Showing results by narrator "Joseph Kloska" in All Categories

Brought to you by Penguin. Our countryside is iconic: a series of distinctive habitats that unite to create a landscape that is unique for the rich diversity of our flora and fauna. In England, his most magisterial book to date, John Lewis-Stempel explores each in turn, taking us from coast to...

Bernard Hinault is one of the greatest cyclists of all time. He is a five-time winner of the Tour de France and the only man to have won each of the Grand Tours on more than one occasion. Three decades on from his retirement, he remains the last Frenchman to win the Tour de France. His victory in 1985 marks the turning point when the nation who had dominated the first eight decades of the race they had invented suddenly found they were no longer able to win it.

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. 

When a young solicitor, Jonathan Harker, visits the heart of Transylvania - ostensibly to meet reclusive nobleman Count Dracula - he cannot begin to imagine what horrors might lie in store for him there...or the chain of events he will set in motion at Castle Dracula. Soon, Dracula's bloodlust spreads to England's shores, and Harker's fiancée, Mina Murray, becomes embroiled in his affairs.

1961. Radio producer Hugo is proud of his new science-fiction show. Admittedly, the dialogue is somewhat creaky, the two lead actors despise each other and the sound effects were knocked up in the engineer's kitchen - but it has rocket-ships, hover-cars, robots and Martians. It's the world of the future, where anything can happen: and often does....

Acclaimed nature writer Neil Ansell has suffered from progressive hearing loss his whole life. As his world is becoming ever more silent, he suddenly hears something quite unexpected — the haunting call of the great northern diver. It is this extraordinary experience which makes him realise that there might still be remarkable sounds in nature within his reach — if he can only find himself in the right place at the right time. This moving book charts Neil's mission to hear rare and elusive creatures that he had not previously encountered.

A brilliant historical crime novel of Georgian London from the author of The Devil in the Marshalsea. Spring 1728. A young, well-dressed man is dragged through the streets of London to the gallows at Tyburn. The crowds jeer and curse as he passes, calling him a murderer. He tries to remain calm. His name is Tom Hawkins, and he is innocent. Somehow he has to prove it before the rope squeezes the life out of him.It is, of course, all his own fault.

Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days to Oxford and army life, his travels abroad and his years as a successful novelist, Memoirs offers extraordinary insights into a unique literary life.

The fourteen haunting stories in this collection span the whole of Daphne du Maurier's writing career and explore every human emotion: an apparently happily married woman commits suicide; a steamer in wartime is rescued by a mysterious sailing-ship; a dull husband breaks loose in a surprising fashion; a con woman plays her game once too often; and a famous novelist looks for romance, only to meet with bitter disappointment.

A classic of alienation and horror, The Birds was immortalised by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's sense of dominance over the natural world.

Dan Starkey takes on the mantle of William Hope Hodgson's supernatural detective, Thomas Carnacki, in this collection of enhanced audiobook readings: 'The Gateway of the Monster', 'The House Among the Laurels', 'The Whistling Room', 'The Horse of the Invisible', 'The Searcher of the End House' and 'The Thing Invisible'. Directed by Scott Handcock.

Living in exile in Venice, the disgraced Lord Byron revels in the freedoms of the city. But when he is associated with the deaths of local women, found with wounds to their throats, and then a novel called The Vampyre is published under his name, rumours begin to spread that Byron may be the murderer. . .

The new twisting mystery from CWA Historical Dagger 2014 winner Antonia Hodgson. Late spring, 1728, and Thomas Hawkins has left London for the wild beauty of Yorkshire - forced on a mission he can't refuse. John Aislabie, one of the wealthiest men in England, has been threatened with murder. Blackmailed into investigating, Tom must hunt down those responsible - or lose the woman he loves forever.

London, 1727 - and Tom Hawkins is about to fall from his heaven of card games, brothels, and coffeehouses to the hell of a debtors' prison. The Marshalsea is a savage world of its own, with simple rules: those with family or friends who can lend them a little money may survive in relative comfort. Those with none will starve in squalor and disease. And those who try to escape will suffer a gruesome fate at the hands of the gaol's rutheless governor and his cronies.

Three enhanced audiobooks performed by the stars of the classic BBC television series. These stories are set during Series 2. Includes Logic by Simon Guerrier, Risk Management by Una McCormack and Three by James Goss.

November, 1939. A conscription officer arrives in the peaceful farming village of Rautjärvi. The Soviet Union has invaded, and for the first time in its history as an independent country, Finland is at war. Setting off into the depths of winter to face the Red Army, the small group of childhood friends recruited from Rautjärvi have no idea whether any of them will ever return home. But their unit has a secret weapon: the young sniper Simo Häyhä, whose lethal skill in the snow-bound forests of the front line will earn him the nickname 'The White Death'.

On the Saturday morning of January 9, 1993, while Jean Claude Romand was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent-teacher meeting.... With these chilling first words, acclaimed master of psychological suspense Emmanuel Carrère begins his exploration of the double life of a respectable doctor, 18 years of lies, five murders and the extremes to which ordinary people can go.

Everyone remembers where they were when they heard that AJ Silver had died. In summer 1996, there was no avoiding the story that America's biggest teen pop sensation had plunged to his death on a rollercoaster at a family-run amusement park in rural England. Now, 27 years have passed, and – even if you’re too young to remember the event – you’ve probably heard AJ Silver's songs topping the charts again. So what better time to take a forensic look at what happened that summer?

For a century Bram Stoker's Dracula has reigned supreme as the undisputed masterpiece of horror writing. We have all grown up under the shadow of the elegant Count, at once an attractive, brutal, and erotic creature of the night.

Autumn, 1728. Life is good for Thomas Hawkins and Kitty Sparks. The Cocked Pistol, Kitty's wickedly disreputable bookshop, is a roaring success. Tom's celebrity as 'Half-Hanged Hawkins', the man who survived the gallows, is also proving useful. Their happiness proves short-lived. When Tom is set upon by a street gang, he discovers there's a price on his head. Who on earth could want him dead - and why?