Showing results by narrator "John Sackville" in All Categories

Animal Farm tells the story of Farmer Jones’s animals, led by Napoleon the pig, who rise up in rebellion and take over the farm. Tired of being exploited solely for human gain, the animals—who have human characteristics such as speech—vow to create a new and more just society. However, as time goes on, it becomes clear that the society the animals have constructed is not equal at all when the pigs begin their crusade to consolidate their power and the other animals make the daunting realization that “some animals are more equal than others.”

The car jolts to a halt at the pavement's edge, the driver waving through the windscreen to attract Richard's attention. He starts with astonishment. The driver is Gemma, his ex-wife. He has not seen or spoken to her for several years. They have, she memorably assured him the last time they met, nothing to say to each other. But something has changed her mind - something urgent.

At the height of summer a dark shadow falls across Exmoor. Children are being stolen from cars. Each disappearance is marked only by a terse note – a brutal accusation. There are no explanations, no ransom demands... and no hope. Policeman Jonas Holly faces a precarious journey into the warped mind of the kidnapper if he's to stand any chance of catching him. But – still reeling from a personal tragedy – is Jonas really up to the task?

COVID-19, monkeypox, bird flu, SARS, HIV, AIDS, Ebola; we are living in the Age of Pandemics – one that we have created. As the climate crisis reaches a fever pitch and ecological destruction continues unabated, we are just beginning to reckon with the effects of environmental collapse on our global health. Fevered Planet exposes how the way we farm, what we eat, the places we travel to and the scientific experiments we conduct create the perfect conditions for deadly new diseases to emerge and spread faster and further than ever.

Luke Craven is convinced that the world is against him; his once-happy life hasn’t been the same since he lost both of his parents and his wife in quick succession, and his everyday has become more about existing than living. But he is forced to reconsider his glass-half-empty outlook when he narrowly escapes a freak accident with his life - pushed to safety by a stranger, who isn’t so lucky.

A missing man leads Jack Haldean straight into danger... Mark Helston, the rising star of Hunt Coffee Limited, was successful and popular, with plenty of money and everything to live for. Yet at half past seven on the evening of the ninth of January, 1925, he walked out of his Albemarle Street flat and disappeared. Desperate to know what happened to Mark, his uncle, old Mr Hunt, appeals to Jack Haldean. Inspector Bill Rackham of Scotland Yard thinks it’s a thankless task.

The eight-year-old boy had vanished from the car and, as if by slick, sick magic, had been replaced by a note on the steering wheel reading, "You don't love him." At the height of summer, a dark shadow falls across Exmoor; more children are stolen, each disappearance marked only by the same brutal accusation. No explanations, no ransom demands, and no hope.

It's New Year's Eve. A major terrorist cell is planning a series of attacks across London over the next 48 hours. The government has surveillance on the group, a man undercover, and prepare to move in, to take out the terrorists before they can strike. But they lose contact with their inside man. And the cell vanishes into thin air, dispersing into the streets, armed and intent on completing their assault on London. The best counterterrorist teams in the country are told to take them down before it's too late.

Our future diet will be shaped by diverse forces. It will be shaped by novel technologies and the logic of globalisation, by geopolitical tensions and the evolution of cultural preferences, by shocks to the status quo - pandemics and economic strife, the escalation of the climate and ecological crises - and by how we choose to respond. It will also be shaped by our emotions. It will be shaped by the meat paradox.

Charles Otterbourne’s New Century company should have been the perfect partner for Professor Alan Carrington’s radical new gramophone. After all, Charles was not only a leading manufacturer, but also a noted philanthropist. But when murder is the result of their meeting, Jack Haldean takes up the case, in a desperate bid to save a man from the gallows. But what led to the crime? The answer is Off the Record...

When England beat Pakistan to become T20 World Champions in November 2022, they crowned an extraordinary rise to the top from the depths of 2015, and became the first male side to hold the 20-over and 50-over titles at the same time. This is the story of how they got there. From early failure, to the building of a golden generation, and a look to the future, this is the must-listen story from the key protagonists about building one of England’s most successful sporting teams from rubble.

New York City. Summer. A series of violent and highly successful bank robberies have been carried out across the city, all by the same five-man team. Millions of dollars have been stolen. The thieves are slick, efficient, well-organized, and vicious. The FBI are getting nowhere in tracking them down. With pressure from Washington mounting and the heists continuing, the Feds desperately search for any leads. Across the city, Sam Archer is in town for a funeral. At the service, he is approached by an old family friend who works out of the FBI's New York office.

A hundred thousand dragons lie, underneath an Arabian sky. How do a few lines of poetry, a chance encounter in a London hotel, and a death in Sussex lead to a lost city of Arabia, and to the tombs of the Whispering Dead? Jack Haldean has evaded the truth for years, but now, enmeshed in the web of murder, theft and deception, he must find the answer and face up to the truth – a truth as deadly as any dragon...

It's late 1938. Thomas Heiselberg has built a career in Berlin as a market researcher for an American advertising company. In Leningrad, 22-year-old Sasha Weissberg has grown up eavesdropping on the intellectual conversations in her parents' literary salon. They each have grand plans for their lives. Neither of them thinks about politics too much, but after catastrophe strikes they will have no choice.

On a cold December morning in New York City, a man is found dead in Central Park. There are no knife or gunshot wounds to his body and no signs of violence. But beside the body is a box containing a cracked vial. Suspecting he died from some sort of biological attack, a lab team screen the body. What they find is deeply unsettling and terrifying.

Let The Illumination of the Heart touch every person, who took this book in his hands, and highlight the most secret corners of his life. Reading and listening to its text will help you focus on what is most valuable to you, because this book contains priceless Gifts presented by the Great Mentors of Mankind, who studied the Human Race for many millions of years.

Just when Stanley Duke thinks it safe to sink into middle age, his son goes insane. As if that wasn't terrible enough, Stanley finds himself beset on all sides by women - neurotic, cantankerous, half-baked or just plain capricious. As one by one they gnaw away at his composure, Stanley wonders whether insanity is not something with which all women are intimately acquainted.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Charles I: An Abbreviated Life by Mark Kishlansky, read by John Sackville. The tragedy of Charles I dominates one of the most strange and painful periods in British history as the whole island tore itself apart over a deadly, entangled series of religious and political disputes. In Mark Kishlansky's brilliant account it is never in doubt that Charles created his own catastrophe, but he was nonetheless opposed by men with far fewer scruples and less consistency who for often quite contradictory reasons conspired to destroy him.

Britain buckles under a Luftwaffe Blitz, but its population does not break. After Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Brin accompanies Winston Churchill across the Atlantic for historic meetings with President Roosevelt.

“What does she want from me?” A young Iranian immigrant panics as she’s being chased through the streets by an unknown blonde woman. When their two worlds collide, the answer to that question becomes increasingly unsettling in Afsaneh Gray’s The Other Woman, a bracingly unpredictable audio experience. The two women find they share similar struggles in a society that doesn’t see them…but as their relationship develops, what feels like liberation begins to shift into an all-too-familiar dynamic.