Showing results by narrator "Mark Meadows" in All Categories

November 1853. Inspector Field has summoned his friends Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to examine a body found in an attic studio, its throat cut. Around the body lie the lacerated fragments of canvas of a painting titled A Winter of Despair. Wilkie realises he recognises the victim, for he had been due to dine with him that very evening. The dead man is Edwin Milton-Hayes, one of Wilkie's brother Charley's artist friends. With his own brother under suspicion of murder, what secrets lie among the close-knit group of Pre-Raphaelite painters who is the killer in their midst?

The Essential Classics: Volume 8 brings together 5 of the greatest classics ever written, perfectly read by an esteemed cast including Emma Gregory, Lucy Scott, Mark Meadows, and Rachel Atkins. From the quiet introspection of Persuasion, where Anne Elliot faces the complexities of love and second chances, to the thrilling escapades of The Scarlet Pimpernel, this volume offers a diverse array of experiences. The Mysteries of Udolpho will immerse you in gothic suspense, while The Provincial Lady offers a humorous and sharp look at the life of a woman in the early 20th century.

The growth that companies can achieve from their operations in home and developed world markets has for many years been modest, with the real opportunities to take a business to a higher level existing in identifying and exploiting emerging market opportunities. The Economist Corporate Network has for many years now been one of the leading authorities advising firms on how to make the most of the opportunities that emerging markets present and avoid the mistakes that so many companies make with disastrous results.

July knows 18 things about her mother. But not the truth. Summer, 1995. On her tenth birthday, July's teacher sets the class a project to find out about a relation they don't know. It's easy for July to choose her subject. She doesn't remember her mother, who died when she was small, and her father refuses to talk about her. Ever. The only memories she has of her are flashbacks from the accident that claimed her mother's life. But then she receives the note: 'She didn't die in a car accident.'

Tommy and Tuppence, a young pair short of cash and restless for entertainment, embark on a bold new business scheme – Young Adventurers Ltd. Their advert states that they are ‘willing to do anything, go anywhere’. But their first assignment, for the unnerving Mr Whittington, throws them into more danger than they had ever imagined.

Democracies are being gamed. Authoritarian governments, moneyed elites and fringe hackers are exploiting our digital infrastructure and the vulnerabilities in our democratic system to influence our politics and elections. In just a few years, it has become a perpetual information war. Inherently unstable and prone to wild volatility, our digital ecosystem has at its heart a vacuum open to the influence of those with the motivation, money or expertise to exploit it. Played successfully it can lead to unprecedented swings of public opinion.

After an unspecified near-future disaster, one English town survives under the protection of the surviving computer algorithms of the Process, which governs every aspect of their lives. But now the Process is making soldiers. It is readying for war.

IWM was founded on 5th March 1917 when the War Cabinet approved a proposal by Sir Alfred Mond MP for the creation of a national war museum to record the events still taking place during the First World War. The intention was to collect and display material as a record of everyone's experiences during the war - civilian and military - and to commemorate the sacrifices of all sections of society.The First World War Retold tells the story of that war from a fresh perspective from IWM's unparalleled collections.

The King of Naples and the Duke of Milan are shipwrecked on a strange, enchanted island. Little do they know that the lord of the island is Prospero, the old duke of Milan who they betrayed many years ago—and he has been plotting his revenge ever since...

Falkenberg, Sweden. The mutilated body of talented young jewellery designer, Linnea Blix, is found in a snow-swept marina. Hampstead Heath, London. The body of a young boy is discovered with similar wounds to Linnea's. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1944. In the midst of the hell of the Holocaust, Erich Hebner will do anything to see himself as a human again. Are the two murders the work of a serial killer, and how are they connected to shocking events at Buchenwald?

A story of romance, humor, and true detective fiction, this novel begins with Arsène Lupin, a gentleman thief known for his strict moral code, forcing the French authorities to find an investigator who can put a stop to his dealings. In order to find a competitor keen enough, they must traverse the English Channel, where they find Herlock Sholmes and his assistant, Wilson - two of the most inquisitive and successful detectives in the world. Does Lupin stand a chance?

As revenge for marrying a man he didn't approve of, Véronique d'Hergemont's father, Professor Antoine d'Hergemont, kidnapped her baby and, while escaping, drowned with the baby at sea. Fourteen years later, in 1917, Véronique is watching a film and spots her quite unique signature written on the side of a hut in the background of a scene. The signature, V d'H, prompts her to visit the location where the movie was shot and launches her into a deep and ancient mystery that only one man can solve.

The action swings from London to Sweden, and then back into the past, to Franco’s Spain, as Roy and Castells hunt a monstrous killer...in the latest instalment of Johana Gustawsson’s award-winning series. Spain, 1938: the country is wracked by civil war, and as Valencia falls to Franco’s brutal dictatorship, Republican Therese witnesses the murders of her family. Captured and sent to the notorious Las Ventas women’s prison, Therese gives birth to a daughter who is forcibly taken from her.

At a prayer meeting on a cold Rotterdam night, the young clerk Aart Anthonij van der Lingen - a pale, sickly, hunchbacked 'fish from the North' - is held in the charismatic Reverend Johannes Kicherer's thrall. Lured by Kicherer's passion, he leaves his grey and loveless life to land at the Cape of Good Hope as a lay missionary in 1800. But when the Missionary Society draws lots to determine where to send the new arrivals, Van der Lingen is sent east and Kicherer north. The hunchback missionary must make his own way in a place that, on the surface, God has forsaken.

As the rain falls, the nightmare begins. Blake Hudson is an environment officer who lives in a converted lighthouse on the southwest coast of England. Sky McPherson is a pathologist, recently assigned to the area. Both of them share a past.

Atalanta is as strong and brave as a bear—and she's determined to be a warrior! However, the boring men in her life have other plans. When her dad tries to push her into marriage, she agrees on one condition. First, someone must beat her in a race! Is Atalanta fast enough to outrun her fate?

German Detective Maier travels to Phnom Penh, the Asian kingdom's ramshackle capital, to find the heir to a Hamburg coffee empire. As soon as the private eye and former war reporter arrives in Cambodia, his search for the young coffee magnate leads into the darkest corners of the country's history, and through the history of the communist revolution to the White Spider, a Nazi war criminal, who hides amongst the detritus of modern Cambodia and reigns over an ancient Khmer temple deep in the jungle.

Florence, 1691. The Renaissance is long gone, and the city is a dark, repressive place, where everything is forbidden and anything is possible. Knowledge is still the property of the few, and they guard it fiercely. Art, sex and power - these, as always, are the obsessions. Facing criminal charges, Gaetano Zummo is forced to flee his native Siracusa at the age of 20, first to Palermo, then Naples, but always has the feeling that he is being pursued by his past, and that he will never be free of it.

Sequel to international best seller Block 46 and next in the award-winning Roy & Castells series. Whitechapel, 1888: London is bowed under Jack the Ripper's reign of terror. London 2015: actress Julianne Bell is abducted in a case similar to the terrible Tower Hamlets murders of some 10 years earlier and harking back to the Ripper killings of a century before. Falkenberg, Sweden, 2015: a woman's body is found mutilated in a forest, her wounds identical to those of the Tower Hamlets victims.

After a dramatic accident Kit and his parents find themselves washed up on a small island. But there is no sanctuary here. The local community is hostile and menacing. Soon Kit's life is in danger and he is forced to face not just the inhabitants but a disturbing new arrival whose presence on the island terrifies the community. In his struggle to stay alive and make sense of what is happening Kit is forced to confront good and evil in unexpected forms, even within himself, and face trials and dangers beyond anything he could have imagined.