Showing results by narrator "Bruce Mann" in All Categories

Princess Arabella of Avonia is bored out of her ever-loving mind. No 28-year-old wants to live an endless loop of high teas, state dinners, and the same five conversations. They want freedom and adventure. After a wild night out in Ibiza ends in disaster, the royal handlers have shortened her leash considerably. Desperate for an out, she sneakily signs up to cohost a new nature docu-series, starring Will Banks, the man dubbed "McHotty of the Wilderness".

Pip is not in the mood for her friend’s murder mystery party. Especially one that involves 1920’s fancy dress and pretending that their town is an island called Joy. But when the game begins, Pip finds herself drawn into the make-believe world of intrigue, deception and murder. But as Pip plays detective, teasing out the identity of the killer clue-by-clue, the murder of the fictional Reginald Remy isn’t the only case on her mind …

Engineering Hitler's Downfall features numerous inventions such as the decoding machines developed at Bletchley Park; the hand-held mine detectors that cleared pathways through enemy minefields, firstly at the Battle of el Alamein but also in most subsequent actions; the newly-located factories and tanks that enabled the Russians to repulse the German invasion; the escort carriers and long range aircraft that enabled U-boats to be attacked in the mid-Atlantic; and the 4000 plus Bailey bridges that allowed narrow ravines and rivers as wide as the Rhine to be crossed.

The only son of a poor British coal miner, Robert Coffin sets sail for the far ends of the Earth in search of his fortune, leaving his young bride and infant child behind in England. In the sordid and dangerous South Pacific port of Kororareka, on the sprawling island the native Maori call "the Land of the Long White Cloud," Coffin builds a successful new life as a merchant. He gains an unwavering respect for the aboriginal people and their culture, and finds comfort in the arms of his fiery Irish mistress. But the unexpected arrival of his wife and son throws his world into turmoil.

Three years after the storming of the Bastille, the streets of Paris are roiling with the spirit of revolution. The citizens of France are enlivened by the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The monarchy of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has been dismantled - with the help of the guillotine - and a new nation is rising in its place. Jean-Luc, an idealistic young lawyer, moves his wife, Marie, and their infant son from their comfortable life in Marseille to Paris in the hopes of joining the cause.

This book presents the remarkable personal journals of German soldier Hans Roth. Writing as events transpired, he recorded the mystery and tension as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in June 1941. In these journals, battles are described in "you are there" detail, as Roth wrote privately, as if to keep himself sane, knowing that his honest accounts of the horrors in the East could never pass through Wehrmacht censors.

Friedrich Reck might seem an unlikely rebel against Nazism. Not just a conservative but a rock-ribbed reactionary, he played the part of a landed gentleman, deplored democracy, and rejected the modern world outright. To Reck, the Nazis were ruthless revolutionaries in Gothic drag, and helpless as he was to counter the spell they had cast on the German people, he felt compelled to record the corruptions of their rule.

Before Miss Peregrine gave them a home, the story of peculiars was written in the Tales. Wealthy cannibals who dine on the discarded limbs of peculiars. A fork-tongued princess. These are but a few of the truly brilliant stories in Tales of the Peculiar - the collection of fairy tales known to hide information about the peculiar world, including clues to the locations of time loops - first introduced by Ransom Riggs in his number-one best-selling Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series.

Following the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, after a bloody civil war, Mao hoisted the red flag over Beijing's Forbidden City, and the world watched as the Communist revolution began to wash away the old order. Due to the secrecy surrounding the country's records, little has been known before now about the eight years that followed, preceding the massive famine and Great Leap Forward. The Tragedy of Liberation bears witness to a shocking, largely untold history.

The newest immensely original undertaking from the historian who gave us the defining two-volume portrait of Hitler, Fateful Choices puts Ian Kershaw's analytical and storytelling gifts on dazzling display. From May 1940 to December 1941, the leaders of the world's six major powers made a series of related decisions that determined the final outcome of World War II and shaped the course of human destiny.

In the century since Rome's defeat of the Seleucid Empire in the 180s BC, the East was dominated by the rise of new empires: Parthia, Armenia, and Pontus, each vying to recreate the glories of the Persian Empire. By the 80s BC, the Pontic Empire of Mithridates had grown so bold that it invaded and annexed the whole of Rome's eastern empire and occupied Greece itself. But as Rome emerged from the devastating effects of the First Civil War, a new breed of general emerged with it, eager to re-assert Roman military dominance and carve out a fresh empire in the east.

Based on exclusive and unrestricted access to more than 5,000 pages of personal writings and family photos, this definitive biography of German physician and SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Josef Mengele (1911-1979) probes the personality and motivations of Auschwitz's "Angel of Death". From May 1943 through January 1945, Mengele selected who would be gassed immediately, who would be worked to death, and who would serve as involuntary guinea pigs for his spurious and ghastly human experiments (twins were Mengele's particular obsession).

Brodick McJames is an earl in name only. To secure his clan's future he needs an English wife. Mary Stanford, daughter of the Earl of Warwickshire, will suit perfectly. He's never met her, but what matter? She'll grace his bed eventually, and once she bears his child he need see her no more.Anne Copper looks just like her noble half-sister, but she was born illegitimate, and can never forget it. The best she can hope for is to stay a serving girl in her own father's house.

Arguably no other character in history has been so enduringly popular as Sherlock Holmes. From his first appearance in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 novella A Study in Scarlet, fans have loved reading and listening about him - and writers have loved writing about him. Here, Otto Penzler collects 83 wonderful stories about Holmes and Dr. John Watson, the majority of which will be new to listeners.

During the tumultuous era of World War II, the city of London shattered under unrelenting bombs dropped by Nazi Germany. Millions of buildings were destroyed or damaged, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and survivors were left to ask: How can this destruction be part of God's plan? What is God's will in all of this? After City Temple in London was reduced to rubble, Rev. Leslie Weatherhead crafted five sermons on understanding the will of God to help his congregation endure religious doubt as their city - and church - crumbled around them.

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Living with Shakespeare, Susannah Carson invites 40 actors, directors, scholars, and writers to reflect on why his work is still such a vital part of our culture.

What William Gibson did for science fiction, China Miéville has done for fantasy, shattering old paradigms with fiercely imaginative works of startling, often shocking, intensity. Now from this brilliant writer comes a groundbreaking collection of stories, many of them previously unavailable in the United States, and including four never-before-published tales - one set in Miéville’s signature fantasy world of New Crobuzon.

All his life, Jack has longed for an adventure, so when giants turn up in the neighbor's cabbage patch, he is thrilled! Soon Jack is chasing them to a land beyond the clouds, with his little sister, Annabella, in tow. The kingdom of giants is full of super-sized fun: Puddings to swim in, spoons to use as catapults, monster toads to carry off pesky little sisters...But Jack and Annabella are on a mission. The king of the giants has taken something that belongs to them, and they’ll do anything - even dive into a smelly tureen of green bean soup - to get it back.

Raised in 1943 with 17-year-olds from the Hitler Youth movement, and following the twin disasters of Stalingrad and "Tunisgrad", the Hitlerjugend Panzer Division emerged as the most effective German division fighting in the West. The core of the division was a cadre of offices and NCOs provided by Hitler's bodyguard division, the elite Leibstandarte, with the aim of producing a division of "equal value" to fight alongside them in I SS Panzer Corps.

Exogenesis: Hybrid Humans offers a deep dive into the strongest ever scientific evidence that supports the popular belief that Earth has been visited in prehistory, but goes even further, concluding that there is also compelling evidence of alien involvement with the human genome. The broader history of possible extraterrestrial contact is explored alongside a look at current events in the subject of alien disclosure with the result of highlighting evidence of a contact continuum that has continued since the dawn of humanity.