Steven Pacey has narrated 63 audiobooks on Listento.it by 43 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 5,000 ratings. The most-rated is The Blade Itself.
Pompeii
Summary
A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? All along the coast, the Roman Empire's richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas. The world's largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum and Pompeii. Only one man is worried. The engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct which brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay. Springs are failing for the first time in generations. His predecessor has disappeared. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta's sixty-mile main line - somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Attilius - decent, practical, incorruptible - promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. But as he heads out towards Vesuvius he is about to discover there are forces which even the world's only superpower can't control. Pompeii recreates in spellbinding detail one of the most famous natural disasters of all time. And by focusing on the characters of an engineer and a scientist, it offers an entirely original perspective on the Roman world.
©2003 Robert Harris (P)2014 AudioGo Ltd. Published by Random House Audiobooks
Bad Samaritans
Summary
With irreverent wit, an engagingly personal style, and a battery of real-life examples, Ha-Joon Chang blasts holes in the "World Is Flat" orthodoxy of Thomas Friedman and other neo-liberal economists who argue that only unfettered capitalism and wide-open international trade can lift struggling nations out of poverty. On the contrary, Chang shows, today's economic superpowers - from the United States to Britain to his native South Korea - all attained prosperity by shameless protectionism and government intervention in industry. We in the wealthy nations have conveniently forgotten this fact, telling ourselves a fairy tale about the magic of free trade and - via our proxies such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization - ramming policies that suit ourselves down the throat of the developing world. Unlike typical economists who construct models of how economies are supposed to behave, Chang examines the past: what has actually happened. His pungently contrarian history demolishes one pillar after another of free-market mythology. We treat patents and copyrights as sacrosanct - but developed our own industries by studiously copying others' technologies. We insist that centrally planned economies stifle growth - but many developing countries had higher GDP growth before they were pressured into deregulating their economies. Both justice and common sense, Chang argues, demand that we reevaluate the policies we force on weaker nations. Bad Samaritans calls on America to return to its abandoned role, embodied in programs like the Marshall Plan, to offer a helping hand, instead of a closed fist, to countries struggling to follow in our footsteps.
©2007 Ha-Joon Chang (P)2007 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Family Driven Faith
Summary
More teens are turning away from the faith than ever before: It is estimated that 75 to 88 percent of Christian teens walk away from Christianity by the end of their freshman year of college. Something must be done. Family Driven Faith equips Christian parents with the tools they need to raise children biblically in a post-Christian, antifamily society. Voddie Baucham, who with his wife has overcome a multigenerational legacy of broken and dysfunctional homes, shows that God has not left us alone in raising godly children. This bold book is an urgent call to parents - and the church - to return to biblical discipleship in and through the home.
©2018 eChristian (P)2018 eChristian
The Road Home
Summary
Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to Britain, seeking work. But Lev has an outsider's vision of the place we call home. Lev begins with no job, little money, and few words of English. He has only his memories, his hopes, and a certain skill preparing food.Behind him loom the figures of his dead wife, his beloved daughter, and his outrageous friend. In front of Lev lies the strangeness of the British: their hostile streets, their clannish pubs, their obsession with celebrity, their lonely flats.London holds the alluring possibilities of friendship, sex, money, and a new career. But, more than this, the sense of belonging.
©2007 Rose Tremain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure
Summary
You've never seen the Wimpy Kid World like this before - an entirely new, awesome, friendly, truly fantastic fantasy quest from number one international best-selling author Jeff Kinney! From the imagination of Rowley Jefferson comes an adventure of epic proportions. Join Roland and his best friend, Garg the Barbarian, as they leave the safety of their village and embark on a quest to save Roland's mom from the White Warlock. Will our heroes survive? Find out in Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure! And don't miss Rowley Jefferson's first book, the instant number one best seller, Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid: Rowley Jefferson's Journal!
©2020 Wimpy Kid, Inc. (P)2020 Recorded Books
The Risk of Darkness
Summary
Following on from the child abduction in her previous novel The Pure in Heart, Susan Hill explores the crazy grief of a widowed husband, a derangement that turns to obsession and threats, violence and terror.
©2006 Susan Hill (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Benefit of Hindsight
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin. In this, the 10th Simon Serrailler crime novel, Simon must engage with his own demons as Lafferton struggles to cope with a series of crimes that threaten the sanctity of hearth and home. On the face of it DCS Simon Serrailler has had time to recuperate after the violent incident that cost him his arm and nearly his life. He is back in harness at Lafferton CID but is spending his spare time high up in the cathedral roof, making drawings of some medieval angels which are being restored. Lafferton is apparently going through a quiet patch, so far as crime is concerned, until one night two local men open their front door to a distressing scene. Simon makes a serious error of judgment when handling the incident. The stress of this, combined with the fact that he refused all offers of counselling after the loss of his arm, takes its toll. In her new role as a private GP, Simon’s sister Cat’s medical and counselling skills are tested by terrible and unexpected events at the homes of two very different Lafferton women. Their unreliable father, Richard, has returned to live nearby, in a luxury apartment for the well-heeled over 60s. It’s not long before he’s up to his old tricks.
©2019 Susan Hill (P)2019 Penguin Audio
The Pure in Heart
Summary
Detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler, first introduced in The Various Haunts of Men, is on a painting holiday in Venice when he is summoned home by a telephone call. He has family problems to face, and the stress and grind of running a busy police station. When a little boy is snatched as he stands with his satchel at the gate of his home, waiting for his lift to school, an ordinary community realises that terror and evil are in their very midst.
©2006 Susan Hill (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Soul of Discretion
Summary
The cathedral town of Lafferton seems idyllic, but in many ways it is just like any other place. As part of the same rapidly changing world, it shares the same hopes and fears, and the same kinds of crime, as any number of towns up and down the land. When one day DC Simon Serrailler is called in by Lafferton's new Chief Constable, Kieron Bright, he is met by four plainclothes officers. He is asked to take the lead role in a complex, potentially dangerous undercover operation and must leave town immediately, without telling anyone - not even his girlfriend Rachel, who has only just moved in with him. Meanwhile, Simon's sister Cat is facing difficult choices at work that will test her dedication to the NHS. But an urgent call about her and Simon's father, Richard, soon presents her with a far greater challenge much closer to home.To complete his special op, Simon must inhabit the mind of the worst kind of criminal. As the op unfolds, Lafferton is dragged into the sort of case every town dreads. And Simon faces the fight of his life.
©2014 Susan Hill (P)2014 Audible Studios
London Fields
Summary
The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing who is intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts; or the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch. As Nicola leads her suitors towards the precipice, London--and, indeed, the whole world--seems to shamble after them in a corrosively funny novel of complexity and morality.
©1989 Martin Amis (P)2010 AudioGo
The Negotiator
Summary
The kidnapping of a young man on a country road in Oxfordshire is but the first brutal step in a ruthless plan to force the President of the United States out of office. If it succeeds, he will be psychologically and emotionally destroyed. Only one man can stop it - Quinn, the world's foremost Negotiator, who must bargain for the life of an innocent man, unaware that ransom was never the kidnapper's real objective... The Negotiator unfolds with the spellbinding excitement, unceasing surprise and riveting detail that are the hallmarks of Frederick Forsyth, the master storyteller.
©1990 Frederick Forsyth (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Memories of Midnight
Summary
Best selling author Sidney Sheldon picks up where his megahit, The Other Side of Midnight, left off, revisiting and continuing the story and characters from the earlier novel. The story moves from Greece to other exotic locales as Sheldon evokes a compelling portrayal of Catherine Douglas and her fight against a terrifying destiny.
©1990 Sheldon Literary Trust (P)1990 Dove Books on Tape, Inc.
The Vows of Silence
Summary
Gunmen are terrorising young women in the Cathedral town of Lafferton. What - if anything - links the apparently random murders? Is the marksman with a rifle the same person as the killer with a handgun? Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler falls back on well tried police methods such as questioning neighbours and house-to-house searches. Simon has been promoted and is now with the Serious Incident Flying Taskforce, but he is still at heart a loner and these chilly murders are on his home territory.
©2008 Long Barn Books Ltd (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Ash
Summary
David Ash, detective of the paranormal, is sent to the mysterious Comraich Castle, secluded deep in the Scottish countryside, to investigate a strange, high-profile case. A man has been found crucified in a locked room. The reports suggest that the cliff-top castle is being haunted.... Who or what is the reclusive hooded figure that Ash has seen from the window walking across the courtyard in the dead of night? What are the strange, animal-like sounds that come from the surrounding woods? And why are the castle's inhabitants so reluctant to talk about what they have seen? What Ash eventually discovers is truly shocking.... Featuring one of Herbert's best-loved characters, first encountered in The Ghosts of Sleath and Haunted, Ash is a ghost story like no other that will chill you to the marrow.
©2012 James Herbert (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Comforts of Home
Summary
Recovering on a remote Scottish island, his peace doesn’t last long. He is pulled in to a murder inquiry by the overstretched local police. A newcomer, popular with the islanders, has died in perplexing circumstances. The community's reactions are complicated and fragile. It’s good to be back on the job. And when Simon returns to Lafferton, an arsonist is on the rampage and a woman whose daughter disappeared some years before is haunting the police station seeking closure. She will not let it rest, and Simon is called in to do a cold-case review. At home, Simon is starting to get used to having a new brother-in-law - in the form of his Chief Constable Kieron Bright. His sister Cat has embarked on a new way of practising medicine, and his nephew Sam is trying to work out what to do with his life. And then their tricky father, Richard, turns up again like a bad penny. In this gripping new Serrailler thriller, Simon's personal and professional lives intertwine in more complex and demanding ways than ever before.
©2018 Susan Hill (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
A Question of Identity
Summary
Shortlisted for: Crime & Thriller of the Year – Specsavers National Book Awards 2012 Duchess of Cornwall Close: sheltered accommodation, a mix of bungalows and flats, newly built and not quite finished. Despite the bitterly cold weather, elderly residents are moving in. Then, one snowy night, an old lady is murdered - dragged from her bed and strangled with a length of flex. DCS Simon Serrailler and his team are aware of bizarre circumstances surrounding her death, but keep some details secret while they desperately search for a match. All they know is that the killer will strike again, and will once more leave the same tell-tale signature. Then Simon's former sergeant, the ever-cheerful Nathan Coates, tracks down a name: Alan Keyes. But Alan Keyes has no birth certificate, no address, no job, no family, no passport, and no dental records. Nothing. Alan Keyes does not exist. The seventh in the best-selling Simon Serrailler series, A Question of Identity is Susan Hill's most thrillingly imagined crime novel to date.
©2012 Susan Hill (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Betrayal of Trust
Summary
Simon Serrailler is faced with that most complicated of investigations - a cold case. Freak weather and flash floods have hit southern England. The small cathedral town of Lafferton is underwater, and a landslip on the moor has closed the roads. As the rain slowly drains away, a shallow grave - and a skeleton - is exposed; 20 years have passed, and the remains of missing teenager Joanne Lowther have finally been uncovered. Joanne, an only child, had been on her way home from a friend's house that night. She was the daughter of a prominent local businessman, and her mother had killed herself two years after she disappeared, unable to cope. Cold cases are always tough, and in this latest mystery in the acclaimed series from Susan Hill, Simon Serrailler is forced to confront his most grisly, dangerous, and complex case yet.
©2011 Susan Hill. All rights reserved. (P)2012 AudioGo
Handling the Undead
Summary
In his new novel, John Ajvide Lindqvist does for zombies what his previous novel, Let the Right One In, did for vampires. Across Stockholm, the power grid has gone crazy. In the morgue and in cemeteries, the recently deceased are waking up. One grandfather is alight with this, with hope that his grandson will be returned, but one husband is aghast at what his adored wife has become. Here is a horror novel that transcends its genre by showing what the return of the dead might really mean to those who loved them.
©2005 John Ajvide Lindqvist; Translation copyright 2009 by Ebba Segerberg (P)2010 Macmillan Audio
The Pregnant Widow
Summary
The year is 1970, and it's a long, hot summer. In a castle on a mountainside in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on a sea of change, trapped inside the history of the sexual revolution. The girls are acting like boys, the boys are going on acting like boys, and Keith Nearing - 20 years old, a literature student all clogged up with the English novel - is struggling to twist feminism and women's ascendency toward his own ends. The tragicomedy of manners that ensues will have an indelible effect on all its participants, and we witness, too, how it shapes Keith’s subsequent love life for decades to come. Bitingly funny, full of wit and pathos, The Pregnant Widow is a trenchant portrait of young lives being carried away on a sea of change.
©2010 Martin Amis. All rights reserved. (P)2010 BBC Audiobooks America
The Incorruptibles
Summary
In the contested and unexplored territories at the edge of the Empire, a boat is making its laborious way upstream. Riding along the banks are the mercenaries hired to protect it - from raiders, bandits and, most of all, the stretchers, elf-like natives who kill any intruders into their territory. The mercenaries know this is dangerous, deadly work. But it is what they do. In the boat the drunk governor of the territories and his sons and daughters make merry. They believe that their status makes them untouchable. They are wrong. And with them is a mysterious, beautiful young woman, who is the key to peace between warring nations and survival for the Empire. When a callow mercenary saves the life of the Governor on an ill-fated hunting party, the two groups are thrown together. For Fisk and Shoe - two tough, honourable mercenaries surrounded by corruption, who know they can always and only rely on each other - their young companion appears to be playing with fire. The nobles have the power, and crossing them is always risky. And although love is a wonderful thing, sometimes the best decision is to walk away. Because no matter how untouchable or deadly you may be, the stretchers have other plans.
©2014 John Hornor Jacobs (P)2014 Orion Publishing Group