a diverse host of phantoms exhumed from the rare pages of literary magazines and newspaper serials to thrill once more.