Showing results by narrator "Kris Dyer" in All Categories

These 25 new stories mark Graham Swift's return to the short form after seven acclaimed novels and confirm him as a master storyteller. They unite into a richly peopled vision of a country that is both a crucible of history and a maze of contemporary confusions.

Loneliness has reached the levels of an epidemic. From the bullied child to the new parent, from the pensioner who has outlived friends and family members to teenagers who manage their social lives through the glow of a mobile phone, it can - and does - affect anyone and everyone, irrespective of age, race or class. Many suffer in silence, convinced it's a confession too far, a sign of too much vulnerability, a shameful failing. But the human condition is not a failing. What's it like when loneliness descends? How does it announce itself, and how do you recognise it?

Colin Kingsley is a pizza delivery boy with a twist. He's actually an aspiring detective. But in sleepy Rufflington-on-Sea, there are no cases to solve - until the Golden Spatula League come calling. The world's premier agency for 'caterer-detectives', run by children, the GSL have been dazzled by Colin's freakish memory skills. To join their ranks, Colin - codenamed 'Mark Anchovy' - must fly to Rome to track down a valuable stolen painting, titled Girl with a Squirrel. The chief suspect: Big Alan Fresco, notorious art thief and pizza addict.

For some, there is a high price to pay for ambition and success. The toll it can take on our mental health can be significant, particularly if we are born with the "Worry" gene. In Beat Stress at Work, management trainer Mark Simmonds helps you understand the effects stress and anxiety can have on your mental health and provides tools and advice to find your way through work-induced struggles. Mark sheds light on the difficulty of discussing mental health with colleagues and employers and identifies the best ways for navigating your way through a mental health crisis.

As a winter storm rages over the coastal city of Brighton, torrential rain exposes a shallow grave up on the cliffs, while a teenager goes rogue with a shotgun in a supermarket and a violent robbery is staged in an upmarket boutique. The resulting body count stretches the resources of the Brighton police. They badly need leads, but can they trust the testimony of Ciara O’Cleary, the sole witness to the robbery – who saw nothing, but seems to be offering vital clues?

In What Do Animals Think and Feel?, the biologist Karsten Brensing has something astonishing to tell us about the animal kingdom: namely that animals, by any reasonable assessment, have developed the sophisticated systems of social organisation and behaviour that human beings call 'culture'. Dolphins call one another by name and orcas inhabit a culture that is over 700,000 years old. Chimpanzees wage strategic warfare while bonobos delight in dirty talk. Ravens enjoy snowboarding on snow-covered roofs, and snails like to spin on hamster exercise wheels.

From technical wizardly that goes disastrously wrong, to underwater warfare with a sting in its tail, this new book by Tony Matthews delves into a wide range of top-secret stories, including black propaganda missions, calamitous Resistance operations and accounts of espionage activities at the very highest level. Spies, Saboteurs and Secret Missions of World War II is a fascinating insight into some of the most astonishing clandestine activities of the Second World War.

Ed Truman's family is falling apart. His daughter Ally is being targeted by an alt-right incel organisation, Men Together. His house is being picketed, former clients are accusing him of sexual assault, his son won't speak to him. And then Ally disappears. Frantic, Ed suspects that Men Together have abducted her. But before he can go to the police, his DNA is found on the body of a young woman. Suddenly he's the subject of a nationwide manhunt, led by the tenacious DCI Jackie Rose.

A naïve English graduate arrives in Greece seeking experience and perhaps an encounter with his literary hero: Nobel laureate and irascible old hell-raiser Irakles Bastounis. Agreeing to act as driver for Bastounis, the young man finds himself on a hectic, adventurous, and always challenging tour of Greece’s wonders - an apprentice in how to live life to the fullest. As the road trip progresses, the questions arise. Is Bastounis still an addict? Who is following him and why? Is he researching his final, much-anticipated novel? Who are the people he’s meeting along the way?

The Classic Crime Collection is a collection of 18 classic detective novels, read by esteemed cast of award-winning narrators. Included here are stories by some of the most iconic crime writers in history, including Dorothy L. Sayers; Arthur Conan Doyle; Agatha Christie; Dashiell Hammett; Wilkie Collins; Josephine Tey; and more.

With unseeing eyes, Major George Tomson gazed down into the training hall from his office window. The F-omat, on the desk behind him, flicked to standby but the last message loomed in his mind and arrested all further thought. The soft footfall in the corridor and the gentle tap on the door went unnoticed. He vaguely sensed a faint aromatic odour.

When Kev's girlfriend is killed in a hit-and-run, he thinks he's suffered the worst. Haunted by his past, Kev attempts to put his life back together, throwing himself into his new relationship with Stella and his job as a literary agent. Then a book lands on his desk that changes everything. And he quickly realises his nightmare has only just begun.

In 2005 London, two teenage boys commit a crime so horrendous that the entire nation is shocked and outraged. When Abigail Riley's body is found in an underground shelter, DS Fraser Harvey finds himself hunting her killers--whose depravity is matched only by their naivety. Eleven years later, when the young murderers are released to faraway countries with new identities, Harvey remains haunted by the case, convinced that one--or both--will kill again.

London in the early nineties is a hotbed of political activism and intrigue, and times are changing fast - too fast for DCI Rick Bailey, who is starting to think he cannot keep up. But then a young woman goes missing in the run-up to Christmas, and he's convinced Alice's disappearance is related to an unsolved murder that has haunted him for the last three years. He stumbles upon a suspect connected to all the clues, among them a care worker facing betrayal, a cemetery worker hearing music that does not play, an activist running from himself and a blind man who sees more than anyone else.

Scarlett Point is a short story from the best-selling author of Safe House. Cutler is a man with a secret, camping by the coast on the Isle of Man. Luke is a young boy hunting for an elusive treasure from an incomplete map. Their lives collide at Scarlett Point in a story about trust, redemption and how sometimes you find what you most need when you’re searching for something else.

Inspector George Grimchard of Scotland Yard is the only man to have solved a premeditated murder in the last 50 years without resorting to the testimony of the deceased. Moreover he is the grandson of Edgar Grimchard, disgraced founder of the Department of Irregular Souls, a police department that has virtually ridden the British Empire of murder by solving crimes using the testimony of spirits held at séance.

Noah can't believe his eyes - or his luck - when a magical gnome called Tommy turns up on the 24th of December. He's sure it's going to be AWESOME! But Tommy's spells keep going WRONG... The Christmas tree topples over, a gingerbread army goes on the attack, and a real-live reindeer is charging around the garden. Worst of all, Noah's parents are coming home soon - AARRRGHH! Can Noah fix Tommy's magical mischief in time to save Christmas?

In the bleak days of 1942, Countess Elisabeth von Trecheim, Berlin-born and city-raised, runs her husband’s family estate in isolated Silesia, while her Panzer officer spouse, Hans-George, confronts the horrors of Stalingrad. Meanwhile, Gideon Rokesby, an English mining engineer, is captured by the Germans in North Africa and endures brutal internment, showing determination to escape. As fate links these characters within a chaotic, war-torn world, a dance of survival, loyalty, and forbidden connection unfolds against the looming collapse of the Third Reich.

Join us on a journey around the globe and meet the enthusiasts, technologies, and decision-makers that are proving that humans are indeed capable of saving us from ourselves. The challenges may be great, but there are a number of opportunities to stall climate change – perhaps even reverse it. This book offers a glimpse of how to do just that. It will explain how we can equip ourselves with food, clothing, shelter, energy, transport and all in all live good lives without negatively impacting the planet we live on. "If We Act Now" tells us about the barriers to action and how we can overcome them.

It's 1789, and as the new colony in Sydney Cove is established, Surgeon John White defies convention and adopts Nanberry, an Aboriginal boy, to raise as his son. Nanberry is clever and uses his unique gifts as an interpreter to bridge the two worlds he lives in. With his white brother, Andrew, he witnesses the struggles of the colonists to keep their precarious grip on a hostile wilderness. And yet he is haunted by the memories of the Cadigal warriors who will one day come to claim him as one of their own.