Description: 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.

Description: Long ago, Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) totally hoodwinked this reviewer, who has since been suspicious of any mystery written in the first person. This distrust was intensified by Nicholas Farrell's seemingly innocent interpretation of Robin Timariot, the protagonist of Borrowed Time. Is he the honest, ingenuous Englishman he seems? Or is he capable of complex lies, rape, and murder? Farrell's outstanding reading is as ambiguous as the story is layered. Initially, his neutral tones introduce a colorless, joyless government employee. Yet Timariot meets a lovely woman on the evening of her murder, and his emotions are stirred by her beauty and, later, by horror at hearing of her rape and murder. Even though he is unable to adequately explain his obsession with the dead woman and her family, his subsequent involvement in their lives brings some meaning to his. Farrell unobtrusively effects this transformation by orally coloring Timariot with shades of admiration, anger, disgust, disappointment, embarrassment, and concern. Mystery fans will appreciate this recording's characterization, plot, and performance.

Description: Here again Goddard creates a narrator who uncovers secrets buried in the past that cast grim shadows on later generations. He takes classic English mystery staples - a grand old house in Cornwall, a family fortune in dispute, murder and blackmail and concocts an absorbing suspense novel with a modern sensibility.

Description: 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. Michael Kitchen's understated interpretation adds to the eerie atmosphere. He is an excellent guide through the twists and, sometimes predictable, turns of this suspenseful tale. His pacing is right on target; his voices and accents vary by character but do not parody or overwhelm the production.

Description: On a mild autumn afternoon in 1882, William Trenchard sits smoking his pipe in the garden of his comfortable family home. When the creak of the garden gate heralds the arrival of an unexpected stranger, he is puzzled but not alarmed. He cannot know the destruction this man will wreak on all he holds most dear... The stranger announces himself ast James Norton, but claims he is in reality Sir James Davenall, the man to whom Trenchard's wife Constance had been engaged, and who had committed suicide eleven years ago. Sir Hugo, James's younger brother, and his mother, Lady Catherine, refuse to recognise Norton and force Trenchard - who fears the loss of his wife's affections - into an uneasy alliance against him. But Trenchard must plumb the depths of his own despair before the dark secrets of the Davenall family can finally, shockingly, be revealed...

Description: 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.