Showing results by narrator "James Langton" in All Categories

Eddie Drood, at your service. For generations my family has been keeping humanity safe from the wicked, the nasty, and the generally not-nice inhuman predators who feed on people’s fear and misery. No one kicks evil arse better than us Droods - especially yours truly.

What separates a masterpiece from a piece of junk? Thanks to the BBC's Antiques Roadshow and its American spin-off, everyone is searching garage sales and hunting online for hidden gems, wondering whether their attics contain trash or treasures. In The Art Detective, Philip Mould, one of the world's foremost authorities on British portraiture and an irreverent and delightful expert for the Roadshow, serves up his secrets and his best stories.

The new decade is going well for Edgar Stephens and his good friend the magician Max Mephisto. Edgar is happily married, with children, and promoted to Superintendent. Max has found fame and stardom in America, though he's now back in England for a funeral, and a prospective movie job. Edgar's new wife, though - former detective Emma - is restless and frustrated at home, knowing she was the best detective on the team. But when an investigation into a string of disappearing girls begins, Emma sees her chance to get back in the action. She begins her own hunt.

Miss Abigail Abbott desperately needs to disappear - permanently - and the only person she trusts to help her do that is Lord Stephen Wentworth, heir to the Duke of Walden. Stephen is brilliant, charming, and - when he needs to be - absolutely ruthless. So ruthless that he proposes marriage instead of "murder" to keep Abigail safe. Stephen was smitten the instant his sister introduced him to Abigail. When she accepts his courtship of convenience, he also discovers she kisses like his most intimate wish come true.

Greece, 1876. Renowned archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann unearths the tomb of legendary King Agamemnon and makes a mind-blowing discovery. Determined to keep it secret until the time is right, he dies before it can be revealed to the world. Germany, 1945. The liberation of a concentration camp reveals clues to the lost antiquities stolen by the Nazis. But the operation is covered up after a horrific secret surfaces.

Opal is a fiercely independent young woman pushing against the grain in her style and attitude, Afro-punk before that term existed. Coming of age in Detroit, she can’t imagine settling for a 9-to-5 job—despite her unusual looks, Opal believes she can be a star. So when the aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles discovers her at a bar’s amateur night, she takes him up on his offer to make rock music together for the fledgling Rivington Records.

In 1946, after five years as a prisoner - first as a Soviet POW in Nazi concentration camps, then as a deportee in the Arctic Gulag - 29-year-old Lev Mishchenko unexpectedly received a letter from Sveta, the sweetheart he had hardly dared hope was still alive. Amazingly, over the next eight years, the lovers managed to exchange more than 1,500 messages and even to smuggle Sveta herself into the camp for secret meetings. Their recently discovered correspondence is the only known real-time record of life in Stalin's Gulag.

It will soon be another cold winter in the Ukraine. But it's 1941, and things are different this year. Max, the devoted caretaker of an animal preserve, must learn to live with the Nazis who have overtaken this precious land. He must also learn to keep secrets - for there is a girl, Kalinka, who is hiding in the park.

Bao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier, provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed his life, his country, and the people who live there. Originally published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its nonheroic, nonideological tone, The Sorrow of War has won worldwide acclaim and become an international best seller.

Long before the European Enlightenment and the Darwinian revolution, which we often take to mark the birth of the modern revolt against religious explanations of the world, brave people doubted the power of the gods. Religion provoked skepticism in ancient Greece, and heretics argued that history must be understood as a result of human action rather than divine intervention. They devised theories of the cosmos based on matter and notions of matter based on atoms.

Gifted pianist Valentine Windham, youngest son of the duke of Moreland, has little interest in his father's obsession to see his sons married, and instead pours passion into his music. But when Val loses his music, he flees to the country, alone and tormented by what has been robbed from him. Grieving Ellen Markham has hidden herself away, looking for safety in solitude. Her curious new neighbor offers a kindred lonely soul whose desperation is matched only by his desire, but Ellen's devastating secret could be the one thing that destroys them both.

A peaceful demonstration in the normally quiet town of Eastvale ended with 50 arrests---and the brutal stabbing death of a young constable. But Chief Inspector Alan Banks fears there is worse violence in the offing. For CID superintendent Richard "Dirty Dick" Burgess has arrived from London to take charge of the investigation, fueled by professional outrage and volatile, long-simmering hatreds.

In 1866, sightings of a legendary sea monster prompt a daring expedition out of New York City. Professor Pierre Aronnax, his servant Conseil, and whaler Ned Land are among the crew of the United States Navy frigate Abraham Lincoln. Though they are fearless, nothing prepares them for the "creature" itself - the Nautilus - a powerful, destructive submarine years ahead of its time. At the helm of the vessel is the brilliant Captain Nemo, who pulls the men deep into the wonders of the seas and the dark depths of his mind.

Wrexham, Duke of Elsmore, is overrun by family obligations. With three sisters to escort about Town, a legion of cousins to look after, and aunties who insist he dance with every eligible young woman, he barely has time to manage his dukedom. When he finally carves out a moment to evaluate his family's finances, he learns that he - and his sisters - are on the verge of social catastrophe. Eleanora Hatfield has an uncanny knack for numbers, but she knows from experience that dealing with the peerage can only lead to problems.

This wondrous guide for the curious and the intrepid takes listeners on a tour of eighteen of the world’s most captivating architectural mysteries. Delve into both the secretive places themselves and the eccentric and obsessive minds that created them. Visit a chamber of skulls high in the Swiss Alps, a Japanese temple full of traps, a Parisian apartment locked and untouched since World War II, a Prohibition-era speakeasy in Washington, DC, and a spooky “initiation” well in Portugal built by a secret society.

In Egypt during the late Roman Republic, the young Gordianus finds himself involved in a raid to steal the golden Sarcophagus of Alexander the Great....

Long ago, Olympian gods imprisoned the demon Pandora in a human - Hope - creating a creature whose only purpose was chaos and death. Remorseful, the gods locked Pandora away in Tartarus, ruled by Hades.

Hermann Hesse's famous and influential novel Siddhartha is perhaps the most important and compelling allegory produced in the last hundred years. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, written with a deep and moving empathy for humanity, has touched the lives of millions since its original publication in 1922.

Spring, 1941. France has fallen but the Free French naval forces are in no mood to surrender. Royal Navy Sub-Lieutenant Harry Gilmour is also ready for action, despite the horrors of his first taste of submarine warfare. When he is appointed as British Navy Liaison Officer aboard the Free French submarine Radegonde, he finds it anarchic, disorientating - and very French. Within its claustrophobic confines, suspicion and misunderstanding are rife.

Matthew Belmont is a widower who's been lonely too long. He sees Theresa as a woman paying far too high a price for mistakes long past, and as a lady given too little credit for turning her life around. Theresa is enthralled by Matthew's combination of honorable intentions and honest passion, but then trouble comes calling, and it's clear somebody wants to ruin any chance Theresa and Matthew have for a happily ever after.