Showing results by narrator "Steven Pacey" in All Categories

April 1945. East of Berlin the Red Army stands poised to unleash its final assault upon the ruined capital of Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich. To the north, at a lonely outpost near the Baltic Sea, German scientists perfect a guidance system for the mighty V2 rocket, which has already caused massive damage to the cities of London and Antwerp. This device, known only by the codename Diamondstream, will allow the rocket to arrive at its target with pinpoint accuracy.

Laurence Sterne’s great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate "hero" Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations.

In the middle of a hard-won morning nap in the basement of police headquarters, Carl Mørck, head of Department Q, receives a call from a colleague working on the Danish island of Bornholm. Carl is dismissive at first, but then he receives some shocking news. Carl then has no choice but to lead Department Q into the tragic cold case of a vivacious seventeen-year-old girl who vanished from school, only to be found dead hanging high up in a tree.

Mother Goose has three very active little goslings. If they're not splashing in puddles, they're probably chasing each other along the riverbank or having swimming races! So when Mother Goose tells them some of her favourite traditional nursery rhymes, they love to join in with the actions. Now you and your family can join in too.

Mallory, Miller and Andrea are united into a lethally effective team. Their mission: to silence the impregnable guns set in the tall cliffs of Navarone. On their success or failure rests one of the most critical offensives of the Second World War.

Time's Arrow tells the story, backwards, of the life of Nazi war criminal, Doctor Tod T. Friendly. He dies and then feels better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them and mangles his patients before he sends them home.

The setting is Berlin. Into this divided city, wrenched between East and West, between past and present; comes twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team. Though only a pawn in an international plot that is never fully revealed to him, Leonard uses his secret work to escape the bonds of his ordinary life - and to lose his unwanted innocence.

Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to Britain, seeking work. But Lev has an outsider's vision of the place we call home. Lev begins with no job, little money, and few words of English. He has only his memories, his hopes, and a certain skill preparing food.

It is America's most secret base, hidden deep in the Utah desert, an Air Force installation known only as Area 7. And today it has a visitor: the president of the United States. He has come to inspect Area 7, to examine its secrets for himself. But he's going to get more than he bargained for on this trip - because hostile forces are waiting inside. Among the president's helicopter crew, however, is a young Marine.

Pickpockets, pimps and prostitutes: All in a day’s work for the city constable – until work moves too close to home… When Richard Nottingham, Constable of Leeds, discovers his former housemaid murdered in a particularly sickening manner, his professional and personal lives move perilously close. Circumstances seem to conspire against him, and more murders follow. Soon the city fathers cast doubt on his capability, and he is forced to seek help from an unsavoury source.

Kimmie’s home is on the streets of Copenhagen. To live she must steal. She has learned to avoid the police and never to stay in one place for long. But now others are trying to find her. And they won’t rest until she has stopped moving - for good. Detective Carl of Department Q, the cold cases division, has received a file concerning the brutal murder of a brother and sister 20 years earlier. A group of boarding school students were the suspects at the time - until one of their numbers confessed and was convicted.

John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel, a huge best seller in his native Sweden, is a unique and brilliant fusion of social novel and vampire legend. And a deeply moving fable about rejection, friendship and loyalty. Oskar and Eli. In very different ways, they were both victims. Which is why, against the odds, they became friends. And how they came to depend on one another, for life itself. Oskar is a 12-year-old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city's edge. Eli is the young girl who moves in next door.

The Moonstone, a yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple and believed to bring bad luck to its owner, is bequeathed to Rachel Verinder on her 18th birthday. That very night the priceless stone is stolen again, and when Sergeant Cuff is brought in to investigate the crime, he soon realizes that no one in Rachel’s household is above suspicion. The Moonstone is a marvellously taut and intricate tale of mystery, in which facts and memory can prove treacherous, and not everyone is as they first appear.

Vila is scared. Of course he is. Vila is always scared. He should feel safe. He is onboard the Liberator, the most powerful ship ever constructed. He is home - but he is certainly not alone. Ghostly figures stalk the corridors of the Liberator. Spectres who know Vila's name. Revenants. Demons. And Vila has nowhere to run.

In the darkest days of World War II, Laura McGill and her sister, Diana, were willing to go behind enemy lines on behalf of Britain’s Special Operations Executive. They knew the risks and were willing to take them for king and country. What they did not expect was that their government would forget all about them once the war was over. It is the spring of 1948, four years since Diana disappeared inside occupied France, and Laura is sick of being ignored.

Penguin Classics presents Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actor Steven Pacey. Do I desire unreasonably much in wanting what is called life - music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that is going on in the great arteries of the world? Tempestuous Eustacia Vye passes her days dreaming of passionate love and the escape it may bring from the small community of Egdon Heath.

What starts as an ordinary pick-pocketing incident in Victorian London unites three teens against a madman. Eddie is the pickpocket; George is an assistant at the British Museum; Elizabeth has a nose for trouble, and all of them are being hunted by Augustus Lorimore. Lorimore is a sinister factory owner, a villain bent on reanimating the dead, both humans and dinosaurs, and one of each is already terrorizing the streets of London.

Outside of Pakistan, the world's highest concentration of al-Qaeda lurks in southeast Asia and there, Nick Stone's bosses get wind of an act of terror that will dwarf even the nightmare of 9/11. When Stone is despatched to Malaysia by the CIA to assassinate a biochemist, he expects his mission to be a straightforward part of the fight against Bin Laden.

Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.

On her 60th birthday, a woman commits suicide. When the case lands on Detective Carl Mørck's desk, he can't imagine what this has to do with Department Q, Copenhagen's cold cases division. It's a tragedy to be sure, but the cause of death seems to be clear. But his superior, Marcus Jacobsen, is convinced that this is not in fact a suicide, but a murder related to an unsolved case that has been plaguing him since 1988. At Marcus' behest, Carl and the Department Q gang—Rose, Assad, and Gordon—reluctantly begin to investigate.