Showing results by narrator "Leighton Pugh" in All Categories

From the number one best-selling author of The American Boy and The Ashes of London comes a collection of three Gothic novellas - Broken Voices, The Leper House and The Scratch - perfect for fans of The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley.

At the height of the Cold War, officials at the Ministry of Defence conducted a highly secret investigation into unusual events that occurred along a strip of rugged Pembrokeshire coastline. The events made national headlines: objects hovering in the sky, ghostly figures peering into windows and poltergeists plaguing a terrified family. Thirty years later, the official files were finally released for public scrutiny and prompted a new witness to come forward.

When Jerry falls asleep on the bus to school, he's incredibly hacked off to wake up and discover he's on another planet. The realisation that he's just been sold to a family of aliens by an exotic pet shop, does nothing to improve Jerry's mood. Harchi Jannan and his son, Chad, are thrilled with their unique new pet, but Rashila Jannan is so furious with her husband for buying it, she's ready to shed her tail tip.

Sam and Lizzie are freezing and hungry on the streets of Victorian London. When Sam asks a wealthy man for some coins, he is rudely turned away, and Sam resolves to kill the man. Huddling in a graveyard, Sam and Lizzie are horrified to see the earth around one of the tombs begin to shift. A ghostly figure warns Sam about the future which awaits such a bitter heart, and so begins Sam's journey led by terrifying spirits through the past, present and future.

James Marlowe puts in long alcohol- and cocaine-fuelled hours as an advertising director. As his life disintegrates around him, he comes to despise his clients, the corporate world, and himself. Now his imagination is fired by a set of characters he calls The Zoo. They lead him into a world crazier than the one that's thrown him out. The way back to sanity might lie behind the fantasy.

Man is a delicate mechanism...he can easily be set off course. It is the late 18th century, and a young Sicilian nobleman, Vitellio Scarpia, finds himself penniless and in disgrace on the streets of Rome. After leaving his home to pursue a military career, his impulsive and undisciplined nature has led to his expulsion from Spanish royal guard, and he must now seek his fortune in Italy - a fortune inseparably bound up with the ruler of the Eternal City, the Pope.

It's 1782. The 13-year-old daughter of a Venetian merchant family is lured naked from her bath by a stray cat and finds herself in the arms of Casanova - the legendary seducer of women. Twenty-five years later Cecilia is in Albania, now a portrait painter of some renown. Enter a young man from England, a troubled poet, looking for adventure at any price - a man who begins his affair with Cecilia.

Will & Tom is a glimpse into the life of the infamous artist J. M. W. Turner as a young man during a week spent at Harewood House, fighting for a commission against his childhood friend and rival, Tom Girtin. 1797, West Yorkshire. When young artist Will Turner arrives at Harewood House at the invitation of aristocrat Beau Lascelles, his intention is to do no more than sketch the house and grounds, receive his commission, and return to London.

When Dillon's dad turns up unannounced to take him and his brother on a trip, Dillon isn't sure what to do - Mum's at work and they haven't seen Dad in months. Dillon's little brother Robbie is ecstatic to see his father and desperate to go. But why won't Dad let them use their phones? And why are their faces plastered all over the news? What exactly does Dad want with them?

Deep in the grounds of Welland House lies an ancient memorial tower, surrounded by a prehistoric wilderness that isolates it from the rest of the land. When one day Viviette Constantine, the wife of the estate's owner, investigates the tower, she there discovers Swithin St. Cleeve, a young astronomer who introduces her to the majesty and wonders of the night sky. Instantly drawn to Swithin, and with her husband abroad, Viviette offers him use of the tower and becomes a kind of apprentice to him, and then, eventually, a lover.

The hare, a night creature and country dweller, is a rare sight for most people. We know them only from legends and stories. They are shape-shifters, witches’ familiars and symbols of fertility. They are arrogant, as in Aesop’s 'The Tortoise and the Hare', and absurd, as in Lewis Carroll’s Mad March Hare. In the absence of observed facts, speculation and fantasy have flourished. But real hares? What are they like? John Lewis-Stempel explores myths, history and the reality of the hare.

In the late 1950s, during his National Service, Drummond meets the two people who will change his life: Carter, a rich, educated young man sent down from Oxford, and Gwen, a barmaid with whom he feels an instant connection. His feelings for both will be tested at a military base known as Doom Town. It is an experience that will colour the rest of his - and his family’s - life. The Blind Light moves from the '50s through to present day, taking in the global and local events that will shape and define Drum’s family.

Jonas Merrick - mockingly nicknamed 'Eternal Flame' by his colleagues at MI6 because he was desk bound and considered a long redundant encyclopaedia of names and faces - was on the edge of retirement. Having escaped his own insincere retirement party and taken refuge on a bench within the grounds of Thames House, he finds himself sitting next to Winston Gunn, a young man drawn into the Jihadi activist net while serving 18 months imprisonment. A young man packed tightly with explosives ready for detonation....

The unresolved and ambiguous details of Robert Schumann’s psychological decline and death have tended to dominate his biography. Yet in his time Schumann was lauded as a protean Romantic literary genius whose writings, as a music critic, poet, novelist and dramatist, eclipsed his musical creativity. How did Schumann reconcile these elements? Does his music suggest he suffered from bipolar disorder? How did his pianist wife, Clara, influence his compositions?

This audiobook is the first to offer a concise, accessible overview of the evolution of the Soviet Union as a multiethnic empire. It reflects on how the Soviet Union was home to many ethnic minorities, and how their fates, and that of the USSR itself, were bound to the question of how the Soviet state responded variously throughout its existence to the fundamental question of ethnic difference across its vast and diverse territory. The audiobook then examines how the Soviet collapse in 1991 fractured the Union along markedly national lines.

Nuclear Russia probes the juncture of history of science and technology, political and cultural history, and environmental history. It considers the atom in Russian society as a reflection of Leninist technological utopianism, Cold War imperatives, scientific hubris, public acceptance, and a state desire to conquer nature. Furthermore the audiobook examines the vital – and perhaps unexpected – significance of ethnicity and gender in nuclear history by looking at how Kazakhs and Nenets lost their homelands and their health in Russia in the wake of nuclear testing.

They say that third time's a charm... It's been two years since mass murderer, Giacomo Riondino, disappeared after killing Greta Alfieri. Dr. Claps, devastated and guilt-ridden by Greta's death, has been on a man-hunt for Riondino ever since. Meanwhile, an American girl disappears on the 382nd step of the Cerro trail in Guayaquil, Ecuador. No one saw her disappear. Who took her? And how? When the US authorities contact Claps, he is certain that it must be Riordino. But, unlike Riondino's other victims, the girl has disappeared into thin air.

When the leader of one of Denmark’s major political parties is seriously injured in a car crash a mere three weeks before an election, two of his deputies vie to succeed him. But only one can emerge victorious, and a vicious, dirty-tricks campaign—marked by the unearthing of past indiscretions, malignant arm-twisting, and forged documents—ensues. Everyone else is just a pawn in this high-stakes game of chess, in which even the reporters covering the Danish Parliament have their own agendas.

A gripping thriller full of twists you won't see coming... Seven years ago, psychiatrist Dr Claps assisted police in capturing Giacomo Riondino, a man accused of abducting, torturing and murdering two women. On arrest, tests had revealed that Riondino suffered from a rare and disturbing psychiatric condition and was sectioned. Six years later, Riondino is on the run after escaping from a rehabilitation centre, leaving a trail of bloody murders in his wake.

Zola’s Money (L’Argent, 1891) shows the corrupting effect of untrammelled stock-market speculation. While some seek redemption through philanthropic and evangelical ventures, others–such as the main protagonist, Saccard–embrace their own avarice. Speculators illegally push up share prices so that ordinary citizens are feverishly swept up in an epidemic of small-scale investment.