Showing results by narrator "Philip Battley" in All Categories

From an early age, Sarah Cranshaw has exhibited an unladylike interest in scientific pursuits. Whether it's memorising train timetables or stargazing on her telescope, such pursuits have earned her the nickname of bluestocking in her Oxfordshire village. But behind the eccentric demeanour she presents to the world, there lies a secret. For years, Sarah has been obsessed with the handsome but roguish Mr Templeton. She knows, of course, that she has little hope of earning his affection in return, but still she yearns for him.

When Six Englishmen come to Apple Blossom, they turn the town upside-down by not leaving. Instead, they take it upon themselves to help a few poor folks out by sprucing up their houses! Next on their list: The Widow Crawford. But Sarah Crawford didn't trust the newcomers, and was it any wonder? The last strangers that came through town killed her husband. They appeared to be decent men, just like the Englishmen. So far they'd fixed things up for a rancher and Apple Blossom's own lady sheriff. But just because they trusted them didn't mean Sarah had to. After all, she had to protect herself and her children.

Cassie Laine never wanted to be sheriff, but when her father, Sheriff Laine was ambushed and killed along with his posse, she had little choice. The little town of Apple Blossom was dying. No one in their right mind would take the job! To make matters worse, an annoying Englishman, one of six brothers passing through and now helping some of the townsfolk out, was assigned to her.

It is 1903 in the English countryside when Robbie, a shy young art student, meets the twenty-nine-year-old Anton who is running from memories of his brutal childhood and failed marriage. Within months, they begin a love affair that will never let them go. Robbie grows into an accomplished portraitist in the vivid London art world with the help of Anton's enchanting former wife, while Anton turns from his inherited wealth and connections to improve the conditions of the poor.

Still unclear as to his past or why he had been brought to these war-ravaged lands, Darcus is sent on a journey to retrieve the Orb of Origins from an evil, dark sorcerer. If he returns the orb to the elder of the Mërka Uran, he has been promised to have his memories restored. Facing the Dark Sorcerer will not be an easy task though. While Darcus starts off with wyverns and a clear direction, his journey isn’t as straight of a path as he had hoped for. Darcus is determined, but will he even make it to the Dark Sorcerer’s Lair?

James Gardner weaves both the brutality and the compassion of modern Africa into his thriller, The Lion Killer. His protagonist, Rhodesian war hero Rigby Croxford, is hired by the unscrupulous American litigator Max Turner to rescue his son from Congolese rebels after a peaceful safari to see the mountain gorillas turns into a bloodbath of rape and murder. Croxford is apprehensive about Max’s hidden agenda, but it’s too late to back out. The adventure has more twists than the Zambezi River with danger at every bend.

On the verge of losing everything, the citizens of Ness come together to save their kingdom, led by two young friends who show them how to work together by honoring their differences. Beans and humans alike come together to form a close-knit community that embraces different cultures and ways of life. The Ness farm discovers that their greatest crop isn't beans, but love. Together, they build a fair and peaceful world where all are free.

Chance Hale is more interested in running around with women than following in his father's footsteps as head of the billion-dollar tech company Halcyon Enterprises. Called home for an important announcement, Chance seeks to liven up the weekend by bringing along an alluring young lady named Cadence Turing, who claims to be visiting his home planet, Arrhidaeus, from the planet Paraesepe. But when someone turns up murdered, all evidence points to Chance. Of all the house's guests, his weekend companion seems to believe she can prove his innocence, though she's hesitant to admit how.

The young bodybuilder found himself alone in a strange city, homeless, where he knew no one. Would he survive the concrete jungle when all his pleas for help fell on deaf ears? The alien world Will visited every night in his dreams had its own perils too. He must find the blue orchid he had placed on the dead girl’s chest before he had pushed her body into the lava flow. He had been told that the flower couldn’t perish in flames, but would he be able to find it? Would he find the narrow path to his love? Would the blue orchid melt the ice in her heart?

Recruited solely for his reputation in cyber intelligence, Luke Frankland is meant to lend his name to a cyber start-up venture, host clients, and build up the sales value of the fledgling company. However, when he is targeted by a new type of social engineering, he quickly realises that all is not as it seems in the high-tech world of commercial intelligence gathering. Thrust into an environment where corporate advantage means multi-million dollar contracts, he discovers that some within the firm will stop at nothing to protect their share of the profits.

When a British bank, investing in emerging markets and hoping to help some of the world’s poorest, starts hemorrhaging money, Luke is called in to find out who is to blame. He soon finds himself in the middle of a multinational game of treachery, extortion, and murder.

Luke Frankland, a junior intelligence officer just home from the Iraq War, finds himself cast into a world of cyber espionage and state-level politics. Out of his depth and with no one in the government heeding his warnings, he forms a makeshift team and tries to establish who is waging a new kind of war from behind a keyboard. The truth will leave him plunged into an arena he little expected, and where the real cost is not measured in 1s and 0s but in human life.

Powerful new technologies enable us to see the details of how our neural systems work. We no longer need to speculate about how genes are expressed or the nature of consciousness. Now, we can understand how the brain functions from the bottom up, how we communicate, form ideas, and behave accordingly.

In this military thriller, a freak storm reveals a city hidden deep under the largest sand dunes of the Sahara. A silver pyramid at the centre of the city is emitting a strange energy signal. The race is on to secure the energy source and other treasures of the city.

Hue's life is transformed from the mundane to the fantastic when his father, Howard, attracts the attention of Baba Yaga, the iron-teeth, Witch of Misfortune. Enraged by Howard's comments, she brings misfortune to him, and then turns on Hue for his insulting disbelief of witches. As Baba Yaga executes her misdeed, Ganesh, the elephant-headed, Deity of Good Fortune, spies upon her. Ganesh takes favor on the Hue and dispatches one of his familiars, a charmed Pharaoh hound called Magic, to protect the now fatherless boy.

Warning! This story is an adult free zone. Why? Because it is simply too scary, or too horridly disgusting, for most adults. We know this is true. Kids can handle it. Usually. Adults can’t. Mostly. This is a folk tale for children, set once upon a time, in a place not so far from you. Meet the schoolboy Hunch - the village hunchback. Hunch lives in a small village surrounded by a tall forest. All the parents always tell the children, "Don't go in the woods!" When the children ask why, the adults always say, "Because strange creatures called Things live in there"!

Book one of Will's story, Sleeper Chronicles. When young bodybuilder, Will, decides to get a tattoo, he never would have expected to fall in love with the woman portrayed on his chest. However, his dreams are the only place he can find her, as she lives in a strange castle on slope of an erupting volcano, guarded by ghostly knights. Soon, Will’s life is pulled down a rabbit hole when he bounces between dream and reality. All the while, his greatest desire is to find the woman he loves. But is Will ready to pay the price?

"Escape the City of Gold, or live forever in chains". Raised in splendid isolation. Betrothed to a man she despises. Destined to rule over the greatest city on earth. She is the Golden Princess. Sarah dreams of love and adventure beyond her gilded prison, but tonight her dreams come true in the most terrifying way imaginable. A bloody power struggle erupts for the throne, and dawn finds the princess on the run with a bounty on her head.

His cheeks are as tender as raw meat on a butcher's block. And those are just the cheeks of his face. As he slumps in the saddle, watching the road disappear into the distance, he aches in parts of his body that he's only just discovering he has. When Mark travels to Ecuador to go hiking and climbing, he discovers a land of dramatic volcanoes rising through the clouds and wide-open horizons rich in history.

Now trapped in the terrible world of Suburbia, Stanley Pargo is faced with a difficult choice: go his own way and face the beasts of the wilderness alone, or join a small cohort fighting to destroy a brutal monster known as the Chumbley. Both options all but guarantee Stanley’s untimely demise, and neither offers him the home he truly seeks, but if he doesn’t decide soon, the Chumbley will obtain a powerful stone capable of annihilating all who might thwart him.