Showing results by narrator "Homer Todiwala" in All Categories

On a volcanic island, in the middle of shark-infested waters, stands the Cruel School. The lessons are appalling, the school dinners are revolting and the teachers are terrifying—especially the mysterious science teacher Doctor Doktur. When Larker is sent to the school, she quickly realises something very odd is going on...something involving Doctor Doktur, a pair of strange spectacles and a ‘Monsterfication Machine’. And ultimately she finds herself face to face with a real life Megamonster.

Fascinating for supporters looking to understand their club’s and its rivals’ strategy and methods, and those curious about finance and power in football, Who Owns Football? reveals how the game's custodians operate. Football club owners can take teams to the heights of the Champions League or financial oblivion. Still, in a world of super leagues, rapidly escalating wages, transfer fees, Financial Fair Play and an increasingly profitable women’s game, they tread a precarious tightrope.

A man is burnt at the stake in a London park. His smouldering corpse is a message of the most violent kind. The victim is Davey Caine. He is the heir to the criminal empire created by his father, William ‘Billy’ Caine. Billy is a notorious and violent gangster who controls South East London. But he’s not the man he used to be and the sharks smell blood in the water. Detectives Ray Paterson and Johnny Clocks must find the killer before Billy extracts his own brand of justice. They are drawn ever deeper into London’s underworld.

2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to nearly 1 in 3 driving on the left side of the road, and even shaping the origins of international law. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things.

Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are famous for solving murder mysteries. But there are many other intrigues in the pages of Hazel's casebook, from the macabre Case of the Deepdean Vampire, to the baffling Case of the Blue Violet, and their very first whodunit: the Case of Lavinia's Missing Tie.

This Audible production expertly brings to life Salman Rushdie’s postcolonial masterpiece Midnight’s Children, available for the first time unabridged in audio. Written in the magical-realist style that Rushdie is renowned for, Midnight’s Children follows Saleem Sinai - a child gifted with extraordinary powers after being born at the exact moment India becomes independent. The captivating events that unfold act as an allegory for India’s transition from colonialism to independence as Saleem finds himself 'handcuffed to history', with his fate entwined with that of his newly independent state.

In his brilliantly illuminating new book Sathnam Sanghera demonstrates how so much of what we consider to be modern Britain is actually rooted in our imperial past. In prose that is, at once, both clear-eyed and full of acerbic wit, Sanghera shows how our past is everywhere: from how we live to how we think, from the foundation of the NHS to the nature of our racism, from our distrust of intellectuals in public life to the exceptionalism that imbued the campaign for Brexit and the government's early response to the COVID crisis. And yet empire is a subject weirdly hidden from view.

On Saturday, 26 November 1983, an armed gang stole gold bullion worth almost £26 million from the Brink's-Mat security depot near London's Heathrow Airport. It was the largest robbery in world history, and only the start of an extraordinary story. For forty years, myths and legends have grown around the Brink's-Mat heist and the events that followed.

Omar Khayyam Shakil had three mothers who shared everything. They shared the symptoms of pregnancy, they shared the son that they all claim to have borne on the same night. Raised at their six breasts, Omar's mothers teach him to live a life without shame. And it is training that proves very useful when he leaves his mothers' fortress and makes the fateful mistake of falling in love. For he finds himself an unwitting player in an ongoing duel between the families of two men.

Kidnapped and forced to shovel coal underneath a half-bombed, blackened power station, 12-year-old Luke's life is miserable. Then, he discovers he can see things others can't. Ghostly things. Specifically, a ghost-girl named Alma. Alma, who can ride clouds through the night sky and bend their shape to her will, befriends Luke. And with Alma's help, Luke discovers he is in fact a rare being—half-human and half-something else ... Then Luke learns the terrible truth of why children are being kidnapped and forced to work in the power station.

The peaceful Eldarin were the last of three ancient races. The mystical Oltor, healers and poets, had fallen before the dread power of the cruel and sadistic Daroth. Yet in one awesome night, the invincible Daroth had vanished from the face of the earth. Gone were their cities, their armies, their terror. The Great Northern Desert was their only legacy. Not a trace remained for a thousand years....

In this comprehensive anthology, former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion has gathered together exceptional poems from the 14th century through to the present day, creating an extraordinary poetic journey for the listener. From the love poems of Shelley and Keats to the grim war elegies of Owen and Sassoon, there is a poem here for every sentiment, each with something different to offer.

In a world where magic has gone mainstream, a policewoman and a group of petty criminals are pulled into a heist to find a forbidden book of spells that should never be opened. A new adventure begins in the world of the Laundry Files. Dead Lies Dreaming presents a nightmarish vision of a Britain sliding unknowingly towards occult cataclysm.

A dead body in the prayer hall of a mosque isn't the best start to the day for anyone. But for Detective Inspector Harold Porter it's all in a day's work. The problem is that DI Porter has been given a new partner - a young Muslim detective by the name of Mohammed Salim Nasri. Nasri and Porter are both British and both cops, but they look at the world - and the case - from completely different viewpoints. And when that case includes Islamic terrorists and knife-wielding fanatics that can only mean problems.

A victim. A mutilated body. A single word. A young woman is found dead on the streets of London. Her throat slashed, her body mutilated, and one word carved into her flesh: “DON’T.” Detective Superintendent Ray Paterson is assigned to the case. Young, handsome and from a wealthy background, he’s tipped for the top. He joins a team based out of Bermondsey, South London. It’s meant to be a stepping stone to his next promotion, but this case will threaten to bring down his career and everything he thought he knew about policing.

Charles Sobhraj remains one of the world's great con men and as a serial killer, the story of his life and capture endures as legend. First published in 1979, but updated here to include new material, On the Trail of the Serpent draws its listeners into the story of Sobhraj's life as told exclusively to journalists Richard Neville and Julie Clarke. Blurring the boundaries between true crime and novelisation, this remains the definitive book about Sobhraj - a riveting tale of sex, drugs, adventure and murder.

The ‘culture wars' have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. This book takes the long view, explaining the real origins of ‘race' in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings in the Enlightenment all the way to our own fractious world. In doing so, leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underpinning today's heated debates around race, culture, whiteness and privilege.

You've probably heard the word 'empire' before. Perhaps because of the Roman empire. Or maybe even the Star Wars films. But what about the British Empire? Why don't we learn much about this? And what even is an empire, anyway? This book will answer all the important questions about Britain's imperial history. It will explore how Britain's empire once made it the most powerful nation on earth, and how it still affects our lives in many ways today - from the words we use, to the food we eat, the sports we play and even to every grown-up's fixation with a good cup of tea.

Bled dry by violent confrontations with the Magadhan Empire, the Mathuran Republic simmers on the brink of oblivion. Senator Krishna and his third wife Satyabhama have put their plans in motion, both within and beyond the Republic’s blood-soaked borders, to protect it from total annihilation. But they are soon to discover that neither gold nor alliances last forever – and that they are not the only players on the board.

As riots erupt on the streets of Lahore, Inspector Faraz returns to his birthplace, the red-light district in the ancient walled city where women still pass on the profession of courtesan to their daughters. Plucked from it as a small boy by his influential father, Faraz has kept his roots well hidden. Now his father has sent him back: to cover up the murder of a young prostitute. It should be a simple task in the marginalised community, but Faraz finds himself unable to obey orders or to resist searching for the mother and sister he left behind.