Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

Unpick the complexities of our digital world and discover how to live well within it. Over the last decade, through digital media, we have crossed a number of significant thresholds: the interconnection of over half of the world’s adult population through mobile telephony and the internet and the devotion of more than half the waking hours of a western generation to mediated experience.

Lucius Falerius is dead, and Rome in its entirety mourns the passing of its most powerful senator. It falls to his son Marcellus to carry out his father's legacy and restore the rights promised to the defeated Sicilian slaves, yet there are those who will not see the honour of Rome compromised and the slaves assuaged. On the Roman border provinces there is trouble, and the legions move north to neutralise the threat posed by the Celts.

When the world's most famous chocolate factory disappears, it is up to the Spy Toys to find out the truth - and fast! If the chocolate runs out, there could be riots from children everywhere! The Spy Toys are sent undercover into a school where they need to disguise themselves as regular pupils. Could this be their toughest challenge yet? They'll need all their wits about them to defeat this baddie. And one thing is for sure: these kids don't play nice!

In 2050 there will be 9.3 billion people alive - compared with 7 billion today - and the number will still be rising. The population aged over 65 will have more than doubled, to more than 16 percent; China's GDP will be 80 percent more than America's; and the number of cars on India's roads will have increased by 3,880 percent. And, in 2050 it should be clear whether we are alone in the universe.What other megachanges can we expect - and what will their impact be? This comprehensive and compelling book will cover the most significant trends that are shaping the coming decades.

At two pm on a Monday in 1966, Ned Balfour wakes in Corsica beside a beautiful woman. In the same instant, back in London, fellow art dealer and Dachau survivor Sam Weiss falls 10 storeys to his death. Ned refuses to believe that Sam's death was intentional, and his investigation thrusts him into the deceit and fraudulence of the art world, where he unmasks more than one respectable face. First published in 1967, this thrilling tale of vertigo, suspicion and infidelity is a long-forgotten classic with an intriguing plot twist.

Anzo is 11 years old and very, very short. Mum, dad and his two uncles are extremely tall and also high achievers, obsessed with fulfilling their lifelong ambition of opening a restaurant together. But where does Anzo fit in? If only he could grow a few inches in height, no one would be able to overlook him. Then, overnight, Anzo starts to grow. Is life as a giant going to solve all his problems, or should he learn to just be himself?

A missile tears a passenger plane from the skies over London. Everyone onboard is killed, including 37 special children. As terror turns to international chaos, can the government survive?

From the moment his father was executed in the arena for an act of treason, former military tribune and condemned gladiator Marcus Valerius Pavo has burned with the desire for revenge. Now all that stands between Pavo and victory is a man considered by many to be the greatest gladiator to have ever lived: Hermes. But even with Optio Macro as his trainer and the help of the snakish imperial secretary, defeating Hermes appears an impossible task.

The opening day of the Games in Rome is a time for celebration in honour of the new Emperor. But for Marcus Valerius Pavo, a young military tribune fallen from grace, only despair awaits. Along with former mentor Optio Macro, Pavo must fight for his life in a ferocious beast hunt. Battling against lions and bears, he'll have to use all his wits to survive as well as the help of a hated former rival. But when Pavo achieves a stunning victory, his reward is to be condemned to death in a chaotic free-for-all. Now the young gladiator faces a race against time to triumph over the odds....

John Motram has the chance of a lifetime. A cell biologist convinced that the Black Death was not caused by bubonic plague but by an unknown virus, he is asked to examine preserved bodies buried under the ancient abbey at Dryburgh. However, Motram’s excavations end up in disaster when he first becomes violent and then dangerously ill after entering the secret tomb.

Sinclair Breckenridge is my husband. We’re up and coming leaders to The Fellowship and parents to be. But my new life doesn’t come easily. Not when long buried secrets––and far more than I bargained for––finally reveal my mother’s killer. Sin vows to do anything to keep our little ones and me safe, even if his promise means denying me of the one thing I want most in this world. He doesn’t understand it’s the death of my dream. And that’s a problem.

Passengers boarding the 10.35 train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston have no idea that their journey is about to be brutally curtailed. Holly has just landed her dream job, and Jeff is heading for an interview after months of unemployment. They end up sitting next to each other.

A Greek gangster arrives in Stockholm only to be murdered in a macabre fashion at Skansen zoo, his body consumed by animals. As the Intercrime Unit - a team dedicated to solving international violent crime - investigate what brought him to Sweden, eight Eastern European women vanish from a refugee centre outside the city while an elderly professor, the tattooed numbers on his arm hinting at his terrible past, is executed at the Jewish cemetery.

In this game it’s kill or be killed. A stranger has you cornered. They call themselves The Host. You are forced to play their game. In it one person can live and the other must die. You are the next player. You have a choice to make. This is a game where nobody wins....

Dear Uncle Morton, The McDougalls are here. Mr McDougall won’t stop shouting. He has lost three sheep in a week. Now he wants to take your dragons away. Eddie has yet more trials by fire. This time, he’s dragonsitting on his uncle’s remote Scottish island home, getting some unexpected birthday party guests and taking the dragons with him on his half-term trip to London. What can possibly go wrong?

A severed head washes up on the banks of the Nile. The police turn a blind eye. It is just another victim in a series of ritual killings of refugees. Distracted from his hunt for a missing boy, Makana feels the pull of his Sudanese past and is impelled to seek justice for the murdered emigrants.

I'm a doctor. Mobster. Killer. My hands are covered in filth. I don't have the right to touch anything as clean and pure as Ellison MacAllister. I distance myself...always remaining obscure, composed, restrained. Careful to never allow my eyes to linger too long. Careful to hide my interest. Careful to keep my burning desire buried beneath the surface. I do it for her - suffer in silence - because it's what is best for the woman I love. And she has no idea.

Private Investigator Makana has a new client: the powerful art dealer Aram Kasabian. Kasabian wants him to track down a priceless painting that went missing from Baghdad during the US invasion. The art world is a far cry from the Cairo that Makana knows, but he discovers that this side of the city has its own dark underbelly. Before long he finds himself caught between dangerous enemies on a trail that leads him into the darkness of war and which threatens to send the new life he has built for himself up in flames.

I’ve watched her from afar for weeks. And she has no idea. Bleu MacAllister ran from me three months ago. She thought she could disappear from my life. My beloved believed I’d let her go.

Deep in a Derbyshire cave, the skeleton of an 11-year-old girl has lain undisturbed for 18 years. Its discovery brings to light the half-forgotten and horrifying rituals performed by a group of children in their chilling 'Egyptian game'. But the game is by no means over. Technology adds a new dimension to the sinister manipulation practiced by the group's former leader, and a primitive fear returns to haunt his former acolytes.