Showing results by narrator "Gordon Griffin" in All Categories

When the phone rings in the middle of the night, Dr Arthur Jackson leaves the warmth of his bed without hesitation. Tending to his peculiar flock of patients - including the blind cobbler with a surprising taste for hard liquor, the accident-prone butcher, and the young woman with an unusual phobia - is his first priority, whether their illness is critical or they simply need a comforting hand to hold. The whole community turns to the young doctor for advice...and not all of it medical.

A collection of Peter Fleming’s essays written for The Spectator.

Inspector Alvarez is in a good mood, for once. The sun is shining, he has enjoyed an uniterrupted morning nap at his desk, his irasciable boss - Superios Chief Salas - is on holiday, and the local Mallorquin government’s proposal to increase tax on alcohol has been soundly defeated. But optimism, he soon has cause to reflect, is the road to disaster. In short order, he provokes the ire of Salas’ secretary and then of Salas himself - whose holiday does not seem to exclude phoning Alvarez to complain about his work. In no time at all, Alxvarez is mired down by a seemingly impossible task....

By the Booker-shortlisted author of Astonishing Splashes of Colour; a wittily observed slice of modern life as it plumbs the gulf between nostalgia and reality. Who is the Roundabout Man? He doesn't look like a tramp, yet he lives on a roundabout in a caravan and survives on the leftovers from a motorway service station. He calls himself Quinn, the name of a boy in a world-famous series of children's books. When Quinn's reclusive existence is invaded, he has to face his past, and the uncomfortable truth of who he really is.

In the long, hot summer of 1969, two young men are involved in the accidental killing of their foreman on a Shropshire building site. Traumatized, they conceal his body and vow to never mention the horrific incident again. Four decades later, DI Frank Kavanagh and DC Jane Salt’s relationship is in trouble and she escapes to a friend’s home in that same Shropshire town. Here, whilst trying to avoid her own relationship problems, Salt gets herself embroiled in her friend’s love life and finds herself in serious danger.

Spring, 1947. Having survived the horrors of the camps, Felix Breit, one of pre-war Europe’s foremost sculptors, arrives in London, hoping to rebuild his life and career. The opportunity arises when two English architects invite him to join a community they are hoping to create at the Dower House, a Georgian country house. He is under the spell of Angela Wirth, a fellow concentration camp survivor. Will they ever dare admit their love?

1919, London's East End. Robert Hunter is eagerly awaiting the return of his father from the war. Next door, Ruth Cooper's family are also preparing to welcome her dad, whose ship was lost at Jutland. After five years of separation and anxiety – and, for Bob, the worry of caring for his frail mother – emotions are running high for both young people.

Five years after Duncan Percival is left in a vegetative state following a vicious attack, he finally dies. The case has now become a murder investigation, and DCI Hennessey and DS Yellich are brought in to renew the evidence and re-interview the suspects. As they delve deeper, bodies start turning up, and the detectives are drawn into York’s criminal underworld where grasses are punished and the gruesome Chelsea Smile is the favoured method of retribution…

A raving, bedraggled girl is found sheltering in a barn near the Parish of Tardebigge in Worcestershire. Then the decomposing body of a small boy is unearthed by poachers in a nearby wood. Constable Thomas Potts is called upon to investigate both cases, which appear to be connected to a wagon-load of children known to have been abducted from the Poorhouse. Meanwhile Thomas’ engagement to buxom barmaid Amy Danks is threated by his widowed mother’s hatred of his sweetheart, and by the many duty calls upon his time.

When five corpses in various states of decomposition are found chained to the walls of an overgrown kitchen garden, George Hennessey and Somerled Yellich, assisted by Carmen Pharaoh, Thomas Ventnor and Reginald Webster, quickly begin their investigation into these shocking murders. The recently deceased owner of the large country house had been housebound for the last 25 years and would have had no idea of the appalling crimes that were taking place just yards away.

On a damp autumn day, two girls playing truant from school find a body in a remote cottage not far from Hungerford. The dead woman, Gillian Lestrange, was a ghostwriter, engaged in writing the memoirs of a widely disliked retired spy, Lavinia (Vinnie) Latham. The mystery thickens when Superintendent Gregory Summers discovers that Gillian was a ghost in more ways than one – she has been presumed dead for the past fifteen years. Somebody paid the price for Gillian’s first death, and a heavy price it was.

For Dick and Tammy, life was a struggle. Although Dick’s family were wealthy, Dick wanted to prove to himself that he was capable of supporting his wife and two children himself. With both finances and marriage failing, Tammy turns to a family friend, Adam, for support when she realises that baby Richard is not responding as he should. After visiting the doctor, all three are devastated to learn that baby Richard is severely deaf. Will this be the final straw?

It is 1827, and in the town of Redditch life is harsh for the poor. When a young serving woman is found drowned in the canal, her widowed mother believes her daughter has been murdered and appeals to the Parish Constable, Thomas Potts, for help. Physically weak and bookish by nature, Tom Potts is to many people an object of derision. But concealed behind his timid façade is intelligence, experience and a fierce passion for justice.

Following the split from her husband, Helen Pascoe decides to take her children away from London to live in a lovely old house near Falmouth. The family are beginning to feel happy and settled, when the local community is stunned by a murder. A young man has been found stabbed at the crossroads of two narrow lanes - a place where legend says a gibbet once stood. It is DCI Channon's territory, and he soon finds that the victim is connected to the Pascoe family, as well as to other residents of the once humble fishing village.

When David Sterne went up to London to seek his fortune, Adolf Hitler was rampant and the shadow of impending conflict lay forebodingly over Europe. He was still struggling to make a living when war broke out and he was swept into it. Six years of his life were to be spent in the King's uniform. And so began his dramatic climb to success - with a little help from Frederica Lathwell. Then, of course, there was Angela Street...

Rogue Herries tells the story of the larger-than-life Francis Herries, who uproots his family from Yorkshire and brings them to live in Borrowdale, where their life is as dramatic as the landscape surrounding them.

Proud, violent, and impetuous, he despises his first wife, sells his mistress at a county fair, and forms a great love for the teenage gypsy Mirabell Starr. Alongside this turbulent story, runs that of his son David, with enemies of his own, and that of his gentle daughter, Deborah.

Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin never knew that five short lines could change his life - until he receives a notice announcing his sudden death on Midsummer's Eve. Someone wants him dead and he has only seven days to find out who it is.

A body neatly wrapped in brown paper is found by the gardener, Mr Turtle, on his garden rubbish heap. The police are again summoned to the convent, and we meet again the now Deputy Commissioner Pearson, along with many of the characters so charmingly and empathetically described in the first audiobook.

The Sister's Secret is a powerful new saga from Jennie Felton, in her Families of Fairley Terrace series, in the grand tradition of Josephine Cox, Dilly Court, Maggie Hope and Rosie Goodwin of secrets, romance, drama and triumph in the wake of a bitter tragedy. Can she hide the truth to protect...

DI Wesley Peterson suspects the execution-style murders might be linked to Robert's past career in the police - until Robert's name is found on a list of people who've been sent tickets anonymously for a tour of Darkhole Grange, a former asylum on Dartmoor. When his friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, finds the skeleton of a woman buried in a sealed chamber dating back to the 15th century at his nearby dig, Wesley wonders whether there might be a connection between the mysterious stone cell and the tragic events at Darkhole Grange.