Showing results by narrator "Jamie Parker" in All Categories

For sixteen years, DS Adam Tyler has been searching for answers to his father, Richard’s, death. Convinced it wasn’t suicide, he has been investigating the case in secret. When a body is found in a frozen lake, linked to a cold case from 2002, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the death of his father—except Tyler knows Richard was investigating the same case shortly before he died. And Tyler doesn’t believe in coincidences.

A brilliantly observed story of crises and reconciliations within families and stepfamilies and the conflict between Millennials and their Baby Boomer parents. Funny, dark, yet limned with hope, Tim Lott returns to a family saga—and social commentary—that began with the award-winning White City Blue, continuing with When We Were Rich. It is a story for everyone trying to make sense of a sharply polarised world where the political has become personal and the personal has become a minefield.

For those who enjoyed I Am the Secret Footballer, this new book delivers hard-hitting insights into the hidden world of professional football and footballers. In the vein of Hotel Babylon and Confessions of a GP, The Secret Player will fascinate football fans with its wealth of insider knowledge and willingness to talk, albeit anonymously, about the inner workings of the game. Based on the hugely popular 'The Player' columns in FourFourTwo magazine, the book gives a warts-and-all insight into the daily life of professional footballers.

Left reeling from the disappearance of his daughter and ex-wife, Staff Sergeant Dom Riley is a haunted man. After spending months investigating, he has exhausted nearly all leads in his hunt for answers. As Riley decides to make one final push for the truth, it emerges that multiple bombs are on board a civilian cruise ship and he is sent in to neutralise the threat. The mission is perilous before it’s even begun, requiring a low-altitude parachute jump, a manoeuvre he has only completed in training - but it’s not the journey, nor the bombs themselves, that pose the real threat.

Moscow, 1953. Under Stalin’s terrifying regime, families live in fear. When the all-powerful State claims there is no such thing as crime, who dares disagree? An ambitious secret police officer, Leo Demidov believes he’s helping to build the perfect society. But when he uncovers evidence of a killer at large—a threat the state won’t admit exists—Demidov must risk everything, including the lives of those he loves, in order to expose the truth. But what if the danger isn’t from the killer he is trying to catch, but from the country he is fighting to protect?

When an anonymous tip lands on his desk, DS Adam Tyler is intrigued in spite of himself. A tantalizing new lead in a 24-year-old unsolved disappearance is something he just can’t ignore, even while juggling a new boss, a heavy caseload and the early days of a fledgling relationship. But the letter triggers more than just a fresh investigation, and a shocking chain of events soon leaves him fighting for his life.

Soviet Union, 1956: Stalin is dead. With his passing, a violent regime is beginning to fracture—leaving behind a society where the police are the criminals, and the criminals are innocent. The catalyst comes when a secret manifesto composed by Stalin's successor Khrushchev is distributed to the entire nation. Its message: Stalin was a tyrant and a murderer. Its promise: The Soviet Union will transform. But there are forces at work that are unable to forgive or forget Stalin's tyranny so easily, that demand revenge of the most appalling nature.

It's Christmas Eve, and Theo - left at home with a babysitter - sees an odd-looking star out of his window and decides to make a wish. He wishes that he had some friends to keep him company. Moments later the Christmas decorations begin to disentangle themselves from the tree behind him, ready to wreak a little havoc.... Written with generous helpings of warmth and humour, this is a story about treasuring the people and values that really matter at this time of year.

The fourth book in Chris Ryan's Extreme series. The Chris Ryan Extreme books take you even further into the heart of the mission with more extreme action, more extreme language and more extreme pace. Like Call of Duty or Medal of Honour you'll feel part of the team. Chris Ryan Extreme: Silent Kill has previously been published as four separate shorter missions. Now in one book to keep you at the heart of the action. Northern Ireland, 1993. For high-flying MI5 officer Avery Chance the real war has only just begun.

Berlin is Europe’s most fascinating and exciting city. It is and always has been a city on the edge – geographically, culturally, politically and morally. The great movements that have shaken Europe, from the Reformation to Marxism have their origins in Berlin’s streets. The long-time capital of Prussia and of the Hohenzollern dynasty it has never, paradoxically, been a Prussian city. Instead it has always been a city of immigrants, a city that accepts everyone and turns them into Berliners. A typical Berliner, it is said, is someone who has just arrived at the railway station.

Though it is for the sparkling epic, Aeneid, that the Roman poet Virgil is best known, it was these two poems, The Eclogues and Georgics, which first established his reputation.

Former Soviet Secret Service agent Leo Demidov has built himself a new life as a civilian with his wife Raisa, and their two teenage daughters, Elena and Zoya. The Soviet Union is a country trying to reassert itself after the murderous excesses of Stalin and the chaos of the following years, and as the Cold War continues powers inside Russia seek to topple their great enemy, the United States of America. Communist allies within the United States will prove vital players in this game of intrigue and revolution.

The plot centers on Anthony Beavis, a dilettante social theorist, a man inclined to recoil from life. The pleasures of the physical world disgust him and the universe of ideas is but a poor refuge. Having long lost the art of intimacy, he betrays friendships and toys with the affections of women. But as Beavis approaches middle age, his world of perfect detachment begins to lose its appeal. Finally realizing that his withdrawal from life has been motivated not by intellectual honesty but by moral cowardice, Beavis, devastated and at crisis point, meets the remarkable and redoubtable Dr Miller.

Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor to an extraordinary waterworks being built miles from the city. But Isabel, denied the motherhood role that is expected of her by a succession of miscarriages, finds unexpected consolations in a place where she can feel the presence of her unborn children and begin to work out what her life in Victorian society is for.

Someone is setting fire to Sheffield. It starts with small things – dustbins and abandoned sheds – so people don’t notice at first. But the calling card is there if you look for it. Soon the fires spread to offices, homes, people. The Firewatcher’s followers are growing and they have one particular blaze in mind – one that the police would do well to pay attention to. But D/S Adam Tyler is distracted by a case, one that he is unknowingly connected to. And if he can’t discover the link between the fires and himself, he will burn – along with the entire city.

Max and Annie Kingsley have left the London rat race to set up a glamping site in the wilds of Cornwall. They invite old university friends – TV star Dominic, doctor and new mum Kira, and free-spirited Jim and Suze – and their children for a trial weekend but the reunion quickly veers off-course. First, there’s The Incident around the campfire on the first night. The following afternoon, a storm quickly develops off the rugged North Coast. When one of their group goes missing, all hell breaks loose.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a fascinating portrait of 19th-century Europe - disillusioned and ravaged by the wars of the postrevolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Our protagonist, whose breathtaking journey eerily echoes Byron's own life story, forgoes his destiny back home for the exciting unknown - the nature of humanity and the transformative effects of travel burst through the pages in four powerful cantos of Spenserian stanzas. Here is the poem that set Byron on his meteoric rise to fame in London society.

When Nick Wychwood loses his wife Elise in a shocking accident, he is left to bring up their daughter Lucy on his own. A move from Cornwall to the Cotswolds should give them the fresh start that they need, a tranquil setting where they can put tragedy behind them and forge new friendships. But Lucy, as a teenager, is fragile, vulnerable, easily led… She is shy and hesitant. When someone offers her their shoulder, the warmth and understanding, even love, that she thinks she needs, she is readily accepting. But this ‘someone’ is online, cajoling, manipulative, and setting a devastating trap.

The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic-Asian antithesis of the Christian-European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans' multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe's heart. In their breadth and versatility, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans.

Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, a priest, the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral—and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a high-born girl without her father's consent, struggled to feed a family of 10 children and was often ill and in pain.