Showing results by narrator "NICHOLAS BOULTON" in All Categories

Justine is the first volume in the Alexandria Quartet, four interlinked novels set in the sensuous, hot environment of Alexandria just before the Second World War. Within this polyglot setting of richly idiosyncratic characters is Justine, wild and intense, wife to the wealthy businessman Nessim, a Mari complaisant. Her emotional and sexual wildness fuels a highly charged atmosphere.

The Charterhouse of Parma is a twisting tale of passion and intrigue following the adventures of Fabrizio del Dongo, a young Italian nobleman who dreams of glory on the battlefields of Europe and finds himself fighting alongside Napoleon at Waterloo. After returning home, Fabrizio becomes entangled in Machiavellian scheming, an ill-advised romance, and a fatal duel that lands him in prison, where he begins a star-crossed love affair with the ethereal Clelia, the commandant’s daughter.

The collected BBC Radio 4 crime dramas featuring Inspector Coleman and Sergeant Astor Like his actor namesake, Ronald Coleman is a suave, well-spoken English gentleman. But although he's a movie buff, Coleman is no film star - he's a copper, and a Detective Inspector to boot. Together with his...

Set in the financial centres of 1820s Frankfurt and London, Jezebel’s Daughter (1880) tells the story of two widows: Madame Fontaine, who will go to any lengths to secure her daughter’s marriage, and Mrs Wagner, who devotes herself to her late husband’s social reforms. In pursuit of her endeavours, Mrs Wagner befriends Jack Straw, a former inmate of Bedlam, who plays a pivotal role as the action, full of plotting and counterplotting, unfolds, culminating in the morgue, where several lives hang in the balance.

Published in 1888, The Legacy of Cain is the last of Wilkie Collins’s completed novels. Two sisters, Helen and Eunice, are brought up by their father, Reverend Gracedieu. He has deliberately kept the girls in ignorance of their true ages, to disguise the fact that one of them was adopted after her birth mother was executed for the brutal murder of her husband. In time, both girls fall for the same man, Philip Dunboyne, but when he eventually chooses one of the sisters, events take a sinister turn.

Father Ambrosio, the most pious and venerated monk in all of Madrid, is held as a paragon of virtue. But after 30 years of study and prayer, evil thoughts begin to permeate his mind. As two plots cleverly converge, torture, murder, incest, rape, poison, and magic prevail, sustained by an elegance in the writing of the 19-year-old Matthew Lewis.

Demons, vengeful spirits, insanity, premature burials, and lesbian vampires. In a Glass Darkly contains five diabolical tales of horror and mystery that will get the heart racing. Each story, including the famous "Green Tea" and "Carmilla", is presented as a case from the posthumous papers of Dr. Martin Hesselius, a metaphysical physician who has no doubt as to the existence of supernatural phenomena - unlike our anxious protagonists....

The child of a reputable family and a faithful son of the Church, Robert of Locksley had no intention of becoming an outlaw. But the relentless cruelty and tyranny by the elite nobility of England demanded that someone rise up to give answer. And so Robert of Locksley became Robin Hood, a man thrown into a fierce struggle to balance his deep faith with a call to action in a violent age. Featuring over 60 actors, cinematic sound, and original music, The Legends of Robin Hood is an exciting 12-part audio drama from the award-winning Augustine Institute.

First appearing in 1782, Dangerous Liaisons is one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The plot unfolds through a series of letters as the two main protagonists, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, attempt to bring about the seduction of a young woman. The epistolary nature of the novel gives a multi-faceted perspective of the action, which places the book firmly in the tradition of libertine literature.

Dickens weaves a tale of mystery, betrayal, and social unrest, centered around the simple, good-hearted Barnaby Rudge, a man with a mysterious past and a deep connection to the chaos brewing in London. As Barnaby’s journey unfolds, he is caught in the whirlwind of political and social upheaval, facing dark secrets, unexpected twists, and a society teetering on the brink of violence.

Charles Cumming’s gripping new thriller series surrounding Lachlan Kite's intelligence agency BOX 88 *Icarus 17, the fourth book in the gripping Lachlan Kite thriller series is available to pre-order now!* Waterstones Best Espionage Thriller of the Year Sunday Times Thriller of the Month...

The very liberal Kirks are throwing a party. For Howard Kirk, liberal sociology lecturer whose deluded sense of heroism has him moving seductively around the university campus, the net must be perfectly cast: ‘if you want to have something that’s genuinely unstructured, you have to plan it carefully.’ Kirk embodies the contradictions of the era’s intellectual and political climate. As he navigates complex relationships with his wife, his students and his colleagues, he pursues personal and professional agendas under the guise of progressive thought.

One of the most important and influential Russian writers of the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoevsky is admired worldwide for his great realist novels, exploring questions of morality, philosophy and the nature of existence. This compilation contains the BBC radio productions of his four most famous novels - as well as three lesser-known works and two bonus documentaries - collected together for the first time.

Completed six years after Dostoyevsky's own term as a convict, The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical account of life in a Siberian prison camp, and the physical and mental effects it has on those who are sentenced to inhabit it. Alexandr Petrovitch Goryanchikov, a gentleman of the noble class, has been condemned to 10 years of hard labor for murdering his wife.

Once the golden boy of the English literary scene, now a clinically depressed writer of pulp crime fiction, Ash Winters has given up on hope, happiness, and—most of all—himself. He lives his life between the cycles of his illness, haunted by the ghosts of other people’s expectations. Then a chance encounter throws him into the path of Essex-born Darian Taylor. By his own admission, Darian isn’t the crispest lettuce in the fridge, but he makes Ash laugh, reminding him of what it’s like to step beyond the boundaries of anxiety.

Sent undercover by Britain's famed yet clandestine Temporal Agency to Istanbul, Detective Sir Seaton Begg and Doctor Sinclair are on the hunt for the Red King, the leader of a secretive group of assassins who are plotting to change the shape of the world. Begg and Philips are thrust into a city that is in transition from the ancient to the modern, reflecting the state of the world in the early 1930s, and they are hard pressed on all sides by assassins and betrayals.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the most astonishing child prodigy in the history of music, is felt by many people to be the greatest composer who ever lived. Dominated and shaped by a highly intelligent but frustrated and ambitious father, his story sees the development of a unique genius, from precocious and often endearing childhood to liberated fulfillment, unexpected poverty, and a tragically early death. Generously illustrated by Mozart’s music, from his fifth to his final year, this portrait-in-sound reveals a fascinating yet elusive character, drawing richly on the words of the composer himself and those who knew him.

In Oceania, one of three totalitarian states that rule the world, Big Brother is watching. The Thought Police are listening. Reality is defined by the Party. And in London, at the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith’s job is to rewrite history. His dream, however, is to rebel. Winston is beginning to think for himself. In defiance of the State, he falls into a criminal love affair with his coworker Julia. But it isn’t until he joins the Brotherhood, an underground network of revolutionaries, that Winston discovers how high the cost of freedom may be.

Appearing in 1852, Basil was Wilkie Collins’s second published novel. The eponymous narrator is emotionally torn between two women: Margaret Sherwin and his sister Clara. His marriage to Margaret, a draper’s sexually precocious daughter, is to remain secret and unconsummated for the first year, as agreed with her father.

The Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes form the wellspring of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Stories of knightly valour in the Welsh Marches had existed before the 12th century, but it was the magnificent poetry and imagination of Chrétien, the 12th century French poet and trouvère, which brought alive the great characters of Arthur, his wife Guinevere, Lancelot and others.