Showing results by narrator "Simon Mattacks" in All Categories

As a rousing Strauss piece is reaching its crescendo in Maningpool Civic Hall, the talented yet obnoxious conductor Sir Noel Grampian is shot dead in full view of the Municipal Orchestra and the audience. It was no secret that he had many enemies - musicians and music critics among them - but to be killed mid-flow suggests an act of the coldest calculation. Told through the letters and documents sent by DI Alan Hope to his wife as he puzzles through the dauntingly vast pool of suspects and scant physical evidence in the case.

It looks like a regular advent calendar. Until DC Becky Greene starts opening doors...and discovers a crime scene behind almost every one. The police hope it's a prank. Because if it isn't, a murderer has just surfaced - someone who's been killing for 20 years. But why now? And why has he sent it to this police station? As the country relaxes into festive cheer, Greene and DS Eddie Carmine must race against time to catch the killer. Because there are four doors left, and four murders will fill them....

Former SAS soldier Jeff Bradley thought he had left warzones behind when he inherited a vineyard in rural New Zealand. But now his vineyard manager, Arben Shala, has gone missing in his native Kosovo. An enigmatic message tells Jeff that his friend is in grave danger.

At the peak of her career as lead singer of a legendary 1980s indie band, Meredith Vincent was driven off the international stage by a horrific incident. Now living a quiet existence in a cottage on the grounds of an old stately home, she has put her past behind her and come to terms with her new life. When a body is found in the manicured gardens of her home, and a series of inexplicable and unsettling events begin to occur, it becomes clear that someone is watching, someone who knows who she is…. Someone who wants vengeance.

1957. A catastrophe occurs at the pharmaceutical lab in Coventry where 16-year-old Wilf is working for the summer. A catastrophe that needs to be covered up at all costs. 2017. Phiney is shocked by the death of her grandfather, Wilf, who has jumped from a railway bridge at a Coventry station. Journalist Mat Torrington is the only witness. Left in utter disbelief, with a swarm of unanswered questions, Phiney, Mat and Wilf's wife, Dora, begin their own enquiries into Wilf's death.

France, 1351: Kemp and his men are captured in a skirmish near Calais, and subsequently imprisoned in a French castle. All attempts at escape are punished with death. Then Sir Hugues de Beauconray comes to Kemp with an offer: escort a Dominican friar on a quest to steal a mysterious book from an abbey in Scotland. Fail, and ten of Kemp's friends will be hanged.

In the western hinterland of Roman Britannia, Meddi, the seeress of the Eorlingas tribe, can only obtain vengeance when her husband’s dead and her ancestral villa returned to her. With her brother, Madog, as leader, they unite and stand strong against those who seek the riches of their villa. They must harness the power of the lost magiks of iron to make weapons to mercilessly oppose those who seek to challenge and fight to rule.

The festive season is in full swing - parties, champagne and Christmas crackers abound. You're having a breather at the hotel bar when a stunning young woman catches your eye. Could she really be interested in you? She flutters her eyelashes and takes your hand. Her Christmas party dress glitters with sequins. What you don't know is that your life is now in her hands - as she leads you up to her room there's only one thing that will determine whether you live or die. Are you a good person? Are you really?

As children, Gareth and Helen went ignored and utterly unsupervised in their isolated English farmhouse while their mother obsessively tended to her beloved, exquisite garden. When they were little, Gareth would occupy himself by trapping insects under glass and Helen would find ways to entertain herself - but the older they grew, the more sinister their lives became, with no attentive parent to shield them from the predators of the world. Decades later, Helen is in the same crumbling house, unhappily married and looking after their bedridden mother, and Gareth finally returns home.

When Mac and Marie marry and find a home of their own, Mac takes a snap of themselves outside their newbuild bungalow, the garden bare and the paint on the front door still wet. It becomes a tradition, this snap, and slowly the photographs build into an album of a fifty-year partnership. Every year they take a photo and though things change around them—the garden matures, the fashions change, they grow older—the one constant is their love. Every year, come rain, come shine, from the Seventies through the decades, every photo tells the story of their love.

Seth was a priest. He served for 10 years and 163 days. Then he decided to die. Beginning with his bungled suicide attempt, Faithless charts the incidents within Seth's ministry that led him to that point. From dealing with a cult leader to performing exorcisms in haunted houses, Seth has seen the unimaginable. He has escaped from the clutches of a man who showed signs of being possessed and helped rebuild families after unthinkable tragedy.

When little Julie goes missing in summer 1986, David and Samuel share the terrible secret of her disappearance. Thirty years later, David has become a famous author and Samuel his publisher. Both receive identical manuscript chapters telling the story of what really happened that tragic summer.

While drug running for a local crime lord, Danny decides to call in a large debt from a young female drug addict, Micki Ashton. During a chaotic night on a riverbank, in which punches are thrown, Shaw steps in to protect the defenceless woman, but things turn deadly when Danny produces a knife and Micki is stabbed. Appalled by his friend's actions, Shaw deliberately pushes Danny into the river. Danny survives and, arrested and charged for murder, spends the next quarter of a century in prison.

Time to Heal tells the story of the colourful life of a country doctor towards the end of his career. In turn shocking, sad and funny, it describes a doctor who feels poorly served by the conventional medicine of his time and finds new ways to relieve the suffering of his patients. This tale has a twist. Twenty-first-century general practice and its patients have been betrayed by top-heavy regulation, performance management and a blame culture. Young doctors no longer want to enter general practice. The author explores why and how pandemics might provide the answers.

Something appalling happened in the wood. When Gabriel Ash and his dog come to her aid, she thinks she's safe. But this is Norbold, where things aren't always as they seem. Detective Chief Inspector Gorman thinks this is his worst nightmare: a predatory paedophile who's prepared to kill rather than be taken. Constable Hazel Best thinks she's helping both the Somers family and her friend Ash, but her tendency to follow her heart rather than her orders is about to get her into trouble again.

Having devoted his studies to optics and refraction, an impulsive scientist named Griffin has rendered himself invisible. Unable to reverse the effects, his struggle to survive grows desperate until he realizes that there are benefits to living out of the public eye. Increasingly isolated, he soon spirals into a life of crime and degenerates into madness. He can't see that he has become his own worst enemy.

Libya, 2011. Into this maelstrom of violence arrive a covert team of MI6 officers and their minders. They land by helicopter straight into the hands of the Libyan rebels in Benghazi and the very unwanted glare of the world press. Only ex-Royal Marine and close protection expert James Royce manages to extradite his intelligence chiefs from the mess.

It's never going to be you. Then one day you hear the clatter of automatic fire at the mall. You have been drawn into the chaos and terror of an active shooter event. What do you do? Who do you turn to? Be a Hero is the essential guide to terrorist attacks that will help you survive. Former Special Air Service terror expert John Geddes will explain how to cope with a life-threatening event.

With her new billionaire boss in town, Sophie's determined to swap the No-Jobs she meets on Tinder for her very own Steve Jobs. But will looking like a million dollars be enough to kick-start a Fifty Shades adventure? A ring in his pocket and dressed to kill, Calum's planning to get down on one knee. Though if Mia doesn't say 'yes', he's not sure he'll ever get back up. Julie's got a surprise for Mark - though it's something she's not even sure she wants.

Sure to capture the imagination of devotees of true crime and the occult, this anthology of 13 true crime stories includes the mysterious slaying of Charles Walton, who was found slashed and pierced to death in an area notorious for its associations with black magic; the murder of Eric Tombe, whose body was located because of a recurring dream in which his mother saw Eric down a well; the terrorizing of Hammersmith, London, in the early 19th century by the nocturnal appearance of a "ghost"; and much more.