Robert Goddard - Novels on 2discs

* Four Robert Goddard Novels * [Read by John Telfer]

Take No Farewell (1991)
Geoffrey Staddon had never forgotten the house called Clouds Frome, his first important commission and the best thing he had ever done as an architect. Twelve years before the day in September 1923 when a paragraph in the newspaper made his blood run cold, he had turned his back on it for the last time, turned his back on the woman he loved, and who loved him. But when he read that Consuela Caswell had been charged with murder by poisoning he knew, with a certainty that defied the great divide of all those years, that she could not be guilty. As the remorse and shame of his own betrayal of her came flooding back, he knew too that he could not let matters rest. And when she sent her own daughter to him, pleading for help, he knew that he must return at last to Clouds Frome and to the dark secret that it held...

Hand in Glove (1992)
Tristram Abberley was an acclaimed English poet of the 1930s whose legendary reputation was sealed when he died fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Nearly 50 years later, his sister Beatrix is brutally murdered in her seaside cottage. Her family are stunned by the crime - especially Beatrix's niece, Charlotte Ladram. But Charlotte has little time to mourn her aunt as 50 years of secrets begin to unravel. Beatrix is the victim of a dark conspiracy, one that her loved ones are powerless to defeat. A harrowing quest for answers begins, one that uncovers a shocking tale of wartime greed and treachery and a vendetta seemingly without end....

Borrowed Time (1995)
One fateful summer evening, businessman Robin Timariot meets a strikingly beautiful woman while out walking. They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable. A few days later, the newspapers are full of the rape and murder of Lady Louise Paxton - and to his horror, Timariot realises that this was the woman he met just hours before her death. A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a series of bizarre events begin to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems. Against his better judgment, he is soon sucked into the tortuous complexity of the dead woman's life. But the closer Timariot gets to the truth, the more hideous and uncertain it seems to be. And far too late, he realises that anybody who uncovers it is unlikely to live....

Beyond Recall (1997)
Alienated from his family for some years, Chris Napier returns home to the Cornish town of Truro for his niece's wedding at Tredower House, the family estate (now a hotel and conference center) bequeathed by his adventurous great uncle, Joshua Carnoweth. Guests are reminded of an unpleasant event when Chris's boyhood friend, Nicky Lanyon, shows up at the reception to announce that his father, who was hanged for the murder of Uncle Joshua, was innocent of the deed. Nicky culminates his plea by committing suicide. In Nicky's memory, Chris investigates the 34-year-old murder case, while one mysterious woman goes after his money and another wins his heart...

All from CDs and unabridged. Encoded at 32 kbps / 22 kHz Mono CBR Fraunhofer MP3

#1. Into The Blue [1990], 18 hours 15 mins, read by Paul Shelley.
Harry Barnett is a middle-aged failure, leading a shabby existence in the shadow of a past disgrace, reduced to caretaking a friend's villa on the island of Rhodes and working in a bar to earn his keep. Then a guest at the villa - a young woman he had instantly and innocently warmed to - disappears on a mountain peak. Under suspicion of her murder, Harry stumbles on a set of photographs taken by Heather Mallender in the weeks before her disappearance. Desperately, obsessed by the mystery that has changed his life, he begins to trace back the movements and encounters that led to the moment when she vanished into the blue. The trail leads him back to England, to a world he thought he had left for ever, and at every step of the way a new and baffling light is shed on all the assumptions that have made Harry what he is...

#2. Out Of The Sun [1996], 11 hours 55 mins, read by Paul Shelley.
When Harry Barnett is anonymously informed that his son is languishing in hospital in a diabetic coma, he is certain there must be some mistake, since he does not have a son. But he soon discovers that he does. David Venning is a brilliant mathematician, whose illness is taken to be either a tragic accident or a suicide attempt. But, oddly enough, his notebooks are missing from the hotel room in which he was found. And Harry discovers that two other scientists employed, like David, by Globescope Inc., an American forecasting institute, have died in mysterious circumstances. Perhaps David is actually the victim of attempted murder. And perhaps the deaths of other Globescope staff are not the coincidences they seem. Pursuing the truth in England, Denmark and the United States, Harry finds himself entangled in several different kinds of conspiracy, none of which he should - in theory - be able to defeat. But as before in his life, Harry finds that circumstance and theory are not necessarily the same thing...

#3. Never Go Back [2006], 11 hours 40 mins, read by Joe Dunlop.
Harry Barnett is leading a contented life in Vancouver with his wife and daughter when he is brought back to England by the death of his mother. He intends to spend just a few days sorting out her affairs when a chance meeting he will regret for the rest of his life makes him change his plans. Two old acquaintances from his National Service days track Harry down to his mother's house - the last address they had for him. A lavish reunion has been organised to mark the fiftieth anniversary of their RAF days. Harry decides to go. During the war Harry and his fellow RAF conscripts spent three months in a Scottish castle where they acted as guinea pigs in a psychological experiment. The reunion is to take place in the same castle. It will be a chance to see friends, settle old scores and lay a few ghosts to rest. The party begins on the train up to Aberdeen, until the apparent suicide of one of their number shatters the holiday atmosphere. Their arrival in Scotland seems under a cloud. And when another comrade dies soon after their arrival, Harry is gripped by a sense of foreboding. The recollections of the old comrades of their time in the castle are frighteningly different and unexplained events from 1955 still haunt them. As Harry tries to solve the mystery of what really happened fifty years ago, he uncovers an extraordinary secret that convinces him he will never leave the castle alive!

#1. *The Ways of the World* [2013], 12 hours 48 mins
1919. The eyes of the world are on Paris, where statesmen, diplomats and politicians have gathered to discuss the fate of half the world's nations in the aftermath of the cataclysm that was the Great War. A horde of journalists, spies and opportunists have also gathered in the city and the last thing the British diplomatic community needs at such a time is the mysterious death of a senior member of their delegation. So, when Sir Henry Maxted falls from the roof of his mistress's apartment building in unexplained circumstances, their first instinct is to suppress all suspicious aspects of the event. But Sir Henry's son, ex Royal Flying Corps ace James 'Max' Maxted, has other ideas. He resolves to find out how and why his father died - even if this means disturbing the impression of harmonious calm which the negotiating teams have worked so hard to maintain. In a city where countries are jostling for position at the crossroads of history and the stakes could hardly be higher, it is difficult to tell who is a friend and who a foe.And Max will soon discover just how much he needs friends, as his search for the truth sucks him into the dark heart of a seemingly impenetrable mystery...

#2. *The Corners of the Globe * [2014], 12 hours 39 mins
James 'Max' Maxted, former Great War flying ace, returns to the trail of murder, treachery and half-buried secrets he set out on in 'The Ways of the World'. He left Paris after avenging the murder of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, a senior member of the British delegation to the post-war peace conference. But he was convinced there was more -- much more -- to be discovered about what Sir Henry had been trying to accomplish. And he suspected elusive German spymaster Fritz Lemmer knew the truth of it. Now, enlisted under false colours in Lemmer's service but with his loyalty pledged to the British Secret Service, Max sets out on his first -- and possibly last -- mission for Lemmer. It takes him to the far north of Scotland -- to the Orkney Isles, where the German High Seas Fleet has been impounded in Scapa Flow, its fate to be decided at the conference-table in Paris. Max has been sent to recover a document held aboard one of the German ships. What that document contains forces him to break cover sooner than he would have wished and to embark on a desperate race south, towards London, with information that could destroy Lemmer -- if Max, as seems unlikely, lives to deliver it.

#3. *The Ends of the Earth* [2015], 12 hours 49 mins
In the third installment of the James Maxted thriller series starring a dashing Royal Flying Corps veteran turned secret service operative the truth about allegiances has never been less certain. The Treaty of Versailles has finally been signed officially ending the World War I peace negotiations and the action shifts east to Tokyo where a team assembled at Max's behest anxiously awaits his arrival on the docks Max had arrived in Paris soon after the end of the Great War to investigate the suspicious death of his father a British diplomat named Sir Henry and soon plunged into a treacherous game of cat-and-mouse with the people behind his fathers death German spymaster Fritz Lemmer and the dark horse of the Japanese diplomatic contingent Count Tomura. It is in Japan where Sir Henry worked as a young government agent that Max hopes to finally uncover the whole truth behind his fathers murder and take down Lemmer's spy network once and for all. But what Max's cohort doesn't know is that his own story-line seems to have come to an end in a villa outside Marseilles. Stuck in limbo the team decides to pursue their only lead right into Lemmer's den Loaded with death threats knife fights a kidnapping or two and a coded list that has the power to dismantle whole governmental hierarchies. 'The Ends of the Earth' is a masterful work of historical cut-and-thrust that tests the bonds of family and country to their very limit...
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Three Robert Goddard Novels - Read by Gordon Griffin
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* Days Without Number (2003)
Nick Paleologus is summoned to the unyielding bosom of his family to help resolve a dispute which threatens to set his brothers and sisters against their aged and irascible father. Michael Paleologus, retired archeologist and supposed descendent of the last Emperors of Byzantium, lives alone at Trennor, a remote and rambling house on the Cornish bank of the Tamar. A ridiculously generous offer has been made for the house, but he refuses to sell despite the urgings of his children, for whom the proceeds would solve a variety of problems. Nick accomplished little in the role of mediator, but the stalemate is soon tragically broken. Only then do Nick and his siblings discover why their father was bound at all costs to reject the offer and what may really be the motives of the prospective buyer. Their increasingly desperate efforts to conceal the truth drag them into a deadly conflict with an unseen and unknown enemy, who seems as determined to force them into a confrontation with their family's past as he is to conceal his own identity. Late in the day, perhaps too late, Nick realizes that the only way to escape from the trap their persecutor has set for them is to hunt him down, wherever - and whoever - he may be. But the hunt involves excavating a terrible secret from their father's archeological career.

* Play to the End (2004)
Actor Toby Flood arrives in Brighton for the final week of the production of a Joe Orton play. That night he is visited by his estranged wife, Jenny, who is worried that she is being stalked by a strange man. She asks Toby, for old times’ sake, to follow the man and get to the bottom of things. What he discovers is a legacy of industrial negligence and a sinister connection with Jenny’s new partner, Roger Colborn. Spurred on by a desire to win Jenny back, Toby begins to ask probing questions. Before he fully understands the risks he is running, he finds himself caught up in a mysterious – and dangerous – tangle of family rivalries and murderous intent. The prospects for his survival until the close of the show suddenly start to look very far from good…

* Sight Unseen (2005)
One summer's day in 1981 a two-year-old girl, Tamsin Hall, was abducted during a picnic at the famous prehistoric site of Avebury in Wiltshire. Her seven-year-old sister Miranda was knocked down and killed by the abductor's van. The girls were in the care of their nanny, Sally Wilkinson. One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffin who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of 'Junius', the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up, and Umber never heard from him again. Tamsin Hall was never seen again either. The Hall family fell apart under the strain. Sally Wilkinson wound up living with Umber, whom she had met at the inquest. But she never recovered from the incident, suffered increasingly from depression, and eventually committed suicide. In the spring of 2004 retired Chief Inspector George Sharp receives a letter signed 'Junius' reproaching him for botching the 1981 investigation. Sharp confronts Umber, whose explanation for being at the scene of the tragedy has always seemed dubious. Obliged to accept Umber's denial of authorship of the letter, he nonetheless forces him to join in a search for the real culprit - and hence the long concealed truth about what happened 23 years previously. It is a quest that both will later regret having embarked upon. Too late they come to understand that some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Seven Robert Goddard Novels.

*Caught in the Light * (1998, Book 11). CD, 32kbps. [11 Hours 50 Mins] read by Michael Kitchen.
On assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett falls desperately in love with a woman he meets by chance, Marian Esguard. Back in England, he breaks up with his wife and goes to meet Marian at an agreed rendezvous. She fails to show. Ian sets out to solve a mystery that may be 170 years old...

*Set In Stone* (1999, Book 12). CD. 32kbps. [10 Hours 53 Mins] read by Michael Kitchen.
Foreshadowing lurks around every corner in this engaging first-person story. Tony Sheridan begins by describing the devastating day of his wife's death four months earlier and, conversationally, recounts to Marina, his late wife, the terrible events that followed. To assuage his grief, he accepts an invitation to visit Marina's sister and her husband at Otherways, a house that he soon learns has held calamity for its earlier inhabitants. This spirit soon infects the current residents, and the tragic dance of betrayal and death continues...

*Sea Change* (2000, Book 13). CD. 32kbps. [13 Hours 2 Mins] read by Paul Shelley.
It is January 1721. London is reeling from the effects of the greatest financial scandal of the age, the collapse of the South Sea Bubble. William Spandrel, a penniless mapmaker, is offered a discharge of his debts by his principal creditor, Sir Theodore Janssen, a director of the South Sea Company, on one condition: he must secretly convey an important package to a friend of Janssen's, Ysbrand de Vries, in Amsterdam. The package safely delivered, Spandrel barely survives an attempt on his life, only to be blamed for the murder of de Vries himself. When de Vries's secretary, his English wife and the package itself go missing shortly afterwards, Spandrel realizes that he has become a pawn in several people's games...

*Name to a Face* (2007, Book19). CD. 32Kbps. [10 Hours 48 Mins] read by Andrew Wincott.
A sequence of extraordinary events over the past 300 years provides the links in a chain of intrigue, deceit, greed and murder! The loss of HMS Association with all hands in 1707. An admiralty clerk's secret mission thirty years afterwards. A fatal accident during a dive to the wreck in 1996. An expatriate's reluctant return home ten years later. The simple task he has come to accomplish, shown to be anything but. A woman he recognizes but cannot identify. It's a conspiracy of circumstances that is about to unravel his life. And with it, the past...

*Fault Line* (2018, Book 24). ED. 32kbps. [12 Hours 2 Mins] read by Phillip Franks.
Not all scars are visible. Jonathan Kellaway needs no reminding of that on the verge of his retirement from china clay conglomerate Intercontinental Kaolins. The company has left its mark in pits and spoil heaps around the world. But it has also left a no less enduring mark on some of those who have worked for it, Kellaway included. Its past, as well as its future, is a treacherous place. So Kellaway is surprised when IK's founder and former chairman, Greville Lashley, sets him a final task before he quits. The academic hired by the board to write the company's history has discovered a gap covering several years in the records of the small Cornish china clay outfit Lashley started with and where Kellaway also began his career. He is despatched to Cornwall to learn what has become of the missing documents. But the search is a voyage into dangerous waters. A dead friend, a lost lover and a clutch of mysteries from Kellaway's youth in Cornwall and Italy in the late 1960s come back to haunt him -- and to tempt him with the hope that he may at last learn the truth about the tragedies and misfortunes that blighted those years. It is a truth that has claimed several victims before. If he pursues it hard and long enough, he may only add himself to the list. But pursue it he must. Because the truth, he belatedly realizes, is the secret that has consumed his life. This time -- this last time -- he will not stop. Until he has found it.

*Panic Room* (2018, Book 24). ED. 48kbps. [12 Hours 50 Mins] read by Hollie Taylor and John Sackville.
High on a Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion. Uninhabited except for Blake, a young woman of dubious background, secretive and alone, currently acting as housesitter. The house has a panic room. Cunningly concealed, steel lined, impregnable - and apparently closed from within. Even Blake doesn’t know it’s there. She’s too busy being on the run from life, from a story she thinks she’s escaped. But her remote existence is going to be invaded when people come looking for the house’s owner, missing rogue pharma entrepreneur Jack Harkness. Suddenly the whole world wants to know where his money has gone. Soon people are going to come knocking on the door, people with motives and secrets of their own, who will be asking Blake the sort of questions she can’t – or won’t – want to answer...

*One False Move* (2019, Book 25). ED. 48kbps. [10 Hours 13 Mins] read by Fiona Hampton and Alistair Petrie.
What value can be put on a human mind? How Joe Roberts does what he does is a mystery. He has a brain that seems able to outperform a computer. To a games company like Venstrom that promises big profits if his abilities can be properly exploited. So they send Nicole Nevinson to track him down and make him an offer too good to refuse. But Venstrom aren't the only people interested in Joe. His current boss, a shady businessman, is already making serious money out of Joe's talents and isn't going to let him go without a fight. And then there are other forces, with still darker intentions, who have their own plans for him. Almost before she knows it, Nicole's crossed an invisible line into a world where the game being played has rules she doesn't understand and where no-one can help her win. But win she must. Because the battle now isn't just for Joe's mind, it's for Nicole's life...