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Paris in 1895: Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer, has just been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil's Island, and stripped of his rank in front of a baying crowd of 20,000. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, the ambitious, intellectual, recently promoted head of the counterespionage agency that Dreyfus had passed secrets to the Germans. At first, Picquart firmly believes in Dreyfus' guilt. But it is not long after Dreyfus is delivered to his desolate prison that Picquart stumbles on information that leads him to suspect that there is still a spy at large in the French military.
Hugh Legat is a rising star of the British diplomatic service, serving as a private secretary to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Rikard von Holz is on the staff of the German Foreign Office--and secretly a member of the anti-Hitler resistance. The two men were friends at Oxford in the 1920s, but have not been in contact since. Now, when Hugh flies with Chamberlain from London to Munich, and Rikard travels on Hitler's train overnight from Berlin, their paths are set on a disastrous collision course.
The pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, 118 cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world's most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals. Over the next 72 hours, one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.
Adam Lang has been Britain’s longest serving—and most controversial—prime minister of the last half century. As pressure mounts for Lang to complete this memoirs, he hires a professional ghostwriter to finish the book. As he sets to work, the ghostwriter discovers many more secrets than Lang intends to reveal, secrets with the power to alter world politics - secrets with the power to kill.
Berlin, 1964. The Greater German Reich stretches from the Rhine to the Urals and keeps an uneasy peace with its nuclear rival, the United States. As the Fatherland prepares for a grand celebration honoring Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday and anticipates a conciliatory visit from US president Joseph Kennedy and ambassador Charles Lindbergh, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb.
It's Rome, 44 BC, and the Ides of March are approaching. Julius Caesar has been appointed dictator for life by the Roman Senate. Having pardoned his remaining enemies and rewarded his friends, Caesar is now preparing to leave Rome with his army to fight the Parthian Empire. Gordianus the Finder, after decades of investigating crimes and murders involving the powerful, has set aside enough that he's been raised to the Equestrian rank and has firmly and finally retired. On the morning of March 10th, though, he's first summoned to meet with Cicero and then with Caesar himself.
Paris in 1895: Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer, has just been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil's Island, and stripped of his rank in front of a baying crowd of 20,000. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, the ambitious, intellectual, recently promoted head of the counterespionage agency that Dreyfus had passed secrets to the Germans. At first, Picquart firmly believes in Dreyfus' guilt. But it is not long after Dreyfus is delivered to his desolate prison that Picquart stumbles on information that leads him to suspect that there is still a spy at large in the French military.
Hugh Legat is a rising star of the British diplomatic service, serving as a private secretary to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Rikard von Holz is on the staff of the German Foreign Office--and secretly a member of the anti-Hitler resistance. The two men were friends at Oxford in the 1920s, but have not been in contact since. Now, when Hugh flies with Chamberlain from London to Munich, and Rikard travels on Hitler's train overnight from Berlin, their paths are set on a disastrous collision course.
The pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, 118 cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world's most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals. Over the next 72 hours, one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.
Adam Lang has been Britain’s longest serving—and most controversial—prime minister of the last half century. As pressure mounts for Lang to complete this memoirs, he hires a professional ghostwriter to finish the book. As he sets to work, the ghostwriter discovers many more secrets than Lang intends to reveal, secrets with the power to alter world politics - secrets with the power to kill.
Berlin, 1964. The Greater German Reich stretches from the Rhine to the Urals and keeps an uneasy peace with its nuclear rival, the United States. As the Fatherland prepares for a grand celebration honoring Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday and anticipates a conciliatory visit from US president Joseph Kennedy and ambassador Charles Lindbergh, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb.
It's Rome, 44 BC, and the Ides of March are approaching. Julius Caesar has been appointed dictator for life by the Roman Senate. Having pardoned his remaining enemies and rewarded his friends, Caesar is now preparing to leave Rome with his army to fight the Parthian Empire. Gordianus the Finder, after decades of investigating crimes and murders involving the powerful, has set aside enough that he's been raised to the Equestrian rank and has firmly and finally retired. On the morning of March 10th, though, he's first summoned to meet with Cicero and then with Caesar himself.
Dr. Alex Hoffmann’s name is carefully guarded from the general public, but within the secretive inner circles of the ultrarich he is a legend. He has developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that predicts movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy. His hedge fund, based in Geneva, makes billions. But one morning before dawn, a sinister intruder breaches the elaborate security of his lakeside mansion, and so begins a waking nightmare of paranoia and violence.
Weaving history, legend, and new archaeological discoveries into a spellbinding narrative, critically acclaimed novelist Steven Saylor gives new life to the drama of Rome'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.
Gaius Petrius Ruso is a divorced and down-on-his-luck army doctor who has made the rash decision to seek his fortune in an inclement outpost of the Roman Empire, namely Britannia. After a 36-hour shift at the army hospital, he succumbs to a moment of weakness and rescues an injured slave girl, Tilla, from the hands of her abusive owner. And before he knows it, Ruso is caught in the middle of an investigation into the deaths of prostitutes working out of the local bar.
In Egypt during the late Roman Republic, the young Gordianus finds himself involved in a raid to steal the golden Sarcophagus of Alexander the Great....
Alexias, a young Athenian of good family, grows up just as the Peloponnesian War is drawing to a close. The adult world he enters is one in which the power and influence of his class have been undermined by the forces of war, and more and more Alexias finds himself drawn to the controversial teachings of Sokrates.
The award-winning author of
The Battle of Bretton Woods reveals the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan—told with verve, insight, and resonance for today.
In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin's on the rise, US officials under new secretary of state George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.
Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Benn Steil’s thrilling account brings to life the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar US-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, we see and understand like never before Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe.
Given current echoes of the Cold War, as Putin’s Russia rattles the world order, the tenuous balance of power and uncertain order of the late 1940s is as relevant as ever.
The Marshall Plan provides critical context into understanding today’s international landscape. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Steil’s account will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan and the birth of the Cold War. A polished and masterly work of historical narrative, this is an instant classic of Cold War literature.
Spændingsroman om englændernes arbejde i 1943 med at bryde den kode tyskerne anvender i u-bådskommunikationen. Menneskeliv er på spil, arbejdet foregår under tidspres og de involverede har mange hemmeligheder.
Here is one of the best historical novels ever written. Lame, stammering Claudius, once a major embarrassment to the imperial family and now emperor of Rome, writes an eyewitness account of the reign of the first four Caesars: the noble Augustus and his cunning wife, Livia; the reptilian Tiberius; the monstrous Caligula; and finally old Claudius himself. Filled with poisonings, betrayal, and shocking excesses, I Claudius is history that rivals the most exciting contemporary fiction.
In this Edgar Award-nominated mystery, John Maddox Roberts takes listeners back to a Rome filled with violence and evil. Vicious gangs ruled the streets of Crassus and Pompey, routinely preying on plebeian and patrician alike. So the garroting of a lowly ex-slave and the disembowelment of a foreign merchant in the dangerous Subura district seemed of little consequence to the Roman hierarchy.
France, July 1944: a month after the Allied landings in Normandy, and the liberation of Europe is under way. In the Pas-de-Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband, Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day.
On a blistering day in the 26th year of Augustus Caesar's reign, a young chef, Thrasius, is acquired for the exorbitant price of 20,000 denarii. His purchaser is the infamous gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, wealthy beyond measure, obsessed with a taste for fine meals from exotic places and a singular ambition: to serve as culinary adviser to Caesar, an honor that will cement his legacy as Rome's leading epicure.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child - not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring, like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power - the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.
Attilius promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. His plan is to travel to Pompeii and put together an expedition, then head out to the place where he believes the fault lies. But Pompeii proves to be a corrupt and violent town, and Attilius soon discovers that there are powerful forces at work threatening to destroy him.
With his trademark elegance and intelligence, Robert Harris, best-selling author of Archangel and Fatherland, re-creates a world on the brink of disaster.
"Harris' volcanology is well researched, and the plot...keeps this impressive novel moving along toward its exciting finale." (Publishers Weekly)
"With rich historical details and scientific minutiae, Harris vividly brings to life the ancient world on the brink of unspeakable disaster." (Booklist)
"Brilliantly done. Explosive stuff, indeed." (Daily Telegraph
A good yarn that made me wonder all the way through, on what was history and what was fiction. Made me feel very much involved. I just visited Pompeii in October and what I saw there jived completely with the story. The bars, houses, half-restored temple, arena, whorehouses, baths and street layouts all meshed perfectly. The story flows well and kept me entertained and fascinated. The engineering described in the book is amazing ...as it is, in person! The research for this book must have taken a year or more! This was my 6th audio book and the best yet.
49 of 49 people found this review helpful
And that doesn't hurt the story-telling at all.
Fine mystery and suspense woven around real characters of the period. A peek at a society not so different from ours. In the best tradition of Falco and Gordianus. (Whose stories I wish were here too)
67 of 69 people found this review helpful
I found this story to be one of those that you go out of your way to listen to. I found it's salting of scientific information to be a pleasant compliment to a good storyline. The author tosses in little historically accurate facts and details of Roman life that further embellish the story. Even knowing about the real history of Pompeii's eruption as it is understood today and also of real historical individuals like Pliny the elder, the story doesn't dissapoint.
30 of 31 people found this review helpful
"Pompeii" is an excellent audio book. It's easy to listen to and the historical details--particularly regarding the aquaduct--are fascinating. I was worried about the concept of turning a real person, Pliny the Elder, into a character, but it works. The love story is not all that plausible, but it does not detract from the intense primary story. Even knowing how the tale ends, "Pompeii" held my full attention all the way through. I found myself awake in the middle of the night listening to "just a little bit more." My only slight criticism is that I thought our hero was a little slow in piecing together the many "clues" pointing to an impending eruption, but then again history records that local residents were caught entirely unawares, so I guess we couldn't have a fictional character predicting the event.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful
I am fan of historical fiction; especially from this time period. I found this to be a compelling listen and regretted when it was time for me to park at the end of each commute! The characters were very believable and brought the time period alive for me. In addition I learned a lot about vulcanology, the science of the time period, and aqueducts without feeling like I was getting an info dump or being talked down to.
The narrator was first rate. I've listened to dozens of audio books and this is one of the best narrators I have ever heard. I will be looking for other books he has done.
Don't miss this one!
10 of 10 people found this review helpful
I found this an enjoyable listen. The book is well researched but does not try to hit the reader over the head with the information. I liked the addition of sub-plot with regard to the aquaducts and the inclusion of historical figures which added to the interest. The narrator did a good job and did not intrude upon the story. One quirk - right at the end of the book, there seemed to be a dig at theories of the human source for global warming which seemed a bit out of place (I may be reading too much into a short passage).
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
There certainly were a lot of interesting historical facts in the book - the description of the aqueducts was great - but the actual story part of the book was boring and mildly silly. I made the mistake of downloading this for a long car trip hoping it would help to pass the hours, but the story wasn't compelling and I found my interest waning.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this book. I listened to Cicero before it (same author and same narrator). The narrator is phenomenal. One of the best I have encountered. The book is very well written. A very interesting story with elements of mystery well woven around historial details of Roman life of the time and details about the changes in nature leading up to the great volcanic eruption. Robert Harris is a marvelous story teller.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
I was impressed by the high rating and great reviews this book has received... and I could not have been more thrilled after listening myself. This is an extremely well-researched, intelligent story--certainly one of the most enjoyable pieces of historical fiction I've ever heard.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
This was my first experience with Robert Harris and I am now a convert. I am not normally a fan of mysteries, but bought this because I love historical fiction. This book was excellent - steadily building plot, intriguing characters and all set against a well-painted historical landscape. It was like stepping back in time. Made me want more, so I bought "Imperium" too.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful