Andrew Calverley has narrated 11 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors. The most-rated is Empire Day.
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
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
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 Cold Years
Summary
When so many haven’t survived, just being alive can feel like a crime. Everyone needs to be heard: If there’s one thing Sam Williams has learned, it’s that. Which is why he finds himself defending Richard Fothergill against accusations that date back decades. But Sam’s real problems are closer to home. His nemesis, Trawden, is finally dead, but so are those he once called friends. The people he used to count on, the ones who aren’t in the ground, aren’t what they once were, either. DI Martins is on his back again, and she’s got company. And Sam’s girlfriend Claire might be recovering from her breakdown, but she’s not telling him everything. Life would be so much easier if Sam knew the answers. Instead, all he’s got are questions. Who is following him, and what do they want? What did Fothergill really do to the children he taught? And where was Claire the day Edward Trawden was killed? Everyone has a secret to hide, but some secrets are too close to home.
©2018 Joel Hames (P)2020 Joel Hames
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
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
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
Dead North
Summary
Two dead cops and a suspect who won’t talk.... Once the brightest star in the legal firmament, Sam Williams has hit rock bottom, with barely a client to his name and a short-term cash problem that's looking longer by the minute. So when he's summoned to Manchester to help a friend crack a case involving the murder of two unarmed police officers and a suspect who won't say a word, he jumps at the chance to resurrect his career. In Manchester, he'll struggle against resentful locals, an enigmatic defense lawyer who thinks he's stepping on her toes, beatings, corrupt cops, and people who'll do anything to protect their secrets. On its streets, he’ll see people die. But it's in the hills and valleys further north that Sam will face the biggest challenge of all: learning who he really is and facing down the ghosts of his past. He’s working someone else’s case, and he’s in way over his head. But sometimes, you need the wrong man in the right place.
©2018 Joel Hames (P)2019 Joel Hames
Islands of No Return
Summary
Harry's life goal was to get into the SAS. When we meet him in 1981 he is in the process of achieving his dream. No sooner has he lived one dream than he bumps into another, Sarah, the love of his life. What could go wrong? Well, quite a lot. For example, an idiot Latin American dictator might invade the Falkland Islands within months of Harry earning the right to wear the legendary winged dagger cap badge.
©2013 James P. Coldham writing as JAMES PHILIP (P)2015 James P. Coldham writing as JAMES PHILIP
No One Will Hear
Summary
Four murders. Four messages. One chance to catch a killer. Renowned human rights lawyer Elizabeth Maurier lies dead, her body mutilated, her killer unknown. For DI Olivia Martins and her team, it’s a mystery. For the victim’s daughter Lizzy, a poet and academic with a shaky grasp on reality, it’s a tragedy. But for Sam Williams, the man Elizabeth fired a decade ago and hasn’t spoken to since, it’s a whole new world of pain. Elizabeth’s death has stirred a sleeping past back to life. Former clients are darkening Sam’s door, old enemies returning, ancient cases reopening. It doesn’t help that DI Martins is on his case, the press are dogging his every step, and his girlfriend’s behavior is increasingly erratic. But Elizabeth’s murder is just the start. As Sam reluctantly digs his way back into the past, more truths will crumble into lies. More certainties will shade to doubt. And more innocent people will die.
©2018 Joel Hames (P)2020 Joel Hames
Empire Day
Summary
New York - July 1976 - in a world in which New England remains the sparkling jewel in the crown of the British Empire. It is the day before Empire Day - July 4 - the day each year when the British Empire marks the brutal crushing of the rebellion dignified by the treachery of the 56 delegates to the Continental Congress who were so foolhardy as to sign the infamous Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on that day of infamy in 1776. It is nearly 200 years since George Washington was killed and his Continental Army was destroyed in the Battle of Long Island, and now New England, that most quintessentially loyal and "English" imperial fiefdom - at least in the original, or "First 13" colonies - is about to celebrate its devotion to the Crown and the Old Country, of which it still views, in the main, as the "mother country". Yet all is not roses. Since 1776, in a world of empires, the British Empire has grown and prospered until now, it stands alone as the ultimate arbiter of global war and peace. The Royal Navy has enforced the global Pax Britannia for more than a century since the World War of the 1860s established a lasting but increasingly tenuous "peace" between the great powers. Nonetheless, while elsewhere the empire may be creaking at the seams, struggling to come to terms with a growing desire for self-determination, thus far, the Pax Britannica has survived - buttressed by the commercial and industrial powerhouse of New England stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Northwest - intact for all that barely a year goes by without the outbreak of another small, colonial war somewhere.... This said, the British "Imperial System" remains the envy of its friends and enemies alike, and nowhere has it been so successful as in North America, where peace and prosperity has ruled in the vast Canadian dominions and the 29 old and recent colonies of the Commonwealth of New England for the best part of two centuries. Empire Day might not have originally been conceived as a celebration of the saving of the first British Empire, but as time has gone by, it has come to symbolize the one ineluctable truth about the empire: that New England is the rock upon which all else stands, an empire within an empire that is greater than the sum of all the other parts of the great imperium ruled from London. In past times, a troubling question has been whispered in the corridors of power in London: What would happen to the empire - and the Pax Britannica - if the British hold on New England was ever to be loosened? Generations of British politicians have always known that if the question was ever to be asked again in earnest, it has but one answer. If the New World ever discovers again a single voice supporting any kind of meaningful estrangement from the Old Country, it would surely be the end of the empire....
©2018 James Philip Coldham (P)2019 James Philip Coldham