Showing results by narrator "Bill Wallis" in All Categories

These four stories test Father Brown in many ways, creating headaches a plenty. However, Father Brown is nothing if not redoubtable and whilst Chesterton's stories are, in his own words, "very slight and improbable", his method is all his own. Bill Wallis captures perfectly the mood and tone of Father Brown in this collection.

The irrepressible, audacious defence barrister Horace Rumpole continues to juggle the vagaries of the law, the ambiguities of crime, and the contradictions of the human heart. The much loved stories were adapted from his scripts for the hugely popular TV series of the same name.

France’s Périgord region is the home of the black truffle and at five thousand euros a kilo, the exquisite ‘Black Diamond’ is a treasured local asset. When reports come in that this unique delicacy is being adulterated with a cheaper Chinese version, Captain Bruno Courrèges is asked to investigate the scam. But matters take a much darker turn when a horrific murder occurs, and Bruno has his work cut out to find the connection between present crimes and long-buried ones that are linked to France’s colonial past.

Spoiled, arrogant, filthy rich, and breathtakingly beautiful, the young Lady Godiva Dacre is exiled from the court of Good Queen Bess (who can't abide red-haired competition) to her lonely estate in distant Cumberland, where she looks forward to bullying the peasantry and getting her own imperious way.

We last left Rumpole in his hospital bed after his sudden collapse in court. Now our hero finds himself in the Primrose Path nursing home - or a hospice as he persists in describing it. Things aren't looking good for Rumpole - until suddenly he begins to sense there's something wrong with the place, and all his intelligence and formidable insight into human behaviour come to the fore again.

Gareth Cadwallader Owen is the Mamur Zapt, the Head of the Khedive's Secret Police. However, unlike his British colleagues, Owen works for the Khedive. It's not a comfortable perch, as agitation for political and social restructuring grows. Furthermore, Owen is married to a pasha's daughter, Zeinab, herself straddling a cultural divide.

This collection of short stories contains several gothic tales to bear macabre and chilling witness to writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft. These tales are designed to unsettle you, just a little, as you sit back, and take in their words as they lead you on a walk to places you’d perhaps rather not visit on your own.

When Marshal Guarnaccia is called upon to investigate the murder of a young woman he is convinced that there’s more to the family than meets the eye, and wonders if the girl’s father, Paoletti, might have had something to do with her death.Enlisting the help of a local journalist, Marshal Guarnaccia’s investigations draw him into the seedy underworld of Florence – lap dancing, prostitution and the illegal human trafficking of Eastern European women who are sold into the sex trade.

ASBOs may be the pride and joy of New Labour, but they don't cut much ice with Horace Rumpole - he takes the old-fashioned view that if anyone is going to be threatened with a restriction of their liberty then some form of legal proceeding ought to be gone through first. When one of the Timson children is given an ASBO for playing football in the street, Rumpole soon realizes something fishy is going on.

The undersecretary of the British embassy in Istanbul has died while attempting to swim the Dardanelles Straits. The circumstances of his death have to be investigated, so the Foreign Office sends out an officer: Sandor Seymour, an unobtrusive Special Branch detective.

Award-winning author Lynne Reid Banks is perhaps best known for her classic children's book The Indian in the Cupboard. But it was her groundbreaking debut novel for adults, The L-Shaped Room, that made her name. First published in 1960, it was an instant success and has been in print ever since. This collection contains both The L-Shaped Room and sequel The Backward Shadow, as well as two stories specially written for BBC radio and a bonus edition of Bookclub.

Throughout John Mortimer's career, he established profound friendships with people accused of various crimes. He also indulged his passion for writing, penning Paradise Postponed and a series of stories about Rumpole, for whom he was often mistaken. With wit, wisdom and tenderness, he has written the story of his life.

After the short reign and mysterious death of Pope John Paul I, the election of a new Pope takes place in an atmosphere of high tension between opposing factions within the Vatican, including those who want to elect the first non-Italian Pope for over four hundred years. Starring David Calder, Alison Reid, Nicholas Le Prevost, Andrew Hilton, Nigel Anthony, Paul Humpoletz, Paul Nicholson, Christian Rodska, Jonathan Nibbs, Bill Wallis, David Collins, and Paul Dodgson. With John Sandeman and Kristian Phillips.

The outrageous and irrepressible Baroness (Ida 'Jack') Troutbeck, Mistress of St Martha's, has another cultural battle to win against the British Establishment: this time, against the horror of modern art, as demonstrated by the likes of Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. But shortly after she enthusiastically announces this war to her close friends, Baroness Troutbeck is kidnapped. Panic spreads throughout the London art world when they realise nine more victims are missing,

With the help of Willbury Nibble QC, some friendly boxtrolls and cabbage-heads, Marjorie the frustrated inventor, and the rats and pirates from the Ratbridge Nautical Laundry, can Arthur thwart the Snatcher's evil plans to take over the world?

Are you a day-dreamer? A bad loser? A nose-picker? Nothing wrong with that, you might think. But just see how GRIZZLY these things can get! Includes 'Revenge of the Bogeyman', 'The Upset Stomach' and 'Bunny Boy'. More horribly enjoyable short stories from bestselling author Jamie Rix.

When it comes to motives for crime, the past can never be forgotten. Sara Hirsch is a nervous elderly spinster who still lives in the flat above a long-standing Florentine antiquities shop in which she was raised. Frightened, she calls Marshal Guarnaccia for help, sure that strangers have been in her apartment. The marshal knows she is a lonely old woman but he is preoccupied with an investigation into an Albanian prostitution ring. Before he can respond to her latest alarm, she is found dead.

Fed up with questions about what he was going to do when he retired, Edward decided to get on his bicycle and ride from Le Havre to the Mediterranean. He struggled in Normandy to get directions from old men tipsy on Calvados by 9 am, passed by prairies of corn and acres of sunflowers, and hit his stride on the towpath of the Burgundy canal. He explored the mystery of what an ouvrier eats for lunch, and was barred from a swimming pool because his trunks were too decent.

This is a story of impossible misfortune and improbable good luck - the compelling and uplifting account of the boy who made it out of the ghetto, survived Auschwitz and Stutthof, and endured the Dresden bombing before escaping to England.

Stephanie Sandford, recently widowed, must tell her family the truth. But the past is indistinct and it’s complicated. First, there was her mum, who developed an anxious streak after marrying the wrong Reg. And then there was the young man from the dairy who gave Stevie swimming lessons before he broke her heart. War came, and four years chopping root vegetables in the canteen of the Sun Pat peanut factory on the Old Kent Road.