Showing results by narrator "Rupert Farley" in All Categories

What makes the English English? Is it their eccentricity, their passionate love (or, indeed, hatred) of Marmite - or is it something less easily defined? Beginning at the top of a muddy Gloucestershire slope at the Cooper's Hill cheese-rolling contest and traversing a landscape of lawns and queues, coastlines and sporting arenas, Ben Fogle takes us on a journey through the peculiarly English.

In 1999, Munjed Al Muderis was a surgical resident working in Baghdad when the military police marched into the operating theatre and ordered the team to mutilate army deserters. When the head of surgery refused, he was executed. Munjed's choices were stark - comply and breach the medical oath, refuse and face death or flee. That day, Munjed's life changed forever. He escaped to Indonesia and boarded a boat to Australia.

The Detective Story Club's first short story anthology is based around a London detective club and includes three newly discovered tales unpublished for 100 years, plus a story bearing an uncanny resemblance to a Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story but written some seven years earlier.

Armchair General airdrops you, the listener, into the key historical moments and turning points of WWII - from the outbreak of war to D-Day - and thrusts you into the role of decision-maker. Taking the chair of Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery, General Eisenhower and other leaders and soldiers from the Allied Forces, you will be primed with the contemporaneous intelligence that real leaders would have been presented with during the war - including maps and secret dossiers.

Twenty years following the spacecraft Ishiguro's disappearance, humanity is setting its sights on the heavens once more. Under the direction of two of the most brilliant minds science has ever seen - twin brothers Tomas and Mirakel Hyvönen - this space programme has been tasked with one of the most difficult missions in its history: to study what is being called 'the anomaly' - a vast blackness of space thought to be responsible for the loss of the Ishiguro.

Peter has motor neurone disease, a condition universally considered by doctors to be terminal. It will destroy his nerve cells, and he is told that within an average of two years, it will take his life, too. But, face to face with death, he decides there is another way. Using his background in science and technology, he navigates a new path, one that will enable him not just to survive but to thrive.

Mukesh has just moved from Kenya to the drizzly northern town of Keighley. He was expecting fame, fortune, the Rolling Stones and a nice girl, not poverty, loneliness and racism. Still, he might not have found Keith Richards, but he did find the girl. Neha is dying. Lung cancer, a genetic gift from her mother and an invocation to forge a better relationship with her brother and her widowed father before it's too late. The problem is, her brother is an unfunny comedian and her idiot father is a first-generation immigrant who moved to Keighley, of all places.

A woman violently attacked in her bed. A billionaire businessman on trial at The Old Bailey. As the world's press gather outside London's luxurious Tribeca hotel, can Jon Roscoe protect his own family from the terrifying consequences of the verdict?

It’s never too late to get back on track. Michael is a broken man. He’s waiting for the 09.46 to Gloucester, so as to reach Crewe for 11.22: the platforms are long at Crewe, and he can walk easily into the path of a high-speed train to London. He’s planned it all: a net of tangerines (for when the refreshments trolley is cancelled), and a juice carton full of neat whisky. To make identification swift, he has taped his last credit card to the inside of his shoe.

When his fiancée breaks off their engagement, Patrick Oxtoby leaves home and moves into a boarding house in a remote seaside town. But in spite of his hopes and determination to build a better life, nothing goes to plan, and Patrick is soon driven to take a desperate and chilling course of action.

Susan wakes up alone in a room she doesn't recognise, with no memory of how she got there. She knows only that she is trapped, and her daughter is missing. The relief that engulfs her when she hears her daughter's voice through the wall is quickly replaced by fear. The person who has imprisoned her has her daughter, too. Devising a plan to keep her daughter safe, Susan begins to get closer to her unknown captor. And suddenly, she realises that she has met him before.

The England team that touched down in Russia for the 2018 World Cup was a new-look outfit: there were no real stars, no overblown egos and no dickheads. Still reeling from the wincing exit to Iceland in the 2016 Euros, expectations were at an all-time low. Qualification had been smooth if not spectacular, and pundits and fans alike were lukewarm about the team’s chances. Just avoiding embarrassment would have counted as some kind of success. How wrong we were.

James Patterson's BookShots. Fast-paced, high-impact entertainment. One point away from winning the French Open, tennis star Kirsten Keller breaks down and flees the court in tears. Keller has been receiving death threats. Terrified and desperate, she hires former Metropolitan police officer Chris Foster to protect her at Wimbledon. As the championship progresses, Keller's tormenter gets ever closer. And the threats become horrifyingly real.

Only Scott can keep the vengeful ghost from completing his unholy ritual. Thirty years ago, Scott's grandfather slaughtered his best friend, and then committed suicide. Now the spirit of the murdered man has returned, seeking the ancient volume that can return him to life - forever. Pursued by this savage spirit and accompanied by a strange woman who claims to be immortal, Scott must do the impossible.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) is one of the world’s most loved modern classics. A Leopard’s Kiss entwines the story of Tomasi di Lampedusa writing his famous novel with that of a young couple who say farewell to their Sicilian homeland to settle in far-off Australia. The novella moves from the mountains of an ancient Sicilian village to the ornate cafes and lounges of 1950s Palermo. And from the humid Queensland cane-fields in the north of Australia to a Catholic convent school in the south.

With characteristic wit, eloquence, and unflinching honesty, Churchill shares the pivotal events and relationships that shaped his worldview — from his military service to his years as Prime Minister. My Life is not only a window into the personal and political history of a giant of the 20th century, but also a testament to his unyielding determination, resilience, and vision during some of the most tumultuous periods in modern history.