Showing results by narrator "Paul Thornley" in All Categories

"Sorry, boys, my hands are tied. The order comes from Special Force HQ, and I can’t countermand it. So I’m giving you a warning order for an imminent active service operation. You’ve got forty minutes to call your wives and girlfriends and sort your kit." After the tragic loss of one of his patrol on an ill-advised training exercise in the Arctic Circle, Spider Shepherd and his comrades are angry at their incompetent commanding officer.

"So the men you will train as my bodyguards will be selected not on the basis of their physical fitness but purely on their loyalty to me. The men outside are all Bedu, of my own tribe. Their loyalty to me is absolute and unquestioning.” Spider Shepherd and his team are sent to the Middle East to train tribesmen as bodyguards for the ruling sheikh. He is slowly trying to modernise, but his rule is being threatened by his cousin, whose father was deposed in a bloodless coup.

For James Mercer, the financial ruin of his family by the institutions they trusted can never be undone. It shattered everyone, leaving him with a burning need to right the wrongs they suffered. He will stop at nothing to recoup what they are owed. It’s not theft, it’s payback. Until his solo crusade falls foul of the very people he seeks to rob - the one-percenters, the people who own the bulk of the world’s wealth. Soon he is putting together a crew to carry out one last robbery, to undertake one last job.

From the depths of a valley rises the city of Mahala. It's a city built upwards - where streets are built upon streets, buildings upon buildings. A city that the Ministry rules from the sunlit summit, and where the forsaken lurk in the darkness of Under. Rojan Dizon doesn't mind staying in the shadows, because he's got things to hide. Things like being a pain-mage, with the forbidden power to draw magic from pain. But when the fate of Mahala depends on him using his magic, he can't hide forever.

School bully Jake Hunter receives a mysterious email inviting him to join a scheme for world domination. With unlimited power and wealth at his fingertips, how can he resist? But to get it, he has to become an arch-criminal, entangled in a plan that threatens the planet. And that could just be a step too far.

The chance discovery of a 30-year-old blue movie leads back to the film's maker, Tim Purdom, and the London of the late fifties and early sixties. Purdom was a pioneer of the B&W British porno film and a figure on the periphery of the Profumo sex scandal. He directed eight films... but who was directing him and what was their hidden agenda? And where is Tim now? London Blues explicitly and unremittingly details the hidden world of Soho vice and London's demi-monde at the time when the grey 1950s were giving way to the 'swingin' sixties'.

After a close friend's apparent suicide, Christopher Cornwell receives several photos the friend mailed prior to his death. Cornwell subsequently discovers by chance the presence in one of the photos of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President Kennedy. But how could Oswald be photographed in a small Hertfordshire market town when he was supposed to be living in Russia as a defector at the same time?

Ex-soldier Lee Arnold and his Muslim assistant Mumtaz Hakim run a detective agency in London's ethnically diverse, crime-ridden East End. Mumtaz is approached by an Egyptian woman, Salwa, whose husband is in Belmarsh on terrorism charges. Salwa convinces Mumtaz of her husband's innocence and persuades her to go undercover to prove it. But Salwa is not what she seems. Trapped in an old tunnel that leads to the London docks, will Mumtaz escape with her life?

The gripping new race-against-time thriller by the best-selling author of Relentless, The Last 10 Seconds, Siege and Ultimatum. One witness. You’re on a trip with your family, miles from anywhere. A shot rings out – and your whole life changes in an instant. One secret. A woman is racing towards you, chased by three gunmen. Although you don’t know it, she harbours a deadly secret. She’s in terrible danger. And now you are too. No escape. You’re running, terrified, desperate to find safety.

Eighteen years after the barbarous war with the Serbs that tore their communities apart, a group of Croatian villagers discover the identity of the Englishman who they believe betrayed them by reneging on a deal to supply arms. With revenge in sight at last, they hire a professional killer from London to track him down... but is the story as simple as they think?

A threat has been made. An ultimatum delivered. Innocent people are in mortal danger. The gripping new bestseller from the master of the race-against-time thriller.8am: an explosion blasts through a cafe in central London. Minutes later a call is made to a local radio station: ‘We’ve just detonated a bomb. Another will explode shortly. The British Government has until 8pm tonight to meet all our demands, or a far greater attack will take place somewhere in the country that will bring fire down on all your heads.

Mahala – City of contrasts. Light and dark. Hope and despair. Rojan Dizon just wants to keep his head down. But his worst nightmare is around the corner. With the destruction of their power source, the vertical city of Mahala is crisis. Riots are breaking out, mages are being murdered and the city is divided. But Rojan's hunt for the killers will make him responsible for complete anarchy. Either that, or an all-out war. And there's nothing Rojan hates more than being responsible.

Hong Kong: The British administration is preparing to hand the capitalist colony back to communist China with the minimum of fuss. But Colonel Joel Tyler has other plans for the British Colony, plans which involve four Vietnam War veterans and a spectacular mission, making use of their unique skills. Vietnam was the one thing the four men had in common before Tyler moulded them into a team capable of pulling off a sensational robbery. But while the vets are preparing to take Hong Kong by storm, their paymaster, Anthony Chung, puts the final touches on an audacious betrayal.

Libya 1942 - Rommel's Africa Korps is sweeping across Northern Africa. The ragged Allied forces engage the enemy in brutal fire-fights on the desert sands. Meanwhile, the Allied commander-in-chief sends a coded message to the Prime Minister – the courier is First Officer Madeleine Rose, WRNS – codename Runefish.

When writer Rob Fallon gets drunk one night and ends up joining his friend's girlfriend, Jenny, back at her apartment in London's West End, he's feeling guilty before anything's even happened. But guilt quickly turns to shock when a sequence of events put him in the centre of a mystery and a deadly race against time.

From the bestselling author of the Rebus detective series, a road worker is called on for a favour by the local loan shark.

Jake Hunter was once an ordinary schoolboy with a computer - until he discovered Villain.net. Now he is an extraordinary schoolboy with a dark side, a bad attitude and an addiction to the villainous powers he can download from the website. And when Jake Hunter - aka the Hunter - breaks out of prison, he has one thing on his mind: revenge. He is going to get his family back, avenge himself on hero Psych, who has wiped all memory of him from their minds, and then destroy heroes and villains.

Sidney Blattner is probably the most successful organised crime figure in London, but things are coming unstuck. Who would dare to execute his innocent brother down in Margate, and why? When Blattner attends the funeral, his chauffeur disappears, forcing Sid and his two minders to flee the seaside resort ignominiously in a Transit van.... Sidney calls in as many favours as he can to find out what is going on down in Margate but without success. Two of his aides, sent down to investigate, turn up murdered.

Vince Treadwell investigates the seemingly unrelated murders of a playboy aristocrat from Belgravia and a young black nurse from the wrong side of town. It takes the detective to the illegal drinking dens of Notting Hill, the nightclubs of Soho and the exclusive gaming tables of the Montcler Club. As Vince Treadwell digs deeper he finds a world of espionage and corruption where the underworld mixes easily with the aristocracy and no one is innocent.

Dr Sean Wensley is an award-winning vet and lifelong naturalist, advocating animal wellbeing around the world. Fusing keen scientific insight with tender meditations on the natural world, Through a Vet's Eyes reveals the injustices which animals experience every day and raises an important question: how can we choose a better life for animals?