Matthew Lloyd Davies has narrated 124 audiobooks on Listento.it by 79 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 378 ratings. The most-rated is Five Bloody Hearts.
Trouble in Nuala
Summary
When Inspector Shanti de Silva moves with his English wife, Jane, to his new post in the sleepy hill town of Nuala, he anticipates a more restful life than police work in the big city entails. However an arrogant plantation owner with a lonely wife, a crusading lawyer, and a death in suspicious circumstances present him with a riddle that he will need all his experience to solve. Set on the exotic island of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) in the 1930s, Trouble in Nuala is an entertaining and absorbing mystery spiced with humor and a colorful cast of characters.
©2016 Harriet Steel (P)2018 Tantor
Conflicted
Summary
Drawing on advice from the world’s leading experts on conflict and communication - from relationship scientists to hostage negotiators to diplomats - Ian Leslie, a columnist for the New Statesman, shows us how to transform the heat of conflict, disagreement and argument into the light of insight, creativity and connection, in a book with vital lessons for the home, workplace, and public arena. For most people, conflict triggers a fight or flight response. Disagreeing productively is a hard skill for which neither evolution nor society has equipped us. It’s a skill we urgently need to acquire; otherwise, our increasingly vociferous disagreements are destined to tear us apart. Productive disagreement is a way of thinking, perhaps the best one we have. It makes us smarter and more creative, and it can even bring us closer together. It’s critical to the success of any shared enterprise, from a marriage, to a business, to a democracy. Isn’t it time we gave more thought to how to do it well? In an increasingly polarized world, our only chance for coming together and moving forward is to learn from those who have mastered the art and science of disagreement. In this book, we’ll learn from experts who are highly skilled at getting the most out of highly charged encounters: interrogators, cops, divorce mediators, therapists, diplomats, psychologists. These professionals know how to get something valuable - information, insight, ideas - from the toughest, most antagonistic conversations. They are brilliant communicators: masters at shaping the conversation beneath the conversation. They know how to turn the heat of conflict into the light of creativity, connection, and insight. In this much-needed book, Ian Leslie explores what happens to us when we argue, why disagreement makes us stressed, and why we get angry. He explains why we urgently need to transform the way we think about conflict and how having better disagreements can make us more successful. By drawing together the lessons he learns from different experts, he proposes a series of clear principles that we can all use to make our most difficult dialogues more productive - and our increasingly acrimonious world a better place.
©2020 Ian Leslie (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Offstage in Nuala
Summary
Inspector de Silva is caught up in the excitement when a professional theatre company comes to Nuala, but matters take a dark turn when the company's actor manager is murdered. Our inspector has a new case to solve, and he has to consider some very unpalatable motives for the crime. He will need all his persistence, coupled with his wife, Jane's, invaluable help to unmask the villain of the piece.
©2016 Harriet Steel (P)2018 Tantor
Moralia: Volume 2
Summary
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (46 ce - after 119) was born in Chaeronea, Boeotia, to a wealthy Greek family and assumed his full Latin name on becoming a Roman citizen. He made the most of his varied background and experience as a philosopher, magistrate, ambassador and priest at the Delphic Temple of Apollo, to become one of the most important biographers and essayists of classical Greek and Roman times. His Parallel Lives, which recounts and describes the personalities and achievements of the great figures of the era, is his most well-known (and voluminous) text. But Moralia, his collection of essays on a rich variety of subjects, continues to fascinate and educate. Volume 2 comprises 17 essays which are arguably even wider ranging than the Ethical Essays in Volume 1, opening with ‘On Listening to Lectures’, in which he warns against the habit of ‘the great majority of persons who practise speaking before they have acquired the habit of listening'. Plutarch is didactic, entertaining, informative and at times controversial. He considers atheism in ‘Superstition’, asks ‘Were the Athenians more famous in War or in Wisdom?' and in ‘On Love of Wealth’ confirms that money can’t buy you love: nor ‘peace of mind, greatness of spirit, serenity, confidence, and self-sufficiency'. Plutarch’s fascination with history and biography is also apparent here with some absorbing tales in ‘Sayings of Kings and Commanders’, ‘Sayings of Spartan Women’ and ‘Bravery of Women’. Taking another tack, he turns his attention to the political sphere in ‘A Philosopher ought to Converse especially with Men in Power’. And he gives advice ‘To an Uneducated Ruler’, pointing out that ‘most kings and rulers are so foolish as to act like unskillful sculptors, who think their colossal figures look large and imposing if they are modelled with their feet far apart, their muscles tense, and their mouths wide open’ - advice that is just as relevant to rulers in the 21st century. Throughout these essays there is humour, whimsy and wisdom, but above all Plutarch demonstrates an engaging humanity in his survey of man, in all his greatness and his foibles. Matthew Lloyd Davies is an ideal representative. Translations by Richard Shilleto.
Public Domain (P)2020 Ukemi Productions Ltd