Showing results by narrator "Matthew Lloyd" in All Categories

Fifteen years after losing most of his family to a devastating, pudding-related tragedy, Simon Debovar has settled into a life of self-imposed exile from the stinking, selfish morass of humanity. Content that his daily highlights will include hazelnut coffee, a long bath, and the occasional jar of olives, his life is completely upturned by the discovery that his ornate living room carpet is the deciding factor in a bet between God and Satan.

An old friend's sister disappears without a trace. There's no sign of foul play, but she'd been acting very peculiarly. Meanwhile, Liz's cousin, Christie, comes to stay. She takes an immediate - and uncharacteristic - dislike to the local bookshop owner, Gina. Why does everyone put up with her awful behavior? Christie is convinced that Gina is manipulating everyone around her. Is she onto something dangerous or just pushing her new friends away? No one believes her suspicions until another friend goes missing late at night on the misty Fen marshes.

Matt is intrigued when his partner Liz brings home an old carpet bag she found dumped in the local library. It contains a pile of mysterious handwritten notes. Liz is convinced the bag belongs to Old Molly, a local woman who lives on the streets. The following day, a body is discovered in a marshy lagoon. It's Old Molly. Suffocated with an expensive men's handkerchief. Molly clearly knew something that got her killed. Liz believes she was trying to tell them something important. She calls on her nephew David to help decipher the carpet bag notes.

This is a 150-year detective story with a cast of unrecognized heroes who may, finally, become known for their work on the true causes of heart disease. Exploring the truth about cholesterol—the apparently tried, and convicted, cause of millions of deaths from heart disease—with billions spent each year on lowering cholesterol with diet and drugs.

Photography student Toby Unsworth has found the location for the perfect night-time shoot. A cobbled street in the old part of Fenfleet. Later, when he looks at the images on his laptop, he thinks he sees a woman's face in the window of an old, disused building. He asks his housemate Alex to come and take a look . . . Two days later, Toby and Alex are dead. Carbon monoxide poisoning. An unfortunate accident. But Alex's mother doesn't believe it. She hires Matt and Liz to find out the truth.

At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria’s wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the battlefield.

Marisol locks me out of my own concert by accident. She's wearing a suit at a rock show, searching for her lost law school textbook, has no idea who I am, and for the first time in years, I'm hooked. She's smart, driven, and utterly gorgeous. The sort of girl who earnestly believes in following the rules and hates when others don't. I'm a huge rock star, recovering addict, and general f--kup. Our relationship is for show and that's all. But with every smile, every laugh, and every breathtaking glance at her curves, I want her more.

Grace Repton, a beautiful older woman, walks into the police station to tell Detective Matt Ballard she has information that could stop a murder. Her fiance, the infamous serial killer Jeremy Reader, has told her that he has a disciple who is going to kill using Reader's horrific methods. Reader murdered five women and was finally brought to justice by Detective Ballard. Reader is safely imprisoned in a high security prison, and claiming to be a reformed man who wants to help the police.

One moment, he was enjoying a breakfast of salmon trimmings in his home in South Wales. The next, he was teleported across time and space onto the cold stone floor of an evil warlock. Locked in the warlock's tower through day and night, Ben may have to serve him for a while. He'll hate this, especially having to hunt those infernal demon rats when the warlock doesn't feed him well at all.

Twenty-nine-year-old workaholic Libby Dewitt lives by the motto "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail." She's finally about to start her dream life with her fiance, Richard Tomy. Together, they're the perfect power couple - right down to the fact that he's agreed to use their honeymoon to help further her career in mergers and acquisitions. But 10 minutes before the wedding, her dreams dissolve via text message. Libby escapes to Paradise Bay alone. She's got two goals for her trip: devise a plan to get Richard back and convince resort owner Harrison Banks to sell his property.

The people who call End of the Line need hope. They need reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn’t want them to hope. She wants them to die. Laura hasn’t had it easy: she's survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry. She doesn't love talking to people worse off than she is. She craves it. But now someone’s on to her - Ryan, whose world falls apart when his pregnant wife ends her life, hand in hand with a stranger.

The plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the 14th century has been of never-ending interest to both scholars and the general public. Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story. In The Great Mortality, author John Kelly lends an air of immediacy and intimacy to his telling of the journey of the plague as it traveled from the steppes of Russia, across Europe, and into England, killing 75 million people—one third of the known population—before it vanished.

In this powerful book, the renowned exorcist of Rome tells of his many experiences in his ministry as an exorcist doing battle with Satan to relieve the great suffering of people in the grip of evil. The importance of the ministry to "expel demons" is clearly seen in the Gospels, from the actions of the Apostles, and from Church history. Fr. Amorth allows the listener to witness the activities of the exorcist, to experience what an exorcist sees and does.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant.

There is a wild man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads. When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past - both the green magic of the woods and the dark things that rest in its heart.

As the mists roll over the fens and enigmatic lights twinkle in the distance, only the locals know their way along the hidden paths through the mysterious watery terrain of one of England's most beautiful and sometimes dangerous places. Detective Matt Ballard may have retired but there's still plenty going on in the fens to keep him busy. Someone trashes an old lady's garden and daubs her isolated cottage with hateful graffiti. Emilia Swain seems to be totally harmless, so why is she being targeted?

Silas Mason has no illusions about himself. He's not lovable or even likable. He's an overbearing idealist, a radical bookseller and pamphleteer who lives for revolution...and for Wednesday nights. Every week he meets anonymously with the same man, in whom Silas has discovered the ideal meld of intellectual companionship and absolute obedience to his sexual commands. But, unbeknownst to Silas, his closest friend is also his greatest enemy, with the power to see him hanged - or spare his life.

How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is "really" like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality, Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the listener on a grand tour of 100 years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science.

At precisely two minutes to seven every morning, Gabriel Ward KC steps out of his rooms in the Inner Temple, presses his oak front door three times to ensure it is locked, and walks to his office to begin his day. Except for today. Today, the dead body of the Lord Chief Justice of England, immaculately clad in evening dress except for his bare feet, is lying on his doorstep – with one of the silver Temple carving knives sticking out of his chest. As rumour and gossip fly round the chambers and the press set up camp outside the gates, an investigation is ordered by the head of the Temple.

Robert Harland ended his career as a British spy in an Austrian hospital, after being tortured and beaten by Czech security agents in the last days of the communist regime. He was young enough then to find a new life with the Red Cross and then with the UN.