James Philip has 31 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 10 narrators. The most-rated is Cricket on the Beach.
Interlopers
Summary
Interlopers - book 1 of the Strangers Bureau Series is a novella introducing my new series of supernatural mysteries - The Strangers Bureau - featuring veteran Sûreté detective Eleanor Gerard and set in the now tranquil but historically blood soaked landscape of Northern France. Book 2 in The Strangers Bureau series - Pictures of Lily - is about the ghosts of the Western Front and the spirits of the ones they left behind. In Interlopers we discover that not all is well within the mysterious, ultra secretive Security Committee for Interloper Affairs. For nearly a century, SCIA's work has remained a dark secret within the underbelly of French Governments through war and peace. Nominally acting under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior, the Security Committee for Interloper Affairs - the best kept secret of the Fifth Republic - has become a bloated, corrupt monster, a rogue organ of state whose senior officers are more preoccupied with their own personal aggrandisement and the preservation of SCIA's power, than any meaningful notion of service to the French state. No French government has ever admitted the existence of SCIA and yet in Paris key members of the embattled socialist administration - confronted with poll ratings in free fall and a deepening economic crisis - has belatedly recognized that the Security Committee for Interloper Affairs is a loudly ticking time bomb. SCIA was created to quarantine, to hide, to render invisible a reality that no French Government has ever dared to confront. Now is the time of reckoning when sooner rather than later, that reality will become public knowledge. And when that happens, so too, will the scandal of the Security Committee for Interloper Affairs. Acting under presidential decree three men meet clandestinely in a villa at Compiegne to belatedly begin to contemplate the unthinkable.
©2014 James P. Coldham (P)2020 James P. Coldham
Winter's Revenge
Summary
Winter's Revenge is the second full length Guy Winter mystery. It is set in England in the Second World War at the time of the Battle of Britain and the beginning of the devastating night Blitz of London in September 1940. London reels under the onset of the Blitz as every night hundreds of Luftwaffe bombers unload their cargoes of death over the beleaguered city. On the ground as the new brutal realities of the war are brought home to every citizen, the Ripper continues his rampage and the last secrets of Guy Winter's life are stripped away. As the bombs fall the mystery man unravels one mystery after another, knowing that sooner rather than later he must confront his deadliest foe. This time it is not just Guy Winter's life and loyalties that are under the microscope. Under the Luftwaffe's reign of terror the past mistakes of friends and enemies alike suddenly come home to roost, but Guy Winter never stops hunting his man.
©2014 James P. Coldham (P)2016 James P. Coldham
The Great Society
Summary
The Great Society is Book 3 of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62 – USA. In the alternative timeline of the post-Cuban Missiles War, the swinging 60s never happened. The Great Society is the third verse of the American story of Armageddon. To its friends and enemies, alike the United States seems to have emerged from the October War battered, bruised, but invincible. However, 13 months after the cataclysm terrible wounds remain unhealed and the nation of liberty is riven by conflict. The United States is a country desperately looking to re-find its way; to re-discover its sense of nationhood and purpose. What has happened to the American Dream; is the destiny of the land of the free still manifest? In Washington, DC, there had been an uprising; it is too soon to know if the attack on the Capitol is a coup d’état, a popular uprising ,or simply a massive terroristic assault on the seat of American democracy and government. What price is unity when the war-ravaged states of the American North West and the Great Lakes already feel like battlegrounds in the next war? Across the West, while incumbent Mayors and Governors are asking themselves how they will fend off the deafening clamour of "states rights" movements; the Federal government is struggling to unpick the chaos of a failed coup d’état. The search is on for the traitors who even now still threaten the Union and the recriminations are just beginning. What price is the Great Society? Welcome to the third verse of Timeline 10/27/62 – USA Series. Book 1: Aftermath Book 2: California Dreaming Book 3: The Great Society Book 4: Ask Not of Your Country Book 5: The American Dream
©2016 James Philip (P)2020 James Philip
The Cloud Walkers
Summary
September 1940. Squadron leader Paul Chantrey is a man under pressure, but he is one of "the few". Fighter Command is all that stands between Britain and defeat.... For those familiar with Until the Night, several of the characters and names referenced in The Cloud Walkers may be familiar to you. In that sense, this novel is both part "prequel" and a companion to that title, set later in the Second World War. History justly lauds the derring-do of the brave men - mostly very young men - of Fighter Command in the summer of 1940. Step back into the reality of those desperate days when Britain stood alone against the tide of Nazism. Lest we forget - remember the cloud walkers....
©2017 James P. Coldham (P)2018 James P. Coldham
California Dreaming
Summary
It is November 1963 - 13 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis went horribly wrong. In this timeline the swinging sixties are not going to happen and the survivors, far from counting their blessings are beginning to wonder exactly what sort of world they have created. In the aftermath of the war of October 1962 the United States of America had seemed victorious, but what price victory in a world half-wrecked and in which so many old friends have died? America has survived but has been changed forever. The fracture lines in the Union are widening and America's time of trial, far from being over, still lies in a future fraught with what 18 months before would have seemed like unimaginable perils.
©2015 James P. Coldham (P)2016 James P. Coldham
Winter's Pearl
Summary
Winter's Pearl - Prologue to the Guy Winter Mysteries Series is a novella which sets the scene for the first full length Guy Winter mystery, entitled Winter's War. Winter's Pearl is set in London in the first months of the Second World War during the period of the so-called 'Phoney War'. It draws us into the complex world of Scotland Yard's most famous detective Guy Winter; the Mystery Man. So named because no other living detective has ever solved as many mysteries as Winter of the Yard. However, the great detective's fame and triumphs have come at a high cost. Just when we think we've discovered our hero at his all-time low, it gets worse and it doesn't ever look like it is going to get better. Who needs enemies when your friends are on somebody else's side?
©2014 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip (P)2016 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip
The Pillars of Hercules
Summary
The Pillars of Hercules is the third book in the Timeline 10/27/62 series set in a world in which the Cuban Missile Crisis went bad, and the Swinging Sixties did not happen. The Ancient Greeks called the Straits of Gibraltar the "Pillars of Hercules". The Rock of Gibraltar was the northern pillar; Monte Hacho in Ceuta, its probable southern analogue. To the ancients, the "Pillars of Hercules" delineated the western end of the known Mediterranean world. Beyond lay the limitless, impassable vastness of the Atlantic wherein lay monsters.... It is December, 1963, and the tensions that have been simmering since the October war came to a boil in an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion so poisonous that nobody in England or Washington, DC, realize that in the background, there is a third, malignant force at work. When the CIA is implicated in the attempted assassination of the British royal family, a United States aircraft subsequently attacks two British destroyers off the coast of northern Spain and takes part in a devastating surprise raid on the Maltese Archipelago. The belligerence of General Franco's government over Gibraltar and the sabre-rattling of the new Fascist government of Italy suddenly assume the proportions of a Machiavellian-American plot to drive the final nail into the coffin of the British Empire. In England, the hard-pressed United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration is struggling to feed and house its survivors, and every time it tries to talk to the Kennedy administration, nobody is available to take its call.
©2015 James P. Coldham and JAMES PHILIP (P)2018 James P. Coldham and JAMES PHILIP
Travels Through the Wind
Summary
It is the late spring of 1978 in a world in which the American Revolution failed in 1776 after George Washington was killed and the Continental Army was destroyed at the Battle of Long Island. The rumbling aftershocks of the Empire Day atrocities which reverberated through Two Hundred Lost Years are threatening to come to the boil. While in Philadelphia the politics become ever more fractious in Spain the Royal Alcazar is a citadel besieged in a country which might as well still be stuck in the 19th century. Preparations for war hamstrung by colonial politics begin to gather pace in New England in a climate where the Governor in his mansion and the government back in England continues to tiptoe around provocations in the Caribbean and the Borderlands of the South. In Spain, Melody Danson and Henrietta De L’Isle have performed their role as distractions, adornments to a diplomatic mission whose only purpose is to delay the moment when the truth about the Empire Day attacks finally emerge. Because, when that day comes the road to war will suddenly confront the great European powers. The Peace of Paris, the basis of the post-Great War of 1857-66 settlement, threatened by Anglo-German-Russia tensions is now hostage to the machinations of a Spanish Empire in its death throes and the failing health of Old Spain, "the sick man of Europe". Brothers Abe and Alex Fielding find themselves making ready for war. Melody and Henrietta discover unlikely friends in the Mountains of Madrid. Journalist Albert Stanton of the Manhattan Globe unwittingly stumbles into a war zone. The Governor of the Commonwealth of New England and his political masters in England wrestle with a crisis they saw coming years ago but can do little or nothing to avert. The World in which England’s Georgian colonies in the Americas became the keystone of the British Empire - upon which it seemed the Sun could never set - is about to fray around the edges and our heroes and heroines are going to find themselves directly in the firing line! Author’s note: The books of the New England series are written as episodes in a contiguous narrative arc. This audiobook concludes not so much with overt cliff-hangers but with deliberate "unfinished business" which will be picked up in audioook four - Remember Brave Achilles.
©2019 James Philip Coldham (P)2020 James Philip Coldham
Winter's War
Summary
Winter's War is the first full length Guy Winter mystery. It is set in England in the Second World War at the time of the Battle of Britain and the start of the London Blitz. August 1940 - Chief Inspector Guy Winter has been Fleet Street's favorite detective for over a decade. Dubbed the "Mystery Man" by his friends and enemies alike, for all his fame he cuts a lonely figure at Scotland Yard, where every newspaper story is fresh grist to an already tired mill. Laid low by personal tragedy, there are many who suspect that the great detective's career is over. Guy Winter, still in mourning the death of his wife in a tragic traffic accident the year before is summoned back to Scotland Yard to hunt for a psychopathic killer who is retracing Jack the Ripper's 52-year-old bloody trail of terror through London's East End. Evil stalks the London blackout at the height of the Battle of Britain as a madman sets out to sow panic in the streets. But nothing is quite what it seems. As the threat of invasion looms ever larger and great aerial dogfights rage in the skies over southern England, as air raid sirens wail in the night, searchlights play across the face of the heavens and the first bombs fall, old scores are being settled and we discover that Guy Winter has been living a double life more mysterious than anybody ever suspected. Now that double life has returned to haunt him. Now he no longer knows whom to call friend or foe.
©2014 James P. Coldham (P)2016 James P. Coldham
The Big City
Summary
The Big City is the third audiobook of the Until the Night series and is set in November 1943. The Until the Night series is about Bomber Command in the winter of 1943 to '44 and follows the experience of Adam Chantrey, a 25-year-old veteran of the Bombing War sent to Ansham Wolds in Lincolnshire to rebuild a shattered Lancaster squadron. Exhausted and tormented by his own demons, he discovers, amidst the chaos of war and loss, love and an unlikely inner peace up on the high wold of Lincolnshire while all around him the world is enveloped in madness. It was in November 1943 that Bomber Command commenced a campaign to level Berlin from end to end; at stake was the tantalizing prospect of knocking Germany out of the war by the spring of 1944. The fabled "main aim" of the bomber war briefly beckoned, and like a siren's call, it began to lure the Main Force to its doom. But all that was in an unknown and an unknowable future; in the beginning hope died hard. For Adam Chantrey, this is just the latest battle, and he is not alone in having to come to terms with the new realities of a cruel world. Please be aware - this audiobook is also available in an omnibus edition titled Until the Night, a revised second edition of a previously published title of the same name.
©2013 James P. Coldham (P)2018 James P. Coldham
The House on Haight Street
Summary
The House on Haight Street is a novella featuring Miranda Sullivan and Joe Calleja, culled from material originally included in the body of Warsaw Concerto (Book 13 of the Timeline 10/27/62 series). It did not make the "final cut" for two reasons: Firstly, I thought it was one sub-strand too many and therefore interrupted the flow of the rest of the narrative; and secondly, the book was getting very long even by my standards! Normally, such "exclusions" would never see the light of day. Having lopped a good 30- to 40,000 words out of Warsaw Concerto, I discovered that within the supposedly extraneous or distracting material I had removed, there was the bones of a story capable of standing on its own feet. Moreover, it was a story that serendipitously reintroduced two characters who will be important players in forthcoming instalments of the Timeline 10/27/62 saga, brought their stories up to date, and passed the test of adding another layer of context to the events playing out in both Warsaw Concerto (Book 13) and Eight Miles High (Book 14). I hope that you, my fans will allow me this indulgence. Mostly, I just hope you enjoy the novella. In either event, I am sure you will let me know what you think of The House on Haight Street! It is the first of a series of Timeline 10/27/62 stories that will appear in between the release of forthcoming Main Series books.
©2019 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip (P)2020 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip
The Burning Time
Summary
The Burning Time is book five of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62. It is February 1964 in a world in which the "swinging '60s" never happened. The atomic mushroom clouds over the Mediterranean have dispersed, and now, as the world teeters on the brink of a new thermonuclear war, it is dawning on the "victors" that their "victory", far from being absolute, was tragically pyrrhic. In the uneasy half-peace, the United States stirs from its post-Cuban Missiles War slumber. But will it awaken soon enough to overcome its own divisions to confront the new and terrible forces unleashed by Red Dawn's first paroxysm of violence? Now is a time for betrayal. Now is judgement day, when all the mistakes of the months since the October War will come back to haunt the "victors".
©2015, 2020 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip (P)2020 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip
Winter's Spy
Summary
The fifth full-length installment of the Guy Winter Mysteries series, Winter's Spy is set in November 1940. In Winter's Spy, the Mystery Man is under arrest, suspected of having been an enemy agent for his whole career in the Metropolitan Police and throughout all his years working for MI5. Dammed by the evidence of a German spy whom he encountered in Paris before the war, it seems as if he must literally fight for his life. Then, transported to Camp 020, MI5’s South London interrogation center, and confronted by his accuser, the Mystery Man begins to suspect that nothing is quite what it seemed. Is he trapped in a web of deadly intrigue? Does a beautiful spy hold the key to the greatest secret of the war? And can MI5 and the Metropolitan Police suspend hostilities long enough for Guy Winter to finally unearth the key to unlock the Ripper case?
©2016 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip (P)2018 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip
Aftermath (Timeline 10/27/62 - USA)
Summary
Aftermath is book one of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62 - USA. The Cuban Missile Crisis went wrong, and now the American people are about to start living with the consequences of the catastrophe. From New England to the Pacific Northwest, from Washington, DC, to San Francisco, Americans confront to their worst nightmare. Nobody wins a nuclear war. Aftermath is about the first 24 hours of the new age, a novella-length introduction to the Timeline 10/27/62 - USA series. It is set in America and tells the Timeline 10/27/62 story through American eyes. At points in the narrative, the books of this series will touch base with and offer alternative perspectives on the events in the other books set in the Timeline 10/27/62 world, but each book in the USA series will stand alone. Some of the characters will have appeared in earlier books set in the Timeline 10/27/62 'verse, but many - most, in fact - make their first bows in the opening book of the new series. Aftermath is the first verse of the American story of Armageddon - the first 24 hours of the new era.
©2015 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip (P)2016 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip
Two Hundred Lost Years
Summary
Isaac Fielding knows exactly where he stands: Things were not looking good. Upon that, at least, everybody could agree. The other thing that everybody seemed to agree about was that when, eventually, I had my day in court it was likely to be a short, bittersweet experience and that the main topic of discussion would be the manner of my subsequent execution. A year has passed since the Empire Day outrages of July 1976. Up until now, the colonial administration and the government in the Old Country have controlled "the narrative" and, by and large, kept the truth well and truly buried. Unfortunately, police and judicial bungling in New England is threatening to undo Government House in Philadelphia’s good work. As always, in the affairs of New England, nothing is quite what it seems to be. A year might have passed, but the seismic after-shocks still reverberate through the disunited colonies of the East Coast. Isaac Fielding and his sons have yet to have their day in court. The governor of New England has been put through the mill by the parliament, and horror of horrors, copies of Two Hundred Lost Years, the 30-year-old seditious epistle banned in the First Thirteen, are flooding into North America, courtesy of the free press back in the British Isles - notwithstanding the authorities might have arrested and already condemned the wrong men for the Empire Day atrocities.
©2018 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip (P)2020 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip
Tales of Brave Ulysses
Summary
Tales of Brave Ulysses is book six of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62. Ulysses is the English form of Ulixes, which in turn is the Latin form of the Greek Odysseus, hero Homer’s Iliad that tells the story of the great Trojan Wars, and the Odyssey which recounts the fable of his long journey home from those wars. It is April 1964 in a world in which the ‘swinging 60s’ never happened. War is chaos; and chaos is war. The post-October War world is at a bloody crossroads; betrayal and confusion preoccupies and distracts the West to the disasters about to befall newly remade, desperately fragile alliances as long kept secrets surface. The impenetrable fog of war spreads across the Mediterranean. Even while Malta burns and the survivors of the savage naval battle off its coast fight for their lives in the wreckage-strewn iron grey waters, the brittle rapprochement between the two trans-Atlantic pre-war nuclear superpowers comes under intolerable pressure both from within and without. The new Anglo-American alliance has failed its first test and while the blame game rages, events are moving at terrifying speed. The enemies of the United States and the United Kingdom are finally ready to strike a devastating blow. Like the Greeks of classical antiquity after ten years besieging Troy, the war weary, disillusioned peoples of what remains of the pre-October War free world are badly in need of heroes. And like the Greeks of yore, they too await the return of their brave Odysseus to give them hope for a better future. Please be warned - cliffhanger ending! The Timeline 10/27/62 - Main Series is: Book 1: Operation Anadyr Book 2: Love Is Strange Book 3: The Pillars of Hercules Book 4: Red Dawn Book 5: The Burning Time Book 6: Tales of Brave Ulysses Book 7: A Line in the Sand
©2016 James Philip (P)2020 James Philip
Brothers in Arms
Summary
Brothers in Arms is the third book in the Harry Waters Series and the sequel to Heroes.
Seven years have passed since former SAS officer Harry Waters stood trial in Winchester for the murder of his best friend. He wants nothing more than to be left alone but then Harry has always understood that what you want and what get in this world are hardly ever one and the same thing.
Harry had known, sooner or later, his past was going to catch up with him. In Brothers in Arms his past returns to haunt him, and within days the cost is measured in blood and death.
Harry has no choice but to fall back on the skills and training he acquired in a decade on the road with the SAS.
A psychopathic killer bent on vengeance lurks out in the darkness and only Harry can lure him into the light for one last lethal confrontation.
©2013 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip (P)2017 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip
The Lost Fleet
Summary
In the aftermath of the October War, Armageddon rumbled on. The cataclysm had struck, the missiles and the bombers had wrought global havoc, and the survivors, everywhere, were picking up the pieces as they dazedly looked at the brave, new post-nuclear war world around them. The war had been fought, won, and lost in less than a day, but regionally and locally, the fighting and the settling of scores went on for years. The US Seventh Fleet wiped out what remained of the Red Navy in the North Western Pacific in the days after the war. Sporadic fighting went on in Germany for many months, civil wars broke out like brush fires in a dozen lands, and even in the heartlands of the "victors", civil order disintegrated for days, weeks, or months thereafter in some places. In the aftermath of the October War, Armageddon rumbled on. The war had been fought, won, and lost in less than a day, but regionally and locally, the fighting and the settling of scores went on for years. It was hardly surprising that the fate of three ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy should be, if not forgotten, then allowed to slip under the ‘radar’ of the world. However, no history of the October War is complete without at least a footnote about that "lost fleet". This, insofar as anybody can know at this remove, is its story. However, no history of the October War is complete without at least a footnote about that "lost fleet". This, insofar as anybody can know at this remove, is its story.
©2020 J.P. Coldham (P)2020 J.P. Coldham
Heroes
Summary
Heroes is the second story in the Harry Waters series and the immediate sequel to Islands of No Return. Sometimes, whatever you do, the world conspires against you. In Heroes we find Harry fighting for his freedom, his career, against alcoholism, and to preserve what is left of his nightmare-ravaged sanity. On trial for murdering his best friend, Harry stands condemned by the man who was responsible for leaving his men to die in the deserts of Iraq. And worse, damned by the testimony of the woman he loves. The trial is a public relations disaster for the Army and quickly becomes the nexus of a hysterical media feeding frenzy. Harry is trapped in the middle of a battle he knows he cannot win. Beset with self-loathing, his career is wrecked, he has lost the woman he loves, and he is facing the prospect of a life behind bars. He has hit rock bottom. But sometimes it is only when you hit rock bottom that you finally discover the strength to stand tall. Also in the Harry Waters series: Book 1: Islands of No Return Book 2: Heroes Book 3: Brothers in Arms
©2014 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip (P)2016 James P. Coldham writing as James Philip
Love Is Strange
Summary
The Cuban Missiles Crisis didn't end peacefully and the "swinging sixties" didn't happen. On Saturday October 27th, 1962 American and Soviet geopolitical brinkmanship resulted in the most terrible war in human history. The forever changed world that remained when the thermonuclear fires had burned themselves out is the world of Timeline 10/27/62. Love is Strange is Book Two of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62. Love is Strange picks up the story a year and a month after the terrifying events in Operation Anadyr, Book One of the Timeline 10/27/62 Series. In a partially devastated world in which people are beginning to discover what actually happened and who their friends really are, chaos and disintegration threaten and old allies drift like sleepwalkers towards new wars. The USA has assumed a new global hegemony and written off its old European allies. Therein lie the seeds of a generational conflict, but nobody in Washington wants to hear that kind of news, or recognize that the laurels of victory might in time come to crush the seemingly invincible American eagle. In a Britain ravaged by nuclear war in which the survivors are struggling to come to terms with the cataclysm, questions are being asked about the reasons why, and how what remains of the nation will survive in the new world. Out of the catastrophe new leaders are beginning to emerge and there is a growing consensus that one day there will be a reckoning.
©2014 James P. Coldham (P)2016 James P. Coldham