Showing results by narrator "Luke Thompson" in All Categories

John Wallace has no idea why he has been targeted. No idea who his attacker is. No idea how he will prevent the inevitable. Then the pendulum of fate swings in his favour. He has one chance to escape, find the truth and halt his destruction. The momentum is in his favour for now. But with a killer on his tail, everything can change with one swing of this deadly pendulum....

The Ticket Collector from Belarus tells the remarkable story of two interwoven journeys. Ben-Zion Blustein and Andrei Sawoniuk were childhood companions in 1930s Domachevo, once a holiday and health resort in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and then a struggling township in Belarus. During the events which followed its Nazi occupation in 1942, they became the bitterest of enemies. After the war, Ben-Zion made his way to Israel, and ‘Andrusha the bastard’ found work as a London Transport ticket collector.

It’s been two decades since Irakli fled his war-torn homeland with two young sons, now grown men. Two decades since he saw their mother, who stayed so they could escape. At long last, Tbilisi has lured him home. But when Irakli’s phone calls stop, a mystery begins... Arriving in the city as escaped zoo animals prowl the streets, Saba picks up the trail of clues: strange graffiti, bewildering messages transmitted through the radio, pages from his father’s unpublished manuscript scattered like breadcrumbs.

Receiving letters by post or via e-mail has always been important to me. Even now I feel slightly disappointed if the postman passes the door without anything for me, even though I know the chances are it will be a bill, a parking fine, a bank statement or a catalogue offering me clothing or garden furniture. The same applies when my inbox is empty save for someone offering a deal on a used car or urging me to change my energy provider.

In The Life of Dad, Dr Machin draws on her research and the latest findings in genetics, neuroscience and psychology to tell the story of fatherhood. She will show the extraordinary physiological changes a man undergoes when he becomes a father, investigate how a man’s genes can influence what sort of father he will be, and show how a dad makes a unique contribution to his child’s life, helping to foster independence of mind and spirit.

Brighton, 1963. Edgar Stephens has been promoted to Superintendent and is married to his former sergeant, Emma Holmes. Edgar's wartime partner in arms, magician Max Mephisto, is a movie star in Hollywood, while his daughter Ruby has her own TV show. The funeral of an old friend highlights just how much the gang's lives have changed in the last nine years. Edgar is struggling with fresh responsibilities and the new swinging Brighton of rioting mods and rockers; Emma is chafing against the restrictions of life as a housewife.

Dining alone in an elegant Parisian brasserie, accountant Daniel Mercier can hardly believe his eyes when President François Mitterrand sits down to eat at the table next to him. After the presidential party has gone, Daniel discovers that Mitterrand’s black felt hat has been left behind. After a few moments’ soul-searching, Daniel decides to keep the hat as a souvenir of an extraordinary evening. It’s a perfect fit, and as he leaves the restaurant Daniel begins to feel somehow...different.

Despite the many films and television programmes over the decades since the end of the Second World War that portrays our allied heroes as grown-up men and women, the Battle of Britain was in the main actually fought and won by teenagers. The average age of an RAF fighter pilot was just 20 years old. Many of the men and women who designed and built their planes were even younger.

Suicide is the single biggest killer of men aged 20-45 in the UK. Depression and undiagnosed mental illness are huge contributors to these deaths, as they're often more difficult to diagnose in men. And those men don't tend to talk about the typical symptoms or visit their doctors. Meet Tim. For nearly a decade, he kept his depression secret; it made him feel so weak and shameful, he thought it would destroy his whole life if anyone found out. And Tim is not alone.

Stitch by perfect stitch, Andrew Garvie makes exquisite dolls in the finest antique style. Like him, they are diminutive but graceful, unique and with surprising depths. Perhaps that's why he answers the enigmatic personal ad in his collector's magazine. Letter by letter, Bramber Winters reveals more of her strange, sheltered life in an institution on Bodmin Moor and the terrible events that put her there as a child. Andrew knows what it is to be trapped, and as they knit closer together, he weaves a curious plan to rescue her.

French Academician and Nazi sympathiser Paul-Jean Husson writes a letter to his local SS officer in the autumn of 1942. Tormented by an illicit passion for Ilse, his German daughter-in-law, Husson has taken a decision that will devastate several lives, including his own.

This is the story of a man caught in the middle of a huge American destabilising operation, illustrating the secret economic war that the United States is waging against developed nations across the world. In 2014, France lost part of the control of its nuclear power plants to the United States. Frédéric Pierucci, former senior executive of one of Alstom's subsidiaries, found himself at the heart of this state scandal. His story goes to the very heart of a $12 billion thriller that illustrates the secret economic war that the United States is waging in Europe.

Some of today's greatest storytellers reveal their choices of the ideal grown-up bedtime story: writers such as Margaret Drabble, Ken Follett, Tessa Hadley, Robert Macfarlane, Patrick Ness, Tony Robinson, and Warsan Shire. Fold away your laptop and shut down your mobile phone. Curl up and crash out with the ultimate bedside book, one you'll return to again and again. Full of laughter and tears, moonlight and magic, Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups joyfully provides the dream way to end the day - and begin the night....

In this version of London, there is a small, private clinic. Behind its layers of security, procedures are taking place on poor, robust teenagers from northern estates in exchange for thousands of pounds - procedures that will bring the wealthy dead back to life in these young, supple bodies for 14 days. It's an opportunity for wrongs to be righted, for fathers to meet grandsons, for scientists to see their work completed. Old wine in new bottles. But at what cost?

A wonderful selection of 22 fantastical summer stories by one of the world's best-loved children's authors, Enid Blyton. School's out! So go on a picnic in the woods, visit the seaside or take a trip on a magic aeroplane in this enchanting collection of stories perfect for summer holidays.

In 2019, seventy-year-old Signe sets out on a hazardous voyage to cross an entire ocean in only a sailboat. She is haunted by the loss of the love of her life, and is driven by a singular and all-consuming mission to make it back to him.

November, 1941. Germany is about to win the war. Only one thing still separates the Nazis from a certain victory: they must find the three remaining all-powerful swastikas and reunite them with a fourth that is safely hidden away in Himmler's mountain stronghold. Churchill has no choice but to mobilise his best man, double agent Tristan Marcas, and employ the most risky techniques to beat them to it. It all comes to a showdown at a ball in Venice.

The ravaged world of Tallarn now plays host to the greatest armoured conflict in the history of mankind, with the bitter and vengeful Iron Warriors leading warhosts of tanks and Titans across the befouled plains. In desperation, a covert team of Imperial Fists resort to seemingly unthinkable measures in order to regain the upper hand - but will their mission to seize the macro-transporter Eagle's Talon ensure victory or merely spell doom for their loyal allies on the surface below?

A fugitive stalks the shadows of the Petitioner's City. Though his fellow Outcast Dead are no more, the lone wolf Severian still intends to escape from Terra by any means possible - but the enigmatic hunter Yasu Nagasena is in pursuit. As news of the massacre on Isstvan V continues to spread and Severian's trail doubles back to the place where it all began, both he and Nagasena must face some uncomfortable truths - and an even more uncertain future.

In Rise Like Lions, Booker Prize winning writer Ben Okri has compiled a collection of poems that celebrate the many voices of politics, from polemics and rallying cries to lyrics and meditations. Many of these poems have resonated with readers over lifetimes and through generations, from William Blake to Marvin Gaye. In exploring the impact political poems have on ideas, vision, protest, change and truth, Okri demonstrates how the need for this strand of poetry is as great as it has ever been, and its inspiration just as powerful.