A Summer to Remember in Herring Bay
Summary
Soundings and Choc Lit present the audio edition of A Summer to Remember in Herring Bay. Essy Havers is good at finding things. Her company specialises in helping clients track down anything, from missing china pieces to rare vintage clothing. But now Essy has something more important to find: herself. Essy has always been curious about her motherâs secret past and her Cornish roots. So, when the opportunity arises, she hops on a plane ends up in Herring Bay in Cornwall, the village where her mother grew up. But once there, sheâs mystified by the reactions of the villagers when they realise who she is. Was Essyâs decision to visit Cornwall a mistake, or will it lead to a summer sheâll never forget?
©2020 Angela Britnell (P)2020 Soundings
Foundation
Summary
For 12,000 years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future, to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last 30,000 years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire, both scientists and scholars, and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a fututre generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation. But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun or fight them and be destroyed. Please note: The text of this book includes some passages that begin or end in mid-sentence. This is intentional by the author.
©1982 Isaac Asimov (P)2010 Random House
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Book 7
Summary
"'Give me Harry Potter', said Voldemort's voice, 'and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded.'"Â As he climbs into the sidecar of Hagrid's motorbike and takes to the skies, leaving Privet Drive for the last time, Harry Potter knows that Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters are not far behind. The protective charm that has kept Harry safe until now is broken, but he cannot keep hiding. The Dark Lord is breathing fear into everything Harry loves and to stop him Harry will have to find and destroy the remaining Horcruxes. The final battle must begin - Harry must stand and face his enemy.... Having now become classics of our time, the Harry Potter audiobooks never fail to bring comfort and escapism to listeners of all ages. With its message of hope, belonging, and the enduring power of truth and love, the story of the Boy Who Lived continues to delight generations of new listeners.Â
©2007 J.K. Rowling (P)2007 Listening Library, an imprint of Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
The Psychology of Money
Summary
Doing well with money isnât necessarily about what you know. Itâs about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money - investing, personal finance, and business decisions - is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people donât make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together.  In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of lifeâs most important topics.
©2020 Harriman House (P)2020 Harriman House
![Cover art for Dracula [Audible Edition]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ef+s6y42L._SL500_.jpg)
Dracula [Audible Edition]
Summary
Audie Award, Distinguished Achievement in Production, 2013 Audie Award, Multi-voiced Performance, 2013 Audie Award Nominee, Classic, 2013 Because of the widespread awareness of the story of the evil Transylvanian count and the success of numerous film adaptations that have been created over the years, the modern audience hasn't had a chance to truly appreciate the unknowing dread that readers would have felt when reading Bram Stoker's original 1897 manuscript. Most modern productions employ campiness or sound effects to try to bring back that gothic tension, but we've tried something different. By returning to Stoker's original storytelling structure - a series of letters and journal entries voiced by Jonathan Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, and other characters - with an all-star cast of narrators, we've sought to recapture its originally intended horror and power. This production of Dracula is presented by what is possibly the best assemblage of narrating talent ever for one audiobook: Emmy Award nominees Alan Cumming and Tim Curry plus an all-star cast of Audie award-winners Simon Vance (The Millenium Trilogy), Katherine Kellgren (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), Susan Duerden (The Tigerâs Wife), John Lee (Supergods) and customer favorites Graeme Malcolm (Skippy Dies), Steven Crossley (The Oxford Time Travel series), Simon Prebble (The Baroque Cycle), James Adams (Letters to a Young Contrarian), Nicola Barber (The Rose Garden), Victor Villar-Hauser (Fun Inc.), and Marc Vietor (1Q84). These stellar narrators have been cast as follows: Alan Cumming as Dr. Seward Simon Vance as Jonathan Harker Katy Kellgren as Mina Murray/Harker Susan Duerden as Lucy Westenra Tim Curry as Van Helsing Graeme Malcolm as Dailygraph correspondent Steven Crossley as Zookeeperâs account and reporter Simon Prebble as Varna James Adams as Patrick Hennessey Nicola Barber as Sister Agatha Victor Villar-Hauser as Arthur Holmwood Marc Vietor as Quincey Morris John Lee as Introductory paragraph, various letters
Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Pandora's Star
Summary
Critics have compared the engrossing space operas of Peter F. Hamilton to the classic sagas of such SF giants as Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert. But Hamilton's best-selling fiction - powered by a fearless imagination and world-class storytelling skills - has also earned him comparison to Tolstoy and Dickens. Hugely ambitious, wildly entertaining, philosophically stimulating: the novels of Peter F. Hamilton will change the way you think about science fiction. Now, with Pandora's Star, he begins a new multi-volume adventure, one that promises to be his most mind-blowing yet. The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars some 400 light-years in diameter, contains more than 600 worlds, interconnected by a web of transport "tunnels" known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible: Over 1,000 light-years away, a star...vanishes. It does not go supernova. It does not collapse into a black hole. It simply disappears. Since the location is too distant to reach by wormhole, a faster-than-light starship, the Second Chance, is dispatched to learn what has occurred and whether it represents a threat. In command is Wilson Kime, a five-time rejuvenated ex-NASA pilot whose glory days are centuries behind him. Opposed to the mission are the Guardians of Selfhood, a cult that believes the human race is being manipulated by an alien entity they call the Starflyer. Bradley Johansson, leader of the Guardians, warns of sabotage, fearing the Starflyer means to use the starship's mission for its own ends. Pursued by a Commonwealth special agent convinced the Guardians are crazy but dangerous, Johansson flees. But the danger is not averted. Aboard the Second Chance, Kime wonders if his crew has been infiltrated. Soon enough, he will have other worries. A thousand light-years away, something truly incredible is waiting: a deadly discovery, the unleashing of which will threaten to destroy t...
©2004 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2008 Tantor
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Summary
This is the disturbing tale of the dual personality of Dr. Jekyll, a physician. A generous and philanthropic man, he is preoccupied with the problems of good and evil, and with the possibility of separating them into distinct personalities. He develops a drug that transforms him into the demonic Mr. Hyde, in whose person he exhausts all the latent evil in his nature. He also creates an antidote that will restore him to his respectable existence as Dr. Jekyll. Gradually, however, the unmitigated evil of his darker self predominates until finally he performs an atrocious murder. His saner self determines to curtail these alternations of personality, but he discovers that he is losing control over his transformations and that he slips with increasing frequency into the world of evil. Finally, unable to procure one of the ingredients for the mixture of redemption, and on the verge of being discovered, he commits suicide. Stark, skillfully woven, this fascinating novel explores the curious turnings of human character through the strange case of Dr. Jekyll, a kindly scientist who by night takes on his stunted, evil self, Mr. Hyde. Anticipating modern psychology, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a brilliantly original study of man's dual nature as well as an immortal tale of suspense and terror. This tale has lost none of its ability to shock. Its realistic police-style narrative chillingly relates Dr. Jekyllâs desperation as Hyde gains control of his soul - and gives voice to our own fears of the violence and evil within us.
Public Domain (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Evening and the Morning
Summary
Number-One New York Times Best Seller An Amazon Best Book of 2020 A thrilling and addictive new novel - a prequel to The Pillars of the Earth - set in England at the dawn of a new era: the Middle Ages "Just as transporting as [The Pillars of the Earth].... A most welcome addition to the Kingsbridge series." (The Washington Post) It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns. In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined. A young boatbuilder's life is turned upside down when the only home he's ever known is raided by Vikings, forcing him and his family to move and start their lives anew in a small hamlet where he does not fit in.... A Norman noblewoman marries for love, following her husband across the sea to a new land, but the customs of her husband's homeland are shockingly different, and as she begins to realize that everyone around her is engaged in a constant, brutal battle for power, it becomes clear that a single misstep could be catastrophic.... A monk dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a center of learning that will be admired throughout Europe. And each in turn comes into dangerous conflict with a clever and ruthless bishop who will do anything to increase his wealth and power. Thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of the Earth. Now, Follett's masterful new prequel The Evening and the Morning takes us on an epic journey into a historical past rich with ambition and rivalry, death and birth, love and hate, that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.
©2020 Ken Follett (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Hornet Flight
Summary
It's June 1941, and the low point of the war. England throws wave after wave of RAF bombers across the Channel, but somehow the Luftwaffe is able to shoot them down at will. The skies, indeed, the war itself seem to belong to Hitler. On a Danish island across the North Sea, Harald Olufsen stumbles upon a secret German installation. With England preparing its largest aerial assault, what Harald has discovered may turn the course of the war, but the race to convey the information could have terrible consequences for everyone close to him. For his older brother, Arne, a pilot in the Danish air force, and for Arne's fiancee, Hermia, an intelligence analyst desperate to resurrect the foundering Danish resistance. And most of all, for Harald himself. Filled with knife-edge suspense and rich, tantalizing characters, this is Ken Follett writing at the top of his form, unforgettable storytelling from an unforgettable writer.
©2002 Ken Follett (P)2002 Penguin Audiobooks
Notes from the Underground (AmazonClassics Edition)
Summary
Isolated from society in a tenement basement in St. Petersburg, a malicious former civil servant vents his resentments. In the rambling notes that follow, we are exposed to the inner turmoil of the Underground Man, who represents the voice of his generation. An emotional, paranoid knot of contradictions, the spiteful narrator is also desperate to join a society he loathes, if only to prove his superiority to it. Exploring themes of free will versus determinism, Dostoyevsky's existential exploration was written to challenge increasingly popular Western egoist philosophies. In the Underground Man, he found the embodiment of the antihero, whose behavior - like all human behavior - defies rationalization. AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature's most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds. Revised edition: Previously published as Notes from the Underground, this edition of Notes from the Underground (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.
Public Domain (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
The Evolutionary Void
Summary
An innovator praised as one of the inventors of "the new space opera", Peter F. Hamilton has also been hailed as the heir of such golden-age giants as Heinlein and Asimov. His star-spanning sagas are distinguished by deft plotting, engaging characters, provocative explorations of science and society, and soaring imaginative reach. Now, in one of the most eagerly anticipated offerings of the year, Hamilton brings his acclaimed Void trilogy to a stunning close. Exposed as the Second Dreamer, Araminta has become the target of a galaxywide search by government agent Paula Myo and the psychopath known as the Cat, along with others equally determined to prevent - or facilitate - the pilgrimage of the Living Dream cult into the heart of the Void. An indestructible microuniverse, the Void may contain paradise, as the cultists believe, but it is also a deadly threat. For the miraculous reality that exists inside its boundaries demands energy - energy drawn from everything outside those boundaries: from planets, stars, galaxies...from everything that lives. Meanwhile, the parallel story of Edeard, the Waterwalker, as told through a series of addictive dreams communicated to the gaiasphere via Inigo, the First Dreamer, continues to unfold. But now the inspirational tale of this idealistic young man takes a darker and more troubling turn as he finds himself faced with powerful new enemies - and temptations more powerful still. With time running out, a repentant Inigo must decide whether to release Edeard's final dream: a dream whose message is scarcely less dangerous than the pilgrimage promises to be. And Araminta must choose whether to run from her unwanted responsibilities or face them down, with no guarantee of success or survival. But all these choices may be for naught if the monomaniacal Ilanthe, leader of the breakaway Accelerator Faction, is able to enter the Void. For it is not paradise she seeks there, but dominion.
©2010 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2010 Tantor
A Column of Fire
Summary
Number-one New York Times best-seller. âAbsorbing...impossible to resist.â (The Washington Post) As Europe erupts, can one young spy protect his queen? Number-one New York Times best-selling author Ken Follett takes us deep into the treacherous world of powerful monarchs, intrigue, murder, and treason with his magnificent new epic, A Column of Fire. A thrilling listen that makes the perfect gift for the holidays. In 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, royalty and commoners clash, testing friendship, loyalty, and love. Ned Willard wants nothing more than to marry Margery Fitzgerald. But when the lovers find themselves on opposing sides of the religious conflict dividing the country, Ned goes to work for Princess Elizabeth. When she becomes queen, all Europe turns against England. The shrewd, determined young monarch sets up the country's first secret service to give her early warning of assassination plots, rebellions, and invasion plans. Over a turbulent half century, the love between Ned and Margery seems doomed as extremism sparks violence from Edinburgh to Geneva. Elizabeth clings to her throne and her principles, protected by a small, dedicated group of resourceful spies and courageous secret agents. The real enemies, then as now, are not the rival religions. The true battle pitches those who believe in tolerance and compromise against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else - no matter what the cost. Set during one of the most turbulent and revolutionary times in history, A Column of Fire is one of Follett's most exciting and ambitious works yet. It will delight longtime fans of the Kingsbridge series and is the perfect introduction for listeners new to Ken Follett.Â
©2017 Ken Follett (P)2017 Penguin Audio
The Cock Is the Culprit
Summary
âThe butterfly effect of the crowing of a rooster in the wrong place at the wrong time unleashes chaotic winds of change in a village. In this stunning tale, Unni R. holds up a mirror to Kerala society, with all its foibles and deceptions, and its recently acquired appetite for top-down bigotry. Masterly storytelling laced with wit and humaneness.â (N.S. Madhavan)Â In a small village in Kerala, people begin to feel threatened by an invisible rooster that crows at odd hours. It is heard interrupting the morning and night prayers at the temple, the mass at the church, the azaan at the mosque and the martyrsâ day ceremony. When it hoots in the middle of the national anthem being sung at the local school, it is instantly labelled as a threat to national security. It offends the sentiments of all those who are religious, political, patriarchal, exploitative, fanatical and homophobic. Naturally, there are many baying for its blood. The witch-hunt that ensues fuels suspicions that the invisible cock might even be a human; an anarchist who is trying to destabilize the nation with help from outside. Incisive and hilarious by turns, The Cock Is the Culprit does an astute job of exposing the dark underbelly of Kerala society.
©2019 Unni R.; Translation copyright 2020 J. Devika (P)2021 Audible, Inc.
Perdido Street Station
Summary
Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none - not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory. Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger. While Isaac's experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger - and more consuming - by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon, and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes. A magnificent fantasy rife with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and wonderfully realized characters, told in a storytelling style in which Charles Dickens meets Neal Stephenson, Perdido Street Station offers an eerie, voluptuously crafted world that will plumb the depths of every reader's imagination.
©2003 China Mieville (P)2009 Random House Audio
Chasm City
Summary
Named one of the best novels of the year by both Locus and Science Fiction Chronicle, Alastair Reynolds's debut Revelation Space redefined the space opera. With Chasm City, Reynolds invites you to reenter the bizarre universe of his imagination as he redefines Hell. The once-utopian Chasm City - a domed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet - has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted---from the people to the very buildings they inhabit---only the most wretched sort of existence remains. For security operative Tanner Mirabel, it is the landscape of nightmares through which he searches for a lowlife postmortal killer. But the stakes are raised when his search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.
©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2009 Tantor
Cyrano de Bergerac
Summary
One of the most enduring love stories of all time. Cyrano de Bergerac is the Platonic ideal of the fearless warrior who is paralyzed by romantic yearning. Confident in battle, but relentlessly self-doubting in love, Cyrano is unable to express his devotion to the beautiful Roxane. And when she falls in love with a handsome young cadet named Christian, Cyrano seizes the opportunity to use Christian as a proxy for his own unrequited feelings.  An L.A. Theatre Works full cast recording featuring: Caroline Aaron as Lise/Mother Marguerite Hugo Armstrong as Le Bret Kalen Harriman as Foodseller/Others Gregory Itzin as Comte De Guiche Hamish Linklater as Cyrano Anna Mathias as Duenna/Others Morgan Ritchie as Valvert/Bellerose/Others Jason Ritter as Christian André Sogliuzzo as Ragueneau/Ligniere/Others Devon Sorvari as Roxane Matthew Wolf as Cuigy/Others Original music composed by Mark Holden. Includes a conversation with Sue Lloyd, author of The Man Who Was Cyrano: A Life of Edmond Rostand. Directed and adapted for radio by Barry Creyton. Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at The James Bridges Theater, UCLA in December of 2014. Â
Public Domain (P)2014 L.A Theatre Works
The Pillars of the Earth
Summary
The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known...of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect - a man divided in his soul...of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame...and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother.  A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of 12th century England, this is Ken Follett's historical masterpiece.
©1989 Ken Follett (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Absolution Gap
Summary
The Inhibitors were designed to eliminate any life-form reaching a certain level of intelligence - and they've targeted humanity. War veteran Clavain and a ragtag group of refugees have fled into hiding. Their leadership is faltering, and their situation is growing more desperate. But their little colony has just received an unexpected visitor: an avenging angel with the power to lead mankind to safety - or draw down its darkest enemy. And as she leads them to an apparently insignificant moon light-years away, it begins to dawn on Clavain and his companions that to beat one enemy, it may be necessary to forge an alliance with something much worse.
©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2009 Tantor
World Without End
Summary
In 1989 Ken Follett astonished the literary world with The Pillars of the Earth, a sweeping epic novel set in 12th-century England that centered on the building of a cathedral and the men, women, and children whose lives it changed forever. Critics were overwhelmed, and readers and listeners ever since have hoped for a sequel. At last, here it is. Although the two novels may be listened to in any order, World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge. Three years in the writing, World Without End once again shows that Ken Follett is a masterful author writing at the top of his craft.
©2007 Ken Follett (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
![Cover art for La isla bajo el mar [The Island Beneath the Sea]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/515qkdOXSyL._SL500_.jpg)
La isla bajo el mar [The Island Beneath the Sea]
Summary
La azarosa historia de una esclava en el Santo Domingo del siglo XVIII que logrará librarse de los estigmas que la sociedad le ha impuesto para conseguir la libertad. Para ser una esclava en el Saint-Domingue de finales del siglo XVIII, Zarité habÃa tenido buena estrella: a los nueve años fue vendida a Toulouse Valmorain, un rico terrateniente, pero no conoció ni el agotamiento de las plantaciones de caña ni la asfixia y el sufrimiento de los trapiches, porque siempre fue una esclava doméstica. Su bondad natural, fortaleza de espÃritu y honradez le permitieron compartir los secretos y la espiritualidad que ayudaban a sobrevivir a los suyos, los esclavos, y conocer las miserias de los amos, los blancos. Zarité se convirtió en el centro de un microcosmos que era un reflejo del mundo de la colonia: el amo Valmorain, su frágil esposa española y su sensible hijo Maurice, el sabio Parmentier, el militar Relais y la cortesana mulata Violette, Tante Rose, la curandera, Gambo, el apuesto esclavo rebelde... y otros personajes de una cruel conflagración que acabarÃa arrasando su tierra y lanzándolos lejos de ella. Al ser llevada por su amo a Nueva Orleans, Zarité inició una nueva etapa en la que alcanzarÃa su mayor aspiración: la libertad. Más allá del dolor y del amor, de la sumisión y la independencia, de sus deseos y los que le habÃan impuesto a lo largo de su vida, Zarité podÃa contemplarla con serenidad y concluir que habÃa tenido buena estrella. «En mis cuarenta años, yo, Zarité Sedella, he tenido mejor suerte que otras esclavas. Voy a vivir largamente y mi vejez será contenta porque mi estrella -mi z'etoile- brilla también cuando la noche está nublada. Conozco el gusto de estar con el hombre escogido por mi corazón cuando sus manos grandes me despiertan la piel. He tenido cuatro hijos y un nieto, y los que están vivos son libres. Mi primer recuerdo de felicidad, cuando era una mocosa huesuda y desgreñada, es moverme al son de los tambores y ésa es también mi más reciente felicidad, porque anoche estuve en la plaza del Congo bailando y bailando, sin pensamientos en la cabeza, y hoy mi cuerpo está caliente y cansado.» (Reseña) «Un canto a la libertad.» (El Mundo) Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.
©2009 Isabel Allende (P)2016 Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S.A.U.
Ghost Story
Summary
When an unknown someone shoots him and leaves him to die, Harry Dresden hopes he might be heading to a better place. Unfortunately being dead doesn't make Harry's life any easier. Trapped between life and death, he learns that his friends are in serious trouble. Only by finding his murderer can he save his friends and move on - a feat that would be a lot easier if he had a body and access to his powers. Worse still are the malevolent shadows that roam Chicago, controlled by a dark entity that wants Harry to suffer even in death. Now the late Harry Dresden will have to pull off the ultimate trick without using any magic - or face an eternity as just another lost soul....
©2012 Jim Butcher (P)2015 Penguin Audio
The Maisky Diaries
Summary
The terror and purges of Stalin's Russia in the 1930s discouraged Soviet officials from leaving documentary records, let alone keeping personal diaries. A remarkable exception is the unique diary assiduously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943. This selection from Maisky's diary grippingly documents Britain's drift to war during the 1930s, appeasement in the Munich era, negotiations leading to the signature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Churchill's rise to power, the German invasion of Russia, and the intense debate over the opening of the second front. Maisky was distinguished by his great sociability and access to the key players in British public life. Among his range of regular contacts were politicians, press barons, ambassadors, intellectuals, writers, and indeed royalty. His diary further reveals the role personal rivalries within the Kremlin played in the formulation of Soviet policy at the time. Scrupulously edited and checked against a vast range of Russian and Western archival evidence, this extraordinary narrative diary offers a fascinating revision of the events surrounding the Second World War.
©2015 Gabriel Gorodetsky (P)2015 Tantor
The Fortunes of Africa
Summary
A sweeping history of the fortune seekers, adventurers, despots, and thieves who have ruthlessly endeavored to extract gold, diamonds, and other treasures from Africa and its people. Africa has been coveted for its rich natural resources ever since the era of the pharaohs. In past centuries, it was the lure of gold, ivory, and slaves that drew merchant-adventurers and conquerors from afar. In modern times, the focus of attention is on oil, diamonds, and other rare earth minerals. In this vast and vivid panorama of history, Martin Meredith follows the fortunes of Africa over a period of 5,000 years. With compelling narrative, he traces the rise and fall of ancient kingdoms and empires; the spread of Christianity and Islam; the enduring quest for gold and other riches; the exploits of explorers and missionaries; and the impact of European colonization. He examines, too, the fate of modern African states and concludes with a glimpse of their future. His cast of characters includes religious leaders, mining magnates, warlords, dictators, and many other legendary figures - among them Mansa Musa, ruler of the medieval Mali empire, said to be the richest man the world has ever known.Â
©2014 Martin Meredith (P)2019 Hachette Audio
Metro 2034
Summary
The Metro books have put Dmitry Glukhovsky in the vanguard of Russian speculative fiction alongside the creator of Night Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko. A year after the events of Metro 2033, the last few survivors of the apocalypse, surrounded by mutants and monsters, face a terrifying new danger as they hang on for survival in the tunnels of the Moscow Metro. Featuring blistering action, vivid and tough characters, claustrophobic tension and dark satire, the Metro books have become bestsellers across Europe.
©2009 Dmitry Glukhovsky; English translation 2013 Andrew Bromfield (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Elysium Fire
Summary
Elysium Fire is a smoldering tale of murderers, secret cultists, tampered memories, and unthinkable power, of bottomless corruption and overpowering idealism from the king of modern space opera. Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise. But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives. Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these "melters" leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths.... As panic rises in the populace, a charismatic figure is sowing insurrection, convincing a small but growing number of habitats to break away from the Glitter Band and form their own independent colonies. For more from Alastair Reynolds, check out: Revenger
©2018 Alastair Reynolds (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Fall of Giants
Summary
Fall of Giants is Ken Follett's magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated familiesâAmerican, German, Russian, English, and Welshâas they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.
Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man's world in the Welsh mining pitsâ¦. Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson's White Houseâ¦. Two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolutionâ¦. Billy's sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German embassy in Londonâ¦.
These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from Washington to St. Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty. As always with Ken Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. It is destined to be a new classic.
In future volumes of The Century Trilogy, subsequent generations of the same families will travel through the great events of the rest of the 20th century, changing themselvesâand the century itself. With passion and the hand of a master, Follett brings us into a world we thought we knew, but now will never seem the same again.
©2010 Kevin Follett (P)2010 Penguin Audio
Cesar's Way
Summary
There are at least 68 million dogs in America, and their owners lavish billions of dollars on them every year. So why do so many pampered pets have problems? In this definitive and accessible guide, Cesar Millan, star of National Geographic Channel's hit show Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, reveals what dogs truly need to live a happy and fulfilled life. From his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show to his roster of celebrity clients to his reality television series, Cesar Millan is America's most sought-after dog-behavior expert. But Cesar is not a trainer in the traditional sense; his expertise lies in his unique ability to comprehend dog psychology. Tracing his own amazing journey from a clay-walled farm in Mexico to the celebrity palaces of Los Angeles, Cesar recounts how he learned what makes dogs tick. In Cesar;s Way, he shares this wisdom, laying the groundwork for you to have stronger, more satisfying relationships with your canine companions. Cesar's formula for a contented and balanced dog seems impossibly simple: exercise, discipline, and affection, in that order. Taking readers through the basics of dog psychology and behavior, Cesar shares the inside details of some of his most fascinating cases, using them to illustrate how common behavior issues develop and, more important, how they can be corrected. Whether you're having issues with your dog or just want to make a good bond even stronger, this audiobook will give you a deeper appreciation of how your dog sees the world, and it will help make your relationship with your beloved pet a richer and more rewarding one.
©2006 Cesar Millan (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
The Book of Longings
Summary
"An epic masterpiece that is a triumph of insight and storytelling." (Associated Press) âA true masterpiece.â (Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed) Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 by O, the Oprah Magazine, Good Morning America/ABC-TV, Good Housekeeping, Bustle, Time, Marie Claire, and The Millions. An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times best-selling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with 18-year-old Jesus changes everything. Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Anaâs pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Romeâs occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history. Grounded in meticulous research and written with a reverential approach to Jesusâs life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring, unforgettable account of one womanâs bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her. It is a triumph of storytelling both timely and timeless, from a masterful writer at the height of her powers.
©2020 Sue Monk Kidd (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Red, White & Royal Blue
Summary
A 2019 NYPL Book for Reading and Sharing One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of the Year for 2019 One of Shelf Awareness' Best Books of the Year for 2019 One of Library Journal's Best Books of the Year for 2019 A 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards Winner A 2019 NPR Best Book of the Year One of Amazon.com's Best Books of the Year for 2019 One of Vogue Magazine's Best Books of the Year for 2019 Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Debut and Best Romance of 2019 One of AudioFile Magazine's Best Audiobooks of 2019; an instant New York Times best seller; a Must-Read Book for US Weekly, Vogue, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Oprahmag.com, and more! "Narrator Ramón de Ocampo brings out all the emotion in this tender, serious, funny, and warmly hopeful love story.... Listeners will be swept up as Alex and Henry face questions of identity and coming out amid familial duties and political machinations." (AudioFile Magazine) What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales? When his mother became president, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius - his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, US/British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: True love isn't always diplomatic. Praise for Red, White & Royal Blue: "Effervescent and empowering on all levels, Red, White & Royal Blue is both a well-written love story and a celebration of identity." (NPR) "I took this with me wherever I went and stole every second I had to read! Absorbing, hilarious, tender, sexy - this book had everything I crave. Iâm jealous of all the readers out there who still get to experience Red, White & Royal Blue for the first time!" (Christina Lauren, New York Times best-selling author of Love and Other Words and Roomies) "Red, White & Royal Blue is outrageously fun. It is romantic, sexy, witty, and thrilling. I loved every second." (Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Maybe in Another Life)
©2019 Casey McQuiston (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
Qalea Drop
Summary
The UFS Phoenix embarks on a dangerous quest for the AI Ceephay Queen who rules at the heart of the Reeh Empire. For cover, Phoenix will use the enormous war being launched by the new rulers of the croma, Croma'Dokran, into reeh space. This war is intended in part to evacuate the corbi homeworld of Rando, thus righting a great wrong of croma history by rescuing 200 million corbi from reeh tyranny. While Lisbeth defies her parren seniors to use drysine and parren firepower in assisting the evacuation, Erik captains Phoenix, accompanied by Styx's four drysine warships, to the world of Eshir, where Styx insists the Ceephay Queen was once located. There, in the ancient, ruined city of Qalea, Trace and Styx must lead an away mission through buried layers of Reeh Empire history to uncover its long-forgotten secrets. Discovering the Ceephay Queen's present location could set them on the road to saving humanity. But Qalea's secrets have been hidden by the reeh for millennia, secrets that could rock their Empire, and they will stop at nothing to keep hidden.
©2020 Joel Shepherd (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Genius Makers
Summary
"This colorful page-turner puts artificial intelligence into a human perspective. Through the lives of Geoff Hinton and other major players, Metz explains this transformative technology and makes the quest thrilling." (Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker) Recipient of starred reviews in both Kirkus and Library Journal The Untold Tech Story of Our Time What does it mean to be smart? To be human? What do we really want from life and the intelligence we have, or might create? With deep and exclusive reporting, across hundreds of interviews, New York Times Silicon Valley journalist Cade Metz brings you into the rooms where these questions are being answered. Where an extraordinarily powerful new artificial intelligence has been built into our biggest companies, our social discourse, and our daily lives, with few of us even noticing. Long dismissed as a technology of the distant future, artificial intelligence was a project consigned to the fringes of the scientific community. Then two researchers changed everything. One was a 64-year-old computer science professor who didnât drive and didnât fly because he could no longer sit down - but still made his way across North America for the moment that would define a new age of technology. The other was a 36-year-old neuroscientist and chess prodigy who laid claim to being the greatest game player of all time before vowing to build a machine that could do anything the human brain could do. They took two very different paths to that lofty goal, and they disagreed on how quickly it would arrive. But both were soon drawn into the heart of the tech industry. Their ideas drove a new kind of arms race, spanning Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and OpenAI, a new lab founded by Silicon Valley kingpin Elon Musk. But some believed that China would beat them all to the finish line. Genius Makers dramatically presents the fierce conflict between national interests, shareholder value, the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and the very human concerns about privacy, security, bias, and prejudice. Like a great Victorian novel, this world of eccentric, brilliant, often unimaginably yet suddenly wealthy characters draws you into the most profound moral questions we can ask. And like a great mystery, it presents the story and facts that lead to a core, vital question: How far will we let it go?
©2021 Cade Metz (P)2021 Penguin Audio
The Splendid and the Vile
Summary
The number one New York Times best-selling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz. NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2020 BY The Washington Post ⢠HuffPost ⢠The Seattle Times ⢠Lit Hub ⢠The Week ⢠PopSugar On Winston Churchillâs first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next 12 months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally - and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but itâs also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchillâs prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and, of course, 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports - some released only recently - Larson provides a new lens on Londonâs darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parentsâ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamelaâs illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchillâs "Secret Circle", to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes listeners out of todayâs political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchillâs eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together. This audiobook includes a recording of Winston Churchill's 1941 Christmas Eve speech.
©2020 Erik Larson (P)2020 Random House Audio
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Summary
Composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the most famous and influential work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The work is a philosophical novel in which the character of Zarathustra, a religious prophet-like figure, delivers a series of lessons and sermons in a Biblical style that articulate the central ideas of Nietzsche's mature thought. Key to the philosophy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a rejection of traditional systems of religious morality, the idea of the will to power, and a vision of a new, higher mode of being, the ubermensch" or "Superman," one of Nietzsche's most famous and controversial figures. As innovative stylistically as it is philosophically, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is both a literary masterpiece and an enduring classic of moral thought. This version of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the translation by Thomas Common.
Public Domain (P)2011 Tantor
Correspondances avec Gaston Gallimard
Summary
Gaston Gallimard (1881-1975), fondateur des Ãditions de la Nouvelle Revue française avec André Gide et Jean Schlumberger, confia un jour à Jean Cau qu'il n'écrirait jamais ses mémoires d'éditeur, craignant de ruiner sa maison en disant tout ce qu'il y avait vu et tout ce qu'il savait des mÅurs et pratiques de la vie littéraire. Il ne les écrivit pas et, pour finir, se confia peu. Louable pudeur. Mais les grandes correspondances éditoriales publiées depuis lors sont là qui comblent ce manque. Gaston Gallimard et son conseiller Jean Paulhan y déploient des trésors d'adresse pour répondre aux jalousies, susceptibilités, reproches ou insultes des auteurs phares de la maison : Gide, Claudel, Proust, ou Céline... et les retenir tous auprès de lui malgré des divergences de vues souvent radicales. Des échanges riches d'enseignements sur la vie littéraire et éditoriale du XXe siècle.
©2011 Ãditions Gallimard (P)2011 Ãditions Gallimard
Sizzling Sixteen
Summary
Trenton, New Jersey, bounty hunter Stephanie Plum has inherited a "lucky" bottle from her Uncle Pip. Problem is, Uncle Pip didn't specify if the bottle brought good luck or bad luck.... Bad Luck: Vinnie, of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, has run up a gambling debt of $786,000 with mobster Bobby Sunflower and is being held until the cash can be produced. Nobody else will pay to get Vinnie back, leaving it up to Stephanie, office manager Connie, and file clerk Lula to raise the money if they want to save their jobs. Good Luck: Being in the business of tracking down people, Stephanie, Lula, and Connie have an advantage in finding Vinnie. If they can rescue him, it will buy them some time to raise the cash. Bad Luck: Finding a safe place to hide Vinnie turns out to be harder than raising $786,000. Vinnie's messing up Mooner's vibe, running up pay-per-view porn charges in Ranger's apartment, and making Stephanie question genetics. Good Luck: Between a bonds office yard sale that has the entire Burg turning out, Mooner's Hobbit-Con charity event, and Uncle Pip's lucky bottle, they just might raise enough money to save the business, and Vinnie, from ruin. Bad Luck: Saving Vincent Plum Bail Bonds means Stephanie can keep being a bounty hunter. In Trenton, this involves hunting down a man wanted for polygamy, a turnpike toilet paper bandit, and a drug dealer with a pet alligator named Mr. Jingles. Good Luck: The job of bounty hunter comes with perks in the guise of Trenton's hottest cop, Joe Morelli, and the dark and dangerous security expert, Ranger. With any luck at all, Uncle Pip's lucky bottle will have Stephanie getting lucky - the only question is...with whom? Sizzling Sixteen - so hot, it might spontaneously combust!
©2010 Evanovich, Inc (P)2010 Macmillan Audio
Flight of Dreams
Summary
With everyone onboard harboring dark secrets and at least one person determined to make sure the airship doesn't make the return trip, Flight of Dreams gives an utterly suspenseful, heart-wrenching explanation for one of the most enduring mysteries of the 20th century. On the evening of May 3, 1937, Emilie Imhof boards the Hindenburg. As the only female crew member, Emilie has access to the entire airship, from the lavish dining rooms and passenger suites to the gritty engine cars and control room. She hears everything, but with rumors circulating about bomb threats, Emilie's focus is on maintaining a professional air...and keeping her own plans under wraps. What Emilie can't see is that everyone - from the dynamic vaudeville acrobat to the high-standing German officer - seems to be hiding something. Giving free rein to countless theories of sabotage, charade, and mishap, Flight of Dreams takes us on the thrilling three-day transatlantic flight through the alternating perspectives of Emilie; Max, the ship's navigator, who is sweet on her; Gertrud, a bold female journalist who's been blacklisted in her native Germany; Werner, a 13-year-old cabin boy with a bad habit of sneaking up on people; and a brash American who's never without a drink in his hand. Everyone knows more than they initially let on, and as the novel moves inexorably toward its tragic climax, the question of which of the passengers will survive the trip infuses every scene with a deliciously unbearable tension. With enthralling atmospheric details that immediately transport and spellbinding plotting that would make Agatha Christie proud, Flight of Dreams will keep you guessing till the last minute. And, as The New York Times Book Review said of her last novel, "This book is more meticulously choreographed than a chorus line. It all pays off".
©2016 Ariel Lawhon (P)2016 Random House Audio
Stephen Fry
Summary
In this interview Stephen Fry talks to us about the process of narrating the complete adventures of London's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. He touches on the genius of Arthur Conan Doyle and reveals how joining the 'Sherlock Holmes Society' played a part in his expulsion from school and subsequent imprisonment. Coming round full circle, Stephen admits to having jumped at the chance of voicing Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection. Keen to delve once more into the 'majestic swing, rhythm and pulse of the text,' Stephen describes his experience in the recording studio, all the while expressing a general fondness for the magic of stories told aloud. As a renowned and beloved actor, writer, and presenter, Stephen Fry has imprinted himself into British culture. He has voiced all seven of the Harry Potter audiobooks, as well as titles such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mythos and Winnie the Pooh. His flawless rendition of literary classics is always second to none and in Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, Stephen immediately draws you in and leaves you wanting more. Including personal introductions written by and narrated by Stephen, The Definitive Collection is a truly unique literary gem. Audible Members' Choice Winner of the Year, the audiobook has been described by listeners as 'superb' and 'over 70 hours of pure brilliance.'
©2016 Audible Studios (P)2016 Audible Studios
Kantovan Vault
Summary
The UFS Phoenix is on a mission to find a lost data-core that may contain the secret to defeating the alo-deepynine alliance. But the means to find the data-core is hidden deep in tavalai space, in a highest-security vault where the tavalai's manipulative State Department keep all their most treacherous secrets. To recover it, Phoenix must pull off the most daring heist the Spiral has ever seen. But Phoenix will need help - in the form of a rebellious faction of the tavalai Fleet; a fanatical parren mystic who lusts mostly for power; a cynical old tavalai marine who's spent much of his life fighting humans; and a superintelligent AI queen who will sacrifice anything to rescue her race from extinction. None of them can be trusted, and neither Captain Erik Debogande nor Major Trace Thakur is experienced in this kind of work. But each must gather his ingenuity and courage and learn as they go, as the scale of the threat confronting humanity looms larger, and the clock is ticking.
©2016 Joel Shepherd (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Renegade
Summary
One thousand years after Earth was destroyed in an unprovoked attack, humanity has emerged victorious from a series of terrible wars to assure its place in the galaxy. But during celebrations on humanityâs new homeworld, the legendary Captain Pantillo of the battle carrier Phoenix is court-martialed then killed, and his deputy, Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande, the heir to humanityâs most powerful industrial family, is framed for his murder. Assisted by Phoenixâs marine commander Trace Thakur, Erik and Phoenix are forced to go on the run as they seek to unravel the conspiracy behind their captainâs demise, pursued to the death by their own fleet. What they discover about the truth behind the wars and the nature of humanityâs ancient alien allies will shake the sentient galaxy to its core.
©2015 Joel Shepherd (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
The Wizards of Sevendor
Summary
The second Spellmonger anthology! It is said by some that the Spellmongerâs exile to the Magelaw left Sevendor, the City of Magic, unprotected in his absence. That would be untrue, for though the mightiest mage of the era was forced by law and custom to refrain from visiting his realm in Castal, he left behind a significant body of learned and dedicated colleagues to continue his policies and see to the protection of the magelands. These were not all warmagi, nor even High Magi; indeed, the strength of Sevendor depended on magi of all types and descriptions. As Minalan fought against the darkest foes in the West, his lands in the east were protected by his vassals, allies, and friends. Their powers varied, as did their station. But they were uniformly devoted to Minalan the Spellmonger and the land he had wrought. They kept watch against secret incursions or hidden dangers against the realm while the Spellmongerâs strength was elsewhere. Whilst he grappled with the fearsome minions of Korbal the Necromancer, his magical land was well-warded by the famous Wizards of Sevendor. From the Heeth the Arcanistâs History of the Magelands.
©2021 Terry Mancour (P)2021 Podium Audio
Knights Magi
Summary
Opposites attack! When the Magelord Minalan, the Spellmonger's two apprentices, Tyndal and Rondal, were knighted after the battle of Timberwatch, they were dubbed Knights Magi: a new class of nobility for distinguished High Magi. Designed to combine the pursuit of arcane knowledge with the noble aspirations of chivalry, it elevated them above common warmage...in theory. The problem was they had no idea how to be a Knight Mage...because no one had ever been one before. And as a couple of half-trained rustic apprentices from the Mindens they did not feel up to the task or the high ideals of their title. But Master Minalan the Spellmonger decided to cure that ignorance. He arranges for Tyndal and Rondal to be tutored and trained together in their new vocation, learning the arts of magic, the craft of warfare, and the subtleties of chivalry from the finest masters in the kingdom. If they didn't kill each other, first. The two young spellmonger's apprentices from the Minden mountain domain of Boval Vale have much in common: both had their homes destroyed, they were both sent into exile by the goblin invasion, and they both serve the same master. Yet they could not be more different. Rondal is quiet, bookish, and introspective, dedicated to the disciplines of academic magic and anticipating a future of study, service, and, perhaps, romance. Tyndal is bold and brash: an extroverted over-achiever with dreams of glory, gold, and girls. Fate, circumstance, and the whims of the gods have forced them together, but the raw emotions of adolescence and the trauma of war put them at each others' throats with depressing frequency. Master Minalan can't have that, especially not in his fragile new domain with another baby on the way...so he sends them on the road. Jealousy, anxiety, passion, and frustration conspire to make them rivals - but if they don't figure out a way to learn to work together, and quickly, then their stubborn feud could end up affecting the fate of the entire war. Along the way they pick up some enemies, gain a few allies, master a few new skills, and attempt to learn the laws of love. But as they stumble through their lessons and learn to master their tempers, they discover that the strongest bonds between men are forged by the most difficult of trials. For after they become proficient at magic, war, and errantry, they are put to the test in the field, the most difficult of circumstances...a mission where the strength of their friendship and the quality of their honor may be what defines them best as - Knights Magi!
©2017 Terry Mancour (P)2017 Podium Publishing
The Gentlemen's Hour
Summary
Laid back, ultraâCalifornia cool, the former cop turned PI begins each day with the Dawn Patrol, a close-knit group of surfers, best friends who not only ride waves together but have one another's backs out of the water. It's the life Boone loves, all he wants. To him, "There's no such thing as a bad day at the beach." So when one of their own is murdered - especially an icon like Kelly Kuhio, a local hero - and another surfer, a young punk from the Rockpile Crew, stands accused, the small world of Pacific Beach is rocked to its core. Boone knows he can no longer ignore the painful truth that violence is seeping into the surfing community. But when he agrees to help the defense, the outrage he courts from the community, and the Dawn Patrol, is more than he ever anticipated. He's risking losing the relationships that define his life - just when he needs them most. As Boone digs deeper into San Diego's murkier side, delving into places the city's reputation-conscious establishment would rather he left alone, it becomes clear that more than a murder case is at stake. He soon finds himself out there alone, struggling to stay afloat as the waves get rougher and rougher... and more deadly. It's The Gentlemen's Hour - and it could be Boone's last.
©2011 Don Winslow (P)2011 Simon & Schuster Audio
Thaumaturge
Summary
The Spellmonger in exile! When Minalan the Spellmonger was exiled from his beloved mageland of Sevendor by Prince Tavard, his friend Duke Anguin made him Count Palatine of the Magelaw, a vast realm in the Alshari Wilderlands with which Minalan is all too familiar. After the goblin invasion, the province is devastated, ruined, and peopled almost only by freed slaves. But Minalan has brought his recovering wife and family into exile with him, and he views their impoverished fief as an opportunity to build a new City of Magi in the wilderness. To assist, he recruits some of his closest friends among the High Magi: Mavone, the military intelligence specialist; Sandoval, the marshal in charge of recruiting Minalanâs army; Carmella, whose genius for defensive magics will be key; Gareth, whose ambition to create knows no bounds; and Terleman, perhaps the greatest tactical warmage of his time. Together, Minalan knows that they can build his new city, Vanador, into an anvil that can blunt the thrust of the dark forces that rise against them. For the first of three Nemovorti have come to the Penumbra, and Gaja Katar has vowed to wipe humanity from the face of the world. Yet he is far from the worst of Minalan's worries. For the powerful Sea Folk have sent an emissary to see the Spellmonger, and the news he bears will change the fate of all. Minalan's only hope is to rely on his cunning and his ability as a Thaumaturge!
©2019 Terry Mancour (P)2020 Podium Publishing
A Curious Incident
Summary
I am not a consulting detective, Gemma Doyle reluctantly tells 10-year-old Lauren Tierney, when the little girl comes to the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium to beg Gemma to find her missing cat, Snowball. Gemma might not be able to follow the clues to find the cat, but her dog, Violet, follows her nose to locate the missing kitten in a neighbor's garden shed. Gemma and Violet proudly return Snowball to her grateful owner, and Gemma basks in praise for a job well done. But a few days later, Lauren is back with $10 in hand, wanting to once again hire a consulting detective, and this time for a far bigger job: Her mother has been accused of murdering her garden-club rival. Sheila Tierney's garden, which everyone said was the one to beat for the West London Garden Club trophy, had been vandalized the night before the club's early summer tour. Sheila confronted her former friend and gardening partner Anna Wentworth in a towering rage, and the women nearly came to blows. Later that night, after having won the trophy for best garden, Anna is found murdered, and Sheila Tierney is the police's prime suspect. Despite herself and despite the disapproval of her police-detective boyfriend, Ryan Ashburton, the game is once again afoot, and Gemma finds herself and Jayne Wilson using their powers of deduction to ponder yet another curious incident.
©2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The War of the Worlds
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.  Â
This Penguin Classic is performed by the critically acclaimed actor David Harewood, one of the stars of the television series Homeland. Harewood is also known for his roles in award-winning productions The Night Manager and Blood Diamond. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Brian Aldiss read by Roy McMillan. Â
The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naïve locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag - only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear. Â
The War of the Worlds has been the subject of countless adaptations, including an Orson Welles radio drama which caused mass panic when it was broadcast, with listeners confusing it for a news broadcast heralding alien invasion; a musical version by Jeff Wayne; and, most recently, Steven Spielberg's 2005 film version, starring Tom Cruise. This Penguin Classics edition includes a full biographical essay on Wells, a further reading list and detailed notes. The introduction, by Brian Aldiss, considers the novel's view of religion and society.  Â
H.G. Wells (1866-1946) was a professional writer and journalist. Among his most popular works are The Time Machine (1895); The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), filmed with Bela Lugosi in 1932, and again in 1996 with Marlon Brando; The Invisible Man (1897); The War of the Worlds (1898); and The First Men in the Moon (1901), which predicted the first lunar landings.
Public Domain (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Abiding in Mindfulness, Volume 1
Summary
In the words of the Buddha, the four foundations of mindfulness (the four satipatthanas) are "the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of dukkha (suffering) and discontent, for acquiring the true method, for the realization of Nibbana." Within the quintessential discourse called the Satipatthana Sutta, we find the Buddha's seminal teachings about the practice of meditation. On Abiding in Mindfulness, Volume I: The Body, esteemed teacher and author Joseph Goldstein presents an audio curriculum to reveal the deeper insights of this vital sutta - and how it serves to inform and guide your own daily practice. Goldstein sets the stage for your journey through the sutta by clarifying the Buddha's initial declaration of the "direct path" to awakening that is its promise. Through the wisdom of Buddhist masters of ancient and modern times and the expertise of his own 40-year study and practice, he shares the subtle nuances of each key term derived from the original Pali. Where do you find the ardency to sustain and balance your efforts along the path? How do you cultivate the breadth of mindfulness that makes any spiritual undertaking possible? What strengthens your perception of impermanence - both internally and externally? With Goldstein's lucid instruction, you will discover a wellspring of profound revelations to revitalize and mature your practice, and help you bring forth its fruits in every area of your life. Course objectives: Explore the four abidings of mindfulness, or qualities of mind, as the direct path for awakening Observe the three kinds of cravings and desires, and how they manifest Analyze how mindfulness of the body is the first foundation of mindfulness as taught by the Buddha Discuss the ways of clearly knowing and the four basic qualities of matter in relationship to the relative (objective or conceptual) and the ultimate (subjective or direct) levels of experience or truth On Abiding in Mindfulness, Volume I: The Body, Goldstein introduces you to the first satipatthana, the domain of the body. Here, you will learn the cornerstone techniques for successful meditation practice, as taught by the Buddha himself. From appropriate places and postures for practice to clear comprehension of all aspects of the body to the elements and energies that make up our physical form, Goldstein brings you to the threshold of the "ultimate truth" of our bodies. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2012 Joseph Goldstein (P)2012 Sounds True
The Saints of Salvation
Summary
With refreshing determination and hopeful grit, humanity activates a bold endgame against an alien invasion in the finale of a series heralded as "a modern classic" (Stephen Baxter) from "one of the finest writers the genre has produced" (Gareth L. Powell). Humanity is struggling to hold out against a hostile takeover by an alien race that claims to be on a religious mission to bring all sentient life to its God at the End of Time. But while billions of cocooned humans fill the holds of the Olyix's deadly arkships, humankind is playing an even longer game than the aliens may have anticipated. From an ultra-secret spy mission to one of the grandest battles ever seen, no strategy is off the table. Will a plan millennia in the making finally be enough to defeat this seemingly unstoppable enemy? And what secrets are the Olyix truly hiding in their most zealously protected stronghold? With his trademark optimism about humanity's tenacity and capacity for greatness, Peter F. Hamilton wraps up this brilliant saga with a bang - and reminds us why freedom of choice is the most important freedom there is.
©2020 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2020 Tantor
Reshaping It All
Summary
Candace Cameron Bure first became known to millions as a costar on the hit ABC television series Full House. Today, like her brother Kirk Cameron (Growing Pains, Fireproof), she is the rare Hollywood actor who is outspoken about her Christian faith and how it helps overcome certain obstacles. Bureâs healthy lifestyle has been featured in US Weekly and People magazines as well as national talk shows including The View and NBCâs Today. In Reshaping It All, she continues the story, inspiring women to embrace a healthier lifestyle by moving faith to the forefront, making wise choices, and finding their worth in the eyes of God. Candace shares a candid account of her struggle with food and ultimately her healthy outlook on weight despite the toothpickthin expectations of Hollywood. More than a testimony, here is a motivational tool that will put readers on the right track and keep them there. In addition to practical advice, Candace offers a biblical perspective on appetite and self control that provides encouragement to women, guiding them toward freedom.
©2011 Candaché, Inc. (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Hawkmaiden
Summary
The Falconâs Call! From the moment Dara of Westwood spied the Silver Headed Raptor nesting in Rundeval Peak, the precocious redheaded 12-year-old girl was enchanted. The youngest daughter of the Master of the Wood lived in ramshackle Westwood Hall, in the independently minded Westwood estate of Sevendor. Her determination to capture a baby falcon and train it wasnât hampered by the fact that Dara had never climbed a mountain, had never been trained in falconry, or even remotely had permission from her father to do it. Dara wanted the falcon...and the only thing in her way was the mountain, an angry mother falcon, and her own fears. But the daring climb up Rundeval and actually capturing the fledgling falcon is just the beginning of her troubles. Actually learning falconry and training the willful bird is a responsibility she had barely considered. Worse, there is trouble afoot in the domain: A new lord has come to rule over Sevendor and all of her people, replacing the corrupt old Sir Erantal. While everyone welcomes the change, the new lord is a wizard: a magelord, the first of his kind in 400 years: Lord Minalan the Spellmonger. And heâs not alone. Heâs brought thousands of oddly dressed Wilderlanders with him, families escaping the wars in the west...and settling in Sevendor. Within weeks of holding his first court as lord of Sevendor, the wizard's magic begins to cause problems. Magelord Minalan turns Sevendor Castle, the entire mountain of Rundeval, and a good portion of the Westwood - including Daraâs home - into enchanted white stone when a spell goes unexpectedly awry one fateful night. As a result, Dara learns that she, too, may become a mage someday. Soon after she discovers that she can see through her falconâs eyes and share her thoughts, the talents of a beastmaster, opening up a brilliant new world for her. The folk of the valley have enough to eat for the first time in a generation, there are wizards all over Sevendor, and the castle glows with a magic light at night. The fortunes of the Westwood estate rise. But the Magelord finds foes as well as friends in Sevendor. Though prosperity flows from the Magelordâs benevolent rule, the changes are frightening to some who have lost power since the Magelord came. Outside the Westwood, the other natives of the domain are upset by their magical lord and his strange new people, and there are whispers of rebellion. And outside of the domain, the neighboring lords, urged on by sinister forces, conspire to plunge Sevendor into war - with Dara and her family along with it! What can one girl and her falcon do? When the Magelord leaves on business and his enemies close in on her home, Dara discovers she may hold the answer to saving them all! The fate of the entire domain rests with Dara of Westwood, the girl theyâll call the Hawkmaiden!
©2015 Terry Mancour (P)2019 Podium Publishing
The Books of Blood, Volume 2
Summary
The Books of Blood combine the ordinary with the extraordinary while radiating the eroticism that has become Barker's signature. Weaving tales of the everyday world transformed into an unrecognizable place, where reason no longer exists and logic ceases to explain the workings of the universe, Clive Barker provides the stuff of nightmares in packages too tantalizing to resist. Never one to shy away from the unimaginable or the unspeakable, Clive Barker breathes life into our deepest, darkest nightmares, creating visions that are at once terrifying, tender, and witty. The Books of Blood confirm what horror fans everywhere have known for a long time: We will be hearing from Clive Barker for many years to come.
©1985 Clive Barker Ink, Inc (P)2013 David N. Wilson
10 1/2 Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said
Summary
The antidote to those cotton-candy platitudes that are all too familiar to anyone whoâs ever worn a mortarboard, Wheelanâs 10 head-turning aphorisms - backed up by a PhD in public policy and extensive social science research - set the record straight. Readers everywhere agreed, turning a Dartmouth Class Day speech that had gone viral into a best-selling book.Whether praising the time âwastedâ in fraternity basements; mentioning that, frankly, the worst days of your life still lie ahead; or simply asking that graduates avoid wreaking the kind of havoc that others before them have, Wheelan softens his candid conclusions with good-natured charm and tales of unconventional success. With cartoons sprinkled throughout to keep things light, this volume makes a perfect gift for graduates of all ages.
©2012 Charles Wheelan (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
A Matter of Honor
Summary
Featuring a bonus interview with author Jeffrey Archer A disgraced British colonel bequeaths a mysterious letter to his only son. The moment Adam Scott opens the yellowing envelope, he sets into motion a deadly chain of events. Within days he's running for his life, pursued by the KGB, the CIA, and his own countrymen. Powerful men plot his destruction, and Adam is betrayed and abandoned even by those he holds most dear. When he finally realizes what he possesses, he's even more determined to protect it, for it's more than a matter of life and death - it's a matter of honor.
©1986 Jeffrey Archer (P)2014 Macmillan Audio
2666
Summary
National Book Critics Circle, Fiction, 2009 Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolañoâs life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresaâa fictional Juárezâon the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.
©2004 the heirs of Roberto Bolaño (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The History of the Medieval World
Summary
From the schism between Rome and Constantinople to the rise of the T'ang Dynasty, from the birth of Muhammad to the crowning of Charlemagne, this erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled. In her earlier work, The History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer wrote of the rise of kingship based on might. But in the years between the fourth and the 12th centuries, rulers had to find new justification for their power, and they turned to divine truth or grace to justify political and military action. Right thus replaces might as the engine of empire. Not just Christianity and Islam but the religions of the Persians and the Germans, and even Buddhism, are pressed into the service of the state. This phenomenon---stretching from the Americas all the way to Japan---changes religion, but it also changes the state.
©2010 Susan Wise Bauer (P)2010 Tantor
Defiance
Summary
The UFS Phoenix is hunting for the long-lost drysine data-core. Within it lie the secrets to saving humanity from the resurgent deepynine machine-race. To recover it, Captain Erik Debogande must work together with the man who holds his sister hostage - the power-hungry parren leader Aristan. Aristan has sworn he will return Lisbeth Debogande once Phoenix grants him equal access to its prize. But now from the direction of hostile space comes word of a dark force hunting humans and parren alike, determined at all costs that the store of the lost Drysine Empire's knowledge should be possessed by neither....
©2017 Joel Shepherd (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
The White Tiger
Summary
British Book Awards, Author of the Year, 2009. Man Booker Prize, Fiction, 2008. No saris. No scents. No spices. No music. No lyricism. No illusions. This is India now. Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life - having nothing but his own wits to help him along. Born in a village in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for a wealthy man, two Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. Through Balram's eyes, we see India as we've never seen it before: the cockroaches and the call centers, the prostitutes and the worshippers, the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. With a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create morality and money doesn't solve every problem - but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations.
©2008 Aravind Adiga (P)2008 Tantor
Rando Splicer
Summary
Separated from her ship, Major Trace Thakur is stranded on the reeh-occupied world of Rando. The native corbi have suffered beneath reeh tyranny for 800 years, and many have given up hope. But Trace needs the data stored in the reehâs genetic technology and command center - the Rando Splicer - if sheâs to learn how to save humanity from impending disaster, and is planning an assault against overwhelming odds. Sheâll need help from the UFS Phoenix, though, which is caught in a ritual medieval battle to change the croma leadership that sees her crew embarking on a perilous journey across a warring desert continent. Should they fail, humanity could be just one of many species to die.
©2019 Joel Shepherd (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
The Traveler's Gift
Summary
This modern morality tale by gifted writer and speaker Andy Andrews teaches seven fundamental strategies for creating a successful life. Much like the best-selling books by Og Mandino, this unique narrative is a blend of entertaining fiction, allegory, and inspiration. Storyteller Andy Andrews gives a front-row seat for one man's journey of a lifetime. David Ponder has lost his job and the will to live. When he is supernaturally selected to travel through time, he visits historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, King Solomon, and Anne Frank. Each visit yields a Decision for Success that will one day impact the entire world
©2004 Andy Andrews (P)2004 Oasis Audio LLC
Redemption Ark
Summary
Late in the 26th century, the human race has advanced enough to accidentally trigger the Inhibitors---alien-killing machines designed to detect intelligent life and destroy it. The only hope for humanity lies in the recovery of a secret cache of doomsday weapons---and a renegade named Clavain who is determined to find them. But other factions want the weapons for their own purposes---and the weapons themselves have another agenda altogether.
©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2009 Tantor
The Spy and the Traitor
Summary
New York Times Best Seller
The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War.
âThe best true spy story I have ever read.â (John Le Carré)
If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets.  Â
Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings listeners deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.
©2018 Ben Macintyre (P)2018 Random House Audio
Double Cross
Summary
In his celebrated best sellers Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat, Ben Macintyre told the dazzling true stories of a remarkable WWII double agent and of how the Allies employed a corpse to fool the Nazis and assure a decisive victory. In Double Cross, Macintyre returns with the untold story of the grand final deception of the war and of the extraordinary spies who achieved it.
On June 6, 1944, 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy and suffered an astonishingly low rate of casualties. D-Day was a stunning military accomplishment, but it was also a masterpiece of trickery. Operation Fortitude, which protected and enabled the invasion, and the Double Cross system, which specialized in turning German spies into double agents, deceived the Nazis into believing that the Allies would attack at Calais and Norway rather than Normandy. It was the most sophisticated and successful deception operation ever carried out, ensuring that Hitler kept an entire army awaiting a fake invasion, saving thousands of lives, and securing an Allied victory at the most critical juncture in the war.
The story of D-Day has been told from the point of view of the soldiers who fought in it, the tacticians who planned it, and the generals who led it. But this epic event in world history has never before been told from the perspectives of the key individuals in the Double Cross System. These include its director (a brilliant, urbane intelligence officer), a colorful assortment of MI5 handlers (as well as their counterparts in Nazi intelligence), and the five spies who formed Double Crossâs nucleus: a dashing Serbian playboy, a Polish fighter-pilot, a bisexual Peruvian party girl, a deeply eccentric Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming and a volatile Frenchwoman, whose obsessive love for her pet dog very nearly wrecked the entire plan. The D-Day spies were, without question, one of the oddest military units ever assembled, and their success depended on the delicate, dubious relationship between spy and spymaster, both German and British. Their enterprise was saved from catastrophe by a shadowy sixth spy whose heroic sacrifice is revealed here for the first time.
With the same depth of research, eye for the absurd and masterful storytelling that have made Ben Macintyre an international bestseller, Double Cross is a captivating narrative of the spies who wove a web so intricate it ensnared Hitlerâs army and carried thousands of D-Day troops across the Channel in safety.
©2012 Random House Audio (P)2012 Agentstvo Publishing
A Spy Among Friends
Summary
Master storyteller Ben Macintyre's most ambitious work to date offers a powerful new angle on the 20th century's greatest spy story. Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain's counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War - while he was secretly working for the enemy. And nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott, Philby's best friend and fellow officer in MI6. The two men had gone to the same schools, belonged to the same exclusive clubs, grown close through the crucible of wartime intelligence work and long nights of drink and revelry. It was madness for one to think the other might be a communist spy, bent on subverting Western values and the power of the free world. But Philby was secretly betraying his friend. Every word Elliott breathed to Philby was transmitted back to Moscow - and not just Elliott's words, for in America, Philby had made another powerful friend: James Jesus Angleton, the crafty, paranoid head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton's and Elliott's unwitting disclosures helped Philby sink almost every important Anglo-American spy operation for twenty years, leading countless operatives to their doom. Even as the web of suspicion closed around him, and Philby was driven to greater lies to protect his cover, his two friends never abandoned him - until it was too late. The stunning truth of his betrayal would have devastating consequences on the two men who thought they knew him best, and on the intelligence services he left crippled in his wake. Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological insight, and based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, A Spy Among Friends is Ben Macintyre's best book yet, a high-water mark in Cold War history telling.
©2014 Ben Macintyre (P)2014 Random House Audio
The Troll Hunter
Summary
A warrior with a secret. A band of cutthroats. And a monster of legend. It is a time of war. After years of relentless and pitiless battles, the tired country of Sunja realizes its spine is close to breaking. Desperate for aid, the king dispatches a company of soldiers to the north in a desperate plea for help from its neighbors. A Sunjan cavalier called Bloor has the unenviable task of protecting a mysterious and heavily armored koch destined for the northern kingdom. Under his command is a mixed force of heavy infantry, horsemen, and the kingâs own hand-picked guard, all entrusted with escorting the koch and ensuring its safety. Not only does Bloor have to be ever watchful of their enemyâs movements, he must maintain order among the men under his command - and temper their obvious dislike for each other. And Bloor must contend with a rival cavalier, a man bitter and resentful over not being chosen to command the mission. Despite the tension throughout the ranks, orders are orders. Take the koch to the north. Protect it at all costs. The doomed and divided company will soon discover itâs not the war-torn northern wilderness they will have to be on guard against, or the legions of hated Nordish soldiers who seek to capture the koch and its true contents. A much more sinister threat awaits Bloor and his soldiers, just out of sight of Sunjaâs high walls, one that will rip Bloor and his command apart. A story of heroic fantasy. Some graphic violence and language.
©2010 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2019 Podium Publishing
The Last Train to London
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of Beautiful Exiles conjures her best novel yet, a pre-World War II-era story with the emotional resonance of Orphan Train and All the Light We Cannot See, centering on the Kindertransports that carried thousands of children out of Nazi-occupied Europe - and one brave woman who helped them escape to safety. In 1936, the Nazi are little more than loud, brutish bores to 15-year-old Stephan Neuman, the son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family and budding playwright whose playground extends from Viennaâs streets to its intricate underground tunnels. Stephanâs best friend and companion is the brilliant Žofie-Helene, a Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. But the two adolescentsâ carefree innocence is shattered when the Nazisâ take control. There is hope in the darkness, though. Truus Wijsmuller, a member of the Dutch resistance, risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to the nations that will take them. It is a mission that becomes even more dangerous after the Anschluss - Hitlerâs annexation of Austria - as, across Europe, countries close their borders to the growing number of refugees desperate to escape. Tante Truus, as she is known, is determined to save as many children as she can. After Britain passes a measure to take in at-risk child refugees from the German Reich, she dares to approach Adolf Eichmann, the man who would later help devise the âFinal Solution to the Jewish Questionâ, in a race against time to bring children like Stephan, his young brother Walter, and Žofie-Helene on a perilous journey to an uncertain future abroad.
©2019 Meg Waite Clayton (P)2019 HarperAudio
Apocalypse
Summary
The only thing worse than death is living in hell on Earth. Disorder and chaos ravage London when thousands are contaminated by the accidental discharge of an experimental bio-weapon. The disease robs its hosts of rational thought, giving them a singular desire - find more living flesh to infect. Cut off from information and senior leadership, one squadron of soldiers under the command of their senior NCO, Sergeant Major Johnson, finds itself forced to operate independently until the remnants of military and government command re-establish themselves safely at sea in the English Channel. The infected, however, have a different agenda. They gather into massive hordes, sweeping the countryside and leaving nothing alive in their wake. Don't miss this heart-stopping intro to a zombie thriller series about survival against all odds! You've never experienced the undead like this before.
©2018 DHP Publishing (P)2019 Tantor
Prince of Darkness
Summary
In the middle decades of the 19th century Jeremiah G. Hamilton was a well-known figure on Wall Street. He was reportedly the richest African American man in the United States, possessing a fortune of $2 million, or in excess of $250 million in today's currency. In Prince of Darkness, a groundbreaking and vivid account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger-than-life story of a man who defied every convention of his time. He wheeled and dealed in the lily white business world, he married a white woman, he bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, he owned railroad stock on trains he was not legally allowed to ride, and he generally set his white contemporaries' teeth on edge when he wasn't just plain outsmarting them. An important contribution to American history, Hamilton's life offers a way into considering, from the unusual perspective of a black man, subjects that are usually seen as being quintessentially white, totally segregated from the African American past.
©2015 Shane White (P)2015 Tantor
Twenty Years After
Summary
A new translation of Dumasâs rousing sequel to The Three Musketeers, picking up 20 years after the conclusion of that classic novel and continuing the adventures of the valiant dâArtagnan and his three loyal friends The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumasâs most famous and enduring novel, completed its serial publication in the summer of 1844, and by the time of its book publication at the end of that year, readers were already demanding a sequel. They got it starting in January 1845, when the first chapters of Twenty Years After began to appear - but it wasnât quite what they were expecting. When Twenty Years After opens it is 1648: the Red Sphinx, Cardinal Richelieu, is dead, France is ruled by a regency in the grip of civil war, and across the English Channel the monarchy of King Charles I hangs by a thread. As dâArtagnan will find, these are problems that canât be solved with a sword thrust. In Twenty Years After, the musketeers confront maturity and face its greatest challenge: sometimes, you fail. Itâs in how the four comrades respond to failure, and rise above it, that we begin to see the true characters of Dumasâs great heroes. A true literary achievement, Twenty Years After is long overdue for a modern reassessment - and a new translation. As an added inducement, Lawrence Ellsworth has discovered a âlostâ chapter that was overlooked in the novelâs original publication, and is included in none of the available English translations to date - until now.
©2019 Translation and original material copyright by Lawrence Schick (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing
The Court of Miracles
Summary
Les Misérables meets Six of Crows in this pause-resisting adventure as a young thief finds herself going head to head with leaders of Paris' criminal underground in the wake of the French Revolution. In the violent urban jungle of an alternate 1828 Paris, the French Revolution has failed and the city is divided between merciless royalty and nine underworld criminal guilds known as the Court of Miracles. Eponine (Nina) Thénardier is a talented cat burglar and member of the Thieves Guild. Nina's life is midnight robberies, avoiding her father's fists, and watching over her naïve adopted sister, Cosette (Ettie). When Ettie attracts the eye of the Tiger - the ruthless lord of the Guild of Flesh - Nina is caught in a desperate race to keep the younger girl safe. Her vow takes her from the city's dark underbelly to the glittering court of Louis XVII. And it also forces Nina to make a terrible choice - protect Ettie and set off a brutal war between the guilds, or forever lose her sister to the Tiger. This audiobook includes a diagram of the Miracle Court on a bonus PDF. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Kester Grant (P)2020 Listening Library
Fallen Dragon
Summary
In the distant future, corporations have become sustainable communities with their own militaries, and corporate goals have essentially replaced political ideology. On a youthful, rebellious impulse, Lawrence joined the military of a corporation that he now recognizes to be ruthless and exploitative. His only hope for escape is to earn enough money to buy his place in a better corporation. When his platoon is sent to a distant colony to quell a local resistance effort, it seems like a stroke of amazing fortune, and Lawrence plans to rob the colony of their fabled gemstone, the Fallen Dragon, to get the money he needs. However, he soon discovers that the Fallen Dragon is not a gemstone at all but an alien life form that the local colonists have been protecting since it crashed in their area. Now Lawrence has to decide if he will steal the alien to exploit the use of its inherent biotechnical processes - which far exceed anything humans are capable of - or if he will help the Resistance get the alien home.
©2002 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2016 Tantor
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Summary
Since its release in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell's revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In this book, Campbell outlines the Hero's Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually all of the world's mythic traditions. He also explores the Cosmogonic Cycle, the mythic pattern of world creation and destruction. As relevant today as when it was first published, The Hero with a Thousand Faces continues to find new audiences in fields ranging from religion and anthropology to literature and film studies. The book has also profoundly influenced creative artists - including authors, songwriters, game designers, and filmmakers - and continues to inspire all those interested in the inherent human need to tell stories.
©2008 The Joseph Campbell Foundation (jcf.org). Third edition (with revisions) / 1968 by Princeton University Press. Second edition (with revisions) / 1949 by Bollingen Foundation and published by Pantheon Books. (Original edition), year 2008 (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The History of the Ancient World
Summary
A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own. This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. This narrative history employs the methods of "history from beneath" - literature, epic traditions, private letters, and accounts - to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2007 Susan Wise Bauer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Snow
Summary
Look for Banville's next great crime novel, April in Spain, coming fall 2021 National Best Seller A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year A New York Times Editorsâ Choice Pick "Banville sets up and then deftly demolishes the Agatha Christie format...superbly rich and sophisticated." (New York Times Book Review) The incomparable Booker Prize winner's next great crime novel - the story of a family whose secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their ancestral home. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. The year is 1957, and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford - flinty, visibly Protestant, and determined to identify the murderer - faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in the tight-knit community he begins to investigate. As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community's secrets, like the snowfall itself, threaten to obliterate everything. Beautifully crafted, darkly evocative, and pulsing with suspense, Snow is "the Irish master" (New Yorker) John Banville at his pause-resisting best.
©2020 John Banville (P)2020 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
The Sea
Summary
The author of The Untouchable now gives us a luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory. The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife's death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child; a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. The seductive mother, the imperious father, the twins; Chloe, fiery and forthright, and Myles, silent and expressionless, in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled; each of them a part of the "barely bearable raw immediacy" of his childhood memories. Interwoven with this story are Morden's memories of his wife, Anna, of their life together, of her death, and the moments, both significant and mundane, that make up his life now: his relationship with his grown daughter, Claire, desperate to pull him from his grief; and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying, where the past beats inside him "like a second heart". What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, vividly dramatic, beautifully written novel, among the finest we have had from this extraordinary writer.
©2005 John Banville (P)2006 Random House, Inc.
Invisible Cities
Summary
In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo - Tartar emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts the emperor with tales of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. Soon it becomes clear that each of these fantastic places is really the same place.
©1972 Giulio Einaudi Editore (P)2013 Tantor
Warmage
Summary
The goblin invasion is on...and a wizard's work is never done! After facing a hopeless siege, an implacable foe and an impossible escape, you would think that Minalan the Spellmonger would be able to rest - but the armies of the undead goblin shaman Shereul (known as the Dead God to his human victims) are rolling over the western reaches of the rustic Duchy of Alshar and is headed toward the heart of the Duchy of Castal. Thousands are fleeing for their lives as hordes of goblins pour out of Boval Vale and devastate the rugged fiefs of the Alshari Wilderlands. And the super-charged shamans of the Dead God are making defending the realm almost impossible for the outnumbered Alshari country knights. While the two Dukes play feudal politics to further their own ends, the only people who seem to care about the invasion are Minalan and his outlaw warmagi friends - and they're busy dodging agents of the sinister Royal Censorate of Magic. But if someone doesn't organize an army in northern Alshar soon, then there will be nothing to stop the armies of the divinely powerful Dead God from conquering all five Duchies in his genocidal quest for vengeance. But things are just not that simple: he has to cope with a sexy young Shadowmage assassin who works for a mysterious spymaster, a cocky new manservant, a dysfunctional group of suddenly-powerful warmagi, the Censor General, and a bunch of whiny nobles before the Dukes will grant him the troops and money he will need - and the Dukes have plans of their own. If Minalan the Spellmonger can't lobby the courts of Alshar and Castal to work together - and quickly - the hordes of the Dead God will sweep over the frontiers of both states. Worse, the mysterious Umbra veil he has erected around Boval Vale may come to imperil all Five Duchies. Minalan would rather just go home and let the Dukes handle it, but his conscience won't let him. Someone has to stop the Dead God...and that someone happens to be him. Beyond politics and plots, goblins and trolls, mercenaries and magic, the Soulless and the shamans, Censors and secret orders, for Minalan there is only the thought that his child is to be born in a world with such dangers, and that is something he cannot permit. It is time for the Spellmonger to pick up his mageblade, summon his allies, and go to war again...as a Warmage!
©2016 Terry Mancour (P)2017 Podium Publishing
High Mage
Summary
Rock Star! Things were starting to look up for Magelord Minalan the Spellmonger: The magic mountain in his domain not only made him a wealthy man and the most powerful mage in history, it also produced a lode of magical gemstones with unique properties - properties the Alka Alon, the masters of magic on Callidore, are fascinated by. When Minalan gets his chance to trade some of his magic rocks for irionite, he finds himself in a position to raise hundreds more magi with the stones...making them High Magi. But as valuable as that bargain is for prosecuting the war with the Dead God and his sinister armies, such power comes with a hefty price. Every new High Mage Minalan raises presents potential new problems. The Magelords have inspired fear in their neighbors. The warmagi invent deadly new spells. The lower orders of magi are getting restless. The mage-led Sevendor Town wants a new charter. King Rard and the royal court are pressuring the nascent Arcane Orders politically. Some magi are crossing the Penumbra and taking stones from the goblins as well as taking their service. And some are just starting to get a little crazy. It makes a nice, normal little raid on his lands seem refreshing in its simplicity. In trying to balance the needs of the war with the needs of a well-ordered Order, Minalan finds himself making compromises, cutting deals, and bargaining what power he has in a high-stakes game where Chaos seems to be the only player who knows the rules. The temptations of his position and the power he wields are great, but so, he discovers, are the responsibilities. But when his patience seems nearly exhausted and his alliances seem ready to crumble, a massive army emerges from the shadowy realms and strikes south, forcing the High Magi to rally around the Spellmonger in defense of the kingdom. As the genocidal goblin army marches toward the once-prosperous cottonlands of Gilmora, Minalan and his High Magi must defend a single bridge against them at all costs. And they are ready to. But the plans of magi count little when the powerful and subtle mind of the Dead God opposes them. For when the die is cast and the first blow is struck, it becomes clear that nothing is as Minalan had foreseen. As disaster looms for the humani kingdom and even the Alka Alon are threatened, only a desperate appeal to divinity, a dangerously risky adventure and a little classy enchantment offer any hope against calamity. For the day has come when all that stands between ruin and survival is the bravery and cunning of the Spellmonger and his High Magi!
©2017 Terry Mancour (P)2018 Podium Publishing
In the Region of the Summer Stars
Summary
In the Region of the Summer Stars is a new Celtic fantasy audiobook from Stephen R. Lawhead, critically-acclaimed author of the Pendragon Cycle. Ravaged by barbarian Scálda forces, the last hope for Eirlandia lies with the islandâs warring tribes. Wrongly cast out of his tribe, Conor, the first-born son of the Celtic king, embarks on a dangerous mission to prove his innocence. What he discovers will change Eirlandia forever. For the Scálda have captured the mystical Fae to use as an ultimate weapon. And Conorâs own people have joined in the invasion.
©2018 Stephen R. Lawhead (P)2018 Macmillan Audio
The History of the Renaissance World
Summary
A lively and fascinating narrative history about the birth of the modern world. Beginning in the heady days just after the First Crusade, this volume - the third in the series that began with The History of the Ancient World and The History of the Medieval World - chronicles the contradictions of a world in transition. Popes continue to preach crusade, but the hope of a Christian empire comes to a bloody end at the walls of Constantinople. Aristotelian logic and Greek rationality blossom while the Inquisition gathers strength. As kings and emperors continue to insist on their divine rights, ordinary people all over the world seize power: the lingayats of India, the Jacquerie of France, the Red Turbans of China, and the peasants of England. New threats appear, as the Ottomans emerge from a tiny Turkish village and the Mongols ride out of the East to set the world on fire. New currencies are forged, new weapons invented, and world-changing catastrophes alter the landscape: the Little Ice Age and the Great Famine kill millions; the Black Death, millions more. In the chaos of these epoch-making events, our own world begins to take shape. Impressively researched and brilliantly told, The History of the Renaissance World offers not just the names, dates, and facts but the memorable characters who illuminate the years between 1100 and 1453 - years that marked a sea change in mankind's perception of the world. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
©2013 Susan Wise Bauer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
In the Kingdom of All Tomorrows
Summary
Stephen R. Lawhead, the critically acclaimed author of the Pendragon Cycle, concludes his Eirlandia Celtic fantasy series with In the Kingdom of All Tomorrows. Conor mac Ardan is now clan chief of the Darini.  Tara's Hill has become a haven and refuge for all those who were made homeless by the barbarian Scálda.  A large fleet of the Scálda's Black Ships has now arrived and Conor joins Eirlandia's lords to defeat the monsters. He finds treachery in their midst...and a betrayal that is blood deep.  And so begins a final battle to win the soul of a nation.
©2020 Stephen R. Lawhead (P)2020 Tantor
Necromancer
Summary
Companyâs Coming! Just when Baron Minalan the Spellmonger figured out there was a slim chance to restore his mind-shattered wife Alya (if he's willing to journey to the undercaverns of Olum Seheri, the lair of Korbal the Necromancer), things start to go awry: not only does Prince Tavard, his unloved liege lord, decide to conduct an official state visit to Sevendor on pilgrimage to the Everfire on the Briga's feast day, but a mysterious seamage appears at his door with an intriguing offer from the Sea Folk who rule Callidore: They want to buy snowstone. An entire mountain of it. Between feuding factions of Alka Alon and the contentious nobility of his own kingdom, Minalan is already in arcane intrigue up to his pointy hat, but when the foremost wizard of the age has problems, he also has resources. Before the pilgrimage concludes it sets mighty actions in their courses, and even the gods elect to intervene publicly in Minalan's life. Minalan realizes that he has little choice but to consider an impossible quest into the heart of his enemy's realm, to the caverns of the dead, themselves, if he is to resolve the many conflicts in play. He must recover an ancient artefact of the Sea Folk known as the Handmaiden, and in order to do so he will have to organize the most audacious raid on the most horrific foe in humanity's history on Callidore! Who else but Minalan the Spellmonger has the magic stones to challenge the undead might of the Necromancer!
©2017 Terry Mancour (P)2020 Podium Publishing
Into Africa
Summary
"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" So goes the signature introduction of New York Herald star journalist Henry Morton Stanley to renowned explorer Dr. David Livingstone, who had been missing for six years in the wilds of Africa. Into Africa ushers us into the meeting of these remarkable men. In 1866, when Livingstone journeyed into the heart of the African continent in search of the Nile's source, the land was rough, unknown to Europeans, and inhabited by man-eating tribes. The man sent to find him was an orphan and a drifter who had great ambition but little success to show for it. The book shows how, over the course of their nine-year relationship, Stanley ironically rose in power and prominence while Livingstone was relegated to isolation and danger in Africa.
©2003 Martin Dugard (P)2003 Books On Tape, Inc.
Agent Zigzag
Summary
Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began. In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was orders orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory in Britain. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service. For the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service.   Crisscrossing Europe under different names, all the while weaving plans, spreading disinformation, and, miraculously, keeping his stories straight under intense interrogation, he even managed to gain some profit and seduce beautiful women along the way. The Nazis feted Chapman as a hero and awarded him the Iron Cross. In Britain, he was pardoned for his crimes, becoming the only wartime agent to be thus rewarded. Sixty years after the end of the war, and 10 years after Chapmanâs death, MI5 has now declassified all of Chapmanâs files, releasing more than 1,800 pages of top secret material and allowing the full story of Agent Zigzag to be told for the first time.Â
©2007 Ben MacIntyre (P)2007 Books on Tape
What Went Wrong
Summary
For many centuries, the world of Islam was at the forefront of human achievement: the foremost military and economic power in the world, the leader in the arts and sciences of civilization. Christian Europe, a remote land beyond its northwestern frontier, was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed, as the previously despised West won victory after victory, first on the battlefield and in the marketplace, then in almost every aspect of public and even private life. In this intriguing volume, Bernard Lewis examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to understand why things had changed, how they had been overtaken, overshadowed, and to an increasing extent dominated by the West.
©2001 Bernard Lewis (P)2002 Books on Tape
Jerusalem
Summary
Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of todayâs clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of three thousand years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence.Â
How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the âcenter of the worldâ and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalemâs biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women - kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores - who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem. As well as the many ordinary Jerusalemites who have left their mark on the city, its cast varies from Solomon, Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent to Cleopatra, Caligula and Churchill; from Abraham to Jesus and Muhammad; from the ancient world of Jezebel, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod and Nero to the modern times of the Kaiser, Disraeli, Mark Twain, Lincoln, Rasputin, Lawrence of Arabia and Moshe Dayan.Â
Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetimeâs study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique chronicle of the city that many believe will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice - in heaven and on earth. Â
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2011 Simon Sebag Montefiore (P)2011 Random House Audio
The Future of the Professions
Summary
This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others to work as they did in the 20th century. The Future of the Professions explains how increasingly capable systems - from telepresence to artificial intelligence - will bring fundamental change in the way that the practical expertise of specialists is made available in society. The authors challenge the grand bargain - the arrangement that grants various monopolies to today's professionals. They argue that our current professions are antiquated, opaque, and no longer affordable and that the expertise of the best is enjoyed by only a few. In their place, they propose six new models for producing and distributing expertise in society. The book raises important practical and moral questions. In an era when machines can outperform human beings at most tasks, what are the prospects for employment, who should own and control online expertise, and what tasks should be reserved exclusively for people? Based on the authors' in-depth research of more than 10 professions, and illustrated by numerous examples from each, this is the first book to assess and question the relevance of the professions in the 21st century. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2015 Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
The Book of Swords
Summary
New epic fantasy in the grand tradition - including a never-before-published Song of Ice and Fire story by George R. R. Martin! Fantasy fiction has produced some of the most unforgettable heroes ever conjured onto the page: Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné, Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Classic characters like these made sword and sorcery a storytelling sensation, a cornerstone of fantasy fiction - and an inspiration for a new generation of writers spinning their own outsize tales of magic and swashbuckling adventure. Now, in The Book of Swords, acclaimed editor and best-selling author Gardner Dozois presents an all-new anthology of original epic tales by a stellar cast of award-winning modern masters - many of them set in their authors' best-loved worlds. Join today's finest tellers of fantastic tales, including George R. R. Martin, K. J. Parker, Robin Hobb, Scott Lynch, Ken Liu, C. J. Cherryh, Daniel Abraham, Lavie Tidhar, Ellen Kushner, and more on action-packed journeys into the outer realms of dark enchantment and intrepid derring-do, featuring a stunning assortment of fearless swordsmen and warrior women who face down danger and death at every turn with courage, cunning, and cold steel. Featuring 16 all-new stories: "The Best Man Wins" by K. J. Parker "Her Father's Sword" by Robin Hobb "The Hidden Girl" by Ken Liu "The Sword of Destiny" by Matthew Hughes "'I Am a Handsome Man,' Said Apollo Crow" by Kate Elliott "The Triumph of Virtue" by Walter Jon Williams "The Mocking Tower" by Daniel Abraham "Hrunting" by C. J. Cherryh "A Long, Cold Trail" by Garth Nix "When I Was a Highwayman" by Ellen Kushner "The Smoke of Gold Is Glory" by Scott Lynch "The Colgrid Conundrum" by Rich Larson "The King's Evil" by Elizabeth Bear "Waterfalling" by Lavie Tidhar "The Sword Tyraste" by Cecelia Holland "The Sons of the Dragon" by George R. R. Martin And an introduction by Gardner Dozois Readers: Arthur Morey, Julia Whelan, Mark Deakins, Ralph Lister, Kirby Heyborne, Nicholas Guy Smith, Richard Brewer, Steve West, Elliott Hill, Kim Mai Guest, Katherine Mc Ewan, and John Lee
©2017 George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Scott Lynch, and Garth Nix (P)2017 Random House Audio
Magelord
Summary
Minalan gets medieval! When you defeat the invading goblin army, get knighted on the field of battle, gifted with lands and gold, usually your happily-ever-after is...happy. But now that Minalan the Spellmonger has been ennobled and enfiefed, Sire Minalan has a task cut out for him that makes defeating goblins seem like child's play: moving his very pregnant bride and a few thousand refugees from Boval Vale into the remote, sparsely peopled Domain of Sevendor. But when he arrives, he finds the land withered from neglect and filled with superstition and suspicion. A third of his domain has been conquered before he got there, and the castle he now owns hasn't been maintained in decades. As Minalan manages the challenges of being a noble, being a mage knight, being the lord of the manor, being a landlord, and fending off a belligerent (and well-armed) neighbor, he also has to learn how to be a husband, father, and a leader of the people. Then the fateful night his son is finally born, Minalan learns the nature of fear, as he, his family, and his very realm are forever changed when the spell he casts to save their lives transforms the land. Minalan, his apprentices Sir Tyndal and Sir Rondal, his dour but efficacious castellan Sir Cei, and his moody wife struggle through the winter and defend their domain in his attempt to prove what a Magelord can do for his people when he puts magic in their service. But in the distance, the threat of a renewed war with the goblins looms as they approach the Riverlands, the Gilmoran baronies that are the heart of the Duchies. The contentious High Magi convene to constitute the new Arcane Orders, while the fanatical Royal Censorate of Magic plots to defeat them, and the thousands of hedgemagi, witches, and footwizards they terrorized now see Minalan as a hero. The sinister family schemes to promote Duke Rard II to become King Rard I of the newly united Kingdom of Castalshar - over a pile of bodies, if necessary. And suddenly, out of the sky, fall dragons in the service of the Dead God to strike at the strength of the nascent Kingdom. How can Sire Minalan fight goblins, plots, poverty, and politics, all from his remote and rustic vale, while keeping the peasants in line and the Warbird of West Fleria at bay? With wit, courage, determination, and a healthy dose of magic. And when the new king tasks him to find a way to slay a dragon, an ordinary knight might shy away from the quest. For Sire Minalan, it's just another day on the job as a magelord!
©2017 Terry Mancour (P)2017 Podium Publishing
The Dreaming Void
Summary
AD 3580. The Intersolar Commonwealth has spread through the galaxy to over a thousand star systems. It is a culture of rich diversity with a place for everyone. A powerful navy protects it from any hostile species that may lurk among the stars. For Commonwealth citizens, even death has been overcome. At the center of the galaxy is the Void, a strange, artificial universe created by aliens billions of years ago, shrouded by an event horizon more deadly than any natural black hole. In order to function, it is gradually consuming the mass of the galaxy. Watched over by its ancient enemies, the Raiel, the Void's expansion is barely contained. Inigo dreams of the sweet life within the Void and shares his visions with billions of avid believers. When he mysteriously disappears, Inigo's followers decide to embark on a pilgrimage into the Void to live the life of their messiah's dreams - a pilgrimage that the Raiel claim will trigger a catastrophic expansion of the Void. Aaron is a man whose only memory is his own name. He doesn't know who he used to be or what he is. All he does know is that his job is to find the missing messiah and stop the pilgrimage. He's not sure how to do that, but whoever he works for has provided some pretty formidable weaponry that ought to help. Meanwhile, inside the Void, a youth called Edeard is coming to terms with his unusually strong telepathic powers. A junior constable in Makkathran, he starts to challenge the corruption and decay that have poisoned the city. He is determined that his fellow citizens should know hope again. What Edeard doesn't realize is just how far his message of hope is reaching.
©2007 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2008 Tantor
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Summary
Number-one New York Times Best Seller Now a Netflix Film A remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German Occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name. âTreat yourself to this book, please - I canât recommend it highly enough.â (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love) âI wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.â January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man sheâs never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb.... As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends - and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island - boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the societyâs members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever. Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises and of finding connection in the most surprising ways. Praise for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society âA jewel... Poignant and keenly observed, Guernsey is a small masterpiece about love, war, and the immeasurable sustenance to be found in good books and good friends.â (People) âA book-loverâs delight, an implicit and sometimes explicit paean to all things literary.â (Chicago Sun-Times) âA sparkling epistolary novel radiating wit, lightly worn erudition and written with great assurance and aplomb.â (The Sunday Times [London]) âCooked perfectly à point: subtle and elegant in flavour, yet emotionally satisfying to the finish.â (The Times [London])
©2008 Marry Ann Shaffrer and Annie Barrows (P)2008 Random House, Inc.
Musicophilia
Summary
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does - humans are a musical species. Oliver Sacksâs compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people. He explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinsonâs disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimerâs or amnesia.Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.Â
©2007 Oliver Sacks (P)2007 Books on Tape
Beauty's Kingdom
Summary
The erotic Sleeping Beauty trilogy now continues with a fourth novel by master storyteller and best-selling author of Prince Lestat, Anne Rice, writing as A. N. Roquelaure. Mega-best-selling author Annie Rice returns to where she left off in Beauty's Release with the disappearance of Queen Eleanor in Bellavalten. Now, 20 years after they were forced to leave the kingdom to return to their homeland, Beauty and her husband, Laurent, agree to travel back as its king and queen, to uphold the ways of complete sensual surrender with a twist: They now insist on voluntary servitude in Bellavalten. Countless eager princes, princesses, lords, ladies, and common folk journey to Beauty's new kingdom, where she and her husband awaken their domain, ushering in a new era of desire, longing, and sexual ecstasy. Provocative and stirring, Rice's imaginative retelling of the Sleeping Beauty myth will be hailed by her longtime fans and new listeners of erotica just discovering the novels. This audiobook is intended for mature audiences.
©2015 A. N. Roquelaure and Anne Rice (P)2015 Penguin Audio
Spellmonger
Summary
Nominee, 2018 Audie Awards â Fantasy Minalan gave up a promising career as a professional warmage to live the quiet life of a village spellmonger in the remote mountain valley of Boval. It was a peaceful, beautiful little fief, far from the dangerous feudal petty squabbles of the Five Duchies, on the world of Callidore. There were cows. Lots of cows. And cheese. For six months things went well: He found a quaint little shop, he befriended the local lord, the village folk loved him, he found a sharp young apprentice to help out, and, best yet, he met a comely young widow with the prettiest eyes. Then one night Minalan is forced to pick up his mageblade again to defend his adopted home from the vanguard of an army of goblins - gurvani, they call themselves - bent on a genocidal crusade against all mankind. And that was the good news. The bad news was that their shamans were armed with more magical power than has been seen since the days of the ancient Imperial Magocracy - and their leader, a mysterious, vengeful force of hate and dark magic, is headed directly to Boval Vale, along with a massive invading army of gurvani. The good people of Boval and their spellmonger have only one choice: to hole up in the over-sized Boval Castle and hope they can endure a siege against hundreds of thousands of goblins. When the people look to him for hope, Minalan does his best, but the odds are depressing: there are multitudes of goblins, and they want Boval Vale as a staging ground for a vengeful invasion of the whole Five Duchies. Add to his troubles a jealous rival mage, a motley band of mercenaries, a delusional liege lord who insists victory is at hand despite the hordes at his door, a dour castellan, a moody, pregnant girlfriend and a catty ex-girlfriend who specializes in sex magic - all trapped in a stinking, besieged castle with no hope of rescue, and you'll understand why Minalan is willing to take his chances with the goblins. All that stands between the gurvani horde and the people of the Five Duchies is one tired, overwhelmed baker's son who wanted nothing more than to be a simple village spellmonger.Â
©2011 Terry Mancour (P)2017 Podium Publishing
Young Philby
Summary
An elegant, twisty spy story by a true master of the craft. Best-selling novelist Robert Littell employs all his considerable skills in telling the story of Kim Philby through the eyes of more than 20 true-life characters. As each layer is revealed, the question arises: Who really was this man? When Kim Philby fled to Moscow in 1963, he became the most infamous double agent in history. A member of Britain's intelligence service since World War II, he had risen to become their chief officer in Washington, D.C. after the war. The exposure of other members of the group of double agents known as the Cambridge Five led to the revelation that he had been working for Russia for even longer than he had been part of MI6. Yet he escaped, and spent the last 25 years of his life in Moscow. In Young Philby, Robert Littell tells the story of the spy's early years. In the words of his friends, lovers, and Soviet handlers, we see the development of a fascinating, flawed man who kept people guessing about his ideals and allegiances until the very end.
©2012 Robert Littell (P)2012 Macmillan Audio
Metropolis
Summary
"[Metropolis is] a perfect goodbye - and first hello - to its hero...Bernie Gunther has, at last, come home." (Washington Post) New York Times best-selling author Philip Kerr treats listeners to his beloved hero's origins, exploring Bernie Gunther's first weeks on Berlin's Murder Squad. Summer, 1928. Berlin, a city where nothing is verboten. In the night streets, political gangs wander, looking for fights. Daylight reveals a beleaguered populace barely recovering from the postwar inflation, often jobless, reeling from the reparations imposed by the victors. At central police HQ, the Murder Commission has its hands full. A killer is on the loose, and though he scatters many clues, each is a dead end. It's almost as if he is taunting the cops. Meanwhile, the press is having a field day. This is what Bernie Gunther finds on his first day with the Murder Commisson. He's been taken on because the people at the top have noticed him - they think he has the makings of a first-rate detective. But not just yet. Right now, he has to listen and learn. Metropolis, completed just before Philip Kerr's untimely death, is the capstone of a 14-book journey through the life of Kerr's signature character, Bernhard Genther, a sardonic and wisecracking homicide detective caught up in an increasingly Nazified Berlin police department. In many ways, it is Bernie's origin story and, as Kerr's last novel, it is also, alas, his end. Metropolis is also a tour of a city in chaos: of its seedy sideshows and sex clubs, of the underground gangs that run its rackets, and its bewildered citizens - the lost, the homeless, the abandoned. It is Berlin as it edges toward the new world order that Hitler will soon usher in. And Bernie? He's a quick study, and he's learning a lot. Including, to his chagrin, that when push comes to shove, he isn't much better than the gangsters in doing whatever he must to get what he wants.Â
©2019 Philip Kerr (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Arcanist
Summary
A Belligerent Springtide! Being the most powerful wizard in the world can be a challenge.... After defending his fledgling realm against the undead lord Gaja Katar all winter long, Count Minalan of the Magelaw faces a new threat in the spring: the Nemovort Shakathet, favored of Korbal, leading the mighty hordes out of the Penumbra. This time, Minalan faces a real strategist; one who drives his armies with purpose and efficiency. The road to war leads through Megelin Castle and the vulnerable lands to the south of Vanado. Old enemies will become allies, and old friends will become valuable assets. War, however, is not what is preoccupying Minalan; the knowledge of the end of the world is. As he broods on existential issues and debates with various goddesses and Alka Alon about Calidoreâs fate, he must overcome his own fears and anxieties and impose order on the situation before everything goes into the chamber pot. The solution? Hire an arcanist, a specialist in the obscure and trivial, to organize and investigate the many matters Minalan has to manage and bring them to order.
©2020 Terry Mancour (P)2020 Podium Audio
Revelation Space
Summary
Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason. And if that reason is uncovered, the universe - and reality itself - could be irrevocably altered.
©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2008 Tantor
This Body of Death
Summary
Thomas Lynley is called back to Scotland Yard when the body of a woman is found stabbed and abandoned in an isolated London cemetery. His former team doesn't trust the leadership of their new department chief, Isabelle Ardery, but Lynley may be the sole person who can see beneath his superior officer's hard-as-nails exterior to a hidden and possibly attractive vulnerability. While Lynley works in London, his former colleagues Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata follow the murder trail south to the New Forest, a beautiful and strange place where outsiders are not entirely welcome. What they don't know is that more than one dark secret lurks among the trees, and that their investigation will lead them to an outcome that is both tragic and shocking. A multi-layered jigsaw puzzle of a story skillfully structured to keep readers guessing until the very end, This Body of Death is a magnificent achievement from a writer at the peak of her powers.
©2010 Susan Elizabeth George (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers
The Prefect
Summary
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multifaceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds. His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that left 900 people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus. But then his investigation uncovers something far more serious than mass slaughter---a covert plot by an enigmatic entity who seeks nothing less than total control of the Glitter Band. Before long, the Panoply detectives are fighting against something worse than tyranny, in a struggle that will lead to more devastation and more death. And Dreyfus will discover that to save what is precious, you may have to destroy it.
©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2011 Tantor
The City & The City
Summary
New York Times best-selling author China Miéville delivers his most accomplished novel yet, an existential thriller set in a city unlike any other, real or imagined. When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined. Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel's equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman's secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives. What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities. Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & The City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights. Hugo Award, Best Novel, 2010
©2009 China Mieville (P)2009 Random House
The Temporal Void
Summary
Long ago, a human astrophysicist, Inigo, began dreaming scenes from the life of a remarkable human being named Edeard, who lived within the Void, a self-contained microuniverse at the heart of the galaxy. There, under the beneficent gaze of mysterious godlike entities, humans possessed uncanny psychic abilities, and Edeard's were the strongest of all. Equally strong was his determination to bring justice and freedom to a world terrorized by criminal violence and corruption. Inigo's inspirational dreams, shared by hundreds of millions throughout the galaxy-spanning gaiafield, gave birth to a religion - Living Dream. But when the appearance of a Second Dreamer seemed to trigger the expansion of the Void - an expansion that is devouring everything in its path -the Intersolar Commonwealth was thrown into turmoil. With the adherents of Living Dream determined to set forth on a dangerous pilgrimage into the Void, interstellar war threatens to erupt. With time running out, the fate of humanity hinges on a handful of people. There is Araminta, only now awakening to the unwelcome fact that she is the mysterious Second Dreamer - and to the dire responsibilities that go with it; Inigo, whose private dreams hint at a darker truth behind Edeard's legendary life; Paula Myo, the ruthless field operative of the Commonwealth, whose search for Araminta and Inigo is about to yield a most unpleasant surprise; and Justine, whose desperate gamble places her within the Void, where the godlike Skylords hold the power to save the universe...or destroy it.
©2008 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2009 Tantor
Salvation Lost
Summary
All the best in humanity rises to meet a powerful alien threat in the sequel to Salvation - part of an all-new trilogy from "the owner of the most powerful imagination in science fiction" (Ken Follett). The comparative utopia of 23rd-century Earth is about to go dreadfully awry when a seemingly benign alien race is abruptly revealed to be one of the worst threats humanity has ever faced. Driven by an intense religious extremism, the Olyix are determined to bring everyone to their version of god as they see it. But they may have met their match in humanity, who are not about to go gently into that good night or spend the rest of their days cowering in hiding. As human ingenuity and determination rises to the challenge, collective humanity has only one goal - to wipe this apparently undefeatable enemy from the face of creation. Even if it means playing a ridiculously long game indeed. But in a chaotic universe, it is hard to plan for every eventuality, and it is always darkest before the dawn.
©2019 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2019 Tantor
Edge of Eternity
Summary
Edge of Eternity is the sweeping, passionate conclusion to Ken Follett's extraordinary historical epic, The Century Trilogy. Throughout these books, Follett has followed the fortunes of five intertwined families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they make their way through the twentieth century. Now they come to one of the most tumultuous eras of all: the enormous social, political, and economic turmoil of the 1960s through the 1980s, from civil rights, assassinations, mass political movements and Vietnam to the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, presidential impeachment, revolution - and rock and roll. East German teacher Rebecca Hoffman discovers she's been spied on by the Stasi for years and commits an impulsive act that will affect her family for the rest of their lives. George Jakes, the child of a mixed-race couple, bypasses a corporate law career to join Robert F. Kennedy's Justice Department, and finds himself in the middle not only of the seminal events of the civil rights battle, but a much more personal battle of his own. Cameron Dewar, the grandson of a senator, jumps at the chance to do some official and unofficial espionage for a cause he believes in, only to discover that the world is a much more dangerous place than he'd imagined. Dimka Dvorkin, a young aide to Nikita Khrushchev, becomes a prime agent both for good and for ill as the United States and the Soviet Union race to the brink of nuclear war, while his twin sister, Tania, carves out a role that will take her from Moscow to Cuba to Prague to Warsaw - and into history. As always with Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. With the hand of a master, he brings us into a world we thought we knew but now will never seem the same again.
©2014 Ken Follett (P)2014 Penguin Audio
Pushing Ice
Summary
2057. Humanity has raised exploiting the solar system to an art form. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclear-powered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. And they're good at it. The Rockhopper is nearing the end of its current mission cycle, and everyone is desperate for some much-needed R & R, when startling news arrives from Saturn: Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, has inexplicably left its natural orbit and is now heading out of the solar system at high speed. As layers of camouflage fall away, it becomes clear that Janus was never a moon in the first place. It's some kind of machine - and it is now headed toward a fuzzily glimpsed artifact 260 light-years away. The Rockhopper is the only ship anywhere near Janus, and Bella Lind is ordered to shadow it for the few vital days before it falls forever out of reach. In accepting this mission, she sets her ship and her crew on a collision course with destiny - for Janus has more surprises in store, and not all of them are welcome.
©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2010 Tantor
Toy Soldiers
Summary
Apocalypse: Disorder and chaos ravage London when thousands are contaminated by the accidental discharge of an experimental bioweapon. The disease robs its hosts of rational thought, giving them a singular desire - find more living flesh to infect. Aftermath: Peter, alone by choice and oddly thriving, finds himself suddenly responsible for the life of someone other than himself. Elsewhere, other survivors stake their own claims to land and resources, but the inexplicable swarms of undead threaten to gather and dissipate constantly. Abandoned: The virus spreads to every corner of the country while the combined forces of the naval fleet set sail for deeper waters and leave the UK to its fate. The few groups that remain are separated after a fateful battle for England, left to their own devices. Adversity: As if flesh-hungry zombies weren't enough, a harsh winter strikes. Adaptation: The apocalypse continues in the penultimate chapter of the Toy Soldiers series. Will anybody make it out alive? Annihilation: Fleeing the seemingly unstoppable enemy, the survivors pin their hopes on a final attempt for freedom, but that means they must turn their backs on their home forever.
©2018, 2019, 2020 DHP Publishing (P)2020 Tantor
Shadowmage
Summary
Rescuers. Avengers. Thieves. Spies. The life of a knight mage is never easy, but sometimes the gods smile on you and grant you an errand of incredible complexity...without regards to casualties. When Tyndal and Rondal, journeymen wizards and knights errant, travel to southern Alshar to rescue a helpless boy and his mother, it sets in motion a series of events that will shake the foundations of the Five Duchies! While they are beginning their quest against the vast criminal gang known as the Brotherhood of the Rat, the two knights encounter the Cats of Enultramar, a family of shadowmagi (masters of shadow, illusion, and obfuscation) and high-class thieves who help them discover a plot to attack the rich lands and prosperous people of Alshar, from the Wilderlands to the Great Bay...and only Rondal and Tyndal can stop them. From thugs and thieves to irate Censors of Magic to dragons and undead, the intrepid pair face the challenges of a new land and an old enemy. For when a new, powerful threat in the form of the Necromancer of Olum Seheri looms against them, the brave young knights magi can only hope to defeat it with the help of a...shadowmage! Â Includes special bonus story The Spellmonger's Yule!
©2016 Terry Mancour (P)2019 Podium Publishing
In the Land of the Everliving
Summary
Stephen R. Lawhead, the critically-acclaimed author of the Pendragon Cycle, continues his Eirlandia Celtic fantasy series with In the Land of the Everliving. Conor and his sword companions must leave the safety of the faéry kingdom for the barbarian Scálda threaten to overrun Eirlandia. As he fights for his peopleâs survival, Conor discovers that several of the clan leaders have betrayed their nation by aiding the Scálda. The corruption is such that Conor and his men choose to become outcasts, clan-less and open to attack by friend and foe alike.  They form their own warband...and the beginning of a legend as Conor unites the common people of Eirlandia to drive the poison from their land.
©2019 Stephen R. Lawhead (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
The Scions of Shannara
Summary
New York Times best seller Since the death of the Druid Allanon, the Four Lands have changed profoundly, with magic strictly forbidden in the Southland, now under totalitarian rule. Yet Par still has some power of the Wishsong. When he accidently brings a mythic horror to life, a man calling himself Cogline drives it away. Cogline brings a message from Allanon: venture to the dread Hadeshorn, along with the other Scions of Shannara. For in the future, all life in the Four Lands will be destroyed. To prevent this terrible fate, Allanon commands Par to recover the long-lost Sword of Shannara, a task that is next to impossible. Thus continues the enthralling Shannara epic, a spellbinding tale of adventure, magic, and myth....
©2000 Terry Brooks (P)2016 Random House Audio
The Bat
Summary
Available in English at last! The first book in the remarkable, best-selling Harry Hole series from Jo Nesbø.
Before Harry took on the neo-Nazi gangs of Oslo, before he met Rakel, before The Snowman tried to take everything he held dear, he went to Australia. Harry Hole is sent to Sydney to investigate the murder of Inger Holter, a young Norwegian girl who was working in a bar. Initially sidelined as an outsider, Harry becomes central to the Australian police investigation when they start to notice a number of unsolved rape and murder cases around the country. The victims were usually young blondes. Inger had a number of admirers, each with his own share of secrets, but there is no obvious suspect and the pattern of the other crimes seems impossible to crack. Then a circus performer is brutally murdered, followed by yet another young woman. Harry is in a race against time to stop a highly intelligent killer who is bent on total destruction.
©2013 Jo Nesbø (P)2013 Random House Audio
Salvation
Summary
In 2204, humanity is expanding into the wider galaxy in leaps and bounds. Cutting-edge technology of linked jump gates has rendered most forms of transportation - including starships - virtually obsolete. Every place on Earth, every distant planet humankind has settled, is now merely a step away from any other. And all seems wonderful - until a crashed alien spaceship of unknown origin is found on a newly located world 89 light-years from Earth, carrying a cargo as strange as it is horrifying. To assess the potential of the threat a high-powered team is dispatched to investigate. But one of them may not be all they seem.... Bursting with tension and big ideas, Salvation is the first book of an all-new series that highlights the inventiveness of an author at the top of his game.
©2018 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2018 Tantor
The Miracle of Mindfulness
Summary
In this beautiful and lucid guide, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh offers gentle anecdotes and practical exercises as a means of learning the skills of mindfulness - being awake and fully aware. From washing the dishes to answering the phone to peeling an orange, he reminds us that each moment holds within it an opportunity to work toward greater self-understanding and peacefulness.
©1975 Thich Nhat Hanh (P)2012 Tantor
Priest of Bones
Summary
The war is over, and army priest Tomas Piety heads home with Sergeant Bloody Anne at his side. But things have changed while he was away: His crime empire has been stolen, and the people of Ellinburg - his people - have run out of food, hope, and places to hide. Tomas sets out to reclaim what was his with help from Anne, his brother, Jochan, and his new gang: the Pious Men. But when he finds himself dragged into a web of political intrigue once again, everything gets more complicated. As the Pious Men fight shadowy foreign infiltrators in the back-street taverns, brothels, and gambling dens of Tomas' old life, it becomes clear:Â The war is only just beginning.
©2018 Peter McLean (P)2018 Penguin Audio
House of Suns
Summary
Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings. Not only are Campion and Purslane late for their 30-second reunion but they have also brought along an amnesiac golden robot for a guest. But the wayward shatterlings get more than the scolding they expect: they face the discovery that someone has a very serious grudge against the Gentian line, and there is a very real possibility of traitors in their midst. The surviving shatterlings have to dodge exotic weapons while they regroup to try to solve the mystery of who is persecuting them and why---before their ancient line is wiped out of existence forever.
©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2009 Tantor
The Long Walk
Summary
Twenty-six-year-old cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army in 1939 during the German-Soviet partition of Poland and sent to the Siberian Gulag. In the spring of 1941, he escaped with six of his fellow prisoners, including one American. Thus began their astonishing trek to freedom. With no map or compass but only an ax head, a homemade knife, and a week's supply of food, the compatriots spent a year making their way on foot to British India, through 4,000 miles of the most forbidding terrain on earth. They braved the Himalayas, the desolate Siberian tundra, icy rivers, and the great Gobi Desert, always a hair's breadth from death. Finally arriving, Rawicz reenlisted in the Polish army to fight the Germans.
©2006 Slavomir Rawicz (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.
As the Crow Flies
Summary
Encompassing three continents and spanning over 60 years, best-selling author Jeffrey Archer's As the Crow Flies brings to life a magnificent tale of one man's rise from rags to riches set against the backdrop of a changing century. Growing up in the slums of East End London, Charlie Trumper dreams of someday running his grandfather's fruit and vegetable barrow. That day comes suddenly when his grandfather dies leaving him the floundering business. With the help of Becky Salmon, an enterprising young woman, Charlie sets out to make a name for himself as "The Honest Trader". But the brutal onset of World War I takes Charlie far from home and into the path of a dangerous enemy whose legacy of evil follows Charlie and his family for generations.Â
©1991 Jeffrey Archer (P)2015 Macmillan Audio
Police
Summary
Harry Hole returns - or does he? - in a terrifyingly paced, vertiginous new roller coaster of a thriller by the internationally best-selling author of The Snowman and The Redeemer, "the king of Scandinavian crime fiction" (Kirkus). The police urgently need Harry Holeâ¦. A killer is stalking Oslo's streets. Police officers are being slain at the scenes of crimes they once investigated but failed to solve. The murders are brutal, the media reaction hysterical. But this time, Harry can't help.... For years, detective Harry Hole has been at the center of every major criminal investigation in Oslo. His dedication to his job and his brilliant insights have saved the lives of countless people. But now, with those he loves most facing terrible danger, Harry is not in a position to protect anyone. Least of all himself...
©2013 Jo Nesbø (P)2013 Random House Audio
Zero Hour
Summary
Harry S. Dent Jr., best-selling author of The Demographic Cliff and The Sale of a Lifetime, predicted the populist wave that has driven the Brexit vote, the election of Donald Trump, and other recent shocks around the world. Now he returns with the definitive guide to protect your investments and prosper in the age of the anti-globalist backlash.  The turn of the 2020s will mark an extremely rare convergence of low points for multiple political, economic, and demographic cycles. The result will be a major financial crash and global upheaval that will dwarf the Great Recession of the 2000s - and maybe even the Great Depression of the 1930s. We're facing the onset of what Dent calls "Economic Winter". In Zero Hour, he and Andrew Pancholi (author of The Market Timing Report newsletter) explain all of these cycles, which influence everything from currency valuations to election returns, from economic growth rates in Asia to birthrates in Europe. You'll learn, for instance: Why the most-hyped technologies of recent years (self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, blockchain) won't pay off until the 2030s Why China may be the biggest bubble in the global economy (and you'd be a fool to invest there) Why you should invest in the health-care and pharmaceutical industries and pull out of real estate and automotive Why putting your faith in gold is a bad idea Fortunately, Zero Hour includes a range of practical strategies to help you turn the upheaval ahead to your advantage, so your family can be prepared and protected. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. Â
©2017 Harry S. Dent and Andrew Pancholi (P)2017 Penguin Audio
The Naked God
Summary
The Confederation is starting to collapse politically and economically, allowing the "possessed" to infiltrate more worlds. Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth, destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose goal doesn't quite match her own. The campaign to liberate Mortonridge from the possessed degenerates into a horrendous land battle, the kind that hasn't been seen by humankind for 600 years; then some of the protagonists escape in a very unexpected direction. Joshua Calvert and Syrinx fly their starships on a mission to find the Sleeping God, which an alien race believes holds the key to overthrowing the possessed. The Naked God is the brilliant climax to Peter F. Hamilton's awe-inspiring Night's Dawn trilogy.
©1999 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2016 Tantor
Judas Unchained
Summary
Peter F. Hamilton's superbly imagined, cunningly plotted interstellar adventures are conceived on a staggeringly epic scale and filled with fully realized human and alien characters as complex as they are engaging. No mere world builder, Hamilton creates entire universes - and he does so with irresistible flair and intelligence. His previous novel, the acclaimed Pandora's Star, introduced the Intersolar Commonwealth, a star-spanning civilization of the 24th century. Robust, peaceful, and confident, the Commonwealth dispatched a ship to investigate the mystery of a disappearing star, only to inadvertently unleash a predatory alien species that turned on its liberators, striking hard, fast, and utterly without mercy. Coexistence is impossible with the technologically advanced aliens, who are genetically hardwired to exterminate all other forms of life. Twenty-three planets have already fallen to the invaders, with casualties in the hundreds of millions. And no one knows when or where the genocidal Prime will strike next. Nor are the Prime the only threat. For more than 100 years, a shadowy cult, the Guardians of Selfhood, has warned that an alien with mind-control abilities impossible to detect or resist - the Starflyer - has secretly infiltrated the Commonwealth. Branded as terrorists, the Guardians and their leader, Bradley Johansson, have been hunted by relentless investigator Paula Myo. But now evidence suggests that the Guardians were right all along and that the Starflyer has placed agents in vital posts throughout the Commonwealth - agents who are now sabotaging the war effort. Is the Starflyer an ally of the Prime, or has it orchestrated a fight to the death between the two species for its own advantage? Caught between two deadly enemies, one a brutal invader striking from without, the other a remorseless cancer killing from within, the fractious Commonwealth must unite as never before. This will be humanity's finest hour - or its last gasp.
©2006 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2008 Tantor
Knife
Summary
Brilliant, audaciously rogue police officer Harry Hole, from The Snowman and The Thirst, is back and in the throes of a new, unanticipated rage - once again hunting the murderer who has haunted his entire career. Harry Hole is not in a good place. Rakel - the only woman he's ever loved - has ended it with him, permanently. He's been given a chance for a new start with the Oslo Police, but it's in the cold case office. What he really wants is to be investigating cases he suspects have ties to Svein Finne, the serial rapist and murderer who Harry helped put behind bars. And now, Finne is free after a decade-plus in prison - free and, Harry is certain, unreformed and ready to take up where he left off. But things will get worse. When Harry wakes up the morning after a drunken night with blood that's clearly not his own on his hands, it's only the very beginning of what will be a waking nightmare the likes of which even he could never have imagined.
©2019 Jo Nesbo (P)2019 Random House Audio
A Night Without Stars: A Novel of the Commonwealth
Summary
The planet is isolated from the rest of the universe, unable to seek help as it's targeted by hostile aliens. Bienvenido's ruling authorities have slowly responded to this gradual infiltration, but they have no idea that a highly organized invasion is now under way, designed to wipe out all human life on the planet. All factions must work together to survive. Unfortunately, due to prejudice against enhanced Eliter humans and crippling technophobia, the parochial government won't collaborate. Kysandra, known as the Warrior Angel, heads up the Eliter resistance. With their enhanced capabilities and technological know-how, they could avert disaster, but only if the authorities stop hunting them at every turn. Then, as both resistance and government are caught in a desperate race to save lives, the planet receives an unexpected visitor. As events escalate, petty power-plays, politics, and age-old prejudices may prove fatal. And as the more sophisticated hostiles can hijack a human body, humanity is undermined by spies within - wearing the faces of family and friends.
©2016 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2016 Tantor
Operation Mincemeat
Summary
As plans got under way for the Allied invasion of Sicily in June 1943, British counter-intelligence agent Ewen Montagu masterminded a scheme to mislead the Germans into thinking the next landing would occur in Greece. The innovative plot was so successful that the Germans moved some of their forces away from Sicily, and two weeks into the real invasion still expected an attack in Greece. This extraordinary operation called for a dead body, dressed as a Royal Marine officer and carrying false information about a pending Allied invasion of Greece, to wash up on a Spanish shore near the town of a known Nazi agent. Agent Montagu tells the story as only an insider could, offering fascinating details of the difficulties involved - especially in creating a persona for a man who never was - and of his profession as a spy and the risks involved in mounting such a complex operation. Failure could have had devastating results. Success, however, brought a decided change in the course of the war.
©2001 Ewen Montagu (P)2010 Random House
The Confessor
Summary
Detective Gabriel Allon returns in this stunning thriller of ancient and modern betrayal, long-buried secrets and unthinkable deeds. In Munich, writer Benjamin Stern enters his flat to find a man leafing through his research. When Stern confronts him, the man shoots him, murmurs a few words in Latin, gathers the papers and leaves. In Venice, art restorer and Israeli agent Gabriel Allon reads a message saying that Stern is dead; can he leave immediately? At the Vatican, a priest named Pietro paces in the garden, pondering the discoveries he has made, the enemies he will make, and the journey he must undertake. Silva weaves these three threads into a multilayered mystery peopled with memorable characters and distinguished by rich prose.
©2003 Daniel Silva (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.
Priest of Lies
Summary
Tomas Piety has been many things: soldier, priest, gangster...and spy. As Tomas's power grows, the nobility better watch their backs, in this dark and gritty epic fantasy series. People are weak, and the poorer and more oppressed they are, the weaker they become - until they can't take it anymore. And when they rise up...may the gods help their oppressors. When Tomas Piety returned from the war, he just wanted to rebuild his empire of crime with his gang of Pious Men. But his past as a spy for the Queen's Men drew him back in and brought him more power than he ever imagined. Now, with half of his city in ashes and the Queen's Men at his back, the webs of political intrigue stretch out from the capital to pull Tomas in. Dannsburg is calling. In Dannsburg the nobility fight with words, not blades, but the results are every bit as bloody. In this pit of beasts, Tomas must decide once and for all whether he is truly the people's champion...or just a priest of lies.
©2019 Peter McLean (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Lovely War
Summary
Listen to the novel New York Times best-selling author of The Alice Network Kate Quinn called "easily one of the best novels I have read all year". A critically acclaimed, multilayered romance set in the perilous days of World Wars I and II, where gods hold the fates - and the hearts - of four mortals in their hands. They are Hazel, James, Aubrey, and Colette. A classical pianist from London, a British would-be architect turned soldier, a Harlem-born ragtime genius in the US Army, and a Belgian orphan with a gorgeous voice and a devastating past. Their story, as told by goddess Aphrodite, who must spin the tale or face judgment on Mount Olympus, is filled with hope and heartbreak, prejudice and passion, and reveals that, though war is a formidable force, it's no match for the transcendent power of love. Hailed by critics, Lovely War has received seven starred reviews and is an indie best seller. Author Julie Berry has been called "a modern master of historical fiction" by Bookpage and "a celestially inspired storyteller" by The New York Times, and Lovely War is truly her masterwork.Â
©2019 Julie Berry (P)2019 Listening Library
Tooth and Claw
Summary
A tale of contention over love and money - among dragons. Jo Walton burst onto the fantasy scene with The King's Peace, acclaimed by writers as diverse as Poul Anderson, Robin Hobb, and Ken MacLeod. In 2002, she was voted the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Now Walton returns with a very different kind of fantasy story: the tale of a family dealing with the death of their father, of a son who goes to law for his inheritance, a son who agonizes over his father's deathbed confession, a daughter who falls in love, a daughter who becomes involved in the abolition movement, and a daughter sacrificing herself for her husband. Except that everyone in the story is a dragon, red in tooth and claw. Here is a world of politics and train stations, of churchmen and family retainers, of courtship and country houses... in which, on the death of an elder, family members gather to eat the body of the deceased. In which society's high-and-mighty members avail themselves of the privilege of killing and eating the weaker children, which they do with ceremony and relish, growing stronger thereby. You have never read a novel like Tooth and Claw.
©2003 Jo Walton (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Cockroaches
Summary
When the Norwegian ambassador to Thailand is found dead in a Bangkok brothel, Inspector Harry Hole is dispatched from Oslo to help hush up the case.
But once he arrives Harry discovers that this case is about much more than one random murder. There is something else, something more pervasive, scrabbling around behind the scenes. Or, put another way, for every cockroach you see in your hotel room, there are hundreds behind the walls. Surrounded by round-the-clock traffic noise, Harry wanders the streets of Bangkok lined with go-go bars, temples, opium dens, and tourist traps, trying to piece together the story of the ambassadorâs death even though no one asked him to, and no one wants him to - not even Harry himself.
©2014 Jo Nesbo (P)2014 Random House Audio
Lord Jim
Summary
Lord Jim tells the story of a young, idealistic Englishman - "as unflinching as a hero in a book" - who is disgraced by a single act of cowardice while serving as an officer on the Patna, a merchant-ship sailing from an eastern port. His life is ruined: an isolated scandal has assumed horrifying proportions. But then he is befriended by an older man named Marlow who helps to establish him in exotic Patusan, a remote Malay settlement where his courage is put to the test once more. Lord Jim is about courage and cowardice, self-knowledge and personal growth. It is one of the most profound and rewarding psychological novels in English. Set in the context of social change and colonial expansion in late Victorian England, it embodies in Jim the values and turmoil of a fading empire.
Public Domain (P)2010 Tantor
Winter of the World
Summary
Ken Follett here follows up his number-one New York Times best-seller Fall of Giants with a brilliant, pause-resistant epic about the heroism and honor of World War II and the dawn of the atomic age. Fall of Giants, the first novel in his extraordinary new historical epic, The Century Trilogy, was an international sensation, acclaimed as "sweeping and fascinating, a book that will consume you for days or weeks" (USA Today) and "grippingly told and readable to the end" (The New York Times Book Review). "If the next two volumes are as lively and entertaining as Fall of Giants," said The Washington Post, "they should be well worth waiting for." Winter of the World picks up right where the first book left off, as its five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, Welsh - enter a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the Spanish Civil War and the great dramas of World War II, up to the explosions of the American and Soviet atomic bombs. Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parents, finds her life engulfed by the Nazi tide until she commits a deed of great courage and heartbreak.... American brothers Woody and Chuck Dewar, each with a secret, take separate paths to momentous events, one in Washington, the other in the bloody jungles of the Pacific.... English student Lloyd Williams discovers in the crucible of the Spanish Civil War that he must fight Communism just as hard as Fascism.... Daisy Peshkov, a driven American social climber, cares only for popularity and the fast set, until the war transforms her life, not just once but twice, while her cousin Volodya carves out a position in Soviet intelligence that will affect not only this war - but the war to come. These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as their experiences illuminate the cataclysms that marked the century. From the drawing rooms of the rich to the blood and smoke of battle, their lives intertwine, propelling the reader into dramas of ever-increasing complexity. As always with Ken Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. With passion and the hand of a master, he brings us into a world we thought we knew, but now will never seem the same again.
©2012 Ken Follett (P)2012 Penguin Audiobooks
Provence A-Z
Summary
An indispensable, richly informative, and always entertaining audio sourcebook on Provence, by the writer who has made the region his own. Though organized from A to Z, this is hardly a conventional work of reference. It is rather a selection of those aspects of Provence that Peter Mayle, in almost 20 years there, has found to be the most interesting, curious, delicious, or down-right fun. In more than 170 entries, he speaks about subjects as wide-ranging as architecture and zingue-zingue-zoun (in the local patois, a word meant to describe the sound of a violin), and as diverse as expatriates, Aix-en-Provence, the Provençal character, legends, lavender, linguistic oddities, the museum of the French Foreign Legion, the museum of the corkscrew, the origins of "La Marseillaise", and a bawdy folklore character named Fanny. And, of course, he tells us about food and drink: vin rosé, truffles, olives, melons, bouillabaisse, the cheese that killed a Roman emperor, even a cure for indigestion. Provence A-Z is a delight for Peter Mayle's ever-growing audience and the perfect complement to any guidebook on Provence, or, for that matter, France.
©2006 Escargot Productions, Ltd (P)2006 Books on Tape
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Summary
The last and most famous of D. H. Lawrence's novels, Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in 1928 and banned in England and the United States as pornographic. While sexually tame by today's standards, the book is memorable for better reasons---Lawrence's masterful and lyrical prose, and a vibrant story that takes us bodily into the world of its characters. As the novel opens, Constance Chatterley finds herself trapped in an unfulfilling marriage to a rich aristocrat whose war wounds have left him paralyzed and impotent. After a brief but unsatisfying affair with a playwright, Lady Chatterley enjoys an extremely passionate relationship with the gamekeeper on the family estate, Oliver Mellors. As Lady Chatterley falls in love and conceives a child with Mellors, she moves from the heartless, bloodless world of the intelligentsia and aristocracy into a vital and profound connection rooted in sexual fulfillment. Through this novel, Lawrence attempted to revive in the human consciousness an awareness of savage sensuality, a sensuality with the power to free men and women from the enslaving sterility of modern technology and intellectualism. Perhaps even more relevant today than when it first appeared, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a triumph of passion and an erotic celebration of life.
Public Domain (P)2011 Tantor
The English Assassin
Summary
Israeli art restorer and occasional secret agent Gabriel Allon has a problem. A prominent Swiss banker has called him to Switzerland to restore his Raphael. The problem is that Allon finds the banker dead in front of his Raphael, and he's the prime suspect. After some diplomatic intervention, Allon is freed. However, the banker's daughter, wracked by guilt, tells him that her father's cache of French Impressionist paintings, acquired under dubious circumstances during the Second World War, has been stolen by the murderers. Once Allon knows about the banker's wartime misdeeds, he attracts the attention of a secret Swiss organization dedicated to suppressing knowledge of all such crimes, and he is pursued by a shadowy killer known only as "the Englishman."
©2002 Daniel Silva (P)2002 Books on Tape, Inc.
The Red Sphinx
Summary
For the first time in English in over a century comes a new translation of the forgotten sequel to Dumas' The Three Musketeers, continuing the dramatic tale of Cardinal Richelieu and his implacable enemies. In 1844, Alexandre Dumas published The Three Musketeers, a novel so famous and still so popular today that it scarcely needs introduction. Shortly thereafter he wrote a sequel, Twenty Years After, that resumed the adventures of his swashbuckling heroes. Later, toward the end of his career, Dumas wrote The Red Sphinx, another direct sequel to The Three Musketeers that begins not 20 years later but a mere 20 days afterward. The Red Sphinx picks up right where the The Three Musketeers left off, continuing the stories of Cardinal Richelieu, Queen Anne, and King Louis XIII - and introducing a charming new hero, the Comte de Moret, a real historical figure from the period. A young cavalier newly arrived in Paris, Moret is an illegitimate son of the former king and thus half-brother to King Louis. The French Court seethes with intrigue as king, queen, and cardinal all vie for power, and young Moret soon finds himself up to his handsome neck in conspiracy, danger - and passionate romance. Dumas wrote 75 chapters of The Red Sphinx for serial publication but never finished it, and so the novel languished for almost a century before its first book publication in France in 1946. While Dumas never completed the book, he had earlier written a separate novella, The Dove, that recounted the final adventures of Moret and Cardinal Richelieu. Now for the first time, in one cohesive narrative, The Red Sphinx and The Dove make a complete and satisfying story line - a rip-roaring novel of historical adventure, heretofore unknown to English-language listeners, by the great Alexandre Dumas, king of the swashbucklers.
Public Domain (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
131 Days
Summary
Strength. Honor. Death. Once every year, in the city of Sunja, gladiators meet within the arena known as Sunja's Pit. Some men enter for the lure of fortune, some for the fame, and some simply for the fight. The games continue for days until a champion is finally crowned. Or until all involved perish. Four companions struggle to change their lives in and out of the arena as it becomes clear that to be a Free Trained pit fighter is to live with a mark on one's head. And not everyone is pleased to learn of their plans, as the four warriors soon discover that the path to establishing a formal presence in the games, after the season has started, is infinitely more difficult than expected. All the while, unseen forces watch, waiting for the best time to strike at the companions and take everything that they have. This is blood sport at its finest. At its worst. At its longest.
©2013 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2018 Podium Publishing
The Frozen Shroud
Summary
Death has come twice to Ravenbank, a remote community in Englandâs Lake District, each time on Halloween. Just before the First World War, a young womanâs corpse was found, with a makeshift shroud frozen to her battered face. Her ghost - the Faceless Woman - is said to walk through Ravenbank on Halloween. Five years ago, another woman, Shenagh Moss, was murdered, and again her face was covered to hide her injuries. Daniel Kind, a specialist in the history of murder, becomes fascinated by the old cases and wonders whether the obvious suspects really did commit the crimes. He spends Halloween at a party in Ravenbank - only to find death returning to this beautiful but isolated spot. Once more, the victim is a woman; once more her damaged face is shrouded from view.
©2013 Martin Edwards (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Scarlet Gospels
Summary
The long-anticipated new novel from best-selling author Clive Barker. The gates to hell are open, and something beckons.... The last of Earth's magicians are living in fear. A Cenobite Hell Priest known as Pinhead is killing them off, gorging on their knowledge to enhance his own magical powers as part of a quest to takeover hell. Meanwhile Private Investigator Harry D'Amour is fulfilling the final wishes of the dead, who communicate with his business associate, the blind medium Norma Paine. But while investigating one such case, Harry inadvertently opens up a rift between hell and the real world. When nemesis Pinhead emerges through the portal, a vicious battle ensues. After failing to enlist Harry as one of his Scarlet Gospels, an elite group of indefatigable messengers who will witness his takeover of hell, Pinhead captures Norma, and Harry realizes he must go through hell - literally - to save her.
©2015 Clive Barker (P)2015 Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Century Rain
Summary
Three hundred years from now, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. Archaeologist Verity Auger specializes in the exploration of its surviving landscape. Now, her expertise is required for a far greater purpose. Something astonishing has been discovered at the far end of a wormhole: mid-20th-century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber. Somewhere on this alternate planet is a device capable of destroying both worlds at either end of the wormhole. And Verity must find the device, and the man who plans to activate it, before it's too late - for the past and the future of two worlds.
©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2010 Tantor
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Summary
Includes a bonus PDF with a character chart! One of the twentieth centuryâs enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prizeâwinning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the BuendÃa family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the BuendÃa family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America. Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility, the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truthâthese universal themes dominate the novel. Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an account of the history of the human race. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©1964 Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez (P)2013 Blackstone Audio
Out of Our Minds
Summary
There is a paradox. As children, most of us think we are highly creative; as adults many of us think we are not. What changes as children grow up? Organizations across the globe are competing in a world that is changing faster than ever. They say they need people who can think creatively, who are flexible and quick to adapt. Too often they can't find them. Why not? In this provocative and inspiring book, Ken Robinson addresses three vital questions: Why is it essential to promote creativity? Business leaders, politicians and educators emphasize the vital importance of promoting creativity and innovation. Why does this matter so much? What is the problem? Why do so many people think they're not creative? Young children are buzzing with ideas. What happens as we grow up and go through school to make us think we are not creative? What can be done about it? What is creativity? What can companies, schools and organizations do to develop creativity and innovation in a deliberate and systematic way? In this extensively revised and updated version of his best-selling classic, Ken Robinson offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding creativity in education and in business. He argues that people and organizations everywhere are dealing with problems that originate in schools and universities and that many people leave education with no idea at all of their real creative abilities. Out of Our Minds is a passionate and powerful call for radically different approaches to leadership, teaching and professional development to help us all to meet the extraordinary challenges of living and working in the 21st century.
©2011 Ken Robinson (P)2011 Tantor
The Pandemic Century
Summary
Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms. In The Pandemic Century, a lively account of scares both infamous and less known, Mark Honigsbaum combines reportage with the history of science and medical sociology to artfully reconstruct epidemiological mysteries and the ecology of infectious diseases. We meet dedicated disease detectives, obstructive or incompetent public health officials, and brilliant scientists often blinded by their own knowledge of bacteria and viruses. Like man-eating sharks, predatory pathogens are always present in nature, waiting to strike; when one is seemingly vanquished, others appear in its place. These pandemics remind us of the limits of scientific knowledge, as well as the role that human behavior and technologies play in the emergence and spread of microbial diseases.
©2019 Mark Honigsbaum (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Trinity Six
Summary
The most closely guarded secret of the Cold War is about to be exposed â the identity of a SIXTH member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring. And people are killing for it.... London, 1992. Late one night, Edward Crane, 76, is declared dead at a London hospital. An obituary describes him only as a 'resourceful career diplomat'. But Crane was much more than that â and the circumstances surrounding his death are far from what they seem. Fifteen years later, academic Sam Gaddis needs money. When a journalist friend asks for his help researching a possible sixth member of the notorious Trinity spy ring, Gaddis knows that she's onto a story that could turn his fortunes around. But within hours the journalist is dead, apparently from a heart attack. Taking over her investigation, Gaddis trails a man who claims to know the truth about Edward Crane. Europe still echoes with decades of deadly disinformation on both sides of the Iron Curtain. And as Gaddis follows a series of leads across the continent, he approaches a shocking revelation â one which will rock the foundations of politics from London to Moscow.
©2011 Charles Cumming (P)2011 Macmillan
Mysteries of the Middle Ages
Summary
After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today.  By placing the image of the Virgin Mary at the center of their churches and their lives, medieval people exalted womanhood to a level unknown in any previous society. For the first time, men began to treat women with dignity and women took up professions that had always been closed to them. The communion bread, believed to be the body of Jesus, encouraged the formulation of new questions in philosophy: Could reality be so fluid that one substance could be transformed into another? Could ordinary bread become a holy reality? Could mud become gold, as the alchemists believed? These new questions pushed the minds of medieval thinkers toward what would become modern science. Artists began to ask themselves similar questions. How can we depict human anatomy so that it looks real to the viewer? How can we depict motion in a composition that never moves? How can two dimensions appear to be three? Medieval artists (and writers, too) invented the Western tradition of realism. On visits to the great cities of Europe - monumental Rome; the intellectually explosive Paris of Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas; the hotbed of scientific study that was Oxford; and the incomparable Florence of Dante and Giotto - Cahill brilliantly captures the spirit of experimentation, the colorful pageantry, and the passionate pursuit of knowledge that built the foundations for the modern world.
©2006 Thomas Cahill (P)2006 Books on Tape
Greeks Bearing Gifts
Summary
An NPR book of the year A Crime Reads best crime book of 2018 A vicious murder puts Bernie Gunther on the trail of World War 2 criminals in Greece in this riveting historical thriller in Philip Kerr's New York Times best-selling series. Munich, 1956. Bernie Gunther has a new name, a chip on his shoulder, and a dead-end career when an old friend arrives to repay a debt and encourages "Christoph Ganz" to take a job as a claims adjuster in a major German insurance company with a client in Athens, Greece. Under the cover of his new identity, Bernie begins to investigate a claim by Siegfried Witzel, a brutish former Wehrmacht soldier who served in Greece during the war. Witzel's claimed losses are large, and, even worse, they may be the stolen spoils of Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz. But when Bernie tries to confront Witzel, he finds that someone else has gotten to him first, leaving a corpse in his place. Enter Lieutenant Leventis, who recognizes in this case the highly grotesque style of a killer he investigated during the height of the war. Back then, a young Leventis suspected an S.S. officer whose connection to the German government made him untouchable. He's kept that man's name in his memory all these years, waiting for his second chance at justice... Working together, Leventis and Bernie hope to put their cases - new and old - to bed. But there's a much more sinister truth to acknowledge: A killer has returned to Athens...one who may have never left.
©2018 Philip Kerr (P)2018 Penguin Audio
Supergods
Summary
From one of the most acclaimed and profound writers in the world of comics comes a thrilling and provocative exploration of humankind's great modern myth: the superhero. The first superhero comic ever published, Action Comics #1 in 1938, introduced the world to something both unprecedented and timeless: Superman, a caped god for the modern age. In a matter of years, the skies of the imaginary world were filled with strange mutants, aliens, and vigilantes: Batman, Wonder Woman, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and the X-Men - the list of names is as familiar as our own. In less than a century, they've gone from not existing at all to being everywhere we look: on our movie and television screens, in our videogames and dreams. But what are they trying to tell us? For Grant Morrison, arguably the greatest of contemporary chroniclers of the superworld, these heroes are powerful archetypes whose ongoing, decades-spanning story arcs reflect and predict the course of human existence: Through them we tell the story of ourselves, our troubled history, and our starry aspirations. In this exhilarating work of a lifetime, Morrison draws on art, science, mythology, and his own astonishing journeys through this shadow universe to provide the first true history of the superhero - why they matter, why they will always be with us, and what they tell us about who we are... and what we may yet become. "Grant Morrison is one of the great comics writers of all time. I wish I didn't have to compete with someone as good as him." âStan Lee
©2011 Grant Morrison (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
Orthodoxy
Summary
Written by G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy addresses foremost one main problem: How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? Chesterton writes, "I wish to set forth my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance." Chesterton likens orthodox Christianity to a man who set out in a boat from England and was quite excited to land on an island only to soon discover he had, in fact, landed on England. "I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before." This is Chesterton's autobiography. It is his story of finding the familiar and unfamiliar in Christianity. It is his hunt for the gorgon or griffin and in the end discovers a rhinoceros and then takes pleasure in the fact that a rhinoceros exists but looks as if it oughtn't. In Orthodoxy, Chesterton argues that people in Western society need a life of "practical romance, the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome." Drawing on such figures as Fra Angelico, George Bernard Shaw, and St. Paul to make his points, Chesterton argues that submission to ecclesiastical authority is the way to achieve a good and balanced life.
Public Domain (P)2011 Tantor
The Virtues of War
Summary
I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. So begins Alexanderâs extraordinary confession on the eve of his greatest crisis of leadership. By turns heroic and calculating, compassionate and utterly merciless, Alexander recounts with a warriorâs unflinching eye for detail the blood, the terror, and the tactics of his greatest battlefield victories. Whether surviving his fatherâs brutal assassination, presiding over a massacre, or weeping at the death of a beloved comrade-in-arms, Alexander never denies the hard realities of the code by which he lives: the virtues of war. But as much as he was feared by his enemies, he was loved and revered by his friends, his generals, and the men who followed him into battle. Often outnumbered, never outfought, Alexander conquered every enemy the world stood against him - but the one he never saw coming....
©2004 Steven Pressfield (P)2004 Books on Tape, Inc.
Witch World: Estcarp Cycle Trilogy
Summary
Set on a planet in a parallel universe where magic is a reality, these three high fantasy novels from the Witch World series transport you to the eastern continent of Estcarp, illustrating why prolific author Andre Norton was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.  Trey of Swords: An ancient blade of incredible power that holds the spirit of the ancient hero Tolar will forge young Yonan into the greatest weapon in Witch World. Only Yonan and his loyal friend Uruk can stop the dreaded Targi, the near-invincible warlock who leads the Darkness. With Yonan and Uruk missing in the past, the untrained witch Crytha must hold back the Darkness alone by countering the power of the vile sorceress Laidan with the help of a lethal, legendary blade.  Ware Hawk: Tirtha, last of a decimated clan, must return to her familyâs ancient stronghold of Hawkholme. For protection, she hires Nirel, once a proud Falconer, now a blank shield for hire, who survives by using his gift for seeing the future in his dreams. But he cannot see everything, and a Dark One is determined to stop them. The Gate of the Cat: When she tries to help an injured wildcat, Kelsie McBlair is transported from the Scottish Highlands to a world where magic users, mighty heroes and terrible monsters dwell. There, she embarks on an incredible adventure, accompanied by a cynical witch who doesnât trust her and a young warrior sworn to protect her. Kelsie will prove to be the only one who can face off against the Lord of the Dark himself....
©2018 Andre Norton (P)2021 Podium Audio
The Tunnels
Summary
A thrilling Cold War narrative of superpower showdowns, media suppression, and two escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall.  In the summer of 1962, the year after the rise of the Berlin Wall, a group of young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture, and even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the wall. Then, two US television networks heard about the secret projects and raced to be first to document them from the inside. NBC and CBS funded two separate tunnels in return for the right to film the escapes, planning spectacular prime-time specials. President John F. Kennedy, however, was wary of anything that might spark a confrontation with the Soviets, having said, âA wall is better than a warâ and even confessing to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, âWe donât care about East Berlin.â JFK approved unprecedented maneuvers to quash both documentaries, testing the limits of a free press in an era of escalating nuclear tensions. As Greg Mitchellâs riveting narrative unfolds, we meet extraordinary characters: the legendary cyclist who became East Germanyâs top target for arrest; the Stasi informer who betrays the âCBS tunnelâ; the American student who aided the escapes; an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English channel; and the young East Berliner who fled with her baby, then married one of the tunnelers. The Tunnels captures the chilling reach of the Stasi secret police as US networks prepared to âpay for playâ but were willing to cave to official pressure, the White House was eager to suppress historic coverage, and ordinary people in dire circumstances became subversive. The Tunnels is breaking history, a propulsive listen whose themes still reverberate.Â
©2016 Greg Mitchell (P)2016 Random House Audio
Terminal World
Summary
Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different - and rigidly enforced - level of technology. Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon's world is wrenched apart one more time. If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint's base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon's own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police but by the very nature of reality---and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability.
©2010 Alastair Reynolds (P)2010 Tantor
Gai-Jin
Summary
The heir to the magnificent English trading company, the Noble House; the direct descendant of the first Toranaga Shogun, battling to usher his country into the modern age; a beautiful young Frenchwoman forever torn between ambition and desire - their lives intertwine in an exotic land newly open to foreigners, gai-jin, and torn apart by greed, idealism, and terrorism. Their passions mingle with monarchs and diplomats, assassins, courtesans, and spies. Their fates collide in James Clavell's masterpiece set in 19th-century Japan - an unforgettable epic seething with betrayal and secrets, brutality and heroism, love and forbidden passions.
©2015 James Clavell (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Column of Fire
Summary
Number-one New York Times best-seller. âAbsorbing...impossible to resist.â (The Washington Post) As Europe erupts, can one young spy protect his queen? Number-one New York Times best-selling author Ken Follett takes us deep into the treacherous world of powerful monarchs, intrigue, murder, and treason with his magnificent new epic, A Column of Fire. A thrilling listen that makes the perfect gift for the holidays. In 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, high principles clash bloodily with friendship, loyalty, and love. Ned Willard wants nothing more than to marry Margery Fitzgerald. But when the lovers find themselves on opposing sides of the religious conflict dividing the country, Ned goes to work for Princess Elizabeth. When she becomes queen, all Europe turns against England. The shrewd, determined young monarch sets up the country's first secret service to give her early warning of assassination plots, rebellions, and invasion plans. Over a turbulent half century, the love between Ned and Margery seems doomed as extremism sparks violence from Edinburgh to Geneva. Elizabeth clings precariously to her throne and her principles, protected by a small, dedicated group of resourceful spies and courageous secret agents. The real enemies, then as now, are not the rival religions. The true battle pitches those who believe in tolerance and compromise against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else - no matter what the cost. Set during one of the most turbulent and revolutionary times in history, A Column of Fire is one of Follett's most exciting and ambitious works yet. It will delight longtime fans of the Kingsbridge series and is the perfect introduction for listeners new to Ken Follett.Â
©2017 Ken Follett (P)2017 Penguin Audio
The Talismans of Shannara
Summary
The fourth volume of The Heritage of Shannara, which continues one of the most popular fantasy series of all time. The Shadowmen still swarm over the Four Lands, poisoning everything with their dark magic. And their leader is determined to destroy all the Scions of Shannara. For Walker Boh, he dispatches the Four Horsemen. For Wren, he sends an untrue friend. And for Par, he devises the most terrible fate of all. With these traps cleverly laid, the charges given by the shade of the Druid Allanon are doomed to failure - unless Par can discover a way to harness the power of the Sword of Shannara. Thus continues the enthralling Shannara epic, a spellbinding tale of adventure, magic, and myth....
©2016 Terry Brooks (P)2016 Random House Audio
About the Blood
Summary
Strength. Honor. Death. Once every year, in the city of Sunja, gladiators meet within the arena known as Sunjaâs Pit. Some men enter for the lure of fortune, some for the fame, and some simply for the fight. The games continue for days until a champion is finally crowned. Or until all involved perish. The fighting season continues, and as a result, Goll prepares to participate once again in the games while one man plots revenge upon the returning Kree. Growing weary of the insolent Prajus, golden-faced Gastillo seeks to strike a bargain with the wine merchant Nexus, which would rid him of his troublesome gladiator and provide him with the wealth to forever leave the games. Seeking death, Pig Knot wanders the alleys and backstreets of Sunja and discovers the city of his birth does not favor him in the least. The captured Jackals embrace the Pit and discover the arena sands favor them. And the Perician Weapon - now called Wonder - faces perhaps his most telling match yet. This is blood sport at its finest. At its worst. At its longest.
©2018 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2019 Podium Publishing
The Road to Sevendor
Summary
The very first Spellmonger anthology! Includes two audio exclusive stories, Stonesinger and The Ugliest Maid in Castal. Contains four previously unpublished Spellmonger short stories, "The Wizard of Birchroot Bridge", "The Secret of Westwood Hall", "The Road to Sevendor", and "The Iron Ring", including the full and complete versions of the previously published The River Mists of Talry, Victory Soup, and The Spellmonger's Wedding. Enjoy these scraps from the Spellmonger's table and the fantasy world of Callidore - where they put the evil back into medieval!
©2013 Terry Mancour (P)2020 Podium Audio
Spikes and Edges
Summary
Strength. Honor. Death. Once every year, in the city of Sunja, gladiators meet within the arena known as Sunjaâs Pit. Some men enter for the lure of fortune, some for the fame, and some simply for the fight. The games continue for days until a champion is finally crowned. Or until all involved perish. Feeling the weight of sustained injuries, Halm decides upon his future with the Ten, which prompts a crippled Pig Knot to contemplate his own remaining days. An act of vengeance drives Borchus into hiding. Within the underbelly of the Pit, arrangements are made to introduce Sunjaâs most despised and dangerous criminals into the games, including a captured group of Nordish Jackals. All the while, the House of Ten prepares for its day of vengeful blood matches, where the gladiator known only as Junger will shine as a legend.
©2015 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2019 Podium Publishing
Drysine Legacy
Summary
The legendary battle-carrier UFS Phoenix is on the run in Outer Neutral Space. Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande and Major Trace Thakur are determined to use neutral territory to broker a peace between humanity's warring factions, away from Fleet's strong arm. But as machinations in Fleet Command send a legendary warrior from Trace's past on a sworn path to kill her, there arises in the territory of an insectoid foe an ancient enemy from the nightmares of Spiral history, bent on Phoenix's destructionâ¦.
©2015 Joel Shepherd (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
The One from the Other
Summary
Bernie Gunther, the tough, fast-talking noirish detective who made his first appearance in March Violets, takes center stage in this twist-filled thriller that turns Philip Kerrâs German trilogy into a surprise-filled quartet. Fans have had to wait 15 years for Bernieâs resurrection. They will not be disappointed. Munich, 1949: Amid the chaos of defeat, itâs a place of dirty deals, rampant greed, fleeing war criminals, and all the backstabbing intrigue that prospers in the aftermath of war. It is also a place where a private eye can find a lot of not-quite-reputable work: cleaning up the Nazi past of well-to-do locals, abetting fugitives in their flight abroad, sorting out rival claims to stolen goods. Itâs work that fills Bernie with disgust - but it also fills his sorely depleted wallet. Then a woman seeks him out. Her husband has disappeared. Sheâs not looking to get him back - heâs a wanted man who ran one of the most vicious concentration camps in Poland. She just wants confirmation that heâs dead. Itâs a simple enough job. But in postwar Germany, nothing is simple - nothing is what it appears to be. Taking the case, Bernie takes on far more than heâd bargained for, and he soon finds himself on the run, facing enemies on every side. Because in a defeated and divided Germany, itâs hard to know friends from enemies, the one from the other.Â
©2007 Philip Kerr (P)2007 Books on Tape
By Gaslight
Summary
Longlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize Number One National Best Seller Globe and Mail's "20 Books to Read in 2016", Maclean's best seller, Toronto Star best seller, Ottawa Citizen's "Best on the Shelf", Huffington Post's "Best Fall 2016 Books", Publishers Weekly "Books of the Week", National Post best seller, Vanity Fair 2016 "Must Read Books of the Fall" "A dark tale of love, betrayal and murder that reaches from the slums of Victorian London to the diamond mines in South Africa, to the American Civil War and back. Superb storytelling." (Kurt Palka, author of The Piano Maker) A magnificent literary historical-suspense novel in the tradition of Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers, and Michael Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, By Gaslight is destined to be one of the most acclaimed and talked-about books of the year. London, 1885. In a city of fog and darkness, the notorious thief Edward Shade exists only as a ghost, a fabled con, a thief of other men's futures - a man of smoke. William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of a brutal detective, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in pursuit of a new lead. His father died without ever tracing Shade; William, still reeling from his loss, is determined to drag the thief out of the shadows. Adam Foole is a gentleman without a past, haunted by a love affair 10 years gone. When he receives a letter from his lost beloved, he returns to London in search of her; what he learns of her fate, and its connection to the man known as Shade, will force him to confront a grief he thought long-buried. What follows is a fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, opium dens, drawing rooms, and seance halls. Above all, it is the story of the most unlikely of bonds: between William Pinkerton, the greatest detective of his age, and Adam Foole, the one man who may hold the key to finding Edward Shade. Epic in scope, brilliantly conceived, and stunningly written, Steven Price's By Gaslight is a riveting, atmospheric portrait of two men on the brink. Moving from the diamond mines of South Africa to the battlefields of the Civil War, the novel is a journey into a cityscape of grief, trust, and its breaking, where what we share can bind us even against our darker selves.
©2016 Steven Price (P)2019 McClelland & Stewart
My Name Is Red
Summary
At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of 16th-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers. The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elite therefore mustn't know the full scope or nature of the project, and panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. The only clue to the mystery - or crime? - lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex, and power. Translated from the Turkish by Erdag Goknar.
©2008 Orhan Pamuk (P)2008 Random House, Inc.
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less
Summary
Jeffrey Archer is at his captivating best in this, his first novel, an intricate tale of deceit, dishonor, and sweet revenge. What can an Oxford don, a respected society physician, a chic French art dealer, and a charming English lord have in common? Very little, except they've all been swindled out of every cent they had by Harvey Metcalfe, the man who wrote the book on international stock fraud. They haven't a prayer of ever seeing their money again. Or have they?
©1976 Jeffrey Archer (P)2014 Macmillan Audio
Kraken
Summary
With this outrageous new novel, China Miéville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read thisâor any otherâyear. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring aboutâor preventâthe End of All Things. In the Darwin Centre at Londonâs Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centreâs prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis duxâbetter known as the Giant Squid. But Billyâs tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air. As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizensâhuman and otherwiseâare adept in magic and murder. All of themâand othersâare in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.
©2010 China Mieville (P)2010 Random House
Darkest Hour
Summary
From the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter of The Theory of Everything comes a revisionist look at the period immediately following Winston Churchill's ascendancy to prime minister - soon to be a major motion picture starring Gary Oldman. May 1940. Britain is at war, Winston Churchill has unexpectedly been promoted to prime minister, and the horrors of Blitzkrieg witness one Western European democracy fall after another in rapid succession. Facing this horror, with pen in hand and typist-secretary at the ready, Churchill wonders what words could capture the public mood when the invasion of Britain seems mere hours away. It is this fascinating period that Anthony McCarten captures in this deeply researched and wonderfully written new book, The Darkest Hour. A day-by-day (and often hour-by-hour) narrative of this crucial moment in history provides a revisionist look at Churchill - a man plagued by doubt through those turbulent weeks but who emerged having made himself into the iconic, lionized figure we remember.
©2017 Anthony McCarten (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Small Magic
Summary
Escape to worlds full of adventure and magic in the first-ever Terry Brooks short-story collection, featuring both new and fan-favorite stories from all three of his major literary worlds: Shannara, Magic Kingdom, and The Word and the Void. Here are heroes fighting new battles and struggling to conquer the ghosts of the past. Here are quests both small and far reaching; heroism both intimate and vast. Here we learn of Garet Jaxâs childhood, see how Allanon first located Shea Ohmsford, and follow an old wing-rider at the end of his life. Here we see Knights of the Word fighting demons within and without, and witness Ben Holiday and his daughter each trying to overcome the unique challenges that Landover offers. This collection of 11 tales is a must-have addition to the Terry Brooks canon - a delightful way to spend time with favorite characters, and a wonderful reminder of what makes a Brooks story such a timeless classic.
©2021 Terry Brooks (P)2021 Random House Audio
Don't Know Much About Mythology
Summary
It has been 15 years since Kenneth C. Davis first dazzled audiences with his instant classic Don't Know Much About History, vividly bringing the past to life and proving that Americans don't hate history, they just hate the dull, textbook version they were fed in school. With humor, wit, and a knack for storytelling, Davis has been bringing readers of all ages up to speed on history, geography, and science ever since. Now, in the classic traditions of Edith Hamilton and Joseph Campbell, he turns his talents to the world of myth. Where do we come from? Why do stars shine and the seasons change? What is evil? Since the beginning of time, people have answered such questions by crafting imaginative stories that have served as religion, science, philosophy, and popular literature. In his irreverent and popular question-and-answer style, Davis introduces and explains the great myths of the world, as well as the works of literature that have made them famous. In a single volume, he tackles Mesopotamia's Gilgamesh, the first hero in world mythology; Achilles and the Trojan War; Stonehenge and the Druids; Thor, the Nordic god of thunder; Chinese oracle bones; the use of peyote in ancient Native American rites; and the dramatic life and times of the man who would be Buddha. Ever familiar and instructive, Davis shows why the ancient tales of gods and heroes, from Mount Olympus to Machu Picchu, from ancient Rome to the icy land of the Norse, continue to speak to us today, in our movies, art, language, and music. For mythology novices and buffs alike, and for anyone who loves a good story, Don't Know Much About Mythology is a lively and insightful look into the greatest stories ever told.
©2005 Kenneth C. Davis (P)2005 Random House, Inc.
White Sands, Red Steel
Summary
Mad. Brutal. Unpredictable. And those are their good points. Vicious. Hateful. Foul-mouthed and bad tempered...He-Dog and Balless are all of these and more. And as mercenaries go, they have a stubborn sense of honor. A sense of honor that has once again landed them into a cauldron of mayhem. After an unfit night of drinking, which might have involved firewater, He-Dog and Balless accept a mission that no one wanted. To travel for days through a scorching desert to the glittering city of Foust and deliver a message scroll to the cityâs ruler. At the time, word was the war there would be over. At the time, the coin was too good to refuse. At the time, He-Dog was so pickled he wouldâve right and proper agreed to just about anything. Trouble is, one eventually sobers, and when He-Dog and Balless and their companions finally do and journey to the outskirts of Foustâs besieged walls, they discover the warâs nowhere near over. In fact, itâs only just beginning. A vicious, seething army of beastmen surround the towering city walls, their intent to sack the fabled city and feast upon every last citizen within. Still, coin was paid, and their unfit sense of honor will not allow them to turn back. No one in their right mind would try to get past an army of beastmen. He-Dog, Balless, and their companions, however, arenât in their right minds. And a jobâs a job. He-Dog and company will soon realize that while getting into Foust is unfit madness.... Getting back out will get them killed. Contains violence and hard language.Â
©2012 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2019 Podium Publishing
The Druid of Shannara
Summary
The second volume of The Heritage of Shannara, which continues one of the most popular fantasy series of all time Ancient evil forces remain in control of the Four Lands. To restore the Kepp of the Druid Allanon, Walker Boh sets out on a journey to find the black Elfstone. After narrowly escaping death, he learns that the Elfstone lies in the hands of the Stone King. Now Walker Boh must venture into perilous, unknown lands with a strange band of fellow travelers that includes Morgan Leah, whose once-magic sword has been broken; Quickening, the daughter of the ancient King; and Pe Ell, an assassin who hatches his own dark, sinister plot. Thus continues the enthralling Shannara epic, a spellbinding tale of adventure, magic, and myth....
©2016 Terry Brooks (P)2016 Random House Audio
Journeymage
Summary
The latest book in the Audie-nominated Spellmonger series. Minalanâs Summer Vacation! What does the most powerful wizard in the world do after the war is over? Despite the hordes of goblins still ready to ravage human lands, King Rard has signed a treaty with them, so Minalan is forbidden from taking advantage of their weakened state. Most would take a well-deserved rest over the summerâ¦but Minalan and his household are busy repaying a favor owed to the tribal Kasari for their help in the war, and the Spellmonger pays his debts. So Minalan spends his summer sneaking 2,000 Kasari children through enemy lines, goblin territory, hostile Wilderlords, and through some of the roughest territory in the Five Duchies toward salvation. But the Spellmonger soon learns that not even the help of a goddess is going to be sufficient to contend with the realities of the quest. Despite his best efforts and some of the most advanced magic seen since the Magocracy, the march attracts enemiesâ¦and far too many friends. For when the desperate refugees of the war-torn Alshari Wilderlands see the well-fed legions of Kasari march by, they cannot help but follow, even if they have no idea of the destination. Any life is better than the hopeless existence theyâve lived avoiding starvation and the goblinsâ stewpot. And the promise of hope the great march of the Spellmongerâs children offers is just too good to pass up. Security and the promise of a brighter future lie just on the other side of the border with the duchy of Castal. The problem is that the Duke of Castal, Prince Tavard, who is also Minalan's titular overlord, is dead-set against a single Alshari refugee crossing his frontier - and heâs assembled a small army to stop any from doing so. With political pressure high and the very gods maneuvering behind the scenes, itâs going to take some clever magic, some inspired legal maneuvering, and some serious effort to pull off this miracle⦠but thatâs the kind of job the Spellmonger does in Journeymage!
©2018 Terry Mancour (P)2018 Podium Publishing
First Among Equals
Summary
In Jeffrey Archer's First Among Equals, Charles Seymour, second-born son, will never be the earl like his father, but he did inherit his mother's strength - and the will to realize his destiny.... Simon Kerslake's father sacrificed everything to make sure his son's dreams come true. Now it is Simon's chance to rise as high as those dreams allow.... Ray Gould was born to the back streets but raised with pride - a quality matched by a sharp intellect and the desire to attain the impossible.... Andrew Fraser was raised by a soccer hero turned politician. Now it's his turn for heroics, whatever the cost. From strangers to rivals, four men embark on a journey for the highest stakes of all - the keys to No. 10 Downing Street. Unfolding over three decades, their honor will be tested, their loyalties betrayed, and their love of family and country challenged. But in a game where there is a first among equals, only one can triumph.
©1984 Jeffrey Archer (P)2014 Macmillan Audio
An Ocean Apart
Summary
For six dreadful months, David Corstorphine has tried to come to terms with his young wife's death while caring for his three motherless children. Try as he may, David is unable to return to work, and his only form of solace comes from working in the garden of his parents' estate in the Scottish countryside. Dispatched unexpectedly to New York, David's family hopes that the impromptu business trip will help him get back on his feet. But the journey proves both disastrous and heartening. David finds himself settling in comfortably among the strangers of a seaside Long Island town and takes a job as a gardener. But it is the people he meets, the pain he confronts, and the joy he is able to once again experience that prove to be magically transformative - and as David learns to accept his enormous loss, he is able to open his heart to love once again. Writing with deep sensitivity to human frailty, desires and joys that listeners of his mother, Rosamunde Pilcher, have come to cherish, Robin Pilcher's An Ocean Apart will be embraced by generations in years to come.
©1999 Robin Pilcher (P)2020 Tantor
Forging Destiny
Summary
The highly anticipated sequel to Reclaiming Honor is finally here. Best-selling and award-winning author of Stigerâs Tigers and the Karus Saga, Marc Alan Edelheit has teamed up again with national best-selling author Quincy J. Allen to deliver an epic fantasy adventure, told from the perspective of dwarves. A Pariah amongst dwarves, Tovak bears the burden of his peopleâs disdain and his familyâs disgrace. And yet, Tovak has proven himself in battle, shown his courage in risking life and limb to save his comrades. Though not everyone accepts him, he has finally found his place as a skirmisher and member of the Baelix Guard Company. Armed with his faith in his god, ample determination, and unquenchable courage, Tovak soldiers forward. Dispatched on a dangerous mission against the Horde that could mean life or death for his people, his section is sent behind enemy lines. Everything hinges upon the missionâs success. However, something is not quite right with Tovak. He can feel a power he does not understand building within, guiding his steps forward toward what seems to be destiny. He fears he is losing his mind, but he will not shy away from duty, for in the struggle to come, the warband needs every sword. And make no mistake, desperate times and hard fighting lie ahead. Tovak might just be the key to his peopleâs salvation, or perhaps even their downfall...for the gods are involved in the fight that is to come. Struggling against his past and the stigma of being a pariah, Tovak must unravel the meaning of this power building within him and forge his own destiny - or die trying. Set upon the world of Tannis, some years before the arrival of Karus and the Lost Legio IX, this book is a Last War novel.
©2020 Marc Edelheit (P)2021 Audible, Inc.
Abandoned
Summary
The survivors are trapped. Cut off from the rest of the world and quarantined as the virus spreads to every corner of the country, while the combined forces of the naval fleet set sail for deeper waters and leave the UK to its fate. Facing the aftermath of the battle for the island, the groups are separated as the bonds of friendship and camaraderie are violently severed, and they must survive on their own. Every effort to survive is fraught with peril, and those left behind must battle to find some form of safety, no matter how brief that respite might be. As it dawns on those left behind that the rest of the world has turned its back on them, they must cope with the realization that they are alone, and fight against the brutality that threatens them at every turn. Brutality from both the infected and the rest of the world as it devolves into nuclear Armageddon. Rejoin Johnson, Peter, Amber, and the others in the immediate aftermath of the island battle, as they strive to find safety, to survive after being truly abandoned.
©2018 DHP Publishing (P)2019 Tantor
The Woman in White
Summary
Young Walter Hartright meets the mysterious woman in white in what soon became one of the most popular novels of the 19th century. Secrets, mistaken identities, surprise revelations, amnesia, locked rooms and locked asylums, and an unorthodox villain made this mystery thriller an instant success when it first appeared in 1860, and it has continued to enthrall ever since. From the hero's foreboding before his arrival at Limmeridge House to the nefarious plot concerning the beautiful Laura, the breathtaking tension of Collins's narrative created a new literary genre of suspense fiction, which profoundly shaped the course of English popular writing. Generally considered the first English sensation novel, The Woman in White features the remarkable heroine Marian Halcombe and her sleuthing partner, drawing-master Walter Hartright, pitted against the diabolical team of Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde. A gripping tale of murder, intrigue, madness, and mistaken identity, Collins's psychological thriller has never been out of print since its publication in 1860. While Collins's other great mystery, The Moonstone, has been called the finest detective story ever written, it was this work that so gripped the imagination of the world that Wilkie Collins had his own tombstone inscribed "Author of The Woman in White."
Public Domain (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Snow
Summary
Following years of lonely political exile in Western Europe, Ka, a middle-aged poet, returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral. Only partly recognizing this place of his cultured, middle-class youth, he is even more disoriented by news of strange events in the wider country: a wave of suicides among girls forbidden to wear their head scarves at school. An apparent thaw of his writer's curiosity - a frozen sea these many years - leads him to Kars, a far-off town near the Russian border and the epicenter of the suicides. No sooner has he arrived, however, than we discover that Ka's motivations are not purely journalistic; for in Kars, once a province of Ottoman and then Russian glory, and now a cultural gray-zone of poverty and paralysis, there is also Ipek, a radiant friend of Ka's youth, lately divorced, whom he has never forgotten. As a snowstorm, the fiercest in memory, descends on the town and seals it off from the modern, Westernized world that has always been Ka's frame of reference, he finds himself drawn in unexpected directions: not only headlong toward the unknowable Ipek and the desperate hope for love, or at least a wife, that she embodies, but also into the maelstrom of a military coup staged to restrain the local Islamist radicals, and even toward God, whose existence Ka has never before allowed himself to contemplate. In this surreal confluence of emotion and spectacle, Ka begins to tap his dormant creative powers, producing poem after poem in untimely, irresistible bursts of inspiration. But not until the snows have melted and the political violence has run its bloody course will Ka discover the fate of his bid to seize a last chance for happiness.
©2007 Orhan Pamuk (P)2007 Random House Inc.
A Banquet of Consequences
Summary
The number-one New York Times best-selling author's award-winning series returns with another stunning crime drama featuring Scotland Yard members Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. The unspoken secrets and buried lies of one family rise to the surface in Elizabeth George's novel of crime, passion, and tragic history. As Inspector Thomas Lynley investigates the London angle of an ever more darkly disturbing case, his partner, Barbara Havers, is looking behind the peaceful façade of country life to discover a twisted world of desire, deceit, and murder. The suicide of William Goldacre is devastating to those left behind. But what was the cause of his tragedy, and how far might the consequences reach? Is there a link between the young man's leap from a Dorset cliff and a horrific poisoning in Cambridge? After various career-threatening issues with her department, Barbara Havers is desperate to redeem herself. So when a past encounter with a best-selling feminist writer and her pushy personal assistant gives her a connection to the Cambridge murder, Barbara begs Thomas Lynley to let her pursue the crime. Full of shocks, intensity, and suspense from beginning to end, A Banquet of Consequences reveals both Lynley and Havers under mounting pressure to solve one of the most complex cases they have ever encountered.
©2015 Elizabeth George (P)2015 Penguin Audio
Aftermath
Summary
It is 1989 and the disease resulting from the testing of experimental bioweapons has ravaged much of the world. The UK and Europe are in chaos as the virus spreads uncontrollably. The US, nominally arriving in force to offer military and humanitarian assistance to their allies, are posturing dangerously with the east and failing to unite over the common enemy of humanity.  As command and control are ramping up operations over the British Isles and Europe, the remnants of Johnson's Yeomanry and the scattered troops consolidate their position on their island stronghold and begin to look to the future, but events beyond their knowledge and control force them into desperate action.  Peter, alone by choice and oddly thriving, finds himself suddenly responsible for the life of someone other than himself. Adapting with ease, the young boy begins to show the difference between nature and nurture.  Elsewhere, other survivors stake their own claims to land and resources, but the inexplicable swarms of undead threaten to gather and dissipate constantly.
©2018 DHP Publishing (P)2019 Tantor
Kings and Emperors
Summary
In Kings and Emperors, the 21st installment in Dewey Lambdin's beloved Alan Lewrie series, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is still in Gibraltar, his schemes for raids along the coast of Southern Spain shot to a halt. He is reduced to commanding a clutch of harbor-defense gunboats in the bay while his ship, HMS Sapphire, slowly grounds herself on a reef of beef bones! Until Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of peaceful Portugal and his so-called collaborative march into Spain change everything, freeing Sapphire to roam against the king's enemies once more!  As kings are overthrown and popular uprisings break out all across Spain, Lewrie's right back in the action, ferrying weapons to arm Spanish patriots, scouting within close gun range of the impregnable fort of Ceuta, escorting the advance units of British expeditionary armies to aid the Spanish, and even going ashore to witness the first battles between Sir Arthur Wellesley, later the duke of Wellington, and Napoleon's best marshals, as the long Peninsular War that broke Imperial France begins to unfold.  From Cádiz to La Coruña, Lewrie and Sapphire will be there as history explodes!
©2015 Dewey Lambdin (P)2020 Tantor
Don't Even Think About It
Summary
Most of us recognize that climate change is real, and yet we do nothing to stop it. What is this psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall's search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and the activists of the Texas Tea Party; the world's leading climate scientists and the people who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovered is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake. With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different and drive us apart, but rather in what we all share: how our human brains are wired - our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink and reimagine climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. Rather, it is one we can halt if we can make it our common purpose and common ground. Silence and inaction are the most persuasive of narratives, so we need to change the story. In the end, Don't Even Think About It is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can grow as we deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced.
©2014 George Marshall (P)2014 Audible Inc.
A Risk Worth Taking
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of Starting Over and An Ocean Apart returns with his strongest work to date - a heartwarming story of love, compassion, and redemption After the dot-com bubble burst, Dan Porter is laid off from his job and must decide what is truly important. His wife of 20 years, Jackie, a beautiful and successful managing director for a clothing designer, no longer connects with him. His teenagers Josh, Nina and Millie are distant and confusing. Jackie is tempted by the attentions of a younger man at her office, and thanks to an opportunity suggested by a magazine article, Dan finds himself contemplating a drastic change in his life. A Risk Worth Taking is an engrossing, thought-provoking novel of a man who has to discover what he really values in his work, marriage, and life. Robin Pilcher writes fluidly, and is endlessly interested in the details of his characters' lives. He has written a poignant and moving story about the real choices adults face when they start taking stock of their lives.Â
©2004 Robin Pilcher (P)2004 Audio Renaissance, a dicision of Holtzbrink Publishers, LLC and Books on Tape, Inc.
My Twenty-Five Years in Provence
Summary
From the moment Peter Mayle and his wife, Jennie, uprooted their lives in England and crossed the Channel permanently, they never looked back. Here the beloved author of A Year in Provence pays tribute to the most endearing and enduring aspects of his life in France - the charming and indelible parade of village life, the sheer beauty, the ancient history. He celebrates the café and lists some of his favorites; identifies his favorite villages, restaurants, and open-air markets; and recounts his most memorable meals. A celebration of 25 years of Provençal living - of lessons learned and changes observed - with his final book, Mayle has crafted a lasting love letter to his adopted home, marked by his signature warmth, wit, and humor.
©2018 Peter Mayle (P)2018 Random House Audio
Enchanter
Summary
Minalan the moody! Meanwhile, back at the castle...Minalan the spellmonger faces the boredom of house arrest after being confined to his lands by Prince Tavard for his defiance with the Wilderlands refugees. The Alka Alon have returned to their seclusion, dealing with their own crisis, the dead god is being quiet within the Umbra, and Minâs plans toward reestablishing a functional Duchy of Alshar are progressing. Min sees his punishment as a unique opportunity to indulge in thaumaturgical research. When the Sevendor Magic Fair brings a tide of enchanters eager for snowstone, irionite, and opportunity to his door (as well as the newly formed Arcane Knights of Nablus, the successors of the Censorate in Merwyn), Minalan uses his wealth and position to invite them to stay on in Sevendor over the winter and focus on the developing art of enchantment. He forms the first Bouleuterion, a conclave of enchanters dedicated to producing and researching the creation of magical items, since the fall of the Magocracy. Such notable enchanters as Lanse of Bune, Taren, and Masters Andalnam and Cormoran arrive to help Minalan and his staff of experts push the frontiers of magical science as far as he can. Even Lorcus, Tyndal, and Rondal help out. His secret mission is, of course, to fathom the complexities of the secret Snowflake of Sevendor, the enigmatic pseudo-molopor created from Minalanâs fevered subconscious...but not before they improve the lot of the peasantry by creating a wealth of labor-saving (and potentially socially revolutionary) devices. But enchanters and former Censors are not the only ones to arrive at the fair: Baron and Baroness Greenflower, Magelords Dunselen and Isily, come to Sevendor as well...and the results are explosive. Before they depart Minalanâs entire life is thrown into doubt. Especially when a new divinity appears to make him an offer the spellmonger just canât refuse. As Minalan works through his psychological issues by obsessively focusing on his craft, he must also nimbly maneuver his way around an inevitable war between Sendaria and Sashtalia, protect his vulnerable domains, deftly negotiate his course through the tangle of feudal law and obligation in the Bontal Vales, and contend with his troubled marriage. His frustration, guilt, and doubt are soon revealed to be authored by a secret plot against him. The return of an old enemy and the revelation of new foes challenges his position as head of the Arcane Orders and puts his entire family in jeopardy. Could it be that Minalanâs new 11-year-old apprentice, Ruderal, is the only one capable of seeing through the deceptions in time to save them all even as he struggles with his own guilt about his role in releasing Korbal the undead Demon God from his tomb? Or will their fates lie on the whims of a former lover who has ambitions of her own for Minalan?
©2018 Terry Mancour (P)2019 Podium Publishing
Reefs and Shoals
Summary
Pity poor Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy! He's been wind-muzzled for weeks in Portsmouth, snugly tucked into a warm shore bed with lovely, and loving, Lydia Stangbourne, a Viscount's daughter, and beginning to enjoy indulging his idle streak, when Admiralty tears Lewrie away and order him to the Bahamas, into the teeth of ferocious winter storms. It's enough to make a rakehell such as he weep and kick furniture!   At least his new orders allow Lewrie to form a small squadron from what ships he can dredge up at Bermuda and New Providence and hoist his first broad pendant, even if it is the lesser version, and style himself a Commodore.  Lewrie is to scour the shores of Cuba and Spanish Florida, the Keys and the Florida Straits in search of French and Spanish privateers which have been taking British merchantmen at an appalling rate, and call upon neutral American seaports to determine if privateers are getting aid and comfort from that quarter. Lewrie is to be "Diplomatic". Diplomatic? Lewrie? Not bloody likely!   To solve the problem and find the answers will put Lewrie in touch with old friends, old foes, and more frustration than a dog has fleas. As usual, though, Captain Alan Lewrie will find his own unique way to fulfill his duties, and in the doing, find some fun in his own irrepressible manner!
©2011 Dewey Lambdin (P)2020 Tantor
The Reality Dysfunction
Summary
In AD 2600, the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems, and throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace. A true golden age is within our grasp. But now something has gone catastrophically wrong. On a primitive colony planet, a renegade criminal's chance encounter with an utterly alien entity unleashes the most primal of all our fears. An extinct race that inhabited the galaxy aeons ago called it the Reality Dysfunction. It is the nightmare that has prowled beside us since the beginning of history.
©1996 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2016 Tantor
Mystery Writers of America Presents The Blue Religion
Summary
From Hawaii at the turn of the twentieth century to the post - Civil War frontier, from smoggy Los Angeles to the woods of Idaho, these gripping stories trace the perils and occasional triumphs of lawmen and women who put themselves in harm's way to face down the bad guys. Some of them even walk the edge of becoming bad guys themselves. In T. Jefferson Parker's "Skinhead Central", an ex-cop and his wife find unexpected menace in the idyllic setting they have chosen for their retirement. In Alafair Burke's "Winning", a female officer who is attacked in the line of duty must protect her own husband from his worst impulses. In Edward D. Hoch's "Friday Night Luck", a wanna-be cop blows his chance at a spot on the force---and breaks his case. In Michael Connelly's "Father's Day", Harry Bosch faces one of his most emotionally trying cases, investigating a young boy's death. The magnificent and never-before-published Connelly story alone is worth the price of admission and---combined with eighteen unexpected tales from crime's modern masters---makes this an unmissable collection.
©2008 Mystery Writers of America, Inc. (P)2008 Tantor
A Hard, Cruel Shore
Summary
The year 1809 starts out badly for Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, and his ship, HMS Sapphire. They've extracted the sick, cold survivors of Sir John Moore's army from disaster at Corunna, got hit by lightning while escorting the army to England, and suffered a shattered mainmast which may end Lewrie's active commission if a replacement can't be found or fashioned soon. Admiralty needs troopships, not slow, old Fourth Rate two-deckers, so Lewrie must beg, borrow, steal, and gild the facts most glibly if he wishes to keep her and her skilled crew together. Just when he imagines he's succeeded, new orders come appointing him a Commodore over a wee squadron assigned to prey upon French seaborne supply convoys off the treacherous north coast of Spain, better known as the Costa da Morte, the Coast of Death, where the sea may be more dangerous to him and his ships than the French Navy! Basing out of newly won Lisbon, where Lewrie hopes his mistress from Gibraltar, Maddalena Covilhá, might move, he's sure of one thing: It's going to be a rocky year that, hopefully, doesn't involve wrecking on the rugged shores of Spain!
©2016 Dewey Lambdin (P)2020 Tantor
![Cover art for The Canterbury Tales [Blackstone]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51hYW6lZBaL._SL500_.jpg)
The Canterbury Tales [Blackstone]
Summary
At the Tabard Inn, 30 travelers of widely varying classes and occupations are gathering to make the annual pilgrimage to Becket's shrine at Canterbury. It is agreed that each traveler will tell four tales to help pass the time and that the host of the inn will judge the tales and reward the best storyteller with a free supper upon their return. Thus we hear, translated into modern English, 20-some tales, told in the voices of knight and merchant, wife and miller, squire and nun, and many more. Some are bawdy, some spiritual, some romantic, some mysterious, some chivalrous. Between the stories, the travelers converse, joke, and argue, revealing much about their individual outlooks on life, as well as what life was like in late 14th-century England.
©2003 Gavin Menzies (P)2008 Blackstone Audio
Prussian Blue
Summary
From New York Times best-selling author Philip Kerr, the much-anticipated return of Bernie Gunther, our compromised former Berlin bull and unwilling SS officer. With his cover blown, he is waiting for the next move in the cat-and-mouse game that, even a decade after Germany's defeat, continues to shadow his life. The French Riviera, 1956: The invitation to dinner was not unexpected, though neither was it welcome. Erich Mielke, deputy head of the East German Stasi, has turned up in Nice, and he's not on holiday. An old and dangerous adversary, Mielke is calling in a debt. He intends that Bernie go to London and, with the vial of Thallium he now pushes across the table, poison a female agent they both have had dealings with. But chance intervenes in the form of Friedrich Korsch, an old Kripo comrade now working for Stasi and probably there to make sure Bernie gets the job done. Bernie bolts for the German border. Traveling by night, holed up during the day, Bernie has plenty of downtime to recall the last time Korsch and he worked together. The summer of 1939: At Hitler's mountaintop retreat in Obersalzberg, the body of a low-level bureaucrat has been found murdered. Bernie and Korsch are selected to run the case. They have one week to solve the murder - Hitler is due back then to celebrate his 50th birthday. Lucky Bernie: It's his reward for being Kripo's best homicide detective. He knows what a box he's in - millions have been spent to secure Obersalzberg. It would be a disaster if Hitler were to discover a shocking murder had been committed on the terrace of his own home. But the mountaintop is home to an elite Nazi community. It would be an even bigger disaster for Bernie if one of them was the murderer. Two different eras: 1939 and 1956, 17 years apart. And yet not really apart, as the stunning climax will show when the two converge explosively.
©2017 Philip Kerr (P)2017 Penguin Audio
The Ice Beneath Her
Summary
Acclaimed Swedish author Camilla Grebe makes her solo American debut with a psychological thriller as cunning in its twists as it is captivating in its storytelling - for fans of the celebrated crime fiction of Camilla Läckberg, Jo Nesbø, Ruth Ware, and Fiona Barton. Winter's chill has descended on Stockholm as police arrive at the scene of a shocking murder. An unidentified woman lies beheaded in a posh suburban home - a brutal crime made all the more disturbing by its uncanny resemblance to an unsolved killing 10 years earlier. But this time there's a suspect: the charismatic and controversial chain-store CEO Jesper Orre, who owns the home but is nowhere to be found. To homicide detectives Peter Lindgren and Manfred Olsson, nothing about the suave, high-profile businessman - including a playboy reputation and rumors of financial misdeeds - suggests he conceals the dark heart and twisted mind of a cold-blooded killer. In search of a motive, Lindgren and Olsson turn to the brilliant criminal profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön. Once a valued police asset, now marooned in unhappy retirement and a crumbling marriage, she's eager to exercise her keen skills again - and offer the detectives a window into the secret soul of Jesper Orre. But they're not the only ones searching. Two months before, Emma Bohman, a young clerk at Orre's company, chanced to meet the charming chief executive, and romance swiftly bloomed. Almost as quickly as the passionate affair ignited, it was over when Orre inexplicably disappeared. One staggering misfortune after another followed, leaving Emma certain that her runaway lover was to blame and transforming her confusion and heartbreak into anger. Now, pursuing the same mysterious man for different reasons, Emma and the police are destined to cross paths in a chilling dance of obsession, vengeance, madness, and love gone hellishly wrong. Praise for The Ice Beneath Her âThe Ice Beneath Her deserves to be called a page-turner - I read it in one sitting! The narrative is fast-paced and the twists superb.â (Cecilia Ekbäck, best-selling author of Wolf Winter)Â
©2016 Camilla Grebe and Elizabeth Clark Wessel (P)2016 Random House Audio
The Lady From Zagreb
Summary
From New York Times best-selling author Philip Kerr, the much-anticipated return of Bernie Gunther in a series hailed by Malcolm Forbes as "the best crime novels around today". A beautiful actress, a rising star of the giant German film company UFA, now controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. The very clever, very dangerous propaganda minister - a close confidant of Hitler, an ambitious schemer and flagrant libertine. And Bernie Gunther, former Berlin homicide bull, now forced to do favors for Joseph Goebbels at the propaganda minister's command. This time the favor is personal. And this time nothing is what it seems. Set down amid the killing fields of Ustashe-controlled Croatia, Bernie finds himself in a world of mindless brutality where everyone has a hidden agenda. Perfect territory for a true cynic whose instinct is to trust no one.
©2015 Philip Kerr (P)2015 Penguin Audio
Court Wizard
Summary
When Pentandra got married and took a new job, she knew it would be tough. Ducal Court Wizard is supposed to be the cushiest of assignments for a mage, full of stipends, laboratories, and expense funds. But when you join the Orphan Dukeâs expedition to reclaim, recapture, and restore his shattered realm to health, you have to expect things to be...less cushy. With the south in full rebellion, the goblins stirring on the northern frontier, and the summer capital being run by a corrupt baron and a gang of thugs, things could be better. But those arenât the worst of her problems: Pentandra is learning how to live with her new husband, Arborn, while the town is driven to distraction by an incarnate sex goddess who is organizing all of the whores, a mopey spellmonger, a nun addicted to gambling, a prude sent by the queen, undead skulking through the shadows, and a mysterious blind girl shows up in her office claiming to be her new apprentice! Itâs enough to drive any woman mad, but Pentandra is not just any woman...sheâs the hope of the Alshari Wilderlands, the woman everyone knows as the Court Wizard!
©2018 Terry Mancour (P)2019 Podium Publishing
The Neutronium Alchemist
Summary
The ancient menace has finally escaped from Lalonde, shattering the Confederation's peaceful existence. Those who succumbed to it have acquired godlike powers but now follow a far-from-divine gospel as they advance inexorably from world to world. On planets and asteroids, individuals battle for survival against the strange and brutal forces unleashed upon the universe. Governments teeter on the brink of anarchy, the Confederation Navy is dangerously overstretched, and a dark messiah prepares to invoke his own version of the final Night. In such desperate times, the last thing the galaxy needs is a new and terrifyingly powerful weapon. Yet Dr. Alkad Mzu is determined to retrieve the Alchemist so that she can complete her 30-year-old vendetta to slay a star. This means that Joshua Calvert has to find Dr. Mzu and bring her back before the Alchemist can be reactivated. But he's not alone in the chase, and there are people on both sides who have their own ideas about how to use the ultimate doomsday device.
©1997 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2016 Tantor
The Hedge School
Summary
It is perilous to be a Catholic in the Ireland of 1735, and it's almost more than can be borne for 15-year-old Padraic Fitzbrian. Nearly 100 years before, Lord Protector Cromwell of England had put down the Irish rebellion confiscating lands, killing priests, outlawing the Mass, and prohibiting education of any kind for Irish Catholics. Padraic and his two friends, Liam and Rose, are in their last year as scholars in the forbidden and risky all-weathers classroom under the hedgerow. Fiery Padraic, whose family lands had been seized so long before, chafes under the injustice as though it were yesterday, making trouble for himself and those around him. Liam, as determined a patriot, holds the hope of being able to fight for his people's freedom in an entirely different way. And warm-hearted Rose, gifted with pluck, is also thankfully rich in good sense. Behind the scenes, a mysterious figure called Kestrel stirs the fires of Irish identity, and Padraic longs to do as much. Harmless adventures mount into dangerous trouble as the three young people strive, in each new difficulty, to take hold of the faith and patience that brings freedom amidst the worst tyranny. Gloria Whelan is a National Book Award winner for Young People's Literature and author of many books, including The Miracle of St. Nicholas.
©2015 Gloria Whelan (P)2015 Bethlehem Books
Dam Busters
Summary
The night of 16 May, 1943: Nineteen specially adapted Lancaster bombers take off from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, each with a huge 9000-lb cylindrical bomb strapped underneath it. Their mission: to destroy three dams deep within the German heartland, which provide the lifeblood to the industries supplying the Third Reich's war machine.
From the outset it was an almost impossible task, a suicide mission: to fly low and at night in formation over many miles of enemy-occupied territory at the very limit of the Lancasters' capacity, and drop a new weapon that had never been tried operationally before from a precise height of just 60 feet from the water at some of the most heavily defended targets in Germany.
More than that, the entire operation had to be put together in less than 10 weeks. When visionary aviation engineer Barnes Wallis' concept of the bouncing bomb was green lighted, he hadn't even drawn up his plans for the weapon that was to smash the dams. What followed was an incredible race against time, which, despite numerous setbacks and against huge odds, became one of the most successful and game-changing bombing raids of all time.
©2012 James Holland. Recorded by arrangement with Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Caves of Perigord
Summary
Walker's richly interwoven novel opens with the arrival of a mysterious package for a young American woman working in a London auction house. Brought by a British officer, it contains a 17,000-year-old fragment of a cave painting left to him by his father, a former World War II hero. The fragment, significant and stunning in itself, is also the key to the existence of an unknown cave that may be more important in the history of art and human creation than the world-famous one at Lascaux. It triggers a storm of publicity and commands the attention of the French authorities all the way up to the President of the Republic, who seems to know more about the painting's origins than anyone else... As the young American woman, the British officer, and a French government art historian explore the ancient province of Perigord to determine the painting's origins, their search serves as backdrop for three compelling stories.
©2002 Martin Walker (P)2019 Tantor
Little Demon in the City of Light
Summary
A delicious account of a murder most gallic - think CSI Paris meets Georges Simenon - whose lurid comibation of sex, brutality, forensics, and hypnotism riveted first a nation and then the world. Little Demon in the City of Light is the thrilling - and so wonderfully French - story of a gruesome 1889 murder of a lascivious court official at the hands of a ruthless con man and his pliant mistress and the international manhunt, sensational trial, and an inquiry into the limits of hypnotic power that ensued. In France at the end of the 19th century a great debate raged over the question of whether someone could be hypnotically compelled to commit a crime in violation of his or her moral convictions. When Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé entered 3, rue Tronson du Coudray, he expected nothing but a delightful assignation with the comely young Gabrielle Bompard. Instead, he was murdered - hanged! - by her and her companion Michel Eyraud. The body was then stuffed in a trunk and dumped on a riverbank near Lyon. As the inquiry into the guilt or innocence of the woman the French tabloids dubbed the "Little Demon" escalated, the most respected minds in France debated whether Gabrielle Bompard was the pawn of her mesmerizing lover or simply a coldly calculating murderess. And, at the burning center of it all: Could hypnosis force people to commit crimes against their will?
©2014 Steven Levingston (P)2014 Blackstone Audio
The Pale Criminal
Summary
Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a "brilliantly innovative thriller-writer", Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir-tinged mysteries that are nothing short of spellbinding. In this second book of the Berlin Noir trilogy, The Pale Criminal brings back Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and richly detailed, The Pale Criminal is noir writing at its blackest and best.
©2008 Philip Kerr (P)2008 Books on Tape
The Abyss Beyond Dreams
Summary
The year is 3326. Nigel Sheldon, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, receives a visit from the Raiel - self-appointed guardians of the Void, the enigmatic construct at the core of the galaxy that threatens the existence of all that lives. The Raiel convince Nigel to participate in a desperate scheme to infiltrate the Void. Once inside, Nigel discovers that humans are not the only life-forms to have been sucked into the Void. The humans trapped there are afflicted by an alien species of biological mimics - the Fallers - that are intelligent but merciless killers. Yet these same aliens may hold the key to destroying the threat of the Void forever - if Nigel can uncover their secrets.
©2014 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2014 Tantor
Sea of Grey
Summary
Our rakish hero, Alan Lewrie, is in trouble with his wife, condemned by his daughter, and out of favor with the Admiralty. He is lucky enough to receive a command position on an expedition to the West Indies, there to suppress a bloodthirsty slave rebellion led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, the future father of Haitian independence. In Haiti, L'Ouverture's forces are sacking plantations and slaughtering whites and mulattoes. The French make a hasty compact with the English, as only the English have the strength required to stop L'Ouverture and his general Dessalines. Needless to say, Lewrie finds plenty of engagements, both of the naval and the romantic kind; between white-hot battles, a bevy of international beauties sees to his every fleshly comfort. Author Lambdin puts the "buckle" in "swashbuckle".
©2002 Dewey Lambdin (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.
Napoleon
Summary
Paul Johnson's book is a refreshing return to a concept whose time has come once again: the Great Man theory of biography. It serves as "the greatest possible refutation of those who hold that events are governed by forces, classes, economics, and geography rather than the powerful wills of men and women". Napoleon truly was the Great Man of his age, a towering and terrible genius who managed to conquer the Continent. In Napoleon's insatiable hunger for power, Johnson sees a pragmatist constrained neither by patriotism nor by ideology, a brilliant opportunist who fulfilled his ambition in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Johnson puts Napoleon in the context of his times, but his effort seems to underline even more profoundly how Napoleon stood out above them.
©2002 Paul Johnson (P)2002 Books on Tape, Inc.
A Bold and Dangerous Family
Summary
From the best-selling author of A Train in Winter, the story of the Rosselli family, whose courage standing up to Mussolini's fascism helped define the path of Italy in the years between the World Wars. "I had a house: they destroyed it. I had a newspaper: they closed it. I had a university chair: I was forced to abandon it. I had - as I still do - dreams, dignity, ideals: to defend them I was sent to prison. I had teachers: they murdered them." (Carlo Rosselli on Italy's fascist regime) Italy's Rosselli family were members of the cosmopolitan, cultural elite in Florence at the start of the 20th century. Led by their fierce matriarch, Amelia Rosselli, they were also vocal antifascists. As Mussolini rose to power in Italy following WWI, the Rossellis took leading roles in the rebellion against him, a stance that few in their class would risk. And when Mussolini established a police state whose tactics grew more brutal, the Rossellis and their antifascist friends transformed from debaters and critics into activists. As punishment for their participation in revolutionary activities, the Rossellis' homestead was ransacked, one after another of their number was imprisoned, others in the family fled the country to escape a similar fate, and two were eventually assassinated on the orders of Mussolini's government. After the outbreak of WWII, Amelia fled with the remaining members of the Rosselli family to New York City. Their visas were arranged by Eleanor Roosevelt herself. Through the stories of these brave people and their friends, renowned historian Caroline Moorehead delivers an immersive picture of Italy in the first half of the 20th century. She reveals the rise and fall of Mussolini and his black-shirted Squadristi; the ambivalence of many prominent Italian families to Mussolini and their seduction by his promises; and the bold, fractured antifascist movement, so many of whose members died at Mussolini's hands. Continuing The Resistance Quartet she began with A Train in Winter and continued with Village of Secrets, Moorehead once again shows us the faces of those who helped the world hold on to its humanity at a time when it seemed all might be lost.
©2017 Caroline Moorehead (P)2017 Penguin Random House Canada
The Knowledge
Summary
Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest - or even the most basic - technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, accurately tell time, weave fibers into clothing, or even how to produce food for yourself? Regarded as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can't hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn't just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all - the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. This would allow survivors to learn technological advances not explicitly explored in The Knowledge as well as things we have yet to discover. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very idea of scientific knowledge itself.
©2014 Lewis Dartnell (P)2014 Tantor
Galactic North
Summary
Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence beyond its natural limits has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down. The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space...because who's to say that humanity won't be next? Set in the Revelation Space universe, this is the first short story collection by the author who has been called "one of SF's best and most ambitious novelists". The eight stories included in Galactic North are "Great Wall of Mars", "Glacial", "A Spy in Europa", "Weather", "Dilation Sleep", "Grafenwalder's Bestiary", "Nightingale", and "Galactic North".
©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2009 Tantor Media
The Dream Universe
Summary
A vivid and captivating narrative about how modern science broke free of ancient philosophy, and how theoretical physics is returning to its unscientific roots In the early 17th century, Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed - from Kepler to Newton to Einstein. But in the early 20th century when quantum physics, with its deeply complex mathematics, entered into the picture, something began to change. Many physicists began looking to the equations first and physical reality second. As we investigate realms further and further from what we can see and what we can test, we must look to elegant, aesthetically pleasing equations to develop our conception of what reality is. As a result, much of theoretical physics today is something more akin to the philosophy of Plato than the science to which the physicists are heirs. In The Dream Universe, Lindley asks what is science when it becomes completely untethered from measurable phenomena?
©2020 David Lindley (P)2020 Random House Audio
The Spartans
Summary
The Spartans of ancient Greece were a powerful and unique people, radically different from any civilization before or since. A society of warrior-heroes, they were living exemplars of self-sacrifice, community endeavor, and achievement against all odds, qualities that today signify the ultimate in heroism. Scholars even believe that Thomas More had Sparta specifically in mind when he coined the term "Utopia". Paul Cartledge, widely considered the world's leading expert on Sparta, engagingly examines the rise and fall of this singular society. In a narrative that resounds with the battle cries of the ancient Greeks, he takes a compelling look at the many illustrious Spartan figures from the worlds of history and legend, including Lycurgus, Lysander, King Leonidas, and Helen of Troy and Sparta.
©2002, 2003 Paul Cartledge (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.
An Onshore Storm
Summary
Three mismatched troop transports, lots of 29-foot barges, and an under-strength regiment of foot - a waste of Royal Navy money, a doomed experiment, or a new way to bedevil Napoleon's army in Italy? Either way, it's Capt. Sir Alan Lewrie's idea, and it seems to be working, with successful raids all along the coast of Calabria. But it depends on timely information, and Lewrie must trust Don Julio Caesare, a lord of a Sicilian criminal underworld, and his minions, or the amateur efforts of a disorganized network of Calabrian partisans always in need of British arms and King George III's money. When at last the fourth transport arrives with reinforcement troops, what seems to be a blessing could turn out to be the ruin of the whole thing! Lewrie has been too successful in his career at sea and he's made bitter, jealous enemies with powerful patrons out to crush him and his novel squadron, no matter if it's succeeding. And there are doings back in England that Lewrie would prefer to deal with but can't. Lewrie has always been lucky, always finding a way to prevail-but can he this time? And if he is to be betrayed, who will do it?
©2018 Dewey Lambdin (P)2020 Tantor
Savage Continent
Summary
The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another 10 years.... The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the 20th century's most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted-such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government-were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places-particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France - they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe toward the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.
©2012 Keith Lowe (P)2012 Tantor
The Thirst
Summary
Harry Hole returns in the 11th installment of the author's best-selling, electrifying crime fiction series - published in 48 languages, more than 30 million copies sold worldwide. In Police - the last novel featuring Jo Nesbø's hard-bitten, maverick Oslo detective - a killer wreaking revenge on the police had Harry Hole fighting for the safety of the people closest to him. Now, in The Thirst, the story continues as Harry is inextricably drawn back into the Oslo police force. A serial murderer has begun targeting Tinder daters - a murderer whose MO reignites Harry's hunt for a nemesis of his past.
©2017 Jo Nesbo (P)2017 Random House Audio
The Winged Watchman
Summary
This acclaimed story of World War II is rich in suspense, characterization, plot, and spiritual truth. Every element of occupied Holland is united in a story of courage and hope: a hidden Jewish child, an underdiver, a downed RAF pilot, an imaginative, daring underground hero, and the small things of family life which surprisingly carry on in the midst of oppression. The Verhagen family, who live in the old windmill called the Winged Watchman, are a memorable set of individuals whose lives powerfully demonstrate the resilience of those who suffer but do not lose faith.
©1995 Hilda van Stockum/Bethlehem Books (P)2014 Bethlehem Books
Blood Royal or, The Son of Milady
Summary
The latest entry in this acclaimed series of new translations of the Musketeer novels, Blood Royal continues the adventures of the valiant dâArtagnan and his three loyal friends. The latest translation in Lawrence Ellsworthâs acclaimed new series of Alexandre Dumasâ greatest adventures is Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After. In this volume, all the plots and schemes set up in the previous novel come to dramatic fruition in the kind of exciting thrill ride Dumas is famous for - while at the same time introducing the characters and themes that form the foundation of the rest of the series, leading to its great climax in The Man in the Iron Mask. In Blood Royal, the Four Musketeers all venture to England on parallel missions to save King Charles I, pursued by the murderous and vengeful Mordaunt, the son of Milady de Winter, the great villain of The Three Musketeers. Despite all his experience, dâArtagnan is repeatedly foiled by the much-younger Mordaunt, who erupts out of the past to embody the strengths of audacity and cunning that were once dâArtagnanâs hallmarks. Mordaunt has corrupted those youthful strengths, and the older dâArtagnan is no match for him until he is able to pull his former team together again. To do this, dâArtagnan will have to become a true leader of men, leading not just by example, but also by foresight, persuasion, and compromise. Only then can the team of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis be reformed in all its might to defeat the specter of their past. Blood Royal is unmatched in Dumas' oeuvre in its depictions of his most famous and beloved characters and is an unforgettable saga of swordplay, suspense, revenge, and ultimate triumph.
©2020 Lawrence Schick (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
The Stalin Epigram
Summary
The Stalin Epigram is a masterful rendering of the life of Osip Mandelstam, one of Russia's greatest poets of the 20th century. His heroic protest against the Stalin regime---particularly his outspoken criticism of the collectivization that drove millions of Russian peasants to starvation---finally reached its apex in 1934. When he composed a searing indictment of Stalin in a 16-line poem, secretly passed from person to person through recitation, the poet was arrested. It is widely accepted that Stalin himself was directly involved in Mandelstam's exile and his death in a Siberian transit camp in 1938. A master of historical detail and cultural authenticity, best-selling author Robert Littell based this novel in part on a memorable, intimate meeting with Mandelstam's wife in 1979. Narrated by Mandelstam's wife, his friends Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, and Mandelstam himself, this lucid account of the relationships between the artists, politicians, and proletariat of Stalinist Russia is an astounding moment in history brought to life by a perceptive, immensely talented writer.
©2006 Robert Littell (P)2009 Tantor
Blackbird House
Summary
Hoffman follows her celebrated bestseller The Probable Future with an evocative work that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years. In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family's lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House. These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home. Narrated by John Lee, Se Sands, Amy Rubinate, Paul Michael Garcia, Bernadette Dunne, Tavia Gilbert, Cassandra Campbell, Hillary Huber, Kirsten Potter, Carrington McDuffie, Kate Reading, and Laura Hicks.
©2004 Alice Hoffman (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Fine Retribution
Summary
Captain Alan Lewrie and his small squadron defeat four French frigates off northern Spain, winning honor, glory, and renown. So, why is such a successful captain suddenly without a ship, or another active commission? Why do rumors swirl that jealous foes' powerful patrons are blighting his career? Months on end ashore, even in entertaining London setting up a household for himself and his retinue, getting his portrait painted, put him in serious sulks. Well, the artist is the sister of one of his midshipmen, a delightful and talented young lady of a modern outlook, but not modern enough to become Lewrie's lover. Dare he risk a second marriage? Then, just when things are the rosiest, at last, Admiralty calls upon him to develop and command a plan to raid French-held coasts, not with sailors and Marines from his own ship, but with a battalion of Army troops carried in a squadron of transports. It's intriguing, novel, and a way back to sea, but...can he part from the desirable Jessica Chenery? And if Lewrie does, will his foes allow him to succeed? Be certain that Alan Lewrie will prevail, scruples be damned!
©2017 Dewey Lambdin (P)2020 Tantor
To Thunderous Applause
Summary
Strength. Honor. Death. The fighting season continues, with Goll realizing he might have killed one opponent too many. Confronting the wrath of a dead gladiatorâs stable, he discovers a much more vengeful force behind a slew of blood matches. While the gladiators fight within the Pit, Brozz fights for his life in a much different arena. Escaping an attempt on his life, Borchus finds refuge with an old friend. Struggling to both recover from his wounds and find a purpose in a little village, Halm of Zhiberia discovers that giving up a pit fighterâs life isnât quite as it easy seems. Nor is it solely one manâs decision. And all the while, in the west, a monstrous enemy makes itself known and positions itself to strike at both the games and Sunjaâs heart. This is blood sport at its finest. At its worst. At its longest.
©2018 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2019 Podium Publishing
House of Pain
Summary
Strength. Honor. Death. Once every year, in the city of Sunja, gladiators meet within the arena known as Sunjaâs Pit. Some men enter for the lure of fortune, some for the fame, and some simply for the fight. The games continue for days until a champion is finally crowned. Or until all involved perish. The warriors comprising the House of Ten begin training under punishing mentors and a drink-loving taskmaster. Within the city of Sunja itself, Borchus works to establish a network of spies to aid the newly formed houseâs cause. A vengeful Halm hunts down Skulljigger for bloody retribution. And house master Goll realizes one of his pit fighters possesses potential beyond everyoneâs expectations. All the while, shadowy elements conspire to make the Tenâs opening matches upon the sands also their last. This is blood sport at its finest. At its worst. At its longest.
©2014 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2019 Podium Publishing
Havoc's Sword
Summary
It's 1798, and Dewey Lambdin's lovable but incorrigible rogue, Captain Alan Lewrie, and his crew of the Proteus frigate, have their work cut out for them as they sail through the war-torn Caribbean. First, Lewrie has rashly vowed to uphold a friend's honor in a duel to the death. Second, he faces the horridly unwelcome arrival of HM Government's Foreign Office agents. And last, he must engineer the showdown with his arch foe and nemesis, the hideous ogre of the French Revolution's Terror, that clever fiend Guillaume Choundas! Lewrie must also deal with the newly reborn United States Navy, that uneasy, unofficial "ally", and the stunning, life-altering surprise they bring. For good or ill, Lewrie's in the "quag" up to his neck, this time.
©2003 Dewey Lambdin (P)2005 Books on Tape
Croma Venture
Summary
Upon the ancient drysine moon/city of Defiance, the UFS Phoenix is being rebuilt, but her crew cannot do so in peace. Parren factions jostle for control of not only Defiance, but of the drysine data-core that Phoenix won at such an awful price. But the parren do not lay sole claim to that ancient knowledge, and within the bowels of the machine-city, something long-dead is awakening.  While aliens battle, Captain Debogande struggles to decide his next step. Human emissaries beckon him home, while a terrible new threat drives him toward the far edge of Spiral space. There live the croma, locked in a titanic struggle against the reeh, a species more terrifying than any yet faced by humanity. And holding perhaps the key to humanityâs salvation are a small force of freedom fighters, waging a hopeless battle against impossible odds, having waited a thousand years for just such a saviour as the UFS Phoenix....
©2018 Joel Shepherd (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
The Swan Thieves
Summary
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life--solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Oliver and toward a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Ranging from American museums to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love, The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, the losses of history, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
©2010 Elizabeth Kostova (P)2010 Hachette
H.M.S. Cockerel
Summary
A farmer, a bloody farmer! Knee-deep in dung and fathoms from the nearest port, Alan Lewrie, swashbuckling naval warrior turned family man, longs for battle. And when it comes, a battle royal it is! Called to the H.M.S. Cockerel, a sleek frigate captained by a malaria-stricken tyrant, First Officer Lewrie soon vaults to command, taking Cockerel from the lush pleasures of the Kingdom of Naples to a smoking cauldron called Toulon. There, an outnumbered coalition of former enemies is being drawn into a terrible land-sea battle against the revolutionary French, in a siege of blood and terror that will send shock waves around the world. He's fought and loved on land and bounding sea from America to the East Indies. Alan Lewrie is the unforgettable hero-rogue of the age of wooden-walled, spray-lashed fighting ships.
©1997 Dewey Lambdin (P)2010 Random House
Istanbul
Summary
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the worldâs great cities, by its foremost writer. Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy - or hüzün - that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters - both Turkish and foreign - who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyceâs Dublin and Borgesâ Buenos Aires, Pamukâs Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.
©2013 Orhan Pamuk (P)2013 Random House Audio
The French Admiral
Summary
It is 1781, and the British-held American port of Yorktown on the Chesapeake Bay is under siege. Pounded by the American colonists on land and the deadly warships of their French allies at sea, the once proud city is in flames and near ruin. But on the horizon, the King's own fleet of heavily armed frigates heads full sail to blast through France's blockade. Aboard His Majesty's swift flagship DESPERATE, midshipman Alan Lewrie quickly sets his gunners to their lethal work, firing rapid broadsides of 24 pound shot at the enemy vessels. Cannon fire lights up the death-filled night as the fate of the King's Colonies hangs on the bravery of one young midshipman leading his ships into the fiery jaws of battle. "Jack Aubrey, Stephen Maturin, Horatio Hornblower, and now Alan Lewrie - the four new musketeers." (Amazon.com)Â
©2002 Dewey Lambdin (P)2010 Random House
A Conspiracy of Paper
Summary
Benjamin Weaver is an outsider in 18th-century London: a Jew among Christians; a ruffian among aristocrats; a retired pugilist who, hired by London's gentry, travels through the criminal underworld in pursuit of debtors and thieves. In A Conspiracy of Paper, Weaver investigates a crime of the most personal sort: the mysterious death of his estranged father, a notorious stockjobber. To find the answers, Weaver must contend with a desperate prostitute who knows too much about his past, relatives who remind him of his alienation from the Jewish faith, and a cabal of powerful men in the world of British finance who have hidden their business dealings behind an intricate web of deception and violence. Relying on brains and brawn, Weaver uncovers the beginnings of a strange new economic order based on stock speculation - a way of life that poses great risk for investors but real danger for Weaver and his family. In the tradition of The Alienist and written with scholarly attention to period detail, A Conspiracy of Paper is one of the wittiest and most suspenseful historical novels in recent memory, as well as a perceptive and beguiling depiction of the origin of today's financial markets.
©2000 David Liss (P)2019 Tantor
The Stolen Crown
Summary
Katherine Woodville's sister never gave her a choice. A happy girl of modest means, Kate hardly expected to become a maker of kings. But when her sister impulsively marries King Edward IV in secret, Katherine's life is no longer hers to control.
©2010 Susan Higginbotham (P)2013 Tantor
The Other Side of Silence
Summary
From New York Times best-selling author Philip Kerr, the much anticipated return of Bernie Gunther in a series hailed by The Daily Beast as "the best crime novels around today". Once I'd been a good detective in Kripo, but that was a while ago, before the criminals wore smart gray uniforms and nearly everyone locked up was innocent. Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers. The war is over. Bernie Gunther, our sardonic former Berlin homicide detective and unwilling SS officer, is now living on the French Riviera. It is 1956, and Bernie is the go-to guy at the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat, the man you turn to for touring tips or if you need a fourth for bridge. As it happens, a local writer needs just that - someone to fill the fourth seat in a regular game that is the usual evening diversion at the Villa Mauresque. Not just any writer. Perhaps the richest and most famous living writer in the world: W. Somerset Maugham. And it turns out it is not just a bridge partner that he needs; it's some professional advice. Maugham is being blackmailed - perhaps because of his unorthodox lifestyle. Or perhaps because of something in his past, because once upon a time, Maugham worked for the British secret service, and the people now blackmailing him are spies. As Gunther fans know, all roads lead back to the viper's nest that was Hitler's Third Reich and to the killing fields that spread like a disease across Europe. Even in 1956, peace has not come to the continent: Now the Soviets have the H-bomb, and spies from every major power feel free to make all of Europe their personal playground.
©2016 Philip Kerr (P)2016 Penguin Audio
Paul McCartney
Summary
The best-selling author of Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson now presents an in-depth biography of the legendary musician and icon Paul McCartney, exploring his impact on music and culture, his personal triumphs and defeats, and his post-Beatles relationships with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. The book explores McCartney through the perspective of his lyrics, spanning his career from his years with the Beatles to his solo albums today.The composer of "Yesterday", "Hey Jude", "Eleanor Rigby", and "Let It Be", Paul McCartney is one of the most famous men in the world, yet one of the most elusive. An international superstar for more than 40 years, he has not only sold hundreds of millions of records but has also altered the course of popular culture. He has been worshiped and ridiculed, his work revered and reviled. Governments have celebrated him, persecuted him, thrown him in prison, and knighted him.More than a rock star, more than a celebrity, McCartney is a cultural touchstone. Yet no book has revealed the headwaters of his genius or, for that matter, explained why the Beatles' talented and adventurous musician seemed to abandon his position as an innovator, trading the daring of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for an endless procession of what even he has called silly love songs. But McCartney never lost the spark of genius. And at any given moment, McCartney can reach into himself and pull out something phenomenal.Drawing on years of research, Paul McCartney: A Life spans McCartney's roots in England's working class to his life in the present day, performing around the world and working for causes he believes in. Informed by new, exclusive interviews with friends, bandmates, and collaborators, the book describes McCartney's many triumphs as well as his failures, from the Beatles era through his decade with Wings and his subsequent solo career.
©2009 Peter Ames Carlin (P)2009 Tantor Media
Light & Shade
Summary
More than 30 years after disbanding in 1980, Led Zeppelin continues to be celebrated for its artistic achievements, broad musical influence, and commercial success. The band's notorious exploits have been chronicled in bestselling books; yet none of the individual members of the band has penned a memoir nor cooperated to any degree with the press or a biographer. In Light and Shade, Jimmy Page, the band's most reticent and inscrutable member, opens up to journalist Brad Tolinski, for the first time exploring his remarkable life and musical journey in great depth and intimate detail. Based on extensive interviews conducted with the guitarist/producer over the past 20 years, Light and Shade encompasses Page's entire career, beginning with his early years as England's top session guitarist when he worked with artists ranging from Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, and Burt Bacharach to the Kinks, The Who, and Eric Clapton. Page speaks frankly about his decadent yet immensely creative years in Led Zeppelin, his synergistic relationships with band members Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones, and his notable post-Zeppelin pursuits. While examining every major track recorded by Zeppelin, including "Stairway to Heaven", "Whole Lotta Love", and "Kashmir", Page reflects on the band's sensational tours, the filming of the concert movie The Song Remains the Same, his fascination with the occult, meeting Elvis Presley, and the making of the rock masterpiece Led Zeppelin IV, about which he offers a complete behind-the-scenes account. Additionally, the book is peppered with conversations between Page and other guitar greats, including his childhood friend Jeff Beck and hipster icon Jack White. Through Page's own words, Light and Shade presents an unprecedented first-person view of one of the most important musicians of our era.
©2012 Brad Tolinski (P)2012 Tantor
The Elf Queen of Shannara
Summary
The third volume of The Heritage of Shannara, which continues one of the most popular fantasy series of all time "Find the Elves and return them to the world of Men!" The shade of the Druid Allanon had ordered Wren. It was clearly an impossible task. The Elves had been gone from the Westland for more than a hundred years. There was not even a trace of their former city of Arborlon left to mark their passing. No one in the Esterland knew of them - except, finally, the Addershag. The blind old woman had given instructions to find a place on the coast of the Blue Divide, build a fire, and keep it burning for three days. "One will come for you." Tiger Ty, the Wing Rider, had come on his giant Roc to carry Wren and her friend Garth to the only clear landing site on the island of Morrowindl, where, he said, the Elves might still exist, somewhere in the demon-haunted jungle. Now she stood within that jungle, remembering the warning of the Addershag: "Beware, Elf-girl. I see danger ahead for you...and evil beyond imagining." It had proved all too true. Wren stood with her single weapon of magic, listening as demons evil beyond all imagining gathered for attack. How long could she resist? And if, by some miracle, she reached the Elves and could convince them to return, how could they possibly retrace her perilous path to reach the one safe place on the coast?Â
©2016 Terry Brooks (P)2016 Random House Audio
Alone
Summary
Combining epic history with rich family stories, Michael Korda chronicles the outbreak of World War II and the great events that led to Dunkirk. An epic of remarkable originality, Alone captures the heroism of World War II as movingly as any book in recent memory. Bringing to vivid life the world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of the war, Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Clouds of Glory, chronicles the outbreak of hostilities, recalling as a prescient young boy the enveloping tension that defined pre-Blitz London, and then as a military historian the great events that would alter the course of the 20th century. For indeed, May 1940 was a month like no other. The superior German war machine blazed into France, as the Maginot Line, supposedly "as firmly fixed in place as the Pyramids", crumbled in days. With the fall of Holland and Belgium, the imminent fall of Paris, the British army stranded at Dunkirk, and Neville Chamberlain's government in political freefall, Winston Churchill became prime minister on this historical nadir of May 10, 1941. Britain, diplomatically isolated, was suddenly the only nation with the courage and the resolve to defy Hitler. Against this vast historical canvas, Korda relates what happened and why. We first meet him at the age of six, surrounded by his glamorous movie family: his stage actress mother; his elegant father, Vincent, soon to receive an Academy Award; and his devoted Nanny Low, with whom he recites his evening prayers. Even the cheery BBC bulletins that Michael listened to every night could not mask the impending catastrophe, the German invasion so certain that the young boy, carrying his passport on a string around his neck, was evacuated to Canada on an ocean liner full of children. Such alarm was hardly exaggerated. No one, after all, could have ever imagined that the most unlikely flotilla of destroyers - Dutch barges, fishing boats, yachts, and even rowboats - would rescue over 300,000 men off the beach at Dunkirk and bring them home to England. The miraculous return of the army was greeted with a renewed call for courage, and in the months that followed, the lives of tens of millions would be inexorably transformed, often tragically so, by these epochal weeks of May 1940. It is this pivotal turning point in world history that Korda captures with such immediacy in Alone, a work that triumphantly demonstrates that even the most calamitous defeats can become the most legendary victories.
©2017 Success Research Corporation (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
Empires of the Sea
Summary
Empires of the Sea tells the story of the 50-year world war between Islam and Christianity for the Mediterranean: one of the fiercest and most influential contests in European history. It traces events from the appearance on the world stage of Suleiman the Magnificent - the legendary ruler of the Ottoman Empire - through "the years of devastation" when it seemed possible that Islam might master the whole sea, to the final brief flourishing of a united Christendom in 1571. The core of the story is the six years of bitter and bloody conflict between 1565 and 1571 that witnessed a fight to the finish. It was a tipping point in world civilization, a fast-paced struggle of spiraling intensity that led from the siege of Malta and the battle for Cyprus to the pope's last-gasp attempt to rekindle the spirit of the Crusades and the apocalypse at Lepanto. It features a rich cast of characters: Suleiman the Magnificent, greatest of Ottoman sultans; Hayrettin Barbarossa, the pirate who terrified Europe; the Knights of St. John, last survivors of the medieval crusading spirit; the aged visionary Pope Pius V; and the meteoric, brilliant Christian general, Don John of Austria. It is also a narrative about places: the shores of the Bosphorus, the palaces and shipyards of the Venetian lagoon, the barren rocks of Malta, the islands of Greece, the slave markets of Algiers - and the character of the sea itself, with its complex pattern of winds and weather, which provided the conditions and the field of battle. It involves all the peoples who border the Great Sea: Italians, Turks, Greeks, Spaniards, the French and the people of North Africa. This story is one of extraordinary color and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises, and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts. Its denouement, the battle of Lepanto, is a single action of quite shocking impact - considered at the time in Christian Europe to be "a day to end all days".
©2008 Roger Crowley (P)2008 Tantor
The King's Coat
Summary
It is 1780, and 17-year-old Alan Lewrie is a brash, rebellious young libertine. So much so that his callous father believes a bit of naval discipline will turn the boy around. Fresh aboard the tall-masted Ariadne, Midshipman Lewrie heads for the war-torn Americas, finding - rather unexpectedly - that he is a born sailor, equally at home with the randy pleasures of the port and the raging battles on the high seas. But in a hail of cannonballs comes a bawdy surprise.
©1998 Dewey Lambdin (P)2010 Random House
The Auschwitz Volunteer
Summary
In 1940, the Polish Underground wanted to know what was happening inside the recently opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested by the Germans and report from inside the camp. His intelligence reports, smuggled out in 1941, were among the first eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities: the extermination of Soviet POWs, its function as a camp for Polish political prisoners, and the "final solution" for Jews. Pilecki received brutal treatment until he escaped in April 1943; soon after, he wrote a brief report. This book is the first English translation of a 1945 expanded version. In the foreword, Poland's chief rabbi states, "If heeded, Pilecki's early warnings might have changed the course of history." Pilecki's story was suppressed for half a century after his 1948 arrest by the Polish Communist regime as a "Western spy". He was executed and expunged from Polish history. Pilecki writes in staccato style but also interjects his observations on humankind's lack of progress: "We have strayed, my friends, we have strayed dreadfully.... We are a whole level of hell worse than animals!"
©2012 Jarsolaw Garlinski and Aquila Polonica (U.S.) Ltd. (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Elder Gods
Summary
Richly imaginative, this fantasy will take you to the brink of the end of the world as gods fight demons and monsters for the right to rule - and their lives. While most continents float freely on the face of Mother Sea, the Land of Dhrall survives anchored by the will of the gods. All gods, elder and younger, share the people and the land of Dhrall equally. But the one place they never enter is The Wasteland: a barren and hideous wilderness ruled by the Vlagh - a god-like creature whose young are evil spawn. Now, as the elder gods are about to transfer their power to the younger gods, the Vlagh plans to take advantage of their weakened state and neutralize them, eventually conquering the world. To do so, it is breeding a terrible force borne of monsters and demons. But one ray of hope shines through the darkness: four children called the Dreamers. They alone hold the power to change the course of history...and stop the Vlagh in its quest for total world domination.
©2003 David and Leigh Eddings (P)2018 Hachette Audio
A General History of the Pyrates
Summary
"I presume we need make no Apology for giving the Name of a History to the following Sheets, though they contain nothing but the Actions of a Parcel of Robbers." (From the book) This work was published in 1724, under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson, by an unknown British author, usually assumed to be Daniel Defoe. This work is the prime source for the biographies of many well-known pirates of that era and shaped the popular notions about pirates of the day. Included are Blackbeard, Black Bart, Jolly Roger, Anne Bonny (aka Anne Bonn), Edward Teach, Henry Avery, Mary Read, and many more.
©2016 Daniel Defoe (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Vampire Crusader
Summary
The immortal knight, Sir Richard of Ashbury, hunts his nemesis through centuries of war.... AD 1190, England. A young knight's family is slaughtered. As the lords of Europe seek to retake Jerusalem from the mighty Saladin, Sir Richard swears an oath of vengeance against Earl William de Ferrers, who has returned from the dead with an insatiable thirst for violence. Richard stalks William and his savage knights across Europe to the Holy Land, fights in the crusades' bloodiest battles alongside Richard the Lionheart and unearths a secret of great evil under the hills of Palestine.
©2015 Dan Davis (P)2018 Tantor
Secret Ingredients
Summary
Since its earliest days, The New Yorker has been a tastemaker - literally. As the home of A. J. Liebling, Joseph Wechsberg, and M. F. K. Fisher, who practically invented American food writing, the magazine established a tradition that is carried forward today by irrepressible literary gastronomes including Calvin Trillin, Bill Buford, Adam Gopnik, Jane Kramer, and Anthony Bourdain. Now, in this indispensable collection, The New Yorker dishes up a feast of delicious writing on food and drink, from every age of its fabled 80-year history. There are memoirs, short stories, tell-alls, and poems - ranging in tone from sweet to sour and in subject from soup to nuts. M. F. K. Fisher pays homage to âcookery witches,â those mysterious cooks who possess âan uncanny power over food,â while John McPhee valiantly trails an inveterate forager and is rewarded with stewed persimmons and white-pine-needle tea. There is Roald Dahlâs famous story âTaste,â in which a wine snobâs palate comes in for some unwelcome scrutiny, and Julian Barnesâs ingenious tale of a lifelong gourmand who goes on a very peculiar diet for still more peculiar reasons. Adam Gopnik asks if French cuisine is done for, and Calvin Trillin investigates whether people can actually taste the difference between red wine and white. We journey with Susan Orlean as she distills the essence of Cuba in the story of a single restaurant, and with Judith Thurman as she investigates the arcane practices of Japanâs tofu masters. Closer to home, Joseph Mitchell celebrates the old New York tradition of the beefsteak dinner, and Mark Singer shadows the cityâs foremost fisherman-chef. Selected from the magazineâs plentiful larder, Secret Ingredients celebrates all forms of gustatory delight.Â
©2007 David Remnick (P)2007 Books on Tape
The Red-Haired Woman
Summary
From the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Snow and My Name Is Red, a fable of fathers and sons and the desires that come between them.
On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before - not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world. But in the nearby town where they buy provisions and take their evening break, the boy will find an irresistible diversion. The Red-Haired Woman, an alluring member of a travelling theatre company, catches his eye and seems as fascinated by him as he is by her. The young man's wildest dream will be realized, but, when in his distraction a horrible accident befalls the well digger, the boy will flee, returning to Istanbul. Only years later will he discover whether he was in fact responsible for his master's death and who the redheaded enchantress was.
A beguiling mystery tale of family and romance, of East and West, tradition and modernity, by one of the great storytellers of our time.
Translated from Turkish by Ekin Oklap.
©2017 Orhan Pamuk (P)2017 Random House Audio
Blackett's War
Summary
In March 1941, after a year of unbroken and devastating U-boat onslaughts, the British War Cabinet decided to try a new strategy in the foundering naval campaign. To do so, they hired an intensely private, bohemian physicist who was also an ardent socialist. Patrick Blackett was a former navy officer and future winner of the Nobel Prize; he is little remembered today, but he and his fellow scientists did as much to win the war against Nazi Germany as almost anyone else. As director of the World War II antisubmarine effort, Blackett used little more than simple mathematics and probability theory - and a steadfast belief in the utility of science - to save the campaign against the U-boat. Employing these insights in unconventional ways, from the washing of mess hall dishes to the color of bomber wings, the Allies went on to win essential victories against Hitler's Germany. Here is the story of these civilian intellectuals who helped to change the nature of 20th-century warfare. Throughout, Stephen Budiansky describes how scientists became intimately involved with what had once been the distinct province of military commanders - convincing disbelieving military brass to trust the solutions suggested by their analysis. Budiansky shows that these men above all retained the belief that operational research and a scientific mentality could change the world. It's a belief that has come to fruition with the spread of their tenets to the business and military worlds, and it started in the Battle of the Atlantic, in an attempt to outfight the Germans, but most of all to outwit them.
©2013 Stephen Budiansky (P)2013 Tantor
Vampire Khan
Summary
The immortal knight battles an unstoppable horde of Mongol vampires. AD 1253. The immortal William de Ferrers sits at the right hand of the great Mongol Khan while his hordes conquer Persia and Syria. Soon, nothing will separate them from Christendom itself. And so Richard of Ashbury must cross the barbarian wilderness to destroy the threat to Christendom and fulfill his oath of vengeance. To face the terrifying might of the Mongols, Richard must assemble a company of allies from the Templars, the Assassins, Abbasid Saracens, and even Mongol renegades. Together, they will wage a bloody war on the vampire khan.
©2018 Dan Davis (P)2020 Tantor
The Reading Life
Summary
The revered teacher and best-selling author reflects on the power, importance, and joy of a life dedicated to reading books in this delightful collection drawn from his wide body of writings. More than 50 years after his death, revered intellectual and teacher C. S. Lewis continues to speak to booklovers, thanks not only to his intellectual insights on Christianity but also his wondrous creative works and deep reflections on the literature that influenced his life. Beloved for his instructive novels including The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Chronicles of Narnia as well as his philosophical books that explored theology and Christian life, Lewis was a lifelong writer and book lover. Cultivated from his many essays, articles, and letters, as well as his classic works, The Reading Life provides guidance and reflections on the love and enjoyment of books. Engaging and enlightening, this well-rounded collection includes Lewisâ reflections on science fiction, why childrenâs literature is for all ages, and why we should revisit two old books for every new one we read or listen to. A window into the thoughts of one of the greatest public intellectuals of our time, this collection reveals not only why Lewis loved the written word, but what it means to learn through literature from one of our wisest and most enduring teachers.
©2019 C. S. Lewis (P)2019 HarperAudio
SPQR V: Saturnalia
Summary
This eagerly awaited fifth book in John Maddox Roberts's Edgar-nominated historical mystery series once again takes the reader back to the Rome of Julius Caesar and the Roman Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger. Decius has won himself a reputation as both an investigator and, most unfortunately, a bit of a playboy. Having been banished by his family for sometimes embarrassing activities to a rather leisurely lifestyle on Rhodes, he is puzzled to be suddenly and unexpectedly summoned home to assist in an investigation. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, a relative of Decius and his family and the head of a powerful political clan, has been poisoned, and his infamous wife, Clodia, is immediately suspected of disposing of her rather inconvenient husband. Not entirely convinced of Clodia's guilt, Decius delves into the intricacies of Rome's ruling class and discovers that a clandestine, forbidden witches' cult is inextricably intertwined with some very highborn people. A trial for Clodia would be most unwelcome, as it could bring to light some well-kept secrets. To get to the bottom of the corruption that accompanies the intoxicating allure of this ancient city, Decius must form an uneasy alliance with Clodius, Clodia's brother and his sworn enemy, and be extremely careful not to step on any toes.
©1999 John Maddox Roberts (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Time Pieces
Summary
From the internationally acclaimed and Man Booker prize-winning author of The Sea and the Benjamin Black mysteries - a vividly evocative memoir that unfolds around the author's recollections, experience, and imaginings of Dublin. As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived. And though, when he came of age and took up residence there, and the city became a frequent backdrop for his dissatisfactions (not playing an identifiable role in his work until the Quirke mystery series, penned as Benjamin Black), it remained in some part of his memory as fascinating as it had been to his seven-year-old self. And as he guides us around the city, delighting in its cultural, architectural, political, and social history, he interweaves the memories that are attached to particular places and moments. The result is both a wonderfully idiosyncratic tour of Dublin, and a tender yet powerful ode to a formative time and place for the artist as a young man.
©2018 John Banville (P)2018 Random House Audio
Shardik
Summary
A gripping tale of war, adventure, horror, and romance, Shardik is a remarkable exploration of mankind's universal desire for divine incarnation. Richard Adams' Watership Down was a number-one New York Times best seller, a stunning work of the imagination, and an acknowledged modern classic. In Shardik, Adams sets a different yet equally compelling tale in a far-off fantasy world. Shardik is a fantasy of tragic character, centered on the long-awaited reincarnation of the gigantic bear Shardik and his appearance among the half-barbaric Ortelgan people. Mighty, ferocious, and unpredictable, Shardik changes the life of every person in the story. His advent commences a momentous chain of events. Kelderek the hunter, who loves and trusts the great bear, is swept up by destiny to become first devotee and then prophet, then victorious soldier, then ruler of an empire and priest-king of Lord Shardik - Messenger of God - only to discover ever-deeper layers of meaning implicit in his passionate belief in the bear's divinity.
©2001 Richard Adams (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
Summary
Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture. Cahill credits the Greeks with creating Western militarism, shaping Christianity, and giving us the intellectual foundations on which we base everything from dictionaries to filing systems. Cahill ably demonstrates the fascinating uniqueness of ancient Greek culture, but also shows its startling reincarnations in contemporary contexts.
©2003 Thomas Cahill (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.
Shades of Grey
Summary
An astonishing, hotly anticipated new novel from the great literary fantasist and author of the Thursday Next series and Early Riser, Jasper Fforde As long as anyone can remember, society has been ruled by a Colortocracy. From the underground feedpipes that keep the municipal park green to the healing hues viewed to cure illness to a social hierarchy based upon one's limited color perception, society is dominated by color. In this world, you are what you can see. Young Eddie Russett has no ambition to be anything other than a loyal drone of the Collective. With his better-than-average red perception, he could well marry Constance Oxblood and inherit the string works; he may even have enough red perception to make prefect. For Eddie, life looks colorful. Life looks good. But everything changes when he moves with his father, a respected swatchman, to East Carmine. There, he falls in love with a Grey named Jane who opens his eyes to the painful truth behind his seemingly perfect, rigidly controlled society. Curiosity - a dangerous trait to display in a society that demands total conformity - gets the better of Eddie, who beings to wonder: Why are there not enough spoons to go around? Why is everything - and everyone - barcoded? What happened to all the people who never returned from High Saffron? And why, when you begin to question the world around you, do black-and-white certainties reduce themselves to shades of grey? Part satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, this is the new world from the creative and comic genius of Jasper Fforde.
©2009 Jasper Fforde (P)2009 Penguin
King, Ship, and Sword
Summary
December 1801. The Peace of Amiens end the long war with Napoleon Bonaparte's France, but Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is appalled by its consequences. First, he's been in the Navy since 1780 (most unwillingly, most of the time!) and at sea for the better part of nine years, since 1793, so what is a dashing and successful frigate captain to do with himself, if he's ashore on half-pay, and if so, for how long? Second, and even worse, is where will Lewrie twiddle his thumbs and be bored to death until the war begins again, as he's sure it will? Will he idle in expensive, exciting London, or go home to his rented farm in Anglesgreen in Surrey, and rejoin his wife and in-laws who (mostly) despise him like the Devil hates Holy Water, where he knows as much of agriculture and animal husbandry as his two pet cats do of celestial navigation? When war breaks out again in May of 1803, Lewrie has fresh orders, a new frigate, and a chance to punish and pursue the French, but it's no longer for duty or king and country - now it's personal!
©2010 Dewey Lambdin (P)2019 Tantor
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
Summary
Immanuel Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, first published in 1785, lays out Kant's essential philosophy and defines the concepts and arguments that would shape his later work. Central to Kant's doctrine is the categorical imperative, which he defines as a mandate that human actions should always conform to a universal, unchanging standard of rational morality. Directly opposed to utilitarian philosophy, Kant's theories have been broadly influential since their publication and stand as a seminal contribution to ethical thought. Although Kant expanded upon the ideas defined here in his later work, including the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysics of Morals, it is in his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals that they are communicated in their most clear, concise form. This edition is the translation by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott.
Public Domain (P)2011 Tantor
QB VII
Summary
In Queen's Bench Courtroom Number Seven, famous author Abraham Cady stands trial. In his book The Holocaust - born of the terrible revelation that the Jadwiga Concentration camp was the site of his family's extermination - Cady shook the consciousness of the human race. He also named eminent surgeon Sir Adam Kelno as one of Jadwiga's most sadistic inmate/doctors. Kelno has denied this and brought furious charges. Now unfolds Leon Uris' riveting courtroom drama - one of the great fictional trials of the century.
©1970 Leon Uris (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Surviving Lockdown
Summary
The year 2020 has been the year of the virus, and it will not be a mere footnote in history. This book reflects on the unprecedented changes to our lives and the impact on our behavior as we lived through social isolation during the global COVID-19 pandemic. From sociable creatures of habit, we were forced into a period of uncertainty, restriction, and risk, physically separated from families and friends. Packed with guidance and coping strategies for lockdown, this book, authored by top psychologist David Cohen, explores the impact of this widespread quarantine on our relationships, our children, our mental health, and our daily lives. Benedictine monks, hermit popes, Dorothy Sayers, Daniel Defoe (who made the isolated Robinson Crusoe a hero), Sigmund Freud, and a rabbi's angry dog are all among the cast of characters as we are taken on a whistle-stop tour through plagues in history and brain science, to the importance of introspection and how to make meaning from lockdown. In his trademark entertaining style, Cohen examines the psychology behind our behavior during this unusual time to discover what we can learn about human nature, what lessons we can learn for the future - and whether we will apply them.
©2021 David Cohen (P)2021 Tantor
Leadership in War
Summary
A comparison of nine leaders who led their nations through the greatest wars the world has ever seen and whose unique strengths - and weaknesses - shaped the course of human history, from the bestselling, award-winning author of Churchill and Napoleon "Has the enjoyable feel of a lively dinner table conversation with an opinionated guest."Â (The New York Times Book Review) Taking us from the French Revolution to the Cold War, Andrew Roberts presents us with a bracingly honest and deeply insightful look at nine major figures in modern history: Napoleon Bonaparte, Horatio Nelson, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, George C. Marshall, Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Margaret Thatcher. Each one of these leaders fundamentally shaped the outcome of the war in which their nation was embroiled. Is war leadership unique, or did these leaders have something in common, traits and techniques that transcend time and place and can be applied to the essential nature of conflict? Meticulously researched and compellingly written, Leadership in War presents readers with fresh, complex portraits of leaders who approached war with different tactics and different weapons, but with the common goal of success in the face of battle. Both inspiring and cautionary, these portraits offer important lessons on leadership in times of struggle, unease, and discord. With his trademark verve and incisive observation, Roberts reveals the qualities that doom even the most promising leaders to failure, as well as the traits that lead to victory.Â
©2019 Andrew Roberts (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Starburst
Summary
Every summer, the Edinburgh International Festival attracts celebrated artists, musicians, comedians, and actors to the beloved Scottish city. Hundreds of thousands of people descend on the town to join in the magnificent celebration. This year, the annual Edinburgh festival draws six unique and vibrant individuals, who all come together to follow their dreams and seek success, love, fame, and happiness: Angélique, the beautiful and renowned violinist whose fame hides her secret heartache; Tess, a member of the festival marketing team and a newlywed struggling with her own secrets; Roger, whose dazzling fireworks display will be the grand finale of the festival and his career; Leonard, the aging cinematographer who wants one last time to shine; Rene, the feisty comedienne who is reaching for the stars; and Jamie, the handsome young flat owner who brings everyone together and finds love along the way. Each of them is trying to discover what destiny holds in store, and during this one magnificent summer, paths cross and lives are forever changed. Inspiring, funny, engrossing, and full of vivid descriptions of the incredible sights and sounds of Edinburgh, Starburst is another Pilcher winner.
©2007 Robin Pilcher (P)2007 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC
The Baltic Gambit
Summary
January 1801, and Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, known as "St. Alan the Liberator" for freeing (stealing!) a dozen black slaves on Jamaica to man his frigate years before, is at last being brought to trial for it, with his life on the line. At the same time, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia are forming a League of Armed Neutrality, to Napoleon Bonaparte's delight, to deny Great Britain their vital exports, even if it means war. England will need all her experienced sea dogs, but...even Alan Lewrie? Ultimately, Lewis is acquitted, but he's also ignored by the Navy, so it's half-pay on "civvy street" for him, and with idle time on his mischievous hands, Lewrie is sure to get himself in trouble - again! - especially if there are young women and his wastrel public school friends involved...and they are! A brawl in a Panton Saint brothel, a drunk, infatuated young Russian count, precede Lewrie's summons to Admiralty and the command of the Thermopylae frigate to replace an ill captain as the fleet gathers to face down the League of the North, and its instigator, the mad Tsar Paul. All that and the Battle of Copenhagen, too, and it's broadsides at close quarters, and treachery for Lewrie, forcing him to use all his wiles to survive!
©2009 Dewey Lambdin (P)2019 Tantor
The White Castle
Summary
From a Turkish writer who has been compared with Borges, Nabokov, and DeLillo comes a dazzling novel that is at once a captivating work of historical fiction and a sinuous treatise on the enigma of identity and the relations between East and West.
In the 17th century, a young Italian scholar sailing from Venice to Naples is taken prisoner and delivered to Constantinople. There he falls into the custody of a scholar known as Hoja - "master" - a man who is his exact double. In the years that follow, the slave instructs his master in Western science and technology, from medicine to pyrotechnics.
But Hoja wants to know more: why he and his captive are the persons they are and whether, given knowledge of each other's most intimate secrets, they could actually exchange identities.
Set in a world of magnificent scholarship and terrifying savagery, The White Castle is a colorful and intricately patterned triumph of the imagination.
Translated from the Turkish by Victoria Holbrook.
©1991 Orhan Pamuk (P)2018 Random House Audio
SPQR IV: The Temple of the Muses
Summary
When Roman junior senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger has a chance to join a diplomatic mission to Alexandria, he welcomes the opportunity to temporarily elude his enemies in the Eternal City - even though it means leaving his beloved Rome. Decius is just beginning to enjoy the outpost's many exotic pleasures when the suspicious death of an irascible philosopher occurs, coinciding with the puzzling and apocalyptic ravings of a charismatic cult leader. Intrigued, Decius requests and is given permission by the Egyptian Pharaoh to investigate the heinous crime. What he discovers is beyond shocking. And when the corpse of a famous courtesan mysteriously turns up in his bed, Decius suddenly finds himself entangled in a web of conspiracy far more widespread and dangerous than he ever imagined - one that threatens to bring about the downfall of the entire Empire.
©1992 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Much Ado About Lewrie
Summary
The 25th title in Dewey Lambdin's beloved series of historical naval adventure.  Lewrie loses his ship and his command when he receives news that Vigilance must return to England to be decommissioned and turned over to the dockyards for a complete refit. Lewrie is grounded, put on half-pay, and his crew disperses to look for new positions.  It's late autumn, and being ashore is heavenly, after a time. Lewrie spends time with his wife, Jessica, helps his son Hugh find a new ship, and happily marries off Charlotte. Life onshore is quiet until Lewrie finds himself once again in the headlines of the city papers after discovering a dognapping gang and uncovering stolen Bisquits and Rembrants. The headlines should be positive, but soon the tides turn against Lewrie once again. There's never a dull moment for Lewrie.  Dewey Lambdin is the reigning master of maritime fiction, celebrated as the heir to Patrick O'Brian and C. S. Forester. For over 20 years, his devoted fans have followed the adventures of Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, from his days as a midshipman to captain of his own ship and, though on somewhat dubious grounds, a baronetcy.
©2019 Dewey Lambdin (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
Time's Eye
Summary
For eons, Earth has been under observation by the Firstborn, beings almost as old as the universe itself. The Firstborn are unknown to humankind - until they act. In an instant, Earth is carved up and reassembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline. Instead, the world becomes a patchwork of eras, from prehistory to 2037, each with its own indigenous inhabitants. Scattered across the planet are floating silver orbs impervious to all weapons and impossible to communicate with. Are these technologically advanced devices responsible for creating and sustaining the rifts in time? Are they cameras through which inscrutable alien eyes are watching? Or are they something stranger and more terrifying still? The answer may lie in the ancient city of Babylon, where two groups of refugees from 2037 - three cosmonauts returning to Earth from the International Space Station, and three United Nations peacekeepers on a mission in Afghanistan - have detected radio signals: the only such signals on the planet, apart from their own. The peacekeepers find allies in nineteenth-century British troops and in the armies of Alexander the Great. The astronauts, crash-landed in the steppes of Asia, join forces with the Mongol horde led by Genghis Khan. The two sides set out for Babylon, each determined to win the race for knowledge...and the power that lies within. Yet the real power is beyond human control, perhaps even human understanding. As two great armies face off before the gates of Babylon, it watches, waiting.
©2005 Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Jack London Boxed Set
Summary
Jack Londonâs adventurous nature, intuitive feeling for animal life, and superb storytelling skills give his tales a striking vitality and force. Thrilling action and a sense of justice characterize the classic stories in this collection. The Call of the Wild A bold-spirited dog named Buck is stripped from his comfortable life on a California estate and thrust into the rugged terrain of the Klondike. There, he is made a sled dog and battles to become his teamâs leader and the devoted servant of John Thornton, a man who shows him kindness amid the savage lawlessness of man and beast. White Fang In the desolate, frozen wilds of Northwest Canada, a lone wolf fights the heroic daily fight for life in the wild. But after he is captured and cruelly abused by men, he becomes a force of pure rage. Only one man sees inside the killer to his intelligence and nobility. But can his kindness touch White Fang? AudioFile Earphones Award. Audie Award finalist.
Public Domain (P)2006 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Reclaiming Honor
Summary
Reclaiming Honor (The Way of Legend, Book 1)  The story begins here!  Best-selling and award-winning author of STIGERS TIGERS and the KARUS SAGA, Marc Alan Edelheit has teamed up with national best-selling author Quincy J. Allen to deliver a fresh epic fantasy adventure, told from the perspective of dwarves. This action-packed series introduces a new hero, and fighter, Tovak Stonehammer.  The dwarven nations are facing extermination. Their ancient enemy has returned. The Horde is coming and, along with it, a dark tide is spreading across the world of Tanis. One by one, the free peoples of the world have fallen under a shadow, crushed by the merciless boot of the Horde.  The Syrulian Empire, the last buffer state between three dwarven nations and the advancing armies of the Horde, has fallen. Vastly outnumbered, the dwarves must undertake the Great March, uprooting their entire civilization in search of a new homeland. They hope to find a safe harbor beyond the reach of the enemy, for the nations are not strong enough to withstand the might of the Horde.  Every sword is needed.  A Pariah amongst his people, an outcast and undesirable, Tovak intends to serve and do his part. He must hide his true identity in hopes of making a name for himself and proving his worth. Punished for the actions of his father, something in which he had no part, he has suffered one setback, one injustice after another. Yet his faith in Thulla - the rejected god of his people - is strong and has kept him going. Tovak has pursued his dream of serving his people and working towards the day when he will be able to cast off the mantle of Pariah and build Legend of his own. Bearing the burden of his peopleâs disdain and his familyâs disgrace, Tovak has joined a warband. Armed with his faith, determination, and courage, he must face heartless comrades, deadly monsters, and the enemy who would like nothing better than to place any dwarfâs head on a stake. Will Tovak rise to the occasion? Or will he falter and fall before the blades of the Horde or, worse, his own comrades when they discover the truth? Tovak must find a way to reclaim his honor and prove his worth. All the while, he might also be the key to his peopleâs salvation, or perhaps even their downfall...for a true god has taken an interest in him and his future. The path of destiny lies before him and so, too, does the Way of Legend.  Set upon the world of Tannis, some years before the arrival of Karus and the Lost Legio IX, this book is a Last War Novel.
©2019 Marc Edelheit (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Those Who Hold Bastogne
Summary
Hitler's last gamble, the Battle of the Bulge, was intended to push the Allied invaders of Normandy all the way back to the beaches. The plan nearly succeeded, and almost certainly would have, were it not for one small Belgian town and its tenacious American defenders who held back a tenfold larger German force while awaiting the arrival of General George Patton's mighty Third Army. In this dramatic account of the 1944-45 winter of war in Bastogne, historian Peter Schrijvers offers the first full story of the German assault on the strategically located town. From the December stampede of American and Panzer divisions racing to reach Bastogne first, through the bloody eight-day siege from land and air, and through three more weeks of unrelenting fighting even after the siege was broken, events at Bastogne hastened the long-awaited end of WWII. Schrijvers draws on diaries, memoirs, and other fresh sources to illuminate the experiences not only of Bastogne's 3,000 citizens and their American defenders, but also of German soldiers and commanders desperate for victory.
©2014 Peter Schrijvers (P)2015 Tantor
March Violets
Summary
Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a âbrilliantly innovative thriller-writer,â Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir-tinged mysteries set in Nazi-era Berlin that are nothing short of spellbinding. The first book of the Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets introduces listeners to Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought heâd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and richly detailed, March Violets is noir listening at its best and blackest. âEchoes of Raymond Chandler but better on his vivid and well-researched detail than the masterâ (Evening Standard)
©2008 Philip Kerr (P)2008 Books on Tape
The Perfect Son
Summary
A disturbing and shocking debut novel of psychological suspense about a recently widowed mother, her young son, and the lengths she'll go to in order to keep him safe. When Tess Clarke wakes up in the hospital the day after her son Jamie's eighth birthday, she's sure of these things: She's been stabbed, her son is missing, her brother-in-law and her grief counselor are involved. But no one is listening to her. After her husband, Mark, died suddenly in a terrible accident a few months earlier, the only thing keeping Tess together is Jamie. As they struggle to make sense of their new life without Mark, they find joy in brief moments of normalcy like walking to school and watching television together. Life is hard without Mark, but Tess has Jamie, and that's what matters. But there in the hospital, confused and surrounded by people who won't listen, Tessâs world falls apart. To save her son, she must piece together what happened between Mark's death and Jamie's birthday, but the truth might just be too much for her to bear.
©2019 Lauren North (P)2019 Penguin Audio
101 Job Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again
Summary
Learn the secrets to excelling at job interviews, directly from top interviewers and recruiters.
You can't prepare an answer for every interview question. So, of the thousands of questions potential employers might ask, which ones will they ask? And what should you say?
After extensive research among hundreds of interviewers and thousands of interviewees, finally here's the book that will give you the answer.
101 Job Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again is based on direct input from top interviewers. It offers powerful preparation techniques, the lowdown on how to answer the most common questions, and - above all - how to adopt a winning mind-set at interviews, one that will help you stand out from the pack and land the job.
From classic questions like "tell me about yourself" and "what are your greatest weaknesses?" to puzzlers like "sell me this pen" and "how many traffic lights are there in New York?", James Reed reveals what interviewers are really asking and gives you the best possible answers.
©2016 James Reed (P)2016 Penguin Audio
The Black Book
Summary
A new translation and afterword by Maureen Freely.
Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel-loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst.
With its cascade of beguiling stories about Istanbul, The Black Book is a brilliantly unconventional mystery, and a provocative meditation on identity. For Turkish literary fans, it is the cherished cult novel in which Orhan Pamuk found his original voice, but it has largely been neglected by English-language speakers. Now, in Maureen Freelyâs beautiful new translation, they, too, may encounter all its riches.
©2018 Orhan Pamuk (P)2018 Random House Audio
Hostile Shores
Summary
In 1805, with news of Admiral Nelson's death fresh on his mind, Captain Lewrie's HMS Reliant joins up in the voyage that will culminate in the Battle of Cape Town, in which the British wrested control of South Africa from the Dutch. In the wake of that victory, Lewrie heads west to South America, where Britain's attacks on Buenos Aires and other Spanish colonies have not been faring as well. But the worst is yet to come, and soon Lewrie will be facing a battle at sea that will put his naval career and life at risk.
©2013 Dewey Lambdin (P)2020 Tantor
The King's Commission
Summary
It's 1782. First officer on brig o'war.... Fresh from duty on the frigate Desperate in her fight with the French Capricieuse off St. Kitts, Midshipman Alan Lewrie passes his examination board for lieutenancy and finds himself commissioned first officer of the brig o'war Shrike. There's time for some dalliance with the fair sex, and then Lieutenant Lewrie must be off to patrol the North American coast and attempt to bring the Muskogees and Seminoles onto the British side against the American rebels (dalliance with an Indian maiden is just part of the mission). Then it's back to the Caribbean, to sail beside Captain Horatio Nelson in the Battle for Turks Island. Naval officer and rogue, Alan Lewrie is a man of his times and a hero for all times. His equals are Hornblower, Aubrey, and Maturin - sailors beloved by readers and listeners all over the world.
©1996 Dewey Lambdin (P)2010 Random House
Annihilation
Summary
There can be no victory without annihilation. A lull in the onslaught of infected breeds a false sense of security for Johnson and his expanded group. Once again, events unfolding far beyond their knowledge conspire to bring a new type of terror to the survivors.  Others, displaced from what had been their place of safety, struggle to survive against age-old enemies: cold and hunger. In a bold move, they break out, only to make unexpected discoveries which could spell a chance for them to survive.  In a bid to undo all progress, the untested serum is deployed on a massive scale which tips the scales steeply against humanity's chances to win. To live. To remain the dominant species on Earth.  Fleeing the seemingly unstoppable enemy, they pin their hopes on a final attempt for freedom, but that means they must turn their backs on their home forever.
©2020 DHP Publishing (P)2020 Tantor
Adaptation
Summary
The apocalypse continues in the penultimate chapter of the Toy Soldiers zombie survival series. Will anybody make it out alive?
©2019 DHP Publishing (P)2020 Tantor
Alexander the Great
Summary
Paul Cartledge, one of the world's foremost scholars of ancient Greece, illuminates the brief but iconic life of Alexander (356-323 B.C.), king of Macedon, conqueror of the Persian Empire, and founder of a new world order. Alexander's legacy has had a major impact on military tacticians, scholars, statesmen, adventurers, authors, and filmmakers. Cartledge brilliantly evokes Alexander's remarkable political and military accomplishments, cutting through the myths to show why he was such a great leader. He explores our endless fascination with Alexander and gives us insight into his charismatic leadership, his capacity for brutality, and his sophisticated grasp of international politics. Alexander the Great is an engaging portrait of a fascinating man and a welcome balance to the myths, legends, and skewed history that have obscured the real Alexander.
©2004 Paul Cartledge (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Millennium
Summary
History's greatest tour guide, Ian Mortimer, takes us on an eye-opening and expansive journey through the last millennium of human innovation. In Millennium, best-selling historian Ian Mortimer takes the listener on a whirlwind tour of the last 10 centuries of Western history. It is a journey into a past vividly brought to life and bursting with ideas, that pits one century against another in his quest to measure which century saw the greatest change. We journey from a time when there was a fair chance of your village being burned to the ground by invaders - and dried human dung was a recommended cure for cancer - to a world in which explorers sailed into the unknown and civilizations came into conflict with each other on an epic scale. Here is a story of godly scientists, fearless adventurers, coldhearted entrepreneurs, and strong-minded women - a story of discovery, invention, revolution, and cataclysmic shifts in perspective. Millennium is a journey into the past like no other. Our understanding of human development will never be the same again, and the lessons we learn along the way are profound ones for us all.
©2014 Ian Mortimer (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
The Black Cat
Summary
Three months have passed since Richard Jury was left bereft and guilt- ridden after his lover's tragic auto accident, and he is now more wary than ever. He is deeply suspicious when requested on a case far out of his jurisdiction in an outlying village, where a young woman has been murdered behind the local pub. The only witness is the establishment's black cat, who gives neither crook nor clue as to the girl's identity or her killer's. Identifying the girl becomes tricky when she's recognized as both the shy local librarian and a posh city escort, and Jury must use all his wits and intuition to determine the connection to subseÂquent escort murders. Meanwhile, Jury's nemesis, Harry Johnson, continues to goad Jury down a dangerous path. And Johnson, along with the imperturbable dog Mungo, just may be the key to it all. Written with Martha Grimes' trademark insight and grace, The Black Cat signals the thrilling return of her greatest character. The superintendent is a man possessed of prodigious analytical gifts and charm, yet vulnerable in the most perplexing ways.
©2010 Martha Grimes (P)2010 Penguin
HHhH
Summary
HHhH: "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich," or "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." He was feared by all and loathed by most. With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible - until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service - killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History. Who were these men, arguably two of the most discreet heroes of the twentieth century? In Laurent Binet's captivating debut novel, we follow Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubiš from their dramatic escape of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to England; from their recruitment to their harrowing parachute drop into a war zone, from their stealth attack on Heydrich's car to their own brutal death in the basement of a Prague church. A seemingly effortlessly blend of historical truth, personal memory, and Laurent Binet's remarkable imagination, HHhH- an international best seller and winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman - is a work at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing, a fast-paced novel of the Second World War that is also a profound meditation on the nature of writing and the debt we owe to history.
©2009 Editions Grasset et Fasquelle. Translation from the French copyright 2012 by Sam Taylor (P)2012 Tantor
Alexander the Great
Summary
What can we learn from the stunning rise and mysterious death of the ancient worldâs greatest conqueror? An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait. â[An] infectious sense of narrative momentum.... Its energy is unflagging, including the verve with which it tackles that teased final mystery about the specific cause of Alexanderâs death.â (The Christian Science Monitor) More than two millennia have passed since Alexander the Great built an empire that stretched to every corner of the ancient world, from the backwater kingdom of Macedonia to the Hellenic world, Persia, and ultimately to India - all before his untimely death at age 33. Alexander believed that his empire would stop only when he reached the Pacific Ocean. But stories of both real and legendary events from his life have kept him evergreen in our imaginations with a legacy that has meant something different to every era: In the Middle Ages he became an exemplar of knightly chivalry, he was a star of Renaissance paintings, and by the early 20th century he'd even come to resemble an English gentleman. But who was he in his own time? In Alexander the Great, Anthony Everitt judges Alexanderâs life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions. We meet the Macedonian prince who was naturally inquisitive and fascinated by science and exploration, as well as the man who enjoyed the arts and used Homerâs great epic, the Iliad, as a bible. As his empire grew, Alexander exhibited respect for the traditions of his new subjects and careful judgment in administering rule over his vast territory. But his career also had a dark side. An inveterate conqueror who in his short life built the largest empire up to that point in history, Alexander glorified war and was known to commit acts of remarkable cruelty. As debate continues about the meaning of his life, Alexander's death remains a mystery. Did he die of natural causes - felled by a fever - or did his marshals, angered by his tyrannical behavior, kill him? An explanation of his death can lie only in what we know of his life, and Everitt ventures to solve that puzzle, offering an ending to Alexanderâs story that has eluded so many for so long.
©2019 Anthony Everitt (P)2019 Random House Audio
The Captain's Vengeance
Summary
It is early February, 1799, a year of war. Sailing in the Caribbean, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is once again pursuing a chimera. A rich French prize ship he'd left at anchor at Dominica has gone missing, along with six of his sailors. What starts as a straightforward search for it, and them, from Hispaniola to Barbados, far down the Antilles, leads Lewrie to a gruesome discovery on the Dry Tortugas and to a vile cabal of the most pitiless and depraved pirates ever to sail under the "Jolly Roger", and the suspicion that one of his trusted hands just may be the worst of them all. Against his will - again - the usually irrepressible Lewrie is made his superiors' "cat's-paw" once more, and his covert mission this time is to go up the Mississippi in enemy-held Spanish Louisiana to the romantic but sordid port of New Orleans in search of pirates and prize, where one false step could betray Lewrie and his small party as spies. Beguilements, betrayal, and death lurk 'round every corner of the Vieux Carre, and it's up to Lewrie's quick but cynical wits to win the day for their survival, and wreak a very personal vengeance on his foes.
©2004 Dewey Lambdin (P)2016 Tantor
Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days
Summary
Diamond Dogs The planet Golgotha - supposedly lifeless - resides in a remote star system, far from those inhabited by human colonists. It is home to an enigmatic machinelike structure called the Blood Spire, which has already brutally and systematically claimed the lives of one starship crew that attempted to uncover its secrets. But nothing will deter Richard Swift from exploring this object of alien origin. Turquoise Days In the seas of Turquoise live the Pattern Jugglers, the amorphous, aquatic organisms capable of preserving the memories of any human swimmer who joins their collective consciousness. Naqi Okpik devoted her life to studying these creatures - and paid a high price for swimming among them. Now she may be the only hope for the survival of the species - and of every person living on Turquoise.
©2002 Alastair Reynolds (P)2015 Tantor
Dublin Noir
Summary
Brand new stories by: Ken Bruen, Eoin Colfer, Jason Starr, Laura Lippman, Olen Steinhauer, Peter Spiegelman, Kevin Wignall, Jim Fusilli, John Rickards, Patrick J. Lambe, Charlie Stella, Ray Banks, James O. Born, Sarah Weinman, Pat Mullan, Gary Phillips, Craig McDonald, Duane Swierczynski, Reed Farrel Coleman, and others. Irish crime-fiction sensation Ken Bruen and cohorts shine a light on the dark streets of Dublin. Dublin Noir features an awe-inspiring cast of writers who between them have won all major mystery and crime-fiction awards. This collection introduces secret corners of a fascinating city and surprise assaults on the "Celtic Tiger" of modern Irish prosperity.
©2006 Akashic Books (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Roma
Summary
Weaving history, legend, and new archaeological discoveries into a spellbinding narrative, critically acclaimed novelist Steven Saylor gives new life to the drama of the city's first 1,000 years - from the founding of the city by the ill-fated twins Romulus and Remus, through Rome's astonishing ascent to become the capital of the most powerful empire in history. Roma recounts the tragedy of the hero-traitor Coriolanus, the capture of the city by the Gauls, the invasion of Hannibal, the bitter political struggles of the patricians and plebeians, and the ultimate death of Rome's Republic with the triumph, and assassination, of Julius Caesar. Witnessing this history, and sometimes playing key roles, are the descendents of two of Rome's first families: the Potitius and Pinarius clans. One is the confidant of Romulus. One is born a slave and tempts a Vestal virgin to break her vows. One becomes a mass murderer. And one becomes the heir of Julius Caesar. Linking the generations is a mysterious talisman as ancient as the city itself. Epic in every sense of the word, Roma is a panoramic historical saga and Saylor's finest achievement to date.
©2007 Steven Saylor (P)2007 Books on Tape
Headstone
Summary
Acclaimed Irish crime writer Ken Bruen has won numerous awards for his hard-charging, dark thrillers, which have been translated into ten languages. In Headstone, an elderly priest is nearly beaten to death and a special-needs boy is brutally attacked. Evil has many guises and Jack Taylor has encountered most of them, and has the scars to prove it. But nothing before has ever truly terrified him until he confronts an evil coterie named Headstone, who have committed a series of random, insane, violent crimes in Galway, Ireland that leave even the national police shaken. And Jack is especially vulnerable now that he has finally found love and happiness. Jack, slowly accepting the sheer power of Headstone, comes to realize that in order to fight back he must relinquish the remaining shreds of what has made him human. Headstone barrels along its deadly path right to the center of his life and the heart of Galway. In a moment of awful clarity, Jack realizes that not only might he be powerless to stop Headstone; he may not have the grit needed to even face it. A terrific read from a writer called "a Celtic Dashiell Hammett", Headstone is an excellent addition to the Jack Taylor series.
©2011 Original material © 2011 Ken Bruen. Recorded by arrangement with Mysterious Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (P)2011 (p) 2011 HighBridge Company
Life's Greatest Secret
Summary
Everyone has heard the story of DNA as the story of Watson, Crick, and Rosalind Franklin, but knowing the structure of DNA was only part of a greater struggle to understand life's secrets. Life's Greatest Secret is the story of the discovery and cracking of the genetic code, the thing that ultimately enables a spiraling molecule to give rise to the life that exists all around us. This great scientific breakthrough has had far-reaching consequences for how we understand ourselves and our place in the natural world and for how we might take control of our (and life's) future. Life's Greatest Secret mixes remarkable insights, theoretical dead ends, and ingenious experiments with the swift pace of a thriller. From New York to Paris; Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Cambridge, England; and London to Moscow, the greatest discovery of 20th-century biology was truly a global feat. Biologist and historian of science Matthew Cobb gives the full and rich account of the cooperation and competition between the eccentric characters who contributed to this revolutionary new science. And, while every new discovery was a leap forward for science, Cobb shows how every new answer inevitably led to new questions that were at least as difficult to answer. But the setbacks and unexpected discoveries are what make the science exciting. This is a riveting story of humans exploring what it is that makes us human and how the world works.
©2015 Matthew Cobb (P)2015 Tantor Audio
The Heir
Summary
At the age of 33, Edward Deravenel, having survived harrowing years of betrayal, threats from ruthless enemies, countless lovers, and a war that ravaged his country, is finally king of his company. It's 1918, an influenza pandemic is sweeping the country, and Edward has a family and a business to protect. He must thread his way between his loyal brother, Richard, and his treacherous middle brother, George, an alcoholic bent on self-destruction...but not before he tries to ruin Edward and his good name. Meanwhile, the wrath of his ever-jealous wife, Elizabeth, is reaching a boiling point as suspicions about Edward's relationships with other women arise. Politics of inheritance are intense, and different family factions vie for honor over the years. An heir is needed to keep the Deravenel name alive, but tragedy and death remain obstacles at every turn. The choices include a loyal caretaker, a jealous rumormonger, a charming young woman, a sickly boy, and the scion of the family Edward ousted from power years before. Barbara Taylor Bradford triumphs once again with a novel about passion, treachery, marriage, and family, and the compromises we're forced to make for power and love.Â
©2007 Beaji Enterprises, Inc (P)2007 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC
Sunstorm
Summary
Returned to the Earth of 2037 by the Firstborn, mysterious beings of almost limitless technological prowess, Bisesa Dutt is haunted by the memories of her five years spent on the strange alternate Earth called Mir, a jigsaw-puzzle world made up of lands and people cut out of different eras of Earth's history.Why did the Firstborn create Mir? Why was Bisesa taken there and then brought back on the day after her original disappearance? Bisesa's questions receive a chilling answer when scientists discover an anomaly in the sun's core - an anomaly that has no natural cause, evidence of alien intervention over two thousand years before. Now, plans set in motion millennia ago by inscrutable watchers light-years away are coming to fruition, in a sunstorm designed to scour the Earth of all life through a bombardment of deadly radiation. Thus commences a furious race against a ticking solar time bomb. But even now, as apocalypse looms, cooperation is not easy for the peoples and nations of the Earth. Religious and political differences threaten to undermine every effort. And all the while, the Firstborn are watching...
©2005 Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A King's Trade
Summary
After yellow fever decimated the crew of Alan Lewrie's HMS Proteus, it had seemed like a good idea to abscond with a dozen slaves from a Jamaican plantation to help man his frigate. But two years later, Lewrie is now suspected of the deed. Slave-stealing is a hanging offense, and suddenly his neck is at risk of a fatal stretching. Once Lewrie has escaped, the master Foreign Office spy, Zachariah Twigg, arranges for a long voyage even further out of the law's reach, to Cape Town and India, as escort to an East India Company convoy. At the Cape of Good Hope a British circus and theatrical troupe also joins the party, teeming with tempting female acrobats, nubile bareback riders, and alluring "actresses" like the seductive but deadly archer Eudoxia Durschenko. It will take all Lewrie's shrewd guile, wit, and steely self-control to worm his way out of trouble, and keep his breeches chastely buttoned to avoid even more troubles...or will he?
©2006 Dewey Lambdin (P)2017 Tantor
A King's Commander
Summary
It is 1793, for love of war and money.... Once a French corvette, she was reborn HMS Jester, sleek and fast. At her sea-sprayed helm is former Midshipman Alan Lewrie, turned grizzled warrior by trade. But when Commander Lewrie reaches the island of Corsica, he gets orders for which even he is not prepared: lure his archenemy, French commander Guillaume Choundas, into battle - and personally strike him dead. From splintering-hulled ships battling broadside to exotic ports of call, the adventures of Alan Lewrie capture an age of heroism and action on the great, wind-lashed fighting ships.
©1998 Dewey Lambdin (P)2010 Random House
A Death in Vienna
Summary
Joining the ranks of Graham Greene and John le Carre, the newest master of international suspense, Daniel Silva has crafted a novel of astonishing intricacy and intelligence. Sent to Vienna to authenticate a painting, the art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sidetracked by a photograph that throws his world upside-down. Could it really be the face of a man who during the last days of World War II had brutalized his mother on the Death March from Auschwitz? Questions abound when Allon, driven by an intensity he had not felt in years, begins to investigate, discovering in the process that the hunt for one man is a hunt for many-and a network of unimaginable evil spanning sixty years.
©2004 Daniel Silva (P)2004 Books on Tape, Inc.
Nostromo
Summary
Joseph Conradâs multilayered masterpiece tells of one nation's violent revolution and one hero's moral degeneration. Conrad convincingly invents an entire country, Costaguana, and sets it afire as warlords compete for power and a fortune in silver. Señor Gould, adamant that his silver should not become spoil for his enemies, entrusts it to his faithful longshoreman, Nostromo, a local hero of sorts whom Señor Gould believes to be incorruptible. Nostromo accepts the mission as an opportunity to increase his own fame. But when his exploit fails to win him the rewards he had hoped for, he is consumed by a corrupting resentment. Nostromo, relevant both as literature and as a brilliant social study, ambitiously brings to life Latin American history and the politics of an underdeveloped country.
Public Domain (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Bloodstone
Summary
A recovering alcoholic on the run from his past, all Billy Smith wants is to be left alone. But commanded by the voices in his head to commit acts of violence he does not understand, he kidnaps a prostitute known only as Angel and heads north to a bucolic little New England town called White Falls. Something monstrous has taken root in White Falls, and has waited centuries for the right time to awaken. Psyches begin to unravel and violence erupts. The fate of the living ultimately rests on the back of one man. For the dead are watching....
©2006 Nate Kenyon (P)2012 Audio Realms, all rights reserved. Published by Brilliance Audio.
A German Requiem
Summary
A supremely disturbing thriller set in the ruins of the Third Reich by an internationally acclaimed master of historical suspense. Bernie Gunther had his first brush with evil as a policeman in 1930s Berlin and came to know it intimately as a private eye under the Nazis, when each case drew him deeper into the enormities of the regime. Now the war is over and Guntherâs in Vienna, trying to clear an old friend of the murder of an American officer. Amid decaying imperial splendor he traces concentric circles of depravity that lead him to a former head of the Gestapo. Gripping, frightening, and pungently atmospheric, A German Requiem demonstrates Philip Kerrâs power to take his listeners hostage.
©1991 Philip Kerr (P)2008 Books on Tape
Adversity
Summary
Trapped in an abandoned and quarantined Britain, forsaken by the rest of the world, the scattered survivors are forced into hibernation by the fast onset of a bitter winter. Struggling for supplies and battling the elements, the true nature of people shows through as they face adversity like they have never known before. Nevin, as charmed and untouchable as his toxic existence has been, finds a niche in his new home; still not enough for him, though, as he plans to become more comfortable at the expense of others. But is tangling with Johnson a confrontation he can come back from? Peter and Amber are still fending for themselves and digging in for the harsh winter. But will that be enough to keep them safe? Major Downes confides in Captain Palmer, and together they plan for escape to normality and to structure a new lifestyle for their charges. But in the uncertain world they live in now, nothing is easy.
©2018 DHP Publishing (P)2019 Tantor
King's Captain
Summary
In this adventure, Lewrie is promoted for his quick action in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, but before he's even had a chance to settle into his new role, a mutiny rages through the fleet, and the sudden reappearance of an old enemy has Lewrie fighting not just for his command, but for his life.
©2000 Dewey Lambdin (P)2015 Tantor
Cochrane
Summary
From the best-selling author of Under the Black Flag comes the definitive biography of the swashbuckling 19th-century maritime hero upon whom Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower are based. Nicknamed le loup des mers ("the sea wolf") by Napoleon, Thomas Cochrane was one of the most daring and successful naval heroes of all time. In this fascinating account of Cochrane's life, historian David Cordingly unearths startling new details about the real-life "Master and Commander", from his daring exploits against the French navy to his role in the liberation of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and the shock exchange scandal that forced him out of England and almost ended his naval career. Drawing on previously unpublished papers, his own travels, wide reading, and the kind of original research that distinguished The Billy Ruffian, Cordingly tells the rip-roaring story of the archetypal romantic hero who conquered the seas and, in the process, defined his era.
©2007 David Cordingly (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.
Vampire Outlaw
Summary
The Immortal Knight, Richard of Ashbury, does battle with the undead outlaws of Sherwood. AD 1216. A band of outlaws attacks an English manor in the dead of night. The bloody trail leads to the dark heart of Sherwood Forest, and Richard is certain that his old enemy, William de Ferrers, has returned. But England is in turmoil. The barons have erupted into armed rebellion against King John, and a French army has invaded the south, seeking to crown a French prince as the King of England. Richard must do his duty to save England. But he must also journey deep into Sherwood to destroy William and rescue the Lady Marian before she is devoured or turned. Book 2 of the Immortal Knight Chronicles takes up 25 years after the end of Vampire Crusader. Featuring thrilling sword fights, skillful archery, epic medieval battles, political intrigue while weaving real history with the origins of the Robin Hood myth, this is exciting, action-packed historical fiction with a twist.
©2016 Dan Davis (P)2018 Tantor
The Three Musketeers
Summary
Mixing a bit of seventeenth-century French history with a great deal of invention, Alexandre Dumas tells the tale of young D'Artagnan and his musketeer comrades, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis. Together they fight to foil the schemes of the brilliant, dangerous Cardinal Richelieu, who pretends to support the king while plotting to advance his own power. Bursting with swirling swordplay, swooning romance, and unforgettable figures---including the seductively beautiful but deadly femme fatale, Milady, and D'Artagnan's equally beautiful love, Madame Bonacieux--- The Three Musketeers continues, after a century and a half of continuous publication, to define the genre of swashbuckling romance and historical adventure.
©1923 Public Domain (P)2008 Tantor
SPQR XI: Under Vesuvius
Summary
Things are going well for Decius Caecilius Metellus. He is Praetor Peregrinus, which means he has to judge a case or two, but those cases are outside of the city. His cases will be those dealing with foreigners, and all of Italy is his province. His first stop is Campania, "Italyâs most popular resort district". Decius and his wife, Julia, are happy for a change of scenery. But the good times end when, in a town near Vesuvius, a priestâs daughter is murdered. Decius must find her killer and keep the mob off a young boy who everyone blames but he believes to be innocent. Decius may have acquired more prestige, but heâs also acquired more trouble. With his SPQR novels, John Maddox Roberts has written a satisfying and entertaining historical mystery series. The stakes just keep getting higher in this latest atmospheric puzzle.
©2007 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Die Twice
Summary
Drawing comparisons to Robert Ludlum and his own brother, Lee Child, Andrew Grant cuts a new path through the crime-thriller genre, continuing to test the limits in this groundbreaking series. Obliged to leave New York City in the aftermath of his previous mission, David Trevellyan is summoned to the British Consulate in Chicago - to the same office where, just a week before, his new handler was attacked and shot by a Royal Navy Intelligence operative gone bad. Assigned the job of finding the rogue agent and putting an end to his treacherous scheme, Trevellyan soon finds that once again, his only hopes of saving countless innocent lives lie not within the system, but in his own instincts and skills. Trust is an illusionâtrust the wrong person, and it could get you killed.
©2010 Andrew Grant (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Invasion Year
Summary
For a fellow like Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, who despises the French worse than the Devil hates Holy Water, it's hellish-hard to gain a reputation for saving them, not once but twice, when the French refugees from Haiti surrender to England rather than the vengeful ex-slave armies in November of 1803! After that, it could be "all claret and cruising" in the Caribbean, but for a home-bound sugar convoy, one so frustrating as to make even the happy-go-lucky Alan Lewrie tear his hair out, kick furniture, and curse like...well, like a sailor! Back in England for the first time in two years, there are honors from the Crown for gallant service...a lot more than he expected from King George III, who was having a bad morning, then a chance to move in Society after an introduction to an intriguing daughter of a peer. But then come secret orders to experiment with several types of "infernal engines of war," which might delay or postpone the dreaded cross-Channel invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte, his huge army, and his thousands of invasion craft. For the rest of 1804, Alan Lewrie and his crew of the Reliant frigate will deal with things more dangerous to them than they may prove to be to the French!
©2010 Dewey Lambdin (P)2019 Tantor
Racing Toward Armageddon
Summary
Will current generations live to see Armageddon? Are there really sinister forces at work, encouraging its imminent arrival? If so, who exactly are they? In his latest investigative book, Michael Baigent takes us to the assembly hall of the UN, the boardrooms of major businesses and powerful lobbying groups, the cabinet meetings of world leaders, the ranches of cattle breeders, the churches of the faithful, and the narrow winding streets of modern Jerusalem, revealing to us the many diverse, public, and clandestine figures behind a perilous messianic agenda. By unveiling truly bizarre alliances, revisiting centuries-old ghostly events still haunting the birthplaces of religion, unraveling complex threads of history to discern the difference between myth and prophecy, and providing a thorough explication of the religious texts underlying all of this madness in the context of the times in which they were written, Baigent presents a very different view of the past, present, and future than that perpetuated by many loose interpretations of scripture. What are faith force multipliers? Which members of the U.S. military top brass have fought to employ them? Which world leader belongs to a secret messianic society called the Hojjatieh? What is the Chalcedon Foundation? And what is the correlation between its tenets, those of sharia law, and the fulfillment of end-time prophecies? The answers to these questions and others will intrigue, mystify, and enrage you, whether you're a person of faith or a staunch secularist. But the author's goal is not simply to shock the reader - it is to help diffuse the time bomb that has been set by the hard-liners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the end, Baigent asks these questions to deliver an urgent message: that spiritual yearning is actually a deep and personal issue of awareness, one that can bring hope and tolerance to the world, rather than the self-superiority and control that are born of fear and conflict.
©2009 Michael Baigent (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
SPQR X: A Point of Law
Summary
Decius Caecilius Metellus is moving up in the world. He's won some money and glory fighting pirates in the Mediterranean and expects a speedy election to the office of praetor. That all changes when a man he's never seen before publicly accuses him of corruption. Decius and his powerful family of Rome's leading politicians scramble to prepare a defense. However, the day of the trial they are greeted with a strange surprise on the steps of the courthouse: the corpse of the man who made the accusation. Now Decius is up against a much more serious charge of murder. It may cost him his chance to run for office, but not if he can help it. Roberts once again masterfully sets Decius and his adventures against the background of this famed and crumbling Republic, enriching his story with historical detail and the immortal personalities of the day.
©2006 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
SPQR VII: The Tribune's Curse
Summary
I was happier than any mere mortal has a right to be and I should have known better. The entire body of received mythology and every last Greek tragedy ever written have made one inescapable truth utterly clear: If you are supremely happy, the gods have it in for you. They don't like for mortals to be happy, and they will make you pay. In his extensive series featuring the detecting feats of Decius Caecilius Metellus the younger, set in the Rome of 70 BC, Roberts achieves a very believable modern feeling with his well-researched description of the stories' background. This seventh episode, however, combines a familiar view of the demands office-seeking makes on a candidate with a situation that is impossibly bizarre to us today. An entire city, versed in literature, music, and the other arts, ruled democratically, for its time, is thrown into panic by an enraged man's curse. The Consul Crassus, the wealthiest man in Rome, frustrated by the Senate's vote against his leading Rome in a war against Parthia, plans to march his private army to invade the country himself. Almost all of Rome turns out to watch him carry out his threat and lead his troops out of the city. But before he can, a powerful tribune called Ateius leaps to the top of the city's gate and invokes all the gods to put a curse on Crassus and his army. Rome is terrified. Ateius has called down a forbidden curse - the worst and most frightening blasphemy ever perpetrated. It seriously threatens the entire populace, and drastic steps to propitiate the gods must be taken immediately. Worse even, someone kills Ateius - perhaps in the vain hope that this will lighten the curse? It will not. After joining the other men of the city in a daylong cleansing ritual that left every able-bodied male citizen, Decius included, in a state of half-collapse, Decius learns that he has been chosen to uncover the person responsible for the murder. The culprit must be found in order to complete the cleansing, and there is no one better equipped to do that than Decius. Roberts skillfully blends the playboy and the serious sleuth in Decius just as he combines what we see as contradictions in the Rome of 80 BC. He spices his story with humor and suspense, with characters charming and wise and foolish and very much like we are today. And he presents listeners with a look into another world that has them eagerly awaiting more visits.
©2003 John Maddox Roberts. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
SPQR VI: Nobody Loves a Centurion
Summary
Julius Caesar, as we know, arrived in Gaul (now France) and announced "I Came, I Saw, I Conquered." But when Decius Metellus arrives from Rome, not seeking military glory but rather avoiding an enemy currently in power, he finds that although the general came and saw, so far, at least, he has far from conquered. The campaign seems at a standstill. Decius' arrival disappoints the great Caesar as well. He has been waiting for promised reinforcements from Rome, an influx of soldiers to restart his invasion. Instead he is presented with one young man ridiculously decked out in military parade finery and short on military skills, accompanied not by eager troops but by one callow and reluctant slave, the feckless Hermes. It soon develops, however, that Decius' arrival was fortuitous. When Vinius, the army's cruelest centurion (so-called because he commands 100 soldiers), is found murdered, Caesar remembers that his new recruit has successfully come up with the culprit in a number of recent crimes. Murder is bad for morale, particularly since it seems quite clear that the murderer was one of Caesar's men. Caesar orders Decius to find the killer - and quickly. Although evidence points to the son of one of Decius' clients - a youth who was the particular target of the centurion's brutality - Decius racks his brain to find a way to save him from the sentence of death. The investigation leads Decius to two German slaves of the dead man - a dwarfish old man and a beautiful woman. They are puzzling; the man is arrogant, the woman haughty - very unlike slaves. There are unanswered questions. It soon becomes clear to Decius that only by finding and punishing the real murderer will it be possible to quiet the rising dissatisfaction with Caesar's unorthodox method of warfare and forestall a mutiny against the mighty Caesar's authority and aims.
©2001 John Maddox Roberts (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The King's Privateer
Summary
1783: His Majesty's secret agent Fresh from war in the Americas, young navy veteran Alan Lewrie finds London pure pleasure. Then, at Plymouth he boards the trading ship Telesto, to find out why merchantmen are disappearing in the East Indies. Between the pungent shores of Calcutta and teaming Canton, Lewrie--reunited with his scoundrel father--discovers a young French captain, backed by an armada of Mindanaon pirates, on a plundering rampage. While treaties tie the navy's hands, a King's privateer is free to plunge into the fire and blood of a dirty little war on the high South China Sea. Ladies' man, officer, and rogue, Alan Lewrie is the ultimate man of adventure. In the worthy tradition of Hornblower, Aubrey, and Maturin, his exploits echo with the sounds of crowded ports and the crash of naval warfare.
©1996 Dewey Lambdin (P)2010 Random House
Firstborn
Summary
The Firstborn, the mysterious race of aliens best known as the builders of the iconic black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, have inhabited the writing of science fiction master Arthur C. Clarke for decades. In the first two books of his acclaimed Time Odyssey series, Clarke and co-author Stephen Baxter imagined a near-future in which the Firstborn seek to stop the advance of human civilization by employing a technology indistinguishable from magic. That fate was narrowly averted, at an inconceivable price. But now, 27 years later, the Firstborn are back. This time, they have sent a "quantum bomb" speeding toward Earth, a device that human scientists can barely comprehend, let alone stop or destroy. But when shocking new insights emerge about the nature of the Firstborn and their plans, an unexpected ally appears from light-years away.
©2007 Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Last Escaper
Summary
The product of a lifetime's reflection, The Last Escaper is Peter Tunstall's unforgettable memoir of his days in the British Royal Air Force and as one of the most celebrated British POWs of World War II. Tunstall was an infamous tormentor of his German captors. Dubbed the "cooler king" on account of his long spells in solitary, he once dropped a water "bomb" directly in the lap of a high-ranking German officer. He also devised an ingenious method for smuggling coded messages back to London. But above all he was a highly skilled pilot, loyal friend, and trusted colleague. Without false pride or bitterness, Tunstall recounts the hijinks of training to be a pilot, terrifying bombing raids, and elaborate escape attempts at once hilarious and deadly serious--all part of a poignant and human war story superbly told by a natural raconteur. The Last Escaper is a captivating final testament by the last man standing from the Greatest Generation.
©2014 Peter Tunstall (P)2015 Tantor
SPQR III: The Sacrilege
Summary
When a sacret woman's rite in the ancient city of Rome is infiltrated by a corrupt patrician dressed in female garb, it falls to Senator Decuis Caecilius Metellus the Younger, whose investigative skills have proven indispensable in the past, to unmask the perpetrators. When four brutal slayings follow, Decius enlists the help a notorious and dangerous criminal. Together, they establish a connection between the sacrilege and the murders, and track the offenders from the lowest dregs of society to the prominent elite of the upper class, finding corruption and violence where Decius least expects it.
©1992 John Maddox Roberts. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The Pontiff in Winter
Summary
Pope John Paul II is one of the most famous and influential political figures of the world. Now, best-selling author and journalist John Cornwell has written an accessible and provocative portrait of this highly charged figure, focusing primarily on the last five years and the major world events, and scandals within the Church, that have impacted the papacy. The result is a thoughtful assessment of John Paul II's legacy to the Church. In an age when many people see the Catholic Church as an institution in crisis, Cornwell raises the level of debate by posing difficult questions; chief among them is the effectiveness of a system that grants lifetime power to an individual vulnerable to the vicissitudes of aging and illness.
©2004 John Cornwell (P)2004 Books on Tape
Empires of the Weak
Summary
What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war over other civilizations from 1500 onward. In contrast, Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans actually had no general military superiority in the early modern era. J. C. Sharman shows instead that European expansion is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default because local land-oriented polities were largely indifferent to war and trade at sea. Europeans were overawed by the mighty Eastern empires of the day, which pioneered key military innovations and were the greatest early modern conquerors. Against the view that the Europeans won for all time, Sharman contends that the imperialism of the late19th and early 20th centuries was a relatively transient and anomalous development in world politics that concluded with Western losses in various insurgencies. If the 21st century is to be dominated by non-Western powers like China, this represents a return to the norm for the modern era.
©2019 Princeton University Press (P)2019 Tantor
Dog Who Couldn't Stop Loving
Summary
A groundbreaking and inspiring exploration of the unique relationship between dogs and humans, from the best-selling author of Dogs Never Lie About Love. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson has long been interested in the relationships between humans and animals, and heâs always been aware that there was something very special in our bond with dogs. No other animals love us in quite the same way as dogs love us. And it is mutual. Is it possible that we developed our capacity for love, sympathy, empathy, and compassion because of our long association with dogs? In The Dog Who Couldnât Stop Loving, Masson considers the far-reaching consequences of the coevolution of dogs and humans, drawing upon recent scientific research. Over the past forty thousand years a collective domestication has occurred that brings us to where we are today - humans have formed intense bonds with dogs, and the adoration is almost always reciprocal. Masson himself has experienced a profound bond with his new dog, Benjy, a failed guide dog for the blind, who possesses an abundance of uninhibited love. Masson knows that the love he feels for Benjy - the same feeling Benjy has for all the people and animals around him - is not unique, but exemplifies a love affair unmatched in the animal world. With wisdom, insight, and a brilliant analysis of recent scientific findings, bestselling author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson delivers a provocative and compelling book that will change the way we think about love and our canine companions.
©2010 Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers
The Two Popes
Summary
From the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Darkest Hour and The Theory of Everything comes the fascinating and revealing tale of two very different men - both of whom happen to live at the Vatican. In February 2013, the arch-conservative Pope Benedict XVI made a startling announcement: He would resign, making him the first pope to willingly vacate his office in over 700 years. Reeling from the news, the College of Cardinals rushed to Rome to congregate in the Sistine Chapel to pick his successor. Their unlikely choice? Francis, the first non-European pope in 1,200 years, a one-time tango-club bouncer, a passionate soccer fan, a man with the common touch.  Why did Benedict walk away at the height of power, knowing his successor might be someone whose views might undo his legacy? How did Francis - who used to ride the bus to work back in his native Buenos Aires - adjust to life as leader to a billion followers? If, as the Church teaches, the pope is infallible, how can two living popes who disagree on almost everything both be right? Having immersed himself in these men's lives to write the screenplay for the upcoming motion picture The Two Popes, Anthony McCarten masterfully weaves their stories into one gripping narrative.   From Benedict and Francis' formative experiences in war-torn Germany and Argentina to the sexual abuse scandal that continues to rock the Church to its foundations to the intrigue and the occasional comedy of life in the Vatican, this audiobook glitters with the darker and the lighter details of one of the world's most opaque but significant institutions. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 Anthony McCarten (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
Trinity
Summary
From the acclaimed author of Speak comes a kaleidoscopic novel about Robert Oppenheimer - father of the atomic bomb - as told by seven fictional characters. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant scientist, a champion of liberal causes, and a complex and often contradictory character. He loyally protected his Communist friends, only to later betray them under questioning. He repeatedly lied about love affairs. And he defended the use of the atomic bomb he helped create, before ultimately lobbying against nuclear proliferation. Through narratives that cross time and space, a set of characters bears witness to the life of Oppenheimer, from a secret service agent who tailed him in San Francisco, to the young lover of a colleague in Los Alamos, to a woman fleeing McCarthyism who knew him on St. John. As these men and women fall into the orbit of a brilliant but mercurial mind at work, all consider his complicated legacy while also uncovering deep and often unsettling truths about their own lives. In this stunning, elliptical novel, Louisa Hall has crafted a breathtaking and explosive story about the ability of the human mind to believe what it wants, about public and private tragedy, and about power and guilt. Blending science with literature and fiction with biography, Trinity asks searing questions about what it means to truly know someone, and about the secrets we keep from the world and from ourselves.
©2018 Louisa Hall (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Jester's Fortune
Summary
It is 1796 and a diminutive, Corsican-born French general has inherited a ragtag army and turned it into an unstoppable fighting force. Within months, Napoleon's storm rolls across Italy and strikes a lethal blow against the Austrian empire. But while the soil of Piedmont and Tuscany runs with blood, another battle takes shape on the mysterious Adriatic Sea. Alan Lewrie and his 18-gun sloop, HMS Jester, part of a squadron of four British warships, sail into the thick of it. But with England's alies failing, Napoleon busy rearranging the world map, and their squadron streched dangerously thin along the Croation coast, the British squadron commander strikes a devils bargain: enlisting the aid of Serbian pirates.
©2002 Dewey Lambdin (P)2011 Random House
The Gun Ketch
Summary
1788--Bahamas Squadron . . . A fighter, rogue, and ladies man, Alan Lewrie has done the unthinkable and gotten himself hitched--to a woman and a ship! The woman is the lovely Caroline Chiswick. The ship is the gun ketch, Alacrity, bound for the Bahamas and a bloody game of cat and mouse with the pirates who ply the lunatic winds there. But while war comes naturally to the young husband, politics doesn't. Sure that a powerful Bahamian merchant is behind a scourge of piracy, Lewrie runs afoul of the Royal Governor--who holds the most precious hostage of all. . . . From the windswept Carolinas to the exotic East Indies, Alan Lewrie fights and frolics with all the wild abandon of the high seas themselves. He's a true swashbuckling naval hero in the age of great sailing ships.
©2006 Dewey Lambdin (P)2010 Random House
Mystery Writers of America Presents
Summary
From the Civil War-era south, to 1950's New York, to the present day's gritty cities and seemingly innocuous suburbs, the 18 stories in this anthology, edited by the award-winning mystery writer Harlan Coben, chart the complications - always surprising, sometimes deadly - that arise between lovers, dear friends, and even complete strangers coming together for a single, shocking encounter. In Lee Child's "Safe Enough", a blue-collar city boy takes up with a wealthy suburban wife, with dire consequences. In Harlan Coben's "Entrapped", a woman's husband disappears and is replaced by a handsome impostor. In Laura Lippman's "One True Love", a high-end prostitute seeks a radical solution to a public relations problem. Finally, in P. J. Parrish's "One Shot", a man returns to his childhood home to learn the truth about a long-ago tragedy. Other contributors of original stories include Ridley Pearson, R. L. Stine, Jim Fusilli, Jeff Abbott, Charles Todd, and Tom Savage.
©2006 Mystery Writers of America, Inc. (P)2008 Tantor
Even
Summary
David Trevellyan, a Royal Navy intelligence operative, takes a late-night walk to his New York City hotel. A huddled shape in an alley catches his eye - a homeless man has been shot to death. Trevellyan steps forward and a cop car arrives. A split second too late, Trevellyan realizes he's been set up. Obliged to clear his name, and with no idea who's a friend and who's a foe, he penetrates deep into a huge international conspiracy. The price of failure will be death, and the reward for success will be redemption, both for himself and the huddled corpse from the alley.
©2009 Andrew Grant (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Animals
Summary
Wild Things... They've been with us forever - prowling the smoky roadhouse dives that are their watering holes and hunting grounds. Predators, lurking amidst the human herd. Changing shape at will. Lusting for blood and meat they are gods in the wild. Gods in disguise. And they feed on the spark inside each of us. Syd was just another lonely working class guy singing the steel-town blues. Then he met Nora. She's sensual, Erotic. Amoral. A creature of the night and she's luring Syd across the line that few can cross - and fewer survive: the line that separates man from beast. This will be a Crossroad Press production.
©1993 John Skipp & Craig Spector (P)2012 David N. Wilson
The Spellmonger's Honeymoon: A Spellmonger Novella
Summary
It was a simple rhyme, a honeymoon folk blessing from the Riverlands, Minalan's home. Seven bottles of mead to share. For seven nights or more. Each cup a toast, each sip a wish. To bind their lives forevermore: A bottle first for happiness, a bottle then for health. A bottle for togetherness, a bottle next for wealth. A bottle sipped for harmony, the equilibrium of desire. A bottle savored for purest lust, which brings the marriage fire! A bottle last for love to endure as long as life shall last, saved for they who toast their love when five full years have passed! But those seven bottles of mead were more than just a folk blessing. As Lord Minalan the Spellmonger began his honeymoon on a decadent river barge with his very pregnant bride, he had no idea that the occasion would have anything more complicated than eating, drinking, and making love on the agenda. But a frantic message from one of the Tree Folk indicating he and Alya may be in danger compels him to skip the lazy repose and travel to a far away ruin to speak with a possibly crazy Alka Alon mage - Lilastien, the Sorceress of Sartha Wood. After river pirates, trolls, and the sheer difficulty of adjusting to married life, the answers to the questions he has for her may be more than he, his wife, and his marriage can handle. Come sail down the languid Burine river with the Spellmonger, and see how seven bottles of mead and a pregnant bride can turn a holiday jaunt into a potential interspecies disaster! Note: This novella fits chronologically just before the events of Magelord, book three.
©2014 Terry Mancour (P)2019 Podium Publishing
The Hidden Treasure of Glaston (Living History Library)
Summary
Amidsgreat mystery Hugh is left in the care of Glastonbury Abbey by his father, who must flee England too swiftly to be burdened by a crippled son. Ashamed of his physical weakness yet possessed of a stout heart, Hugh finds that life at the abbey is surprisingly full in this year 1171, in the turbulent days of King Henry II. Hugh; his friend, Dickon; and their strange friend, the mad Bleheris, uncover a treasure trove and with it a deeper mystery of the sort that could only occur in Glastonbury, where Joseph of Arimithea was said to have lived out his last years. Before all is done, more is resolved than Hugh could ever have hoped.
©1946 Elenore M. Jewett (P)2015 Bethlehem Books
When We Were Orphans
Summary
Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-20th-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when both his mother and father disappear under suspicious circumstances. He grows up to become a renowned detective, and more than 20 years later, returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of the disappearances. Within the layers of the narrative told in Christopher's precise, slightly detached voice are revealed what he can't, or wont, see: that the simplest desires, a child's for his parents, a man's for understanding, may give rise to the most complicated truths. A feat of narrative skill and soaring imagination, When We Were Orphans is Kazuo Ishiguro at his brilliant best.
©2000 Kazuo Ishiguro (P)2000 Books on Tape, Inc. and HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Red Hugh, Prince of Donegal
Summary
Here's another one of those "They could make it into a movie!" books that keeps you always wanting to hear just one more chapter. Red Hugh was a true champion for Irish liberty from Queen Elizabeth's constricting reign in the late 1580's and beyond. Hugh's capture, imprisonment, and escape from the Dublin Castle; his triumph over a blizzard and frostbite; his dramatic rescue of his family's castle; his conflict with the evil Captain Leeds; and his inexhaustible love for Ireland make this a wonderful book for the entire family. You learn an astonishing amount of Irish geography and culture while relishing this true adventure, as well.
©1985 Robert T. Reilly (P)2016 Bethlehem Books
SPQR VIII: The River God's Vengeance
Summary
Ancient Rome, in this accurate and evocative series, is just as politics driven as any major American city - possibly even more. Decius Caecilius Metellus has, through a series of rather wild adventure, and in the act of tracking down killers and other reprobates, barely escaped annhilation several times. Now, newly elected to the office of aedile, the lowest rung on the ladder of Roman authority, he must smoke out corruption and conspiracy that threaten to destroy all of Rome.
©2004 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Green Hell
Summary
The award-winning crime writer Ken Bruen is as joyously unapologetic in his writing as he is wickedly poetic. In the new Jack Taylor novel Green Hell, Bruen's dark angel of a protagonist has hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him; he has given up battling his addiction to alcohol and pills; and his firing from the Irish national police, the Garda, is ancient history. But Jack isn't about to embark on a self-improvement plan. Instead, he has taken up a vigilante case against a respected professor of literature at the University of Galway who has a violent habit his friends in high places are only too happy to ignore. And when Jack rescues a preppy American student on a Rhodes Scholarship from a couple of kid thugs, he also unexpectedly gains a new sidekick, who abandons his thesis on Beckett to write a biography of Galway's most magnetic rogue. Between pub crawls and violent outbursts, Jack's vengeful plot against the professor soon spirals toward chaos. Enter Emerald, an edgy young Goth who could either be the answer to Jack's problems, or the last ripped stitch in his undoing. Ireland may be known as a "green Eden", but in Jack Taylor's world, the national color has a decidedly lethal sheen.
©2015 Ken Bruen (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Lineup
Summary
A great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them every time they face danger. But where do some of the most fascinating sleuths in the mystery and thriller world really come from? What was the real-life location that inspired Michael Connelly to make Harry Bosch a Vietnam vet tunnel rat? Why is Lee Child's Jack Reacher a drifter? How did a brief encounter in Botswana inspire Alexander McCall Smith to create Precious Ramotswe? In The Lineup, some of the top mystery writers in the world tell about the genesis of their most beloved characters - or, in some cases, let their creations do the talking.
©2009 Otto Penzler (P)2010 Tantor
SPQR XIII: The Year of Confusion
Summary
Caius Julius Caesar, now Dictator of Rome, has decided to revise the Roman calendar, which has become out of sync with the seasons. As if this werenât already an unpopular move, Caesar has brought in astronomers and astrologers from abroad, including Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, and Persians. Decius is appointed to oversee this project, which he knows rankles the Roman public: "To be told by a pack of Chaldeans and Egyptians how to conduct their duties towards the gods was intolerable." Not long after the new calendar project begins, two of the foreigners are murdered. Decius begins his investigations and, as the body count increases, it seems that an Indian fortune-teller popular with patrician Roman ladies is also involved. This latest in the acclaimed series is sure to please historical mystery fans.
©2010 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Catiline Conspiracy
Summary
It was a summer of glorious triumph for the mighty Roman Republic. Her invincible legions had brought all foreign enemies to their knees. But in Rome there was no peace. The streets were flooded with the blood of murdered citizens, and there were rumors of more atrocities to come. Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger was convinced a conspiracy existed to overthrow the government, a sinister cabal that could only be destroyed from within. But admission into the traitorous society of evil carried a grim price: the life of Decius' closest friend - and maybe his own. The author's masterful writing and impeccable faithfulness to historical fact join together to create a grippingly suspenseful tale of murder and conspiracy in ancient Rome.
©2007 John Maddox Roberts (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead
Summary
Decius Caecilius Metellus, this year's magistrate for cases involving foreigners, is living the good life in southern Italy, happy to be away from Rome, a city suffering war jitters over Caesar's impending actions. He thinks he is merely visiting one of the local sights when he takes a party to visit the Oracle of the Dead, a pre-Roman cult site located at the end of a tunnel dug beneath a temple of Apollo. He quickly learns that there is a bitter rivalry between the priests of Apollo and those of Hecate, who guard the oracle. When the priests of Apollo are all killed, the countryside looks to explode in violence as Greeks, Romans, and native Italians of several conquered nations bring out old enmities. Decius is caught squarely in the middle, desperate to find a way out that will pacify the district and, incidentally, save his own skin.
©2008 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Nightwalker
Summary
US expatriate Bobby Ives is an aimless Vietnam veteran living in London with his girlfriend. The extremely volatile Ives is obsessed with two strange events in his past: the fact that he was declared dead in Vietnam via administrative error, and the time he experienced a vivid waking dream in which he became a zombie. Ives finds himself becoming more susceptible to uncontrolled rage; he also experiences quasi-fugue states where he lets that rage overwhelm him. In the midst of such a fugue state, he's capable of great violence. His girlfriend dies as the result of one of his rages; other victims soon follow. At first, he perversely revels in the changes that have occurred. Then, realizing that he is swiftly losing control, he seeks help from a clairvoyant who seems to have insight into his condition. She initially refuses, and his rampages continue. Eventually, she relents, and tries to help him by imprisoning him. Her efforts prove unsuccessful, as he escapes confinement, forcing her to take more drastic action.
©2008 Thomas Tessier (P)2012 Audio Realms
The Man from Berlin
Summary
In war-torn Yugoslavia, a beautiful young filmmaker and photographer - a veritable hero to her people - and a German officer have been brutally murdered. Assigned to the case is military intelligence officer Captain Gregor Reinhardt. Already haunted by his wartime actions and the mistakes he's made off the battlefield, he soon finds that his investigation may be more than just a murder, and that the late Yugoslavian heroine may have been much more brilliant - and treacherous - than anyone knew. Maneuvering his way through a minefield of political, military, and personal agendas and vendettas, Reinhardt knows that someone is leaving a trail of dead bodies to cover their tracks. But those bloody tracks may lead Reinhardt to a secret hidden within the ranks of the powerful that they will do anything to keep. And his search for the truth may kill him before he ever finds it.
©2013 Luke McCallin (P)2014 Tantor
Dragon of Ash & Stars
Summary
Stormfall is a dragon born with a coat the color of a starry night. When a violent storm strikes his island aerie, he is carried on hurricane winds into the complicated and sometimes cruel world of men. There, his journey takes him from fisher dragon to farmer, pit-fighting dragon to warrior, each step leading him closer to a remarkable destiny. But war is coming to the land of Remus, and with it a crossroads for the Night Dragon and the young soul-boy he allows on his back. How far is Stormfall willing to go in a war that is not his own?
©2016 H. Leighton Dickson (P)2017 Podium Publishing
The Fear and the Freedom
Summary
The Fear and the Freedom is Keith Lowe's follow-up to Savage Continent. While that book painted a picture of Europe in all its horror as World War II was ending, The Fear and the Freedom looks at all that has happened since, focusing on the changes that were brought about because of World War II - simultaneously one of the most catastrophic and most innovative events in history. It killed millions and eradicated empires, while at the same time creating the idea of human rights and giving birth to the UN. It was because of the war that penicillin was first mass-produced, computers were developed, and rockets first sent to the edge of space. The war created new philosophies, new ways of living, new architecture: this was the era of Le Corbusier, Simone de Beauvoir, and Chairman Mao. But amidst the waves of revolution and idealism there were also fears of globalization, a dread of the atom bomb, and an unexpressed longing for a past forever gone. All of these things and more came about as direct consequences of the war and continue to affect the world that we live in today.
©2017 Keith Lowe (P)2018 Tantor
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
Summary
This masterful collection of 17 classic mystery stories, dating from 1837 to 1914, traces the earliest history of popular detective fiction. Today, the figure of Sherlock Holmes towers over detective fiction like a colossus - but it was not always so. Edgar Allan Poeâs French detective Dupin, the hero of âThe Murders in the Rue Morgueâ, preceded Holmesâs deductive reasoning by more than 40 years with his âtales of ratiocination.â In A Study in Scarlet, the first of Holmesâ adventures, Doyle acknowledged his debt to Poe - and to Ãmile Gaboriau, whose thief-turned-detective Monsieur Lecoq debuted in France 20 years earlier. If âRue Morgueâ was the first true detective story in English, the title of the first full-length detective novel is more hotly contested. Two books by Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868) - are often given that honor, with the latter showing many of the features that came to identify the genre: a locked-room murder in an English country house; bungling local detectives outmatched by a brilliant amateur detective; a large cast of suspects and a plethora of red herrings; and a final twist before the truth is revealed. Others point to Mary Elizabeth Braddonâs The Trail of the Serpent (1861) or Aurora Floyd (1862), and others still to The Notting Hill Mystery (1862-3) by the pseudonymous âCharles Felix.â As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages - of hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted, so-called âcozyâ murders in Britain - the legacy of Sherlock Holmes, with his fierce devotion to science and logic, gave way to street smarts on the one hand and social insight on the other - but even though these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required the intelligence and clear-sightedness that characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured here.
©2019 Compilation by Graeme Davis. Introduction © 2019 by Graeme Davis. "The Origins of Sherlock Holmes": © 2019 by Leslie S. Klinger (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing
Troubled Waters
Summary
It is the spring of 1800. Captain Alan Lewrie, fresh from victory in the South Atlantic, is back in England and fitting out his new frigate, the HMS Savage. But true to fashion, Lewrie can't stay ashore too long without trouble arising. A Jamaican court has tried him in absentia and sentenced him to hang for the theft of a dozen black slaves. The vengeful slave owner has made his way to London to seek Lewrie's end...with or without the majesty of the law! To complicate matters further, Lewrie must also deal with allegations that he is a faithless rakehell, as his wife has been informed through anonymous letters. Despite shoreside legal matters, Lewrie takes the Savage on king's business to Southwest France, to plug the threat of enemy warships, privateers, and neutrals smuggling goods in and out of Bordeaux. It could be dull and plodding dreariness, but a bored Captain Alan Lewrie, safe in his post (for the moment), can be a dangerous fellow to his country's foes...if only to relieve the tedium!
©2007 Dewey Lambdin (P)2017 Tantor
The Red Keep
Summary
In the country of Burgundy, the Sauval brothers have begun to terrorize the surrounding lands in an attempt to bring the area under their control. They raid the Red Keep, in hope of gaining it for themselves, only to be thwarted by Sir Roger and young Conan. Now they plot anew to steal the Keep from its rightful owner, Lady Anne. She, with Conan and her loyal followers, sets out to bring justice upon the evil brothers. An action-filled tale with the authentic flavor of the 12th century, by the author of The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow and The Lost Baron. Cover art by N.C. Wyeth.
©1967 Ellen Spalt (P)2017 Bethlehem Books
Scotsman of My Dreams
Summary
In New York Times best-selling author Karen Ranney's second novel in her breathtaking series, an unconventional woman and a former scoundrel embark on a daring mission of desire. Once the ton's most notorious rake, Dalton MacIain has returned from his expedition to America during the Civil War - wounded and a changed man. Instead of returning to his old haunts, he now spends his time at home. But Dalton's peace is disturbed when Minerva Todd barges into his London townhouse, insisting he help search for her missing brother, Neville. Though Dalton would love to spend more time with the bewitching beauty, he has no interest in finding Neville, whom he blames for his injury. Minerva has never met a more infuriating man than the earl of Rathsmere, yet she is intrigued by the torrid rumors she has heard about him...and the fierce attraction pulling her toward him. Dalton does not count on Minerva's persistence or the desire she awakens in him, compelling him to discover her brother's fate. But when danger surrounds them, Dalton fears he will lose the tantalizing, thoroughly unpredictable woman he has come to love.
©2015 Karen Ranney LLC (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers
The Divided City
Summary
A year after Germany's defeat, Gregor Reinhardt has been hired back onto Berlin's civilian police force. The city is divided among the victorious allied powers, but tensions are growing, and the police are riven by internal rivalries as factions within it jockey for power and influence with Berlin's new masters. When a man is found slain in a broken-down tenement, Reinhardt embarks on a gruesome investigation. It seems that a serial killer is on the loose, and matters only escalate when it's discovered that one of the victims was the brother of a Nazi scientist. Reinhardt's search for the truth takes him across the divided city and soon embroils him in a plot involving the Western Allies and the Soviets. And as he comes under the scrutiny of a group of Germans who want to continue the war - and faces an unwanted reminder from his own past - Reinhardt realizes that this investigation could cost him everything.
©2016 Luke McCallin (P)2016 Tantor
SPQR IX: The Princess and the Pirates
Summary
As I walked back through the City, my mood was moderately elevated. This appointment did not displease me nearly as much as I pretended. Like most Romans I abhorred the very thought of sea duty, but this was one of the rare occasions when I was looking forward to getting away from Rome...For years I had complained of the disorder of the City, and now that it was gone, I found that I missed it. All the peace and quiet seemed unnatural. I did not expect it to last.- Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger in SPQR IX: The Princess and the Pirates. His two years of aedileship over, Decius is ready for his next adventure. He would rather do anything than join the war with Caesar in the dismal forests of Gaul, so he and his slave/protg Hermes find themselves on a mission to rid the Mediterranean of pirates. They set off with shoddy ships and sailors to the island of Cyprus, where a young Cleopatra is staying. Between her impressive crew and the ex-pirate Ariston providing insider knowledge of that cutthroat occupation, Decius thinks he stands a good chance of bringing himself some glory. That would be too simple, though. The ruler of the island, Silvanus, is murdered in a most peculiar fashion and Decius, as a guest in his home, has a sacred duty to find and punish the guilty party. Because world relations are already strained, he would rather not suspect Cleopatra, heir to the Egyptian throne. But she has plenty of reasons to hate Rome and murder runs in her family. Another guest and suspect is Gabinius, who is in exile and could have easily given up loyalty toward his friend if it meant a quicker return to Rome. In the meantime, Decius is being humiliated in his pirate hunt, and as if this weren't enough, Aphrodite herself seeks Decius's help by appearing to him in a dream vision. As Decius investigates world trade, the island history, and the new kind of piracy plaguing the waters, he is finding connections more menacing than he had ever imagined possible. In this ninth book in the series, Roberts crafts another skillful mystery, this time fervently pulsing with the collision of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian interests.
©2005 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow
Summary
Rolf, son of Hiarandi the Unlucky, is a character who exemplifies the effect of Christ's teachings upon the Icelandic people during their heroic age. The book is set in Iceland in the days when Christianity has come to the island though the old customs still linger. Hiarandi, at the urging of his wife, does an unprecedented thing: he lights a signal fire on a dangerous point of his land, thereby challenging the accepted custom which places lucrative salvage at higher value than the saving of life. However, the life that is saved that night causes his own death and the unjust outlawing of his son Rolf. Rolf's response to this injustice creates a suspenseful, thought-provoking tale difficult to put down.
Public Domain (P)2015 Bethlehem Books