Showing results by narrator "Matt Addis" in All Categories

Why do you lose arguments with people who know MUCH LESS than you? Why can you recognise that woman, from that thing...but can't remember her name? And why, after your last break-up, did you find yourself in the foetal position on the sofa for days, moving only to wipe the snot and tears haphazardly from your face? Here's why: the idiot brain. For something supposedly so brilliant and evolutionarily advanced, the human brain is pretty messy, fallible and disorganised.

With scorching temperatures soaring to 35 degrees, severe water shortages and a sunburned population queuing at the street standpipes, the summer of 1976 will always be remembered as Britain's hottest on record. But the wave that hit the UK that year was also cultural and political, with upheaval on the streets, in parliament, on the cricket pitch and on the radios and TV sets of a nation at a crossroads.

The epic story of the Mortymer family continues in this thrilling sequel to The Rape of the Fair Country set around the Rebecca Riots, when economic turmoil and unjust taxes plunge the people of south Wales into dire poverty, putting many on the brink of starvation. A time when young men ride through the night smashing and burning the symbols of their oppression. The Mortymer family have left their home in the iron-making country of Blaenafon, retreating to the old farmlands of the west.

It has been many years since Dan Raglan served in the French Foreign Legion, but the bonds forged in adversity are unbreakable and when one of his comrades calls for help, Raglan is duty-bound to answer. An ex-legionnaire, now an intelligence officer at the Pentagon, disappears. He leaves only this message: should he ever go missing, contact Raglan. But Raglan's not the only one looking for the missing man.

A thrilling tale of suspense from the CWA Diamond winner and best-selling author of the Roy Grace series, read by Matt Addis. Susan and John Carter are crazy about each other, and life is perfect but for one thing - they are on the brink of financial disaster. Surely being a surrogate mother to another man's child won't harm such a strong relationship? Especially when the mysterious Mr Sarotzini is offering to save their home and business - everything they've worked for.

London, 1607. As dawn breaks, Daniel Pursglove rides north, away from the watchful eye of the King and his spies. He returns, disguised, to his childhood home in Yorkshire - with his own score to settle. The locals have little reason to trust a prying stranger, and those who remember Daniel do so with contempt. When a body is found with rope burns about the neck, Daniel falls under suspicion. On the run, across the country, he is pursued by a ruthless killer whose victims all share the same gallows mark.

The enthusiasm for and expectation of happiness are so widespread today that fundamental questions about it are often overlooked. For starters, the most basic question of all: where does happiness come from? Is it your brain - a mere concoction of chemicals or network of neurons? Is it in fact your gut? (Spoiler alert: yes. Sort of) Or is it external? Is it love or sex or money or success? And what are these doing to our brains anyway? In The Happy Brain, Neuroscientist Dean Burnett delves into our most private selves to investigate what causes happiness.

They killed Robert Harland today, and they're going to kill the rest of you. This is the warning private investigator Paul Samson receives right after Joni Fremantle, the woman he has been guarding for a mysterious client, gives him the slip. No time to worry about that now: his life, and those of Denis Hisami, Anastasia Christakos and even the young Syrian Naji, is on the line. Samson is sure he knows why - to expose a company supplying funds to far-right groups across Europe is to paint a target on your own back.

The death of Adam Penhallow on the eve of his birthday seems, at first, to be by natural causes. He was elderly after all. But Penhallow wasn't well liked. He had ruled over his estate with an iron will and a sharp tongue. He had played one relative off against another. He was so bad tempered and mean that both his servants and his family hated him. It soon transpires that far from being a peaceful death, Penhallow was, in fact, murdered.

On a deserted road in Calabria, Greek aid worker Anastasia Cristakos is driving alone to visit one of the new refugee centres funded by billionaire Denis Hisami, whom she has recently married. She slows down to greet two African migrants she recognises. Too late she realises they are not her friends. This is an ambush. She manages a desperate phone call to Hisami before her Mafia kidnappers silence her with a powerful drug. Hours later she wakes up in the pitch dark on a container ship powering eastwards across the Mediterranean.

October 1143. A mysterious archer who kills cleanly and 'dissolves' into the forest, a missing train of pack mules on the salt road from Wich and a lord in the wrong place at the wrong time mean a crime the lord Sheriff of Worcestershire cannot ignore. Bradecote, Catchpoll and the eager Walkelin are hunting a killer and a gang and whoever is giving them orders. They are not helped by a reeve keen to keep his position, a lord with his own ends to serve and a distrusting and vengeful widow with a haunted past, to whom Bradecote is increasingly attracted.

Spring 1944, the south coast of England. The Fifth Battalion, Wessex Regiment, wait patiently and nervously for the order to embark. There is boredom and fear, comedy and pathos as the men all drawn from different walks of life await the order to move. With an economy of language that belies its emotional impact, From the City, from the Plough is a vivid and moving account of the fate of these men as they embark for the beaches of Normandy and advance into France, where the battalion suffers devastating casualties.

In Coventry, Eric and Harry watch helplessly as they find themselves face to face with the latest arrival at Ground Zero. Tired and coming to terms with Eric’s devastating injuries, how can two men hope contain such an indestructible force, let alone escape the impenetrable energy shield that now envelops them and the city?

All Hallow’s Eve, 1144. The savaged body of Durand Wuduweard, the solitary and unpopular keeper of the King’s Forest of Feckenham, is discovered beside his hearth, his corpse rendered barely identifiable by sharp teeth. Whispers of a wolf on the prowl grow louder, and Sheriff William de Beauchamp’s men, Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll, are tasked with cutting through the clamour....

Inspector Hemingway has his work cut out for him when a seemingly civilized card game ends in a double murder. The two crimes appear identical, but were they carried out by the same hand? When Timothy Harte's young fiancé - a put-upon secretary and suspected gold digger - becomes the inspector's prime suspect, Harte is determined to prove her innocence.

The Early Tudors A Level History series takes you through the OCR specification step by step, ensuring that you have the necessary knowledge to perform throughout the period of your course and to help prepare you for your A Level. The series is produced by Nick Fellows, a lead examiner for OCR who has written many textbooks on The Tudors, Katie Fellows, who is currently studying for her D.Phil in History at St Peter's College, Oxford, and Oxford historian, Dr Glyn Redworth, who is a specialist in Early Modern British & European history.

January, 1145. Godfrey Bowyer, the best but least likeable bow maker in Worcester, dies an agonising death by poisoning. Although similarly struck down after the same meal, his wife, Blanche, survives. The number of people who could have administered the poison should mean a very short investigation for the sheriff’s men, Hugh Bradecote, Serjeant Catchpoll and Underserjeant Walkelin, but perhaps someone was pulling the strings, and that widens the net considerably.

In the wake of a dying man’s apparent suicide, the skeleton of a young woman is discovered on a windswept hillside. Detective Hjalti Hentze suspects that it is the body of a Norwegian woman reported missing 40 years earlier, while a commune occupied the land, and whose death may be linked to the abduction and rape of a local Faroese girl. Meanwhile British DI Jan Reyna is pursuing his investigation into his mother’s suicide. But as he learns more about her final days, links between the two cases start to appear: a conspiracy of murder and abuse spanning four decades.

It is no ordinary Christmas at Lexham Manor. Six holiday guests find themselves the suspects of a murder enquiry when the old Scrooge, Nathaniel Herriad, who owns the substantial estate, is found stabbed in the back. Whilst the delicate matter of inheritance could be the key to this crime, the real conundrum is how any of the suspects could have entered the locked room to commit this foul deed. For Inspector Hemingway of Scotland Yard, 'tis the season to find whodunit.

Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), the founder of the Vietminh and President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was the archetypical Communist and anti-colonial revolutionary of the twentieth century. He played a key role in the formation of the French, Chinese, and Vietnamese Communist movements and fought successfully against Japanese, French and American imperialism, becoming a hate-figure of the American state during the Vietnam War