Showing results by narrator "Andrew Calverley" in All Categories

Eight years after the events of Vessel, the guardians of an ancient treasure are living in New York. Secrecy has long served as their protection, but in an increasingly connected, technological world, remaining hidden is not as easy as once it was. Present and ancient past are set to collide, and prove that not all myths are fantasy, and not all legends are lies.

New York - July 1976 - in a world in which New England remains the sparkling jewel in the crown of the British Empire. It is the day before Empire Day - July 4 - the day each year when the British Empire marks the brutal crushing of the rebellion dignified by the treachery of the 56 delegates to the Continental Congress who were so foolhardy as to sign the infamous Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on that day of infamy in 1776.

Once the brightest star in the legal firmament, Sam Williams has hit rock bottom, with barely a client to his name and a short-term cash problem that's looking longer by the minute. So when he's summoned to Manchester to help a friend crack a case involving the murder of two unarmed police officers and a suspect who won't say a word, he jumps at the chance to resurrect his career.

The British Empire has sleepwalked, unprepared into war with the Triple Alliance, the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean and Central America. But this is not to be a war like those which have gone before it; wars decided by crushing British sea power and eventually, on land by the superiority of the logistics and tactics of relatively small colonial armies in the South Western badlands. Remember Brave Achilles becomes the call to arms.

For Adam Chantrey, looking forward to the fifth year of his personal odyssey, duty has become his watchword and life on the squadrons his only reality. Then one day, while waiting for a train that is late, he encounters a different fate, and afterwards, nothing will ever be the same again. But for a man like Adam Chantrey, who lives his life rubbing shoulders with the countless ghosts of the never-ending war with the distant cities, whose dreams are filled with burning aircraft falling into clouds soaked like mile upon mile of blood-soaked cotton wool, what has hope become?

Isaac Fielding knows exactly where he stands: Things were not looking good. Upon that, at least, everybody could agree. The other thing that everybody seemed to agree about was that when, eventually, I had my day in court it was likely to be a short, bittersweet experience and that the main topic of discussion would be the manner of my subsequent execution.

A secret prisoner holds the key to a 30-year old crime. Sam Williams was meant for great things, until a fatal misstep crashed his career. Trying to salvage the remnants is a path which leads him to the wrong place at the worst time - a high security prison in the middle of a riot, and face to face with a man the world believes is long dead. Sam quickly learns someone is willing to do whatever it takes make sure things stay that way. The truth to a decades old mystery might save Sam’s skin, but the clock is ticking.

It is the late spring of 1978 in a world in which the American Revolution failed in 1776 after George Washington was killed and the Continental Army was destroyed at the Battle of Long Island. The rumbling aftershocks of the Empire Day atrocities which reverberated through Two Hundred Lost Years are threatening to come to the boil. While in Philadelphia the politics become ever more fractious in Spain the Royal Alcazar is a citadel besieged in a country which might as well still be stuck in the 19th century.

Exhausted and tormented by his own demons, Adam Chantrey discovers, amidst the chaos of war and loss, love and an unlikely inner peace up on the high wold of Lincolnshire while all around him the world is enveloped in madness. Bomber Command's hour of greatest trial - the Battle of Berlin - is approaching, and its long, dark shadow hangs over the young men who ride the heavies of the Main Force to Germany in the knowledge that a tour of bomber operations is a death sentence for two out of every three men.

Renowned human rights lawyer Elizabeth Maurier lies dead, her body mutilated, her killer unknown. For DI Olivia Martins and her team, it’s a mystery. For the victim’s daughter Lizzy, a poet and academic with a shaky grasp on reality, it’s a tragedy. But for Sam Williams, the man Elizabeth fired a decade ago and hasn’t spoken to since, it’s a whole new world of pain.

Everyone needs to be heard: If there’s one thing Sam Williams has learned, it’s that. Which is why he finds himself defending Richard Fothergill against accusations that date back decades. But Sam’s real problems are closer to home. His nemesis, Trawden, is finally dead, but so are those he once called friends. The people he used to count on, the ones who aren’t in the ground, aren’t what they once were, either.

Devon Cricket is a collection of my father’s writings on the subject. The centerpiece of the monograph is the essay "The Beginnings of Devon Cricket", which is accompanied by biographical sketches of that seminal figure in Devonian cricketing folklore "John Henry Copleston", a shorter piece about "Shaw: the Nameless One", and "The Butchers of Devon", about a remarkable West Country cricketing family. In publishing this I am doing what my father would have done had he lived in our marvelously interconnected age—making this material available to the widest possible audience.

Playing cricket in Germany in the 1930s was not always as...fraught. But it certainly had its moments. German Cricket, the second monograph in the James D. Coldham series, covers the fraught, the arcane, and the frankly bizarre aspects of the history of the game in Germany drawing on a wealth of research.

That William Brockwell, who had touched the upper reaches of cricketing greatness and was talented in other ways, slipped badly is, alas, a tragic fact of history; and cruelly illustrative of the knife edge upon which professional cricketers of the "gold age" of English cricket lived.

Our affable, driven, conflicted hero’s journey through nearly 20 stormy years, where it all went wrong and perhaps, and how redemption came looking for him in an unlikely, lethal guise when actually, he was through with the world. One should be careful for what one wishes for, but with Harry Waters, you never quite know what you are going to get because…neither does he, and after a while, that might just be what grows on one!

This anthology of my father’s work is mainly comprised of articles, editor’s notes, short biographical sketches, and tributes written for or during his tenure as editor of the Journal of the Cricket Society. Unashamedly, it is a miscellany of writings; his "notes" which read like a commentary on the state of cricket between 1970 and 1984, and a tour de force of an eclectic, ever-curious mind focused on the abiding passion of his life - the summer game.

After Midnight is the fifth and last book of the Until the Night series and is set in January 1944. The Until the Night Series about Bomber Command in the winter of 1943-44 and follows the experience of Adam Chantrey, a 25-year old veteran of the bombing war sent to Ansham Wolds in Lincolnshire to rebuild a shattered Lancaster squadron. Exhausted and tormented by his own demons he discovers, amidst the chaos of war and loss, love and an unlikely inner peace up on the High Wold of Lincolnshire while all around him the world is enveloped in madness. By January 1944 a tour of operations has become a virtual death sentence and yet the battle goes on; Bomber Command is at the crossroads and Adam Chantrey must confront his last demon.

It is December 1943, and the Lancaster Force has settled into the long, hard slog of razing Berlin from end to end. Raid after raid presses on against the storms of winter and the fury of the gun lines and the fighters guarding the faraway cities on the Saxon plain. The storms that batter the Main Force and the seasonal fog and mist that regularly envelope their bases are enemies as deadly as the Luftwaffe; the time when any man on ops could cling to hope is quickly disappearing.

September 1940. Squadron leader Paul Chantrey is a man under pressure, but he is one of "the few". Fighter Command is all that stands between Britain and defeat.

It was in November 1943 that Bomber Command commenced a campaign to level Berlin from end to end; at stake was the tantalizing prospect of knocking Germany out of the war by the spring of 1944. The fabled "main aim" of the bomber war briefly beckoned, and like a siren's call, it began to lure the Main Force to its doom. But all that was in an unknown and an unknowable future; in the beginning hope died hard. For Adam Chantrey, this is just the latest battle, and he is not alone in having to come to terms with the new realities of a cruel world.