Showing results by narrator "Dan Bottomley" in All Categories

DI Thomas Ridpath was on the up in the Manchester CID: a promising detective who captured a notorious serial killer. But 10 years later, he’s recovering from a serious illness and on the brink of being forced out of the police. Then people start dying, in an uncanny echo of his first case.

Join Stella Starflake Pearl and her three fellow explorers as they trek across the snowy Icelands and come face-to-face with frost fairies, snow queens, outlaw hideouts, unicorns, pygmy dinosaurs and carnivorous cabbages.... When Stella and three other junior explorers get separated from their expedition, will they be able to cross the frozen wilderness and live to tell the tale?

Play with fire, and you're going to get burned. The unputdownable new Ridpath crime thriller. In Manchester, a block of flats is burning. The only victim is a middle-aged man, sat watching TV. Are the fire and the man's death an accident or is something more frightening at work? Meanwhile, DI Ridpath is back with his wife and enjoying work at the Coroner's Office, his myeloma still in remission. But the quiet life is soon shattered by a new threat.

Nowhere is safe. No one can be trusted. A bloodied body is found in a Manchester Immigrant Removal Centre. The investigating officer and the pathologist seem certain: a suicide. But for DI Ridpath something doesn't add up. As the evidence starts to unravel, and with few leads, the pressure is on to find answers before the Inquest is closed. Caught between the police, the coroner and a system that doesn't care, Ridpath isn't making any friends.

Three severed hands. No clues. A race against time. Three embalmed hands are discovered in a disused Victorian house. Is it a gangland ritual? The work of a cult? Or just a prank played by Medical Students? And what happened to the bodies? Meanwhile the Coroner needs to issue a Presumption of Death certificate on a teenage girl who vanished eleven years ago in mysterious circumstances. As hints emerge the two cases are connected, DI Ridpath pushes himself to the limit to find out what really happened.

The past is never over. It's just waiting for an opportunity to return... When the notorious serial killer the Beast of Manchester was captured, the streets should have been safe. Except the police got the wrong man. An innocent person was convicted, and only later was the culprit put away. Now, those connected to the case are being targeted. Someone wants revenge. DI Thomas Ridpath has to relive the horrors all over again. As the bodies stack up once more, Ridpath knows the answers lie in the mistakes made the first time round.

One chance encounter, one murder, will change everything. DI Thomas Ridpath is in the process of getting his life back together when everything goes wrong. Caught in a gruesome motorway incident, one question remains: why did nobody else see what happened? Ridpath's investigations soon pulls the police force itself into question, and hints at something even more sinister. With Manchester on the brink of violence unlike anything seen in decades, Ridpath must battle this unprecedented conflict alongside his own demons...

A child's body in an unmarked grave. A killer waiting to strike again. A young boy's body is found in a meadow beside the River Mersey. No DNA. No witnesses. No clues. It brings back painful memories of the Moors Murderers.

Stella Starflake Pearl is eagerly anticipating her next expedition. Suddenly disaster strikes when Stella's father, Felix, is snatched by a fearsome witch. Stella must bring her magic ice princess tiara to Witch Mountain or she will never see Felix again! But no one ever returns from Witch Mountain.... Stella, Ethan, Shay, Beanie and reluctant Jungle Cat explorer Percival set off into the unknown. They will face terrifying bat caves, poisonous apple groves, outraged vultures, argumentative mushrooms and deranged broomsticks in their quest to rescue Felix.

Ron Fawcett is a natural-born climber. In 1969, while still at school in his native Yorkshire, he tied into a climbing rope for the first time and was instantly hooked. From that moment on, it seemed nothing else in his life mattered nearly as much as his next vertical fix... Fawcett found the pressures of the limelight too much to bear, and at the end of the 1980s he faded from view. Now, for the first time, he tells his extraordinary story, of how his love of nature and the outdoors developed into a passion for climbing that took him to the top - and almost consumed him.

Ice princess Stella Starflake and her father Felix are in trouble: President Fogg has expelled them from the Polar Bear Explorers' Club and banned them from going on any further expeditions. Stella's not going to be put off by rules and regulations, though. She knows her friend Shay is in danger of turning into a witch wolf himself, since receiving a deadly bite on their last adventure. It's vital that Stella and her friends set out to find the spellbook that could save his life, even if it means travelling over the cursed Black Ice Bridge. 

Ursula knew the submarine wasn't designed to go this deep, but what choice did they have? No one wanted to get swallowed up by a colossal sneezing jellyfish! In a distant watery corner of the Explorers Kingdom, a submarine engineer, Ursula, is determined to become an explorer. Unfortunately, she hides an extraordinary secret, which makes her the sworn enemy of the Ocean Squid Explorers' Club were they ever to find out.

The controversial science that claims to have revolutionised economics. For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimise our own ‘utility’. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don’t really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational, we are prone to ‘cognitive biases’ with complex effects on decision-making, such as forgetting to prepare for retirement. 

Danny Mack's mates are brilliant: there's his best mate Giraffles (yeh, you read that right), so-called because of his unusually long neck; the MandM twins (you got it - like the chocolate) who are always finishing each other's sentences; and Lucky Success, who, well I reckon you can guess how he got his name. They're the best mates a kid could ask for, and when an epic school trip is announced, they're all properly made up about it. Because school trips are just an excuse to have a big laugh with your mates, right? Erm, wrong.

Driven by revenge, Serena and Gallows must join forces to take down the conspiracy before the kingdom falls to ruin. Symphony of the Wind is the first audiobook in a gritty epic fantasy trilogy. If you like hardened heroes, bloody action, dark magic, and monsters, then you’ll love Steven McKinnon’s visceral adventure.

Podkin is the son of a warrior chieftain. He knows that one day it will be up to him to lead his warren and guard it in times of danger. But for now, he's quite happy to laze around. Then Podkin's home is brutally attacked, and the young rabbits are forced to flee. With danger all around them, Podkin must protect his family and attempt to defeat the most horrifying enemy rabbitkind has ever known.

Noah can't believe it when he finds out his uncle owns a zoo! But the zoo is closing down, and there are animals who need homes. Before he knows it, Noah and his family are setting sail on a round-the-world trip returning the zoo animals to the places they were born. But when they try to return one very cheeky monkey, they're in for a whole boat-load of trouble!

Exploring the mysterious tunnels under their grandfather's house on Hoarder Hill, Hedy and Spencer discover the Fantastikhana, an underground tournament of magic. Here they find a group of powerful magicians called the Sleight and a mysterious living map, which tattoos itself onto Hedy's skin and seems to be directing her further underground. And so an extraordinary treasure hunt begins.

This year the secret service made a major mix -up. They mistook a 13-year-old boy called Kevin for a secret agent (I know, so much for an 'intelligence' agency). This was the sort of kid that would try and zip wire across a building and end up falling headfirst into a fountain, with his bum on show. Despite this, it is up to Kevin to save us all from an evil supervillain!

Podkin and his fellow rabbits have been sheltering in Dark Hollow after their battle with Scramashank. Paz tends to the rabbits with sleeping sickness; Crom meets with the war council...Podkin has nothing to do! Frustrated, Podkin goes exploring and discovers an abandoned underground chamber. Armed with the Gift of Dark Hollow, Podkin learns to moonstride, and Paz is rewarded with a magical gift of her own.