Showing results by narrator "Steven Pacey" in All Categories

It was summer 1970 – a long, hot summer. In a castle in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on the sea of change, trapped inside the history of the sexual revolution. The girls are acting like boys, and the boys are going on acting like boys, and Keith Nearing – twenty years old, a literature student all clogged up with the English novel – is struggling to twist feminism and the rise of women towards his own ends.

When a paragraph in an evening newspaper reveals a decades-old tragedy, most readers barely give it a glance. But for three strangers, it's impossible to ignore. For one woman it's a reminder of the worst thing that ever happened to her. For another it's the dangerous possibility that her darkest secret is about to be discovered. And for a third, a journalist, it's the first clue in a hunt to uncover the truth. The Child's story will be told.

At St Oswald’s, a long-established boys’ grammar school in the north of England, a new year has just begun. For the staff and boys of the school, a wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork and Information Technology rule the world; and Roy Straitley, the eccentric veteran Latin master, is finally – reluctantly – contemplating retirement. But beneath the little rivalries, petty disputes and everyday crises of the school, a darker undercurrent stirs.

Charlie Cook is reading a book about a pirate captain, who is reading a book about Goldilocks, who is reading about a knight, who is reading about a frog.... From kings and queens to aliens and ghosts, there's something for everyone in Charlie's amazing book of adventure! Perfect for listening to at home, in the car, at bedtime - or any time at all!

The newspaper refers to the dead body only as Victim 2117 - the two thousand, one hundred and seventeenth refugee to die in the Mediterranean Sea. But to three people, the victim is so much more, and the death sets off a chain of events that throws Department Q, Copenhagen's cold cases division led by Detective Carl Mørck, into a deeply dangerous - and deeply personal - case: a case that not only reveals dark secrets about the past, but has deadly implications for the future.

The setting is Berlin. Into this divided city, wrenched between East and West, between past and present; comes twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team. Though only a pawn in an international plot that is never fully revealed to him, Leonard uses his secret work to escape the bonds of his ordinary life - and to lose his unwanted innocence.

In The Amulet of Samarkand, the young magician Nathaniel won wide acclaim for his daring exploits in saving the powerful jewel for the government. Now, he seems set to continue his meteoric rise through the ministerial ranks. But the mysterious Resistance inflicts terrifying destruction on London, and soon Nathaniel's job and his very life are under threat, not only from the elusive Kitty and her companions, but from an unknown and bewildering source.

In Talking It Over, Gillian and Stuart were married until Oliver - witty, feckless Oliver - stole her away. In Love, etc, Julian Barnes revisits Stuart, Gillian, and Oliver, using the same intimate technique of allowing the characters to speak directly to the listener, to whisper their secrets, to argue for their version of the truth… Love, etc is a compelling exploration of contemporary love and its betrayals.

Three new adventures for the Liberator crew, starring some of the actors from the original hit BBC TV series. In 'Corners of the Mind' by Andy Lane, Avon is trapped in a labyrinth full of puzzles, with no way to teleport to safety and deadly traps at every corner. He needs all his wits to survive, but there is one problem - he is losing his mind with every puzzle, piece by piece, memory by memory. Also includes 'Capital' and 'Punishment'.

Penguin Classics presents Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actor Steven Pacey. Do I desire unreasonably much in wanting what is called life - music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that is going on in the great arteries of the world? Tempestuous Eustacia Vye passes her days dreaming of passionate love and the escape it may bring from the small community of Egdon Heath.

This year Valentine’s Day isn’t for romance. It’s for murder.Mega rich restaurant owner Jack Barnes and his second wife Zee are very much in love. However, their plans for Valentine’s Day are about to be torn apart by the most violent murder.Who is the strange figure plotting this sick crime? Who hates Jack that much? There are plenty of suspects living in Jack’s fancy block of flats. Is it them, or could it be the work of an outsider with a twisted mind?

Simon Serrailler is faced with that most complicated of investigations - a cold case. Freak weather and flash floods all over southern England. Half of Lafferton is afloat. A landslip on the Moor has closed the bypass and, as the rain slowly drains away, a shallow grave - and a skeleton - are exposed. It doesn’t take long to identify the remains as those of the missing teenager, Harriet Lowther, last seen carrying a tennis racket while waiting for a bus. But that was 16 years ago.

A woman vanishes in the fog up on "the Hill", an area locally known for its tranquillity and peace. The police are not alarmed; people usually disappear for their own reasons. But when a young girl, an old man, and even a dog disappear, no one can deny that something untoward is happening in this quiet cathedral town.

Duchess of Cornwall Close: sheltered accommodation, a mix of bungalows and flats, newly built and not quite finished. Despite the bitterly cold weather, elderly residents are moving in. Then, one snowy night, an old lady is murdered - dragged from her bed and strangled with a length of flex. DCS Simon Serrailler and his team are aware of bizarre circumstances surrounding her death, but keep some details secret while they desperately search for a match. All they know is that the killer will strike again, and will once more leave the same tell-tale signature.

Following on from the child abduction in her previous novel The Pure in Heart, Susan Hill explores the crazy grief of a widowed husband, a derangement that turns to obsession and threats, violence and terror.

Gunmen are terrorising young women in the Cathedral town of Lafferton. What - if anything - links the apparently random murders? Is the marksman with a rifle the same person as the killer with a handgun? Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler falls back on well tried police methods such as questioning neighbours and house-to-house searches.

In a Copenhagen park the body of an elderly woman is discovered. Though the case bears a striking resemblance to another unsolved homicide from over a decade ago, the police cannot find any connection between the two victims. Across town a group of young women are being hunted down. The attacks seem random, but could these brutal acts of violence be related? Detective Carl Mørck of Department Q is charged with solving the mystery.

A voice is calling in the darkness. A voice that only Cally can hear. Vila has abandoned his crewmates, searching for the mythical water of life.

With Cally acting suspiciously, Tarrant and Grant face danger at the heart of paradise. A gift is being offered. A gift that will cost one member of the Liberator crew dearly. But will Cally accept?

A must-listen for any J. G. Ballard fan, this “capstone to a magnificent career” (San Francisco Chronicle) is the essential sequel to Empire of the Sun. Published in 1991, this semiautobiographical novel is a daring masterpiece from “one of the most important and intelligent voices in contemporary fiction” (Susan Sontag). “Rueful the way Primo Levi’s work was” (New York Times Book Review), the novel follows 15-year-old Jim Graham as he leaves the ruins of postwar Shanghai, only to find that he cannot escape his own obsession with death.

Maizie is struggling to keep the Paris Hotel open whilst her husband is in the army during World War 2. A French soldier stays at the hotel after Dunkirk, they fall in love...and she becomes pregnant. After he leaves for France, she realises she can't follow him.