Showing results by narrator "Tim Bruce" in All Categories

When Bampton’s coroner, Hubert Shillside, does not return from a trip to Oxford, Master Hugh de Singleton is called. Concerned for his old friend, Hugh takes to the road to investigate. Travel is safer than in times hence but, out of sight of prying eyes, it is still unwise to travel alone. Hugh finds a body, stabbed and left to rot, but it is not the body he was expecting to find. Indeed, reports of pillage, attacks, and chaos on the roads out of Oxford suddenly seem rampant. Hugh must ascertain whether the incidents are random, or whether something darker is afoot. 

It's November 1983 in Essex, and there are reasons to be cheerful. 'Uptown Girl' is sitting pretty at the top of the charts, Risky Business is raking it in at the box office and there are now four channels on the telly. However, social tensions are beginning to bubble beneath the surface: Mrs Thatcher has embarked on her second controversial term, and the situation in Northern Ireland is ever-escalating. Yet in the garrison town of Colchester, it's another deadly standoff that is hogging the headlines. 

Driving home after a day in the countryside with his wife, Katy, and their two kids, doting father Adam Parr gets cut up by a speeding silver car, nearly causing him to crash. Shocked and upset that his kids could have been killed, he pulls over. That’s when he sees a struggling woman in the back seat of the silver car, her eyes pleading for help, and he knows his family are in terrible danger. In the blink of an eye, the Parrs' ordinary lives are plunged into an unimaginable nightmare....

When a brutal serial killer defies all known methods, the police call in prolific lawyer and former homicide detective, Charlie Priest, to assist the hunt. Working together they soon discover a link to a lost scripture that contains a secret so devastating that its custodians are prepared to die to keep it. Tangled in a dark world of fanaticism, chaos and deadly secrets, Priest comes up against a nemesis more formidable and deranged than any he has previously encountered.

After Lyra - a princess incapable of speech or sound - is cast out of her kingdom of daylight by her wicked aunt, a witch saves her life, steals her memories, and raises her in an enchanted forest...disguised as a boy known only as Stain. Meanwhile, in a rival kingdom, the prince of thorns and night is dying, and the only way for him to break his curse is to wed the princess of daylight - for she is his true equal. As Lyra finds her way back to her identity, an impostor princess prepares to steal her betrothed prince and her crown. 

The 2016/17 season marked the 25th of the Premier League. This book recognises that fact in a way which is factually accurate yet dismissive of reputations and hype. It recognises the achievements of Swindon and Barnsley as much as Manchester United and Chelsea and sneaks in references to borg drones from Star Trek, Oscar Wilde, Nirvana and Red Dwarf alongside analysis of the songs and seasons. Notts County fan Billy Ivory's foreword sets a tone of bitter irony as the story (shocked back to life by Leicester City) is told in unconventional fashion.

On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the Wentshire Forest Pass when a burst tyre forced his father, Sorrel, to stop the car. Leaving the car to summon the emergency services, Sorrel returned to find his son gone. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995. Elusive online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night. 

When Audrey and Ronny win the National Lottery, their troubles seem to be over. Bills can be met, the loan sharks paid off, and their cleaning and cowboy-builder jobs gleefully ditched off. But for Audrey, the matriarch of the Gateshead tower blocks and Ronny, the flamboyant dreamer, the winning ticket brings with it many other unforeseen changes.

It’s never too late to make amends.They’ve been the best of friends for decades. They’ve seen everything - marriage, divorce, success, and bankruptcy. They think that there are no more surprises, that they’ve learned all of life’s lessons. But they’re wrong. They’ve only just begun. Recently divorced and seeking to find herself, Penny moves to a picturesque town in France, happy to live alone - that is until she meets an irresistible American philosophy professor.

It's 1220, and the City of London is a dirty and dangerous place, very different to the peaceful monastery of Saint Wilfred's in Saint Agnes Next-the-Sea.But when the new abbot returns from Westminster Abbey,it seems that he brings back something wicked,plunging Saint Wilfred's into deceit and violence. Once again,it falls to trainee monk Tom Fletcher to find the true culprit in a matter of life and death.

Gordon Kingdom struggles with the fate of his seriously ill wife while patiently observing and methodically recording the lives of those around him: his neighbours. He has files on them all, including Don Donald (best friend and petty thief), Annie Carnaffan (lives next door, throws footballs over the fence), and Benny (the boy who paints with his eyes closed). Then there’s Angelica, the new girl (42) on the street, with her multicoloured toenails and her filthy temper.

On his first trip to London,Ivo Moncrieff steps off the train and stumbles into a nightmare.As he is waiting on the tubes platform,a stranger thrusts a mysterious object into his hand.Moments later, the carriage next to Ivo's is overcome with panic and at the next station the passengers find the stranger's dismembered body.Ivo guesses that the perpetrators want the object,and if they find he has it,he will be their next target.

Rowan knows he is strange. But dangerous? He didn't scare his sister. In his right mind, he wouldn't hurt a fly. But there's a place he can go where they say they can fix his mind…. As the second World War begins, Rowan is diagnosed as schizophrenic and sent away to a hospital where the latest treatments are available. But the treatments are experimental still-and nobody predicts the effect they will have on Rowan.

Freydis has been left for dead following a raid on her father's Viking stronghold. Her brother has been taken prisoner. Now Freydis's father is bent on revenge, and takes her on his quest, giving her Enno, an African warrior slave, to protect her. As the hunt for her brother becomes more desperate, Freydis and Enno draw closer together.

In A Grand Theory of Everything, McGirk takes us from the winding backstreets of New Delhi to his cramped apartment in New York City, and then on to his eventual relocation with his wife to the empty plains of Oklahoma. And, most importantly, he takes us inside his own head, where his weird theories take shape to help him understand his alienation from his family, his struggles to find a career, his wife's failing health, and all of life's hardships.

Historical fact and fantastic legend clash when Merlin's descendant Roland takes up the Quest for the Grail against Arthur's ancient enemy - a thrilling new adventure from an extraordinary talent whose appeal is growing fast with each new book....

Haunted by his past. Hunted in the present. Buffeted like an arrow in the wind. The hunt for the Bow of Hart continues for Athson and his companions. They have escaped the clutches of Magdronu and Corgren, the mage, but they are still pursued. In need of answers to deep mysteries revealed in Chokkra, Athson must gain possession of the mythic bow to face both his enemies and his tragic past. But Magdronu's reach stretches among Athson's companions, endangering Limbreth and even Hastra in schemes to entrap them all.

In the fog-shrouded autumn of 1873 a man dies violently while searching a burial chamber on the outskirts of the city of Salisbury. At the same time Tom Ansell, a young lawyer, arrives from London to receive a manuscript from one of the Cathedral Canons. Felix Slater wants the compromising memoirs of his late father to be locked away until after his own death.

Athson has seen things that aren't there and suffered fits since being tragically orphaned as a child at the hands of trolls and Corgren the mage who serves Magdronu the dragon. When a strange will mentioning a mysterious bow comes into his possession, Athson's not sure it's real. But the trolls that soon pursue him are all too real and dangerous. And they serve Corgren and his master, the hidden dragon, Magdronu. Athson is drawn into a quest for the concealed Bow of Hart by the mystic Withling, Hastra. But Athson isn't always sure what's real and who his enemies are.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. But war is waged in many ways. From the dark places where 10,000-year-old psychic warriors interrogate living machines from a time before man, to a treacherous assassination plot that could bring an end to a centuries-old legacy of honour, to relic hunters who want to wrest secrets from a plague-ridden traitor or cross swords with a sinister Chaplain of the Dark Angels.