Showing results by narrator "Piers Hampton" in All Categories

The Roman army was the greatest fighting machine the ancient world produced. The Roman Empire depended on soldiers not just to win its wars, defend its frontiers and control the seas but also to act as the engine of the state. Roman legionaries and auxiliaries came from across the Roman world and beyond. They served as tax collectors, policemen, surveyors, as civil engineers and, if they survived, in retirement, as civic worthies, craftsmen and politicians. Some even rose to become emperors.

In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known novelists in Britain. A passionate advocate for the avant-garde, he became famous for his forthright views on the future of the novel and for his unique ways of putting them into practice. Convinced that 'telling stories is telling lies' and that he should write about 'nothing else but what happens to me', Johnson produced Trawl.

When Egyptologists open the lost tomb of a long dead king, they are astounded to find another body entombed alongside him. But this is no ordinary mummy. Not only is it dressed in the manner of a commoner, it also contains a few blood cells that only seem dormant. Becky Ryan, a museum researcher, receives a macabre message from her father, just before he is found dead and follows the clues to uncover what is either a massive hoax, or the greatest ever discovery in the history of mankind. What she uncovers is beyond her wildest dreams…and darkest nightmares.

Lynx and the rest of the Cards are heading south. There's money in their pockets, beer in their hands and a simple job ahead - sun, sea and not getting shot at much. Throw in the prospect of a bar fight and it's almost a holiday. But the volatile Mage Islands are a powder-keg, one just waiting for a spark. A bloody-handed exile perhaps, or the agent of a foreign power preparing for war. Maybe even a bunch of trigger-happy drunks who've upset the balance of magic across the Riven Kingdom. Or all three together, that'd definitely work....

Amid the hustle and bustle of the Paris 1889 Universal Exposition, workers discover the mutilated corpse of a popular model and Moulin Rouge Can-Can dancer in a Montmartre sewer. Hysterical rumors swirl that Jack the Ripper has crossed the Channel, and Inspector Achille Lefebvre enters the Parisian underworld to track down the brutal killer. His suspects are the artist Toulouse-Lautrec, an acrobat at the Circus Fernando named Jojo, and Sir Henry Collingwood, a mysterious English gynecologist and amateur artist.

The final years of the Roman republic are usually recounted from the top, through the eyes of the big winners and losers: Brutus, Mark Antony, Emperor Augustus. But The Last Assassin, a thrilling narrative history, tells the well-known history from an exciting new perspective. For 14 years after 44 BC, Cassius of Parma (Cassius Parmensis), one of the lesser-known assassins of Julius Caesar, watched from the wings as all of his coconspirators were murdered.

In The Title, Scott Murray delivers a lively, cherry-picked history of the country's football narrative through the prism of the old First Division. Rich with humour yet underpinned with solid research, this is a glorious ramble across English football's varied terrain. With as much about Preston, Burnley, Wolves, Portsmouth and West Brom as the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, we learn the less well-known stories the sport has to tell, such as the plight of Glossop - the smallest club to ever play top-flight football.

Medicine in the early 1800s was a brutal business. Operations were performed without anaesthesia while conventional treatment relied on leeches, cupping and toxic potions. It was said of one surgeon, 'His surgical acquirements were very small, his operations generally very badly performed and accompanied with much bungling, if not worse.' It was lucky, for the doctor at least, that his deafness made him immune to his patients' dying groans. Into this milieu came John Elliotson, the dazzling new hope of the medical world.

After a ferocious early-springtime storm, young Norwegian sailor Hans Lyngstrand is shipwrecked in the English Channel near the coastal Kent town of Dengate - he is one of few survivors. Soon after, aspiring journalist Martin Bridges takes a job as a reporter at the local newspaper. A loner by nature, he’s a curiosity to the nosy townspeople, the gregarious editor of the paper, and his melodramatic landlady, whose own private life is fraught by the unexplained absence of her son and suspicious disappearance of her husband.

It is in 1950s Brighton that Marion first catches sight of Tom. He teaches her to swim in the shadow of the pier, and Marion is smitten - determined her love will be enough for them both. A few years later, in Brighton Museum, Patrick meets Tom. Patrick is besotted with Tom and opens his eyes to a glamorous, sophisticated new world. Tom is their policeman, and in this age, it is safer for him to marry Marion. The two lovers must share him until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed.

At the public execution of the anarchist assassin Laurent Moreau, the outgoing Chief Inspector warns his protégé, the newly promoted Lefebvre: “I’ve heard that some of Moreau’s cronies have sworn revenge. You don’t want to get killed your first week as chief.” Meanwhile, Lefebvre is charged with investigating the disappearance of the Baron de Livet, a brash millionaire with connections to Russian spies and a history of gambling, womanizing, and fighting in duels. The case is more complicated than it seems, of course....

Paris: July 1890. Inspector Achille Lefebvre and his wife Adele are enjoying their stay at a seaside resort - until a body found hanging from a bridge in a public park demands the Inspector's attention. Is it suicide or murder? A twisted trail of evidence draws Inspector Lefebvre into a shadowy underworld of international intrigue, espionage, and terrorism.

Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930s - Orwell shot in the neck in the Spanish Civil War and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century, they would be considered two of the most important people in British history....

London, 1939, and in the grimy publands of Earl's Court, George Harvey Bone is pursuing a helpless infatuation. Netta is cool, contemptuous and hopelessly desirable to George. George is adrift in a drunken hell except in his dead moments, when something goes click in his head and he realises, without a doubt, that he must kill her.

People everywhere feel ever more alienated from - and mistrustful of - news and those who make it. We no longer seem to know who or what to believe. We are living through a crisis of 'information chaos'. News: And How to Use It is a glossary for this bewildering age. From AI to bots, from climate crisis to fake news, from clickbait to trolls (and more), here is the definitive user's guide for how to stay informed, tell truth from fiction and hold those in power accountable in the modern age.

This autumn, life is catching up with struggling novelist Thomas Quinn. Five years ago, his sometimes friend Andrew Black wrote a single, million-copy-selling mystery novel and then disappeared. Now could it be that Quinn is being stalked by the hero of Black's book? His wife, Imogen, usually has the answers, but she's working on the other side of the world, and talking to her on webcam just isn't the same.

Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince. But even princes from faraway planets eventually grow up. No longer content with his tiny planet, the young prince sets off once again to explore the universe. And so begins another remarkable journey into the secrets and joys of living a meaningful life. This wonderful sequel to the beloved classic overflows with love and wisdom, a true celebration of life as it should be lived in all its beauty and joy.

An all-too-plausible terrorist plot to destroy the Houses of Parliament brings into focus much greater problems than the differences between two cultures in this gripping thriller from a former commissioned officer in the Parachute Regiment.

This autumn, life is catching up with Thomas Quinn. Five years ago, his sometime friend Andrew Black wrote a mystery novel that sold a million copies and then disappeared. Now could it be that Quinn is being stalked by the hero of Black’s book? His wife, Imogen, usually has the answers but she’s working on the other side of the world and talking to her on webcam just isn’t the same. Quinn finds himself in a world that might well be coming apart at the seams. If he can find Black, he might start finding answers.

A gripping and explosive psychological thriller about a young woman who disappears in suspicious circumstances, having been hounded by a vicious online troll. Years ago, Fortune gave up on his daughter, Sophie, after a troubled adolescence. Now she's gone missing, vanished without trace. And after weeks of investigation, the police have given up on her, too. Driven by guilt, and a determination to atone for his failures as a father, he takes on the search himself.