Showing results by narrator "Simon Mattacks" in All Categories

As a rousing Strauss piece is reaching its crescendo in Maningpool Civic Hall, the talented yet obnoxious conductor Sir Noel Grampian is shot dead in full view of the Municipal Orchestra and the audience. It was no secret that he had many enemies - musicians and music critics among them - but to be killed mid-flow suggests an act of the coldest calculation. Told through the letters and documents sent by DI Alan Hope to his wife as he puzzles through the dauntingly vast pool of suspects and scant physical evidence in the case.

The festive season is in full swing - parties, champagne and Christmas crackers abound. You're having a breather at the hotel bar when a stunning young woman catches your eye. Could she really be interested in you? She flutters her eyelashes and takes your hand. Her Christmas party dress glitters with sequins. What you don't know is that your life is now in her hands - as she leads you up to her room there's only one thing that will determine whether you live or die. Are you a good person? Are you really?

Like any mother, Chrissie wants to protect her family. She would do anything to keep them safe. So when a mysterious stranger turns up at her door, offering to prevent the deaths of the people she loves, it sounds too good to be true. The only problem: she must choose someone to die in their place. A substitute. When her daughter Holly has a terrible accident, Chrissie has no option but to enter the programme. In that horrifying moment, she would do anything to save her.

Hollywood vs. The Author is a collection of non-fiction anecdotes by authors who’ve had the pleasure of experiencing the development room firsthand - some who have successfully managed to straddle the two worlds, seeing their works morph into the kinds of feature films and TV shows that make them proud, and others who stepped blindsided into that room after selling their first or second novels. All the stories in this collection illustrate the great divide between the world of literature and the big or small screen.

Winters End should have been the perfect place for me and my husband Neil to start again. To leave the terrible secrets and guilt of our past far behind us. But from the moment we arrived in the small, isolated community, it becomes clear to me that we are not welcome here. That someone wants us to leave…

Time to Heal tells the story of the colourful life of a country doctor towards the end of his career. In turn shocking, sad and funny, it describes a doctor who feels poorly served by the conventional medicine of his time and finds new ways to relieve the suffering of his patients. This tale has a twist. Twenty-first-century general practice and its patients have been betrayed by top-heavy regulation, performance management and a blame culture. Young doctors no longer want to enter general practice. The author explores why and how pandemics might provide the answers.

1957. A catastrophe occurs at the pharmaceutical lab in Coventry where 16-year-old Wilf is working for the summer. A catastrophe that needs to be covered up at all costs. 2017. Phiney is shocked by the death of her grandfather, Wilf, who has jumped from a railway bridge at a Coventry station. Journalist Mat Torrington is the only witness. Left in utter disbelief, with a swarm of unanswered questions, Phiney, Mat and Wilf's wife, Dora, begin their own enquiries into Wilf's death.

Successful criminal defence lawyer, Jon Shaw, comes face to face with, Danny Hallam, the man he tried to murder twenty-five years ago... Then: While drug running for a local crime lord, Danny decides to call in a large debt from a young female drug addict, Micki Ashton. During a chaotic night on...

Eighty-one-year-old Eddie Wakefield is found brutally murdered at the nursing home where he lives. Crudely carved into his flesh - while he was still alive - is the number 15. Detective Jack MacIntosh and his team are determined to track down the ruthless killer of this frail elderly man. But the investigation is leading nowhere. Then the second body is discovered. The victim was stabbed to death in their own home.Again, the number 15 is etched into the dead man's flesh.

The flame-haired virago bearing down on Ross MacKenna was far too shapely to be a seasoned warrior, but she was just as deadly. As she engaged him on the battlefield, Ross knew her for a MacKay, long-time enemies of his clan. What he didn’t know was that she would soon be his wife, given to him by her father in a desperate effort to end generations of feuding.

Art expert Emma Lindhal is anxious when she's asked to appraise the antiques in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden's wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found. As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants. When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate.

In a world rife with willful chaos, how can order be restored? Philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s answer, composed amid the violence of the English Civil War, revolutionized political thought. His solution was a commonwealth, or Leviathan, a body politic ruled and protected by an absolute sovereign. Its power would be dependent on the people to exchange their freedom for the security and order of a common law. Only with this social contract, Hobbes argued, can civil peace be established.

The call comes in the early hours. Human remains have been discovered in a suitcase, dumped on the muddy banks of the River Thames. Detective Jack MacIntosh races to the scene. The suitcase contains a human torso, two arms and two legs. It's the body of a young girl. But where is her head? Then a skull is found embedded in the silt of the riverbed. But it doesn't belong to the body in the case. As the river offers up more of its gruesome secrets, Jack uncovers a tangled web of shocking secrets stretching back 20 years.

Libya, 2011. Into this maelstrom of violence arrive a covert team of MI6 officers and their minders. They land by helicopter straight into the hands of the Libyan rebels in Benghazi and the very unwanted glare of the world press. Only ex-Royal Marine and close protection expert James Royce manages to extradite his intelligence chiefs from the mess.

Princess of Troy, sister of Hector and Paris, Priestess of Apollo. Blessed by the Sun God with the gift of prophecy, and then - for rejecting his advances - cursed by him to never be believed. Diomenes, the enemy Achaean with the healing hands, and Cassandra become puppets of the gods. Their passions are thwarted, their gifts rendered useless for the sake of a wager between two immortals. And now doomed, magnificent Troy is burning. If Cassandra and Diomenes find each other, can their love survive the games of malicious gods, victorious warriors and hated kings?

Sorceress, Princess of Colchis, Securer of the Golden Fleece. Medea - her very name is a byword for infamy. Legend has it that she murdered her own children for revenge. But love in Ancient Greece was often a dangerous game; and legends are not always what they seem. Medea, devoted wife of Jason, was also a loving mother, a loyal friend of Herakles and a brave adventurer with the Argonauts. A woman both betrayer and betrayed, the real story of Medea is strange, sensual and heroic.

It looks like a regular advent calendar. Until DC Becky Greene starts opening doors...and discovers a crime scene behind almost every one. The police hope it's a prank. Because if it isn't, a murderer has just surfaced - someone who's been killing for 20 years. But why now? And why has he sent it to this police station? As the country relaxes into festive cheer, Greene and DS Eddie Carmine must race against time to catch the killer. Because there are four doors left, and four murders will fill them....

Ten-year-old Ethan Clarke's disappearance gripped the nation. Just as his parents are starting to piece together a life 'after Ethan', their world is ripped apart once more when their daughter, Robin, disappears in almost identical circumstances. They've lost two children within a decade...and now doubts about their innocence are setting in.

With her new billionaire boss in town, Sophie's determined to swap the No-Jobs she meets on Tinder for her very own Steve Jobs. But will looking like a million dollars be enough to kick-start a Fifty Shades adventure? A ring in his pocket and dressed to kill, Calum's planning to get down on one knee. Though if Mia doesn't say 'yes', he's not sure he'll ever get back up. Julie's got a surprise for Mark - though it's something she's not even sure she wants.

During Britannia's tribal age, vengeance is brutal, bloody and will come for even those who think themselves invincible. Family feuds must be settled, whatever the cost. Both Seeress Meddi of the Eorlingas and Wærmund of the Gyrwe have old scores to settle. Meddi for her tribe to survive and thrive, and Waermund to cast himself from his father's shadow once and for all. But unbeknownst, Meddi and Wærmund share a common enemy who threatens them both – the elusive Elen and her ally is someone Wærmund has travelled the breadth of Britannia to outrun.