Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Deep in a Derbyshire cave, the skeleton of an 11-year-old girl has lain undisturbed for 18 years. Its discovery brings to light the half-forgotten and horrifying rituals performed by a group of children in their chilling 'Egyptian game'. But the game is by no means over. Technology adds a new dimension to the sinister manipulation practiced by the group's former leader, and a primitive fear returns to haunt his former acolytes.

November 1983: Three hundred feet beneath the Atlantic, submarine Lieutenant Bill Guth and his fellow officers suddenly receive the order they've long-dreaded - to launch their nuclear missiles in a retaliatory strike against the USSR. But in the unexpected chaos that follows, one person on board lies dead.... Norfolk, 2019: Bill Guth's annual family gathering is interrupted when a historian turns up unannounced to ask about the near-apocalyptic incident back in 1983. Bill refuses to answer. But that night, the historian is brutally murdered.

1564, Lisbon. The Inquisition displays its power and ruthlessly spreads fear. Heretics are tortured and burned. Isabela, daughter of the Falconer at the Royal Court, is about to be caught in the Church’s terrifying schemes. The slaughter of two of the King’s precious white falcons sees her father arrested and imprisoned. He and his family will be killed unless the birds are replaced. Isabela decides only she can save her father. These birds are impossibly rare, and she will have to travel far to strange lands to find them.

Retired bank manager George Pearmain is apparently dead. According to the behaviour of everyone around him, it seems he is no more. Not only that, but his mother has also passed away – and on the eve of her 99th year. Not only that, it could be that they were both murdered. Apart from that he feels fine.

When insurance investigator David Braun probes a particularly violent break-in, the crime scene raises more questions than it answers. Turning to Susan Milton of the London School of Antiquities for help, they find themselves the target of a ruthless and elusive killer as they risk their lives to expose a horrifying centuries-old secret.

It's the end of chocolate for good! A chocolate mystery...at least that's what they're saying on TV. Jelly and her gran are gobsmacked - they love chocolate! Is it really the chocopocalypse, or is there a chocoplot afoot?

Writer Cyril Glendinning is waiting for his big break. He is well reviewed by cultured newspapers, but he makes very little money. Then he is commissioned to write a novel for a big publisher, but before he is able to finish, disaster strikes. His wife, Gertrude, is left penniless and alone, until she is awoken one night by a mysterious clicking metallic sound....

Set in the remote Yorkshire Valleys, the narrator in this story returns to the holiday home of his childhood. He has inherited the house from his uncle and has come to oversee the renovations with a friend. However, it soon becomes apparent the house is haunted by a ghost with an awful secret.

Pippin and her little mouse, Tony, are playing hide-and-sleep in Granny's garden, when Pippin peeps into the shed and sees a very strange door that she's never noticed before. How did it get there, and where does it lead to? Well, one thing it leads to is a crazy new adventure for Pippin, Granny, Mungo, Tony, and Oddplop the frog. Soon they are on the trail of evil Doctor Blowfart and his thieving ghost monkeys, Lumpkin and Bachacha, to recover a very important magical golden mayoral chain!

The Steampunk Pirates are lured back to England by the promise of gold. But the appearance of their inventor, Mr. Richmond Swift, signals big trouble. He has a new army of robots, and it's not long before sparks begin to fly. Have the pirates finally met their match?

When British intelligence agent Marcus Winslow appears at Private Investigator Makana's door one April morning, Makana's life is about to change. Winslow has come with a mission: Ayman Nizari, an Iraqi scientist specialising in chemical warfare, is on the run and asking for asylum. He trusts only one man to bring him to safety: Makana. But why? And what part does Winslow have to play in this? The scientist has gone to ground in Istanbul, and Makana quickly discovers that in this place nothing is as it appears, in a case that will see his past and present collide with fatal consequences.

A severed head washes up on the banks of the Nile. The police turn a blind eye. It is just another victim in a series of ritual killings of refugees. Distracted from his hunt for a missing boy, Makana feels the pull of his Sudanese past and is impelled to seek justice for the murdered emigrants.

A prominent millionaire disappears, and as the headlines grow more cynical by the day, Jack Shepherd knows that his search for a missing retired bookie can only end in misery. But in accepting May Marsh's commission to find her husband, Shepherd doesn't anticipate how high the odds stacked against him are as he is pitched into a world of ruthless exploitation, unbending violence and a heart-stopping confrontation with old enemies - the city's criminal royalty, the Settle family.

It is 2002 and Private Investigator Makana is shaken out of his grief when a routine surveillance job leads him to the horrific murder of a teenage girl. In a country where honour killings are commonplace and the authorities turn a blind eye, Makana determines to track down the perpetrator. Seeking answers in the dead girl’s past he travels to Siwa, where an old enemy lurks in the shadows. Makana discovers that the truth can be as deadly and as changeable as the desert beneath his feet.

It is the summer of 2001 and in Cairo’s crowded streets the heat is rising ...The unsolved murders of young homeless boys are fanning the embers of religious hatred. As tensions mount, Makana is hired to investigate threats made to a hapless travel agent. But Makana’s troubled past is trying to lay claim to him and when Makana witnesses a brutal killing he attracts the attention of both the security services and a dangerous gangster family....

Most villages have an idiot but Casper's village is full of them. So being bright makes poor Casper something of an outsider. When famous magician the Great Tiramisu curses the village, Casper's father is blamed and sentenced to death by pigeon. It's up to Casper and his best friend to find the magician, reverse the curse and save the day. A riotous tale that proves all you really need in life is a buggy that runs on washing-up liquid and a couple of boys to crash it.

Permit me, lovely listeners, to take you back in time. The first thing that I want you to do is to close your eyes and breathe deeply. Okay, great, now open them again very slowly. Are you ready? Good, then let us begin. Featuring Lady Eliot, a brand-new detective agency with a terrible mystery to solve, an awful burglary, Mungo's heroics, Lady Eliot falling in love, a dazzlingly beautiful song about eggs and the awful, villainous penguin Count Visbek.

A postman encounters a strange letterbox in this spooky story. He’s never seen the occupants of the house, the windows and doors are shuttered and any letters posted through the mysterious letterbox disappear into a void of black. It isn’t long before the postman and the local community must investigate.

A response to all ships sunk in action during the war, James Francis Dwyer uses the supernatural to achieve his end in this short story, as an Australian sailor recalls his journey on a pearl schooner and his experience of a ghost ship.

In Praise of Famous Horses is an A-Z companion to perhaps the most loved of all domesticated animals. The book's entries include a wealth of unexpected, fascinating and serendipitous information, from horse-slang phrases to horses in British pub signs and from the horse in advertising to the horse as a food item. Themes such as the horse in warfare and the horse in folklore abound.