Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

It was a mistake for Ben to tell the Hunter that there were still wolves in Surrey. For the Hunter was a fanatic, always on the lookout for unusual prey. Driven by an ambition to wipe out the last English wolves, the Hunter set out on his savage quest.

Grace Macallan is at breaking point, and a new investigation is testing her to the limit. An undercover officer is missing and a woman is washed up, traumatised and barely alive, on the shores of Berwickshire. As she untangles the woman's story, Grace is drawn into a cold-blooded criminal world headed by Pete Handyside, a notorious gangland boss who will fight hard and dirty to control his empire. But a traitor in his midst is intent upon betrayal, triggering an uncontrollable wave of violence. As she hones in on crucial evidence, Grace knows that one wrong move could end in tragedy.

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But can the SAS distract the Nazis to allow airborne landings to go ahead? September 1944: in the wake of the successful Anvil landings, the Allies plan airborne landings in the Orléans Gap. To soften the enemy beforehand, they decide to drop a squadron of men and jeeps in Central France, to hit enemy positions and distract attention from the landings taking place elsewhere.

In a huge old schoolhouse by the sea, full of precious paintings, Thomas Porteous is dying. His much younger wife, Di, holds him and mourns. She knows that soon, despite her being his sole inheritor, Thomas' relatives will descend on the collection that was the passion of both of their lives. And descend they do. The two needy daughters, who were poisoned against their father by their defecting mother, are now poisoning themselves. The family regard Thomas' wealth as theirs by right, with the exception of young Patrick, who adored his grandfather and is torn between his parents and Di, the interloper.

A long buried and shocking secret has been uncovered. In 1940, President Roosevelt and Canada's Mackenzie King secretly agreed to abandon the Allies and make peace with Hitler if the Nazis successfully invaded Britain. Decades later, Soviet agents are ready to use this information to shatter the NATO alliance and use the ensuing geopolitical chaos to strengthen their position in Europe. Only one man stands in their way.

5 August 2005. While conducting a secret mission thirty miles off the remote cost of Kamchatka, the Russian Navy submarine AS-28 became snared in the thick cables anchored to 60-tonne concrete blocks. Without power the stricken boat sunk to the seafloor. Trapped too deep to escape her crew now had just seventy two hours before the air onboard ran out. Twenty-four hours later - still haunted by the loss of the Kursk - the Russian Navy requested assistance.

What does a man do when he discovers a process like Omega Minus? He wishes he hadn't. Scientist James Hallet has the intelligence forces of all the world's major powers on his back, and they're not too particular about how they get their information. They wouldn't, for instance, baulk at the kidnap and torture of Hallet's beautiful blonde mistress. Not if it would give them Omega Minus.

Kate Thompson - glamorous housewife-turned-MP - surprises everyone with her meteoric rise at Westminster. When Kate is sent as a trade minister to India, she hopes it will be her moment to shine. But, embroiled in a personal scandal, she gets drawn into a dangerous world of corruption and political intrigue....

Forced to flee England and live in America during the 1890s, Professor James Moriarty - arch-enemy of Sherlock Holmes - returns to London in 1900 to find that his huge criminal empire has been infiltrated and plundered by the coming crime boss, Idle Jack Idell. As if this was not enough, he has evidence that one of his closest lieutenants, a member of the self-styled Praetorian Guard, is betraying him.

The ballad is one of the oldest poetic forms in English and are simply poems or songs that tell a story. Maybe it’s because of childhood associations or that we all enjoy a cracking good story told in rhyme but as this volume demonstrates, the ballad has endless appeal. We include favourites such as Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee as well as classics such as Sir Patrick Spens, the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Wilde and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats.

The long, drawn-out case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce provides the background to this novel, which takes us into Dickens' world of impoverished people on the street, lovers fallen on hard times, and the grand riches of the upper classes. It is read movingly by Sean Barrett.

October 1914: the destroyer Svea emerged from the Stockholm archipelago bearing south-south-east. On board was Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, a naval engineer charged with making depth soundings to find a navigable channel for the Swedish navy. As a child Tobiasson-Svartman was fascinated by measurement; nothing is as magical as exact knowledge.

A wolf howls through the forests of Transylvania, the murky graveyards of H.P. Lovecraft, the mythic marshes of Count Stenbock and the ghostly vaults of English cathedrals in these timeless stories read by award-winning actors from The Story Circle company.

In London, a newly-arrived Kurdish immigrant is brutally murdered by Turkish people-traffickers. The dead man’s wife, Irena, flees to East Anglia where she disappears into the murky world of illegal foreign workers. Reporter Joe Verdi goes undercover as a migrant worker to try to find Irena. But he’s not the only one looking for her – the Turks are also on her trail. Meanwhile, Joe’s colleague, Elli Mason, is following up the story of a typhoid outbreak. Three people have contracted the disease and the only link between them is a supermarket chain.

Nineteen fifty-three is synonymous in the British memory with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June. But less well known is what happened in 10 Downing Street on 23 June. With Anthony Eden vying for power, the elderly prime minister, Winston Churchill, must maintain the confidence of his government, the press and the public. But after a diplomatic dinner at which he is in typically sparkling form, Churchill's Italian dining companions are rushed out of the building, and his doctor called.

A superstitious man might just have balked at putting to sea on Friday 13th in the centenary year of the sinking of the Titanic.... Fatal Voyage is the first comprehensive account of the wrecking of the Costa Concordia - an enthralling narrative of events before, during, and after the 114,000-ton liner slammed into rocks off the Mediterranean island of Giglio. Focusing on the experiences of a Californian family, Fatal Voyage brings to life the terrifying reality of being trapped aboard the listing, crippled Costa Concordia.

1856, London: The specimen-collecting craze is growing, and discoveries in far-off jungles are reshaping the known world. When the glamorous Lady Bessingham is found murdered, surrounded by her vast collection of fossils and tribal masks, Professor Adolphus Hatton and his morgue assistant Albert Roumande are called in to examine the crime scene - and the body. In the new and suspicious world of forensics, Hatton and Roumande are the best. But the crime scene is not confined to one room.

In the wake of several unexpected deaths at the hospital, Dr Claire Woodforde suspects there is a killer amongst the staff. As Detective Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton and her new sergeant, Tom Bayes, begin to investigate, they too start to wonder if the deaths were natural or whether someone helped them along. But as they start to make headway, something much more sinister comes to light. 

A super recogniser is someone who is outstanding at remembering faces, and when Magnus is stuck with a tricky case his colleague suggests his young cousin from Vik, who could identify every sheep in his flock at the age of 12, to help with the case. But this leads Magnus to a murder.... 

In the heat of a Greek island summer, some slake their thirsts with cool, clear water. Others prefer something stronger, but disgraced government minister Gikas Fragolis has taken his love of the bottle too far. His habitual drunkenness has cost him his job and lost him many friends - but is it at the root of an enemy's wish to see him dead? In this first short story featuring the enigmatic Greek detective, Hermes Diaktoros uncovers good intentions gone bad and plumbs the murky depths of human nature for an unlikely killer.