Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

A listener follows Brendan Archer, a major in the British Army, to County Wicklow in Ireland, where he is supposed to meet the woman he thinks he will marry. When his plans do not turn out quite as he imagined, he decides to stay on at The Majestic - a crumbling coastal hotel - which holds a strange charm and many eccentric, often amusing, inhabitants.

In Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process.

Slough House is the Intelligence Service outpost for failed spies, former high-fliers now dubbed the 'slow horses'. Catherine Standish, one of their number, worked in Regent's Park long enough to understand treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back, and she's known Jackson Lamb long enough to have learned that old sins cast long shadows. And she also knows that chance encounters never happen to spooks, even recovering drunks whose careers have crashed and burned.

London rules might not be written down, but everyone knows rule one. Cover your arse. Regent's Park's First Desk, Claude Whelan, is learning this the hard way. Tasked with protecting a beleaguered prime minister, he's facing attack from all directions himself: from the showboating MP who orchestrated the Brexit vote and now has his sights set on Number 10; from the showboat's wife, a tabloid columnist who's crucifying Whelan in print; and especially from his own deputy, Lady Di Taverner, who's alert for Claude's every stumble.

The 'Old Bastard' raised his grandson to be a hero, not a slow horse. Now, far from joining the myths and legends of Spook Street, River Cartwright is part of Jackson Lamb's team of pen-pushing no-hopers at Slough House. Which doesn't mean he won't ditch everything and go rogue when his grandfather comes under threat. Lamb worked with Cartwright back in the day, and knows better than most that this is no innocent old man.

Arthur C Clarke is without question the world's best-known and most celebrated science-fiction writer. His career, spanning more than 60 years, is one of unequalled success. Clarke has always been celebrated for his clear prophetic vision, which is fully on display in this audiobook, but there are also many stories that show his imagination in full flight, to the distant future and to far-flung star systems.

Monochrome is a busted flush - an inquiry into the misdeeds of the intelligence services, established by a vindictive prime minister but rendered toothless by a wily chief spook. For years it has ground away uselessly, interviewing witnesses with nothing to offer, producing a report with nothing to say, while the civil servants at its helm see their careers disappearing into a black hole. And then the OTIS file falls into their hands. What secrets does this hold that see a long-redundant spy being chased through Devon's green lanes in the dark?

When Ann Waite discovers a shipwreck in Algoa Bay she is stunned to find survivors: a scarred sailor and a little boy. As the man walks away into the distance alone, Ann is left to raise the young child, Harry, in place of the baby she tragically lost at sea. Disaster and hardship befall Ann and Harry, and desperation drives them into the path of the mysterious shipwrecked man once more. Ralph Courtney has recently escaped Robben Island with two fellow prisoners and is destined to seek his fortune at Nativity Bay, the fabled place about which his father told him stories.

In MI5 a scandal is brewing and there are bad actors everywhere. A key member of a Downing Street think-tank has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, one-time First Desk of MI5's Regent's Park, is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to Regent's Park HQ itself, with its chief, Diana Taverner, as prime suspect. Meanwhile her Russian counterpart has unexpectedly shown up in London but has slipped under MI5's radar.

London’s Slough House is where disgraced MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their washed-up careers. Now they have a chance at redemption. An old Cold War-era spy is found dead on a bus outside Oxford, far from his usual haunts. Slough House’s head honcho, the despicable, irascible Jackson Lamb is convinced Dickie Bow was murdered.

A year after a calamitous blunder by the Russian secret service left a British citizen dead from novichok poisoning, Diana Taverner is on the warpath. What seems a gutless response from the government has pushed the Service's First Desk into mounting her own counter-offensive—but she's had to make a deal with the devil first. And given that the devil in question is arch-manipulator Peter Judd, she could be about to lose control of everything she's fought for.

A magisterial, single volume history of the greatest conflict the world has ever known, by our foremost military historian. The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects.

Two young women are missing, their only connection being that they attended the same party, hosted by a notorious businessman. When one of the women is found murdered, the police discover an unusual signature left by the killer, giving them reason to suspect he will strike again. And catching him calls for a detective like no other. But the legendary Harry Hole is gone. Struck off the force, down and out in Los Angeles, it seems that nothing can entice him back to Oslo. Until the woman who saved Harry's life is put in grave danger, and he is forced to join the hunt for the murderer.

Centaine de Thiry Courtney has not only survived but thrived. A successful woman with two sons of her own: Shasa Courtney, the Courtney heir, and Manfred de la Rey, Shasa's half brother, her secret child raised solely by his father. At the time of the Great Depression, Centaine must make difficult decisions to ensure the security of her family - decisions that will affect Manfred and his father, Lothar de la Rey, a man Centaine once loved. But the world is changing, and conflicts greater than any the world has seen before are looming.

From the trenches of France, General Sean Courtney comes back to fame, fortune and a seat in the government. Mark Anders, the courageous young South African whom he has come to regard as his own son, returns to nothing, his grandfather murdered and his property seized by an unknown company. At the bottom of the mystery is Sean's son Dirk, the jealous, violent and power-crazed genius whose all-consuming hatred can only end in blood.... A Sparrow Falls is the thrilling third novel in the Courtney series, continuing from When the Lion Feeds and The Sound of Thunder.

One of the greatest fighter pilots of the Great War, Michael Courtney is saved by the French noblewoman Centaine de Thiry when he crashes near her home. Soon after, Centaine finds herself alone and carrying Michael's child and must travel across the ocean to join his family in South Africa. But no journey is ever simple, and a pregnant Centaine finds herself shipwrecked in shark-infested waters off Africa's notorious Skeleton Coast, a deadly swim away from the sun-bleached desert that will see her defenceless and alone.

Druss, Captain of the Axe: the stories of his life were told everywhere. Instead of the wealth and fame he could have claimed, he had chosen a mountain lair, high in the lonely country bordering on the clouds. There the grizzled old warrior kept company with snow leopards and awaited his old enemy, death.

Conrad de Lancey has seen enough of evil: the shadow of fear on the faces of innocents; the sudden lull before the slaughter begins. Franco's bloody insurrection taught this Englishman all about hell. Arriving in his mother's country, the now Nazi Germany, Conrad is sick at heart. Even Berlin—infamous haven of decadence—salutes fascism. Himmler's black-shirted troops rule the city, and every German arm bears a Swastika. But does every German heart belong to Hitler?

The peaceful life of a village in Wiltshire is suddenly shattered by a disaster which strikes without reason or explanation, leaving behind it a trail of misery and horror. A yawning, bottomless crack spreads through the earth, out of which creeps a fog that resembles no other. Whatever it is, it must be controlled; for wherever it goes it leaves behind a trail of disaster as hideous as the tragedy that marked its entry into the world. The fog, quite simple, drives people insane.

Slough House is Jackson Lamb’s kingdom; a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who’ve screwed up: left a secret file on a train, blown surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They’re the service’s poor relations – the slow horses – and bitterest among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.