Showing results by narrator "Sam Dastor" in All Categories

The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet. It is 1852, and Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date. As a train speeds over the Sankey Viaduct, a man is hurled from a carriage and plummets into the canal below. It later transpires that he has been stabbed to death. With no papers by which to identify the man, the detectives' investigation is hampered from the start. Suspecting that the victim may have come from continental Europe, Colbeck and Leeming take the case to France where a new railway is being built by a British contractor.

On 14 February 1989, Valentine's Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been "sentenced to death" by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being "against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran". So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of M. J. Carter's The Strangler Vine, read by the actor Sam Dastor. India, 1837: William Avery, a fresh young officer in the East India Company, arrives in Calcutta expecting to be seduced by its ancient traditions. Nine months later he hasn't learnt a word of Hindoostani, is in terrible debt, and longs to return home before the cholera epidemic finishes him off.

An exquisite silver coffee-pot in the shape of a locomotive is on its way to Cardiff in the care of silversmith, Hugh Kellow. When the coffee-pot is stolen and a murder is committed, Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called in to investigate.

I forget what took me to Fosterganj in the first place. Destiny, perhaps, although I'm not sure why destiny would have bothered to guide an itinerant writer to an obscure little hamlet in the hills. Chance would be a better word. For chance plays a great part in all our lives. And it was just by chance that I found myself in the Fosterganj bazaar one fine morning early in May....

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

Here are the stories of nine great adventures and the lives of the men who took part in them. They pushed back the frontiers of man's knowledge of the world by their vision, courage, and sheer doggedness. They were very different people, from bold adventurers facing the unknown with enjoyment to careful, more scientific individuals. Their journeys are placed within their historical context, but also contain the words of the men themselves.

In The Guiding Light, Dr Kalam chooses the finest examples of writings from the numerous books, religious texts, philosophical tracts and poetry that he has read over the years. These words have impacted and shaped his thinking, helped him in times of need and made him the person he is. He has quoted from these works in his writings and lectures that have inspired millions of people he has met all over the world.

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

Ranjit Singh, a former Indian Army Captain trying to escape a shameful past, now lives on Martha’s Vineyard, and works as a caretaker for the vacation homes of the rich and powerful. One harsh winter, Ranjit needs a place to stay, and illegally moves his family into an empty, luxurious vacation home belonging to an African American Senator. Ensconced in the house, he tries to forget his brief affair with Anna, the Senator’s wife, and focuses on providing for his family. But one night, their idyll is shattered when mysterious armed men break into the house, searching for an antique porcelain doll.

Antony Barlow comes from a very old Quaker family, dating back to the earliest days of Quakerism in the 17th century, when members were still being persecuted for their beliefs. On the death of his mother, Joan Barlow, in 2007 at the age of 93, he became the custodian of the invaluable collection of family archives, including fading ancient letters, crumbling historical documents, daguerreotypes, and, perhaps most importantly, their old family Bible dating from 1616.

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

Bankers build their careers on trust, or so everyone thinks, till a series of murders threaten to destroy the reputation that the Greater Boston Global Bank (GB2) has built over the years. Who is behind these killings, and what is their motive? When Karan Panjabi, press reporter and ex-banker, digs deeper, he realizes that he has stumbled upon a global conspiracy with far-reaching ramifications - a secret that could not only destroy the bank but also cast a shadow on the entire nation.

On the far eastern borders of the Soviet Union, in the sunset of Stalin's reign, soldiers are training for a war that could end all wars, for in the atomic age man has sown the seeds of his own destruction. Among them is Pavel Gartsev, a reservist. Orphaned, scarred by the last great war and unlucky in love, he is an instant victim for the apparatchiks and ambitious careerists who thrive within the Red Army's ranks.

Rebels Against the Raj tells the little-known story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence. Of the seven, four were British, two American and one Irish. Four men, three women. Before and after being jailed or deported they did remarkable and pioneering work in a variety of fields: journalism, social reform, education, organic agriculture, environmentalism.

Welcome to Kittur, India. Of its 193,432 residents, only 89 declare themselves to be without religion or caste. And if the characters in Between the Assassinations are any indication, Kittur is an extraordinary crossroads of the brightest minds and the poorest morals, the up-and-coming and the downtrodden, and of an India that modern literature has rarely addressed.

It is not often that an author and his editor strike up a relationship which survives forty years of epistolary exchanges and intellectual sparring. The strangely enduring and occasionally fractious friendship which developed between the famously outspoken historian Ramachandra Guha and his reticent editor Rukun Advani is the subject of this quite eccentric and thoroughly compelling literary memoir.

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

Jivan Singh, the bastard scion of the Bapuji family, returns to his childhood home after a long absence - only to witness the unexpected resignation of the ageing Devraj Bapuji from the vast corporation he founded, Company India. On the same day, Sita, Devraj's youngest daughter, absconds - refusing to submit to the marriage her father wants for her. Meanwhile, Radha and Gargi, Sita's older sisters, are left to run the Company.... And so begins a brutal, deathly struggle for power, ranging over the Palaces and slums of New Delhi, the luxury resorts and spas of Amritsar and Srinagar.