検索キーワード： ナレーター "Bill Nighy" すべてのカテゴリー

For Commander Vimes, Head of Ankh-Morpork City Watch, life consists of troubling times, linked together by...well, more troubling times. Right now, it's the latter. There's a werewolf with pre-lunar tension in the city and a dwarf with attitude and a golem who's begun to think for itself, but that's just ordinary trouble. The real problem is more puzzling - people are being murdered, but there's no trace of anything alive having been at the crime scene.

For a policeman, there can be few things worse than a serial killer loose in your city. Except, perhaps, a serial killer who targets coppers, and a city on the brink of bloody revolution. For Commander Sam Vimes, it all feels horribly familiar. Caught on the roof of a very magical building during a storm, he's found himself back in his own rough, tough past without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck. Living in the past is hard, especially when your time travel companion is a serial killer who knows where you live.

They say that diplomacy is a gentle art. That mastering it is a lifetime's work. But you do need a certain inclination in that direction. It's not something you can just pick up on the job. A few days ago Sam Vimes was a copper - an important copper, true - chief of police - but still, at his core, a policeman. But today he is an ambassador - to the mysterious, fat-rich country of Uberwald. Today, Sam Vimes is also a man on the run. At some point during his ambassadorship, things went very wrong. It's snowing. It's freezing.

'Look after the dead,' said the priests, 'and the dead will look after you.' Wise words in all probability, but a tall order when, like Teppic, you have just become the pharaoh of a small and penniless country rather earlier than expected, and your treasury is unlikely to stretch to the building of a monumental pyramid to honour your dead father. He'd had the best education money could buy of course, but unfortunately the syllabus at the Assassin's Guild in Ankh-Morpork did not cover running a kingdom and basic financial acumen....

Ivan Turgenev stands alongside Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as one of the three great Russian novelists of the 19th century. He was also a consummate short story writer, poet and playwright, and the first Russian author to become popular in the West. This specially curated collection showcases his key works, from the most celebrated to the undeservedly underrated.

Elizabeth Bowen was one of the 20th century's most distinctive writers. An associate of the Bloomsbury Set, she was a keen observer of upper-middle-class life and relationships. Best known for her novels of the Anglo-Irish gentry and wartime London, her fiction displays recurring themes of loss, rootlessness and displacement. This collection contains five of Bowen's best-loved works, and hears from the author herself in three radio talks on the art of novel-writing.

Charles Paris - unsuccessful actor, bad husband, and dipsomaniac - is back, and getting into trouble once more. As he tries to woo back his semi-detached wife, Frances, and land a few half-decent roles, he finds himself embroiled in murder and mayhem and forced to turn detective. Luckily, his sleuthing is much better than his acting.

One of Britain's leading contemporary playwrights, Howard Brenton is well known for his controversial state-of-the-nation plays, dark comedies and powerful political satires. He has written over 50 works for the theatre and numerous screenplays, including 13 episodes of the hit TV series Spooks. Included here are some of his most acclaimed dramas, including the award-winning Pravda, co-written with David Hare.

Thespian sleuth Charles Paris is his own worst enemy, a louche lush who can resist anything except temptation - especially in the form of women and alcohol. Estranged from his long-suffering wife, Frances, his personal life is shambolic, and as an actor, he's C-list at best. But he does have a talent for solving murders - which is just as well, because wherever he goes, someone seems to drop dead.

Actor, alcoholic and amateur sleuth Charles Paris returns in another quintet of humorous theatrical thrillers. All Charles asks for is a nice juicy part in a successful play - but wherever he appears on the bill, murder and mystery always play a starring role.

The wizards at Ankh-Morpork’s Unseen University are renowned for many things—wisdom, magic, teatime—but athletics, not so much. When Lord Vetinari, the city’s benevolent tyrant, strongly suggests to Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully that the university revive its sports program and field a football team composed of faculty, students, and staff—or lose the funding that pays for their nine daily meals—the wizards of UU find themselves in a quandary. First, they have to understand what makes foot-the-ball so popular with Ankh-Morporkians.

A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side of reality. . . . Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle—aka the Wee Free Men—a clan of fierce, sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men.

At long last, Lady Sybil has lured her husband, Sam Vimes, on a well-deserved and long-overdue holiday. But for the commander of the City Watch, a vacation in the country is anything but relaxing. The balls, the teas, the muck—not to mention all that fresh air and birdsong—are more than a bit taxing on a cynical city-born and -bred copper.

When the Spirit of Winter takes a fancy to Tiffany Aching, he wants her to stay in his gleaming, frozen world. Forever. It will take all the young witch's skill and cunning, as well as help from the legendary Granny Weatherwax and the irrepressible Wee Free Men, to survive until Spring. Because if Tiffany doesn't make it to Spring, Spring won't come for anyone.

The second in beloved and bestselling fantasy grandmaster Sir Terry Pratchett's beloved Discworld novels starring the young witch Tiffany Aching. Tiffany Aching is ready to begin her apprenticeship in magic. She expects spells and magic—not chores and ill-tempered nanny goats! Surely there must be more to witchcraft than this. What Tiffany doesn't know is that an insidious, disembodied creature is pursuing her.

The Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork is facing a crisis, and who better to manage it than the man who turned around Ankh-Morpork’s inefficient Post Office, former arch-swindler-turned-Postmaster General Moist von Lipwig. Lord Vetinari once again makes Moist an offer he can’t refuse: resuscitate the venerable Royal Mint. The bank has many problems: the chief cashier is almost certainly a vampire, the elderly chairman and her two loaded crossbows needs a daily walkie, there’s something strange happening in the cellar, and running the Royal Mint is costing a mint.

The Amazing Maurice runs the perfect Pied Piper scam. This streetwise alley cat knows the value of cold, hard cash and can talk his way into and out of anything. But when Maurice and his cohorts decide to con the town of Bad Blinitz, it will take more than fast talking to survive the danger that awaits. For this is a town where food is scarce and rats are hated, where cellars are lined with deadly traps, and where a terrifying evil lurks beneath the hunger-stricken streets....

As the witch of the Chalk, Tiffany Aching performs the distinctly unglamorous work of caring for the needy. But someone—or something—is inciting fear, generating dark thoughts and angry murmurs against witches. Tiffany must find the source of unrest and defeat the evil at its root. Aided by the tiny-but-tough Wee Free Men, Tiffany faces a dire challenge, for if she falls, the whole Chalk falls with her. . . .

By all rights, Arch-swindler Moist von Lipwig should be meeting his maker at the end of a noose. Instead, Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, has made him the city’s Postmaster General. Death may be preferable to fixing the Postal Service—a creaky, outdated institution beset by eccentric employees, mountains of old, undelivered mail Moist swears is talking to him, and a dangerous secret order. To restore the postal service to its former glory, Moist accepts the help of the tough talking and very attractive activist Adora Belle Dearheart.

Long, long ago, in a gods-forsaken hellhole called Koom Valley, trolls and dwarfs met in bloody combat. Centuries later, each side still views the other with simmering animosity that has been heightened of late because of one Grag Hamcrusher. The influential dwarf has been fomenting unrest among a section of Ankh-Morpork’s citizenry—a volatile situation made far worse when the petite provocateur is discovered bashed to death . . . with a troll club lying conveniently nearby.