Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

London's Slough House is where disgraced MI5 operatives are reassigned to spend the rest of their spy careers pushing paper. But when one of these 'slow horses' is kidnapped by a former soldier bent on revenge, the agents uncover a larger web of intrigue that involves not only a group of private mercenaries but also the highest authorities in the Security Service.

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.

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.

Twenty years retired, David Cartwright can still spot when the stoats are on his trail. And he's not as defenceless as they might think. Jackson Lamb worked with Cartwright back in the day. He knows better than most that this is no vulnerable old man. 'The old bastard' has raised his grandson with a head full of guts and glory. But far from joining Spook Street, River Cartwright is consigned to Lamb's team of no-hopers at Slough House.

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. 

This hugely engaging story of murder, superstition, religious politics and drama in a medieval monastery was one of the most striking novels to appear in the 1980s. The Name of the Rose is a thrilling story enriched with period detail and laced with tongue-in-cheek allusions to fictional characters, the most striking of which is the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, who displays many characteristics of Sherlock Holmes.

A woman is found murdered after an Internet date. The marks left on her body show the police that they are dealing with a particularly vicious killer. Under pressure from the media to find the murderer, the force know there's only one man for the job. But Harry Hole is reluctant to return to the place that almost took everything from him. Until he starts to suspect a connection between this killing and his one failed case.

Skilgannon the Damned had vanished from the pages of history. Following the terrible triumph at Perapolis, the General had taken the legendary Swords of Night and Day and ridden from the lands of Naashan. No one knew where he had gone, and the assassins sent by the Witch Queen could find no trace of his passing. Three years later, as a mob intent on murder gathers outside a distant monastery, they are faced by a single unarmed priest. In a few terrifying seconds their world is changed for ever, and word spreads across the lands of the East.

Harry is on a special mission. Detective Harry Hole arrives in a steaming hot Bangkok. The Norwegian ambassador has been found dead in a seedy motel room, and Harry has been sent to investigate. It’s clear that the Ambassador’s family are hiding some secrets of their own, but few people are willing to talk.He needs to solve a crime and avoid a scandal. When Harry lays hands on some incriminating CCTV footage, things only get more complicated.

The final story of Waylander, available in audio for the first time. Thousands of years ago, the city of Kuan Hador - a place steeped in evil - was defeated by a vast army of mystic warriors, the enemy banished beyond the gateway between worlds. Now, in the Duchy of Kydor, 2,000 miles from the lands of the Drenai, icy mists begin to form around the ruins of Kuan Hador. Awesome beasts stalk the hills and forests. The spells are fading, the days of blood drawing nearer.

When Kurt Wallander first appeared in Faceless Killers back in 1990, he was a senior police officer, just turned 40, with his life in a mess. His wife had left him, his father barely acknowledged him; he ate badly and drank alone at night. The Pyramid chronicles the events that led him to such a place. We see him in the early years, doing hours on the beat whilst trying to solve a murder off-duty; witness the beginnings of his fragile relationship with Mona, the woman he has his heart set on marrying.

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.

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.

Packed with slaughter and swordplay, these audio dramas, written by Black Library authors including Gav Thorpe, James Swallow, Ben Counter and more, offer fresh insight into two of the Imperium's most beloved fighting forces. 

Nineteenth-century Europe, from Turin to Prague to Paris, abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Conspiracies rule history. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian priests are strangled with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate black masses by night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres.

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. And with winter taking its grip Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can't ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.

The first woman had her lungs ripped out. When the same gruesome ritualistic method was used again, it was clear that the same killer was responsible. But there is no precise evidence to link the two cases, except for a tantalising email. Kriminalhauptkommissar Jan Fabel (half-Scottish, half-German) is a man of conscience and imagination. In his desperate attempt to solve the case before more victims are discovered, he gradually uncovers layer upon layer of intrigue.

Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that the deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account - and there's only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career's worth of spy secrets.

Kafka Tamura runs away from home at 15, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The ageing Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down. As their parallel odysseys unravel, cats converse with people, fish tumble from the sky, a ghost-like pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night, a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since World War II.

The second novel in Wilbur Smith's The Courtneys series, The Sound of Thunder is a powerful story of family tragedy set against the backdrop of the ravages of the Second Boer War. 'Only once in his life had Sean met a man whose strength matched his own - and now, again, they were pitted against each other....' Sean Courtney, impulsive adventurer of When the Lion Feeds, returns from the wildnerness a rich man - until he is robbed by the Boers of his wagons, his gold and the girl he loves.