Leighton Pugh has narrated 63 audiobooks on Listento.it by 50 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 321 ratings. The most-rated is Napoleon.
Winterkill
Summary
When the body of a 19-year-old girl is found on the main street of Siglufjörður, Police Inspector Ari Thór battles a violent Icelandic storm in an increasingly dangerous hunt for her killer.... The chilling, claustrophobic finale to the international best-selling Dark Iceland series. Easter weekend is approaching, and snow is gently falling in Siglufjörður, the northernmost town in Iceland, as crowds of tourists arrive to visit the majestic ski slopes. Ari Thór Arason is now a police inspector, but he’s separated from his girlfriend, who lives in Sweden with their three-year-old son. A family reunion is planned for the holiday, but a violent blizzard is threatening and there is an unsettling chill in the air. Three days before Easter, a 19-year-old local girl falls to her death from the balcony of a house on the main street. A perplexing entry in her diary suggests that this may not be an accident, and when an old man in a local nursing home writes ‘She was murdered’ again and again on the wall of his room, there is every suggestion that something more sinister lies at the heart of her death.... As the extreme weather closes in, cutting the power and access to Siglufjörður, Ari Thór must piece together the puzzle to reveal a horrible truth...one that will leave no one unscathed. Chilling, claustrophobic and disturbing, Winterkill marks the startling conclusion to the million-copy best-selling Dark Iceland series and cements Ragnar Jónasson as one of the most exciting authors in crime fiction.
©2020 Ragnar Jonasson (P)2020 Audible, Ltd
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Summary
John Locke and his works - particularly An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - are regularly and rightly presented as foundations for the Age of Enlightenment. His primary epistemological message - that the mind at birth is a blank sheet waiting to be filled by the experiences of the senses - complemented his primary political message: that human beings are free and equal and have the right to envision, create and direct the governments that rule them and the societies within which they live. In these respects, one might think of Locke (1632-1704) as preparing the way for the 18th century, though An Essay Concerning Human Understanding dates from 1690. In the essay he remarks that he was ‘employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge’. Everywhere, Locke’s 18th-century readers included learned philosophers, educators, historians and political thinkers but also local community and political leaders, students and many others eager to take advantage of the expanding world of print culture that was a central part of the Enlightenment. Today, Locke remains an accessible author whose essay can still be listened to with pleasure by an engaged public around the world. Some will listen to his work to know more about the beginnings of the modern era; others will seek arguments to be used in present-day debates. This recording presents An Essay unabridged. It is prefaced by an informative introduction (written for the Wordsworth Edition) by Mark G. Spencer, who explains: ‘The starting point for much of Locke’s philosophy was his keenness to explore how it was that humans arrived at their knowledge of the world. What do humans know? How do they know what they know?’ Or, as Locke himself puts it in his opening section, ‘Epistle to the Reader’, his purpose was to 'examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with.’ And it remains an approachable text, for, as Spencer points out, Locke’s ‘intended reading audience was not one of scholars and philosophers shut up in their closets’ but the ordinary man.’ The essay is divided into four books: Part 1: Of Innate Notions, Of Ideas, Of Words; and Part 2: Of Knowledge and Probability. Leighton Pugh reads with clarity and vigour. Introduction © Mark G Spencer.
Public Domain (P)2018 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Fire Court
Summary
From number one best-selling author Andrew Taylor comes the sequel to the phenomenally successful The Ashes of London. Somewhere in the soot-stained ruins of Restoration London, a killer has gone to ground.... The Great Fire has ravaged London, wreaking destruction and devastation wherever its flames spread. Now, guided by the incorruptible Fire Court, the city is slowly rebuilding, but times are volatile, and danger is only ever a heartbeat away. James Marwood, son of a traitor, is thrust into this treacherous environment when his ailing father claims to have stumbled upon a murdered woman in the very place where the Fire Court sits. Then his father is run down and killed. Accident? Or another murder? Determined to uncover the truth, Marwood turns to the one person he can trust - Cat Lovett, the daughter of a despised regicide. Marwood has helped her in the past. Now it’s her turn to help him. But then comes a third death...and Marwood and Cat are forced to confront a vicious and increasingly desperate killer whose actions threaten the future of the city itself.
©2018 Andrew Taylor (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
A Damned Serious Business
Summary
Edwin Coker, nicknamed 'Boot', is a case officer at MI6. When a hacker falls into his hands and reveals details of a secret meeting, Boot conceives a plan to strike back - with a bomb that will seriously damage the Russian operation. Boot turns to Merc, an ex-soldier fighting in Iraq and a gun-for-hire, to deliver the explosives into Russia and bring the hacker back. But things do not go to plan, and his mission becomes near impossible. The scene is set for a classic story of pursuit, evasion and a battle for survival.
©2018 Gerald Seymour (P)2018 W. F. Howes Ltd
The Templar Archive
Summary
A breakneck conspiracy thriller perfect for fans of Mario Reading, Iain King and Scott Mariani. While deciphering what few clues they have managed to recover about the Templar’s secrets, Jessop and Mallory make a discovery about their legendary treasure. Rather than gold or jewels, the long-sought prize may be something far more valuable: information. For the Templars were the original inventors of international banking. Lands, titles and the fates of entire noble houses were placed in their keeping. The records of such transactions, though centuries old, may possibly yield the greatest wealth in the world. But hunting for such an archive places Jessop and Mallory in the crosshairs of Europe's most powerful families....
©2016 James Becker (P)2020 W F Howes
Nightblind
Summary
Ari Thor returns to investigate a chilling series of crimes that are rooted in tragic events from the past. Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village on the northernmost tip of Iceland, accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a local policeman whose tumultuous past and uneasy relationships with the villagers continue to haunt him. The peace of this close-knit community is shattered by the murder of a policeman - shot at point-blank range in the dead of night in a deserted house. With a killer on the loose and the dark arctic winter closing in, it falls to Ari Thór to piece together a puzzle that involves tangled local politics, a compromised new mayor, and a psychiatric ward in Reykjavik, where someone is being held against their will. Then a mysterious young woman moves to the area, on the run from something she dare not reveal, and it becomes all too clear that tragic events from the past are weaving a sinister spell that may threaten them all. Dark, chilling and complex, Nightblind is an extraordinary thriller from an undeniable new talent.
©2016 Ragnar Jonasson (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
SAS Great Escapes
Summary
No food. No water. Out of ammo. Safety is south. But between there and here is 150 miles of barren desert – freezing at night, boiling in the day – populated solely by Ernst Rommel’s fearsome and deadly Afrika Corps. What would you do? Give up? Or get on with it? For the seven SAS supermen in Damien Lewis’s explosive new audio exclusive, the answer was simple: Escape. Evade. Survive. From the mountains of Italy, to the deserts of Africa, these heroes epitomise the bravery, esprit de corps and daring do of Britain’s finest elite fighting force. Fans of Ant Middleton’s First Man In and Ben MacIntyre’s SAS: Rogue Heroes are in for a treat, as the SAS’s master chronicler, Damien Lewis, has produced a gripping, heart-in-the-mouth, real-life thriller. A Sunday Times number one best-selling author, this fresh look at the most audacious escapes the SAS made in the Second World War is white-knuckle listening of the highest calibre. Because if you put a fence in front of these men...they’ll climb it.
©2020 Damien Lewis (P)2020 Audible, Ltd
The Lost Treasure of the Templars
Summary
An absolutely gripping Templar conspiracy thriller, perfect for fans of Mario Reading, Dan Brown and Scott Mariani. An ancient sect. A modern mystery. The most dangerous secret ever unearthed. Antiquarian bookseller Robin Jessop has acquired a strange medieval volume. What appears to be a book is a cleverly disguised safe, in which she finds a single rolled parchment, written in code. For encryption expert David Mallory, the text is impenetrable. Until an invaluable clue opens the door to a conspiracy, stretching back seven centuries. Now Jessop and Mallory find themselves on a desperate hunt that could change history, topple an empire and bury them both alive. Because soon they’re not only the hunters. They’re also the hunted.
©2016 James Becker (P)2016 W. F. Howes
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible
Summary
A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of Hells Angels convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, bohemian theatre directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators and oligarch revolutionaries.This is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where life is seen as a whirling, glamorous masquerade where identities can be switched and all values are changeable. It is home to a new form of authoritarianism, far subtler than 20th century strains, and which is rapidly expanding to challenge the global order. An extraordinary audiobook - one which is as powerful and entertaining as it is troubling - Nothing is True and Everything is Possible offers a wild ride into this political and ethical vacuum. Winner of the £10,000 Ondaatje Prize, described by judge Kate Adie as an ‘exuberant exposure’, with the ‘grotesque pursuit of money conveyed in glittering, trenchant prose’.
©2015 Peter Pomerantsev (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
The Second Midnight
Summary
From the number one best-selling author comes a tale of one boy’s fight for survival in Nazi Europe. A secret mission.... 1939. As Europe teeters on the brink of war, Alfred Kendall is tasked with carrying out a minor mission for the British Intelligence Service. Travelling to Prague, he takes his troubled young son, Hugh, as cover. A terrible choice.... When Hitler invades Czechoslovakia, Alfred is given an ultimatum by the Czech Resistance. They will arrange for him to return to England, but only if he leaves his son Hugh behind as collateral. A young boy stranded in Nazi terrain.... Hugh is soon taken under the wing of a Nazi colonel - Helmuth Scholl. But even though Scholl treats Hugh well, his son, Heinz, is suspicious of this foreigner. And as the war across the continent intensifies, they are set on a path that will ultimately lead towards destruction....
©2019 Andrew Taylor (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Battle Sight Zero
Summary
The Kalashnikov AK-47. A weapon with a unique image. A symbol of freedom fighters and terrorists across the globe. Undercover officer Andy Knight has infiltrated an extremist group intent on bringing the rifle to Britain - something MI5 have been struggling for years to prevent. He befriends Zeinab, the young Muslim student from Yorkshire who is at the centre of the plot. All Zeinab needs to do is travel to the impoverished high-rise estates of Marseilles and bring one rifle home on a test run. Then many more will follow - and with them would come killing on an horrendous scale. Zeinab is both passionate and attractive, and though Andy knows that the golden rule of undercover work is not to get emotionally attached to the target, sometimes rules are impossible to follow.
©2019 Gerald Seymour (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd
Jericho's War
Summary
In a moment of suspense that will affect many thousands of lives, a handful of people will converge on a barren stretch of Yemeni desert. Corrie Rankin is already a legend at MI6 when he is sent to take down a high-value player in the war against Al Qaeda. This is Jericho's War. The weapons it deploys and the brutal aims it pursues are state of the art. The fear it breeds and the raw bravery it demands are as timeless as the desert itself.
©2017 Gerald Seymour (P)2017 W F Howes Ltd
The Crow Garden
Summary
Susan Hill meets Alfred Hitchcock in Alison Littlewood's latest chiller. Asylum doctor Nathaniel Kerner is obsessed with the beautiful Mrs Harleston - but is she truly delusional? Or is she hiding secrets that should never be uncovered? Haunted by his father's suicide, Nathaniel walks away from the highly prestigious life of a consultant to become an asylum doctor. He takes up a position at Crakethorne Asylum, but the proprietor is more interested in phrenology and his growing collection of skulls than the patients' minds. Nathaniel's only interesting case is Mrs Victoria Adelina 'Vita' Harleston: her husband accuses her of hysteria and delusions - but she accuses him of hiding secrets far more terrible. Nathaniel is increasingly obsessed with Vita, but when he has her mesmerised, there are unexpected results. Vita starts hearing voices, the way she used to - her grandmother always claimed they came from beyond the grave - but it also unleashes her own powers of mesmerism...and a desperate need to escape. Increasingly besotted, Nathaniel finds himself caught up in a world of séances and stage mesmerism in his bid to find Vita and save her. But constantly hanging over him is this warning: that doctors are apt to catch the diseases with which they are surrounded - whether of the body or the mind....
©2017 Alison Littlewood (P)2017 WF Howes Ltd
Beyond Recall
Summary
He had been to the limit. Then they sent him further. Gary - 'Gaz' - Baldwin is a watcher, not a killer. Operating with a special forces unit deep in Syria, he is to sit in a hide, observe a village, report back and leave. But the appalling atrocity he witnesses will change his life forever. Before long, he is living as a handyman on the Orkney islands, far from Syria, far from the army, not far enough from the memories that have all but destroyed him. 'Knacker' is one of the last old-school operators at the modern MI6 fortress on the Thames. He presides over the Round Table, a little group that meets in a pub and yearns for simpler, less bureaucratic times. When news reaches Knacker that the Russian officer responsible for the Syrian incident may be in Murmansk, Northern Russia, he sets in motion a plan to kill him. It will involve a sleeper cell, a marksman and other resources - all unlikely to be sanctioned by the MI6 top brass, so it must be done off the books. But first, he will need a sure identification. And for that, he needs a watcher. Full of surprise, suspense and betrayal, Beyond Recall is a searching novel of moral complexity and a story of desperate survival.
©2017 Gerald Seymour (P)2017 W F Howes
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
Summary
There is a cause, or a reason, behind everything that happens. This is the fundamental view behind the classical proposition the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which, in 1813, Schopenhauer chose as his subject for further examination in his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. He was 25. In later years Schopenhauer revised this dissertation and republished it in 1847. The original ideas expressed here formed the basis of much of his later works, and therefore it remains an important core text for Schopenhauer studies. He discusses commentaries on the principle by earlier philosophers including Descartes, Spinoza, Wolff and Kant before going on to propose his four ‘classes of objects’ which he feels offer greater clarity and depth of meaning. The four classes of objects are each governed by their own form of the Principle: the Principle of Sufficient Reason of Becoming, the Principle of Sufficient Reason of Knowing, the Principle of Sufficient Reason of Being and the Principle of Sufficient Reason of Willing. This recording of On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason uses the clear, classic translation by Madame Karl Hillebrand (1903). Leighton Pugh presents it with the same clarity and commitment he has brought to his recording of all three volumes of The World as Will and Idea (Ukemi Audiobooks). PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Public Domain (P)2018 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Mortmain Hall
Summary
'You died once...Tell me who arranged your resurrection, or before the day's out, you'll be dead and gone forever.' 1930. A chilling encounter on London's Necropolis Railway leads to murder. At the Old Bailey, a man accused of a 'blazing car' killing escapes the gallows after a surprise witness gives sensational evidence. And journalist Jacob Flint finds himself framed for murder. To save himself, Jacob needs to discover what links these strange events to a remote estate on a northern coast, Mortmain Hall. At Mortmain Hall, an eccentric female criminologist hosts a gathering of people who have narrowly escaped the consequences of miscarriages of justice. But the house party culminates in tragedy when a body is found beneath the crumbling cliffs. Is the death an accident or the result of an ingenious plot to get away with murder? An eclectic mix of suspects and victims includes a radical publisher risen from the grave, a fake medium with a sinister past and a cricketer mauled to death by an escaped lion. Jacob sets out to uncover the labyrinthine secrets of Mortmain Hall, alongside a woman whose relentless quest for the truth might just bring down the British establishment.... Who can we turn to, if justice betrays us?
©2020 Martin Edwards (P)2020 W F Howes
The Golden Age of Murder
Summary
A real-life detective story, investigating how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction, writing books casting new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to their authors' darkest secrets. This is the first book about the Detection Club, the world's most famous and most mysterious social network of crime writers. Drawing on years of in-depth research, it reveals the astonishing story of how members such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers reinvented detective fiction. Detective stories from the so-called "Golden Age" between the wars are often dismissed as cosily conventional. Nothing could be further from the truth: some explore forensic pathology and shocking serial murders, others delve into police brutality and miscarriages of justice; occasionally the innocent are hanged, or murderers get away scot-free. Their authors faced up to the Slump and the rise of Hitler during years of economic misery and political upheaval, and wrote books agonising over guilt and innocence, good and evil, and explored whether killing a fellow human being was ever justified. Though the stories included no graphic sex scenes, sexual passions of all kinds seethed just beneath the surface. Attracting feminists, gay and lesbian writers, Socialists and Marxist sympathisers, the Detection Club authors were young, ambitious, and at the cutting edge of popular culture - some had sex lives as bizarre as their mystery plots. Fascinated by real life crimes, they cracked unsolved cases and threw down challenges to Scotland Yard, using their fiction to take revenge on people who hurt them, to conduct covert relationships, and even as an outlet for homicidal fantasy. Their books anticipated not only CSI, Jack Reacher, and Gone Girl, but also Lord of the Flies.
©2015 Martin Edwards (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Rupture
Summary
The fourth installment in the international best-selling Dark Iceland series Over a million copies sold worldwide With a stalker on the loose and the town of Siglufjörður in quarantine, a child goes missing, as Icelandic police officer Ari Thór Arason investigates a cold case of a mysterious death on an isolated fjord.... "Bitingly contemporary in setting and tone." (Express) "A modern take on an Agatha Christie-style mystery, as twisty as any slalom...." (Ian Rankin) 1955. Two young couples move to the uninhabited, isolated fjord of Hedinsfjörður. Their stay ends abruptly when one of the women meets her death in mysterious circumstances. The case is never solved. Fifty years later an old photograph comes to light, and it becomes clear that the couples may not have been alone on the fjord after all.... In nearby Siglufjörður, young policeman Ari Thór tries to piece together what really happened that fateful night, in a town where no one wants to know, where secrets are a way of life. He’s assisted by Ísrún, a news reporter in Reykjavik, who is investigating an increasingly chilling case of her own. Things take a sinister turn when a child goes missing in broad daylight. With a stalker on the loose, and the town of Siglufjörður in quarantine, the past might just come back to haunt them. Haunting, frightening and complex, Rupture is a dark and atmospheric thriller from one of Iceland’s foremost crime writers. "Traditional and beautifully finessed…morally more equivocal than most traditional whodunnits, and it offers alluring glimpses of darker, and infinitely more threatening horizons." (Independent) "A distinctive blend of Nordic Noir and Golden Age detective fiction…economical and evocative prose, as well as some masterful prestidigitation." (Laura Wilson, Guardian) "A classic crime story seen through a uniquely Icelandic lens…first rate and highly recommended." (Lee Child) Design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
©2017 Ragnar Jonasson; English language translation 2016 by Quentin Bates (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
The World as Will and Idea, Volume 2
Summary
The original edition of The World as Will and Idea appeared in 1818, but in 1844 Schopenhauer published an expanded version. It contained the 'Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy', a lengthy document; and Supplements to the First Book (The Doctrine of the Idea of Perception) and the Second Book (The Doctrine of Perception or Knowledge of the Understanding). The original edition of The World as Will and Idea had been largely ignored, and for 25 frustrating years, Schopenhauer had to live with a feeling of failure, while remaining as acute, as challenging and as creative as ever. His decision to expand and build on his original ideas with the addition of the Supplements, clarifying and furthering his views, made his body of work even stronger. It was with this second edition that his reputation spread, and at last his standing as a major German philosopher of the 19th century was established. In this new volume, following the Kantian critique, are many essays, including 'On the Senses', On the Relation of Knowledge of Perception to Abstract Knowledge, 'On Man's Need for Metaphysics' and 'On the Primacy of the Will in Self-Consciousness'. Leighton Pugh again reads with the clarity and understanding that was praised following the release of The World as Will and Idea, Volume 1. Translation: R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp. Footnotes included.
Public Domain (P)2017 Ukemi Productions
Total Blackout
Summary
The start of a gripping new crime thriller series introducing ex-SAS trooper Jack Tate! Perfect for fans of James Deegan, Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney. Don’t miss the explosive start to the Jack Tate series. When lights go out.... British M16 Agent and former SAS trooper Jack Tate is trying to escape his past when he witnesses a terrorist attack of unthinkable scale. An electro-magnetic pulse knocks out the US power grid, killing anything with a computer processor, throwing the whole country into darkness. You have to escape the past. Under the cover of the blackout, a clandestine operation aims to assassinate prominent public figures on US soil. Looting and violence spreads across the country. And Jack Tate’s past comes back to haunt him. As the only intelligence operative on the ground, he is hurled into a mission that will put him - and the people he loves - in immediate danger. You have to defeat the enemy. With the fate of the United States on the line, only he can prevent the horror of a new world war. This is an explosive action thriller you won’t be able to pause.
©2020 Alex Shaw (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited