Showing results by narrator "Stephen Tompkinson" in All Categories

Here's a bittersweet story about the perils and pleasures of pounds and pennies. It will make you laugh and cry. Two bothers, Damian and Anthony, are unwittingly caught up in a train robbery during Britain's countdown to join the Euro. Suddenly finding themselves with a vast amount of cash, the boys have just one glorious, appalling dilemma - how to spend it in the few days before it becomes worthless.

Tim is thrilled when his parents allow his best friend, Biscuits, to come on holiday to Llanpistyll, Wales, with them. He and Biscuits are having an absolutely brilliant time eating ice cream, having picnics, and making sandcastles until a deadly, fiendish enemy in the form of the bully Prickle-Head and his sidekick, Pinch-Face, arrive, and things begin to go wrong.

Set during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, we meet Max Carrados, the celebrated blind detective who can read a newspaper headline with the touch of his fingers and shoot a villain by aiming at the sound of his beating heart...and Norman Conquest, the fast talking, hard hitting adventurer with a nose for trouble and a hell-rake disregard for danger, who keeps up good cheer while he biffs the baddies...and not forgetting Ben, the chivalrous and perky non-descript little man, whose thumbs itch just before ‘something ‘orrible ‘appens’.

Polish-born author and mariner Joseph Conrad is widely regarded as one of the greatest English novelists. His 16 years in the merchant navy profoundly shaped his fiction, giving him transformative experiences of adventure and exotic places, and a unique insight into the human psyche. Included here are adaptations of six of his best works, brought together for the first time and collected in chronological order, plus one fascinating bonus programmes exploring his life and art.

A blizzard has hit England. In the tiny village of Sittaford, on the fringes of Dartmoor, a party of six is gathered in Sittaford House, home of Captain Trevelyan. He has rented the house out for the winter and is staying in a nearby village. As evening draws in, a seance is proposed. But it reveals more than they had anticipated - TREVELYAN DEAD, spells out the board. Slowly the table begins to rock again, spelling out the word M-U-R-D-E-R. Is it true? And who would kill a man who doesn’t have an enemy in the world?

Writer and director David Hare is one of England's leading political dramatists, celebrated for his many award-winning plays analysing the morality of contemporary Britain. This collection comprises some of his most acclaimed pieces, as well as a fascinating radio interview with Hare himself.

A lost child. A shattered past. A life going under. Vincent Ruiz is lucky to be alive. A bullet in the leg, another through the hand, he is discovered clinging to a buoy in the River Thames, losing blood and consciousness fast. It takes six days for him to come out of his coma and, when he does, his nightmare is only just beginning. Because Vincent has no recollection of what happened and nobody believes him.

When Kenny (Stephen Tompkinson) gives up his life in the geography classroom to join a struggling a capella group with a beautician, a dentist and a boxer, he doesn't realise he'll soon be in the best band on the wedding circuit—and fronting the potential future of rock 'n' roll. Between trying to manage the band's failing love lives and their battling ambitions, Kenny finds that chaos greets them wherever they go. Arguments about who gets to sing the lead? Check. Rowing about recording contracts? Check. Selling out for a TV talent show? Check.

A trilogy of contemporary plays inspired by tales from The Arabian Nights: Arabian Afternoons includes The Casper Logue Affair by Sebastian Baczkiewicz, The Porter and the Three Ladies by Rachel Joyce and A Dish of Pomegranates by Peter Jukes.

Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a collection of narratives written between 1387 and 1400, tells of a group of 30 people from all layers of society who pass the time along their pilgrimage to Canterbury by telling stories to one another, their interaction mediated (at times) by the affable host - Chaucer himself. Naxos AudioBooks’ third volume presents the tales of six people, here in an unabridged modern verse translation (by Frank Ernest Hill, 1935).

In The Eyes of Max Carrados, our blind hero, who can read a newspaper headline with the touch of his fingers and shoot a villain by aiming at the sound of his beating heart, discovers a story of murder, suicide and a desperate daughter’s quest to clear her father’s name. As the First World War rapidly approaches, we arrive in a sleepy south coast town where Max Carrados, the celebrated blind detective, is soon investigating the sudden death of the local museum curator. All is not as it seems, as our blind hero finds himself on the cliff top in a duel to the death.

Three people. Three stories. And a desperate race for survival in a country in the midst of war. Nick Scott fought in the SAS during the first Gulf War. Captured and tortured, he was left a broken man. His daughter Sarah Scott is a beautiful young scientist who has cracked one of the scientific secrets of the age. Now, she has vanished.

With fascination, Davie and his friend Geordie watch the arrival of a new boy, Stephen Rose, in their town. He seems to have come from nowhere, and when he arrives to live with his distant aunt, the local Crazy Mary, no one envies his new home. But perhaps he's the answer to Davie and Geordie's prayers - a secret weapon in their war against monstrous Mouldy and his gang. Intrigued, Davie and Geordie befriend Stephen.

The astrosaurs hit trouble when their ship is pulled into a black hole. They are spat out near their space HQ – but nothing is as it seems. As old friends turn into deadly enemies, Teggs must fight alone against an army of unstoppable dino-droids - before they conquer the universe!

AWAY WE FLY! Teggs is no ordinary dinosaur - he's an Astrosaur! Captain of the amazing spaceship DSS Sauropod, he goes on dangerous missions and fights evil - along with his faithful crew, Gipsy, Ark and Iggy! Disaster has struck Squawk Major, the pterosaur planet. Its people have forgotten how to fly... all except a sinister stranger named Grandum who now plans to rule the world. Can Teggs and the team stop him and put things right - before it's too late?

Six men have reached a certain age, their 40-something years, and each has a very different – and sometimes surprising – story to tell, from the brother who receives an unexpected letter to a compulsive philanderer, and a news photographer sent on an unusual assignment. All are funny, touching, and as beautifully observed as would be expected from the author of the phenomenal best sellers Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Talk to the Hand.

Anthony the dog has a skin problem. The vet tells him that he must have all his fur shaved off apart from his head and tail! He knows that he'll be laughed at, but instead everyone thinks he's a lion and they treat him with respect.

Captain Teggs is no ordinary dinosaur - he's an astrosaur! On the incredible spaceship DSS Sauropod, along with his faithful crew, Gypsy, Arx and Iggy, Teggs rights wrongs, fights evil, and eats a lot of grass! The Sauropod crew are sent on a mission to a planet where a team of diplodocus are mining for a very valuable space mineral. But their work is being disrupted - by space ghosts!

Teggs is no ordinary dinosaur - he's an Astrosaur! Captain of the amazing spaceship DSS Sauropod, he goes on dangerous missions and fights evil - along with his faithful crew, Gipsy, Arx, and Iggy! On the planet Atlantos, two dino-tribes are on the verge of war! Hurrying to save the day, the astrosaurs find monster-sized birds on the scene - but are they here to help or to make things worse?

Teggs must learn the truth before a terrible trap closes around them all.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.