Showing results by narrator "Mike Grady" in All Categories

How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known. In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben puts groundbreaking scientific discoveries into a language everyone can relate to.

Egypt is under attack. Pharaoh Tamose lies mortally wounded. The ancient city of Luxor is surrounded. All seems lost. Taita prepares for the enemy's final fatal push. The ex-slave, now general of Tamose's armies, is never more ingenious than when all hope is dashed. And this is Egypt's most desperate hour. With the timely arrival of an old ally, the tide is turned, and the Egyptian army feasts upon its retreating foe. But upon his victorious return to Luxor, Taita is seized and branded a traitor. Tamose is dead, and a poisonous new era has begun. The new Pharaoh has risen.

In the dead of night, shots ring out over the grounds of a sprawling English estate. The world-weary butler Eustace recognizes the gunman—his longtime employer, Mr. Crowe—and knows he must think and act quickly. Who is the man lying dead on the lawn? Who is the woman in his company? Can he clean up his master's mess like he always has before? Or will this bring a new kind of reckoning? 

Through vivid stories of devoted pigs, two-timing magpies, and scheming roosters, The Inner Life of Animals weaves the latest scientific research into how animals interact with the world with Peter Wohlleben's personal experiences in forests and fields. Horses feel shame, deer grieve, and goats discipline their kids. Ravens call their friends by name, rats regret bad choices, and butterflies choose the very best places for their children to grow up.

For centuries, Dalemark has been a land divided by the warring earldoms of the North and South. Now, with the help of the Undying, the mysterious gods of Dalemark, four extraordinary young people must join forces to reunify their beloved land. 

Organized as a travel guide for the time-hopping tourist, The Time-Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England is an entertaining popular history with a twist. Historian Ian Mortimer reveals in delightful (and occasionally disturbing) detail how the streets and homes of 16th century looked, sounded, and smelled for both peasants and for royals; what people wore and ate; how they were punished for crimes and treated for diseases; and the complex and contradictory Elizabethan attitudes toward violence, class, sex, and religion.

In The Heartbeat of Trees, renowned forester Peter Wohlleben draws on new scientific discoveries to show how humans are deeply connected to the natural world. In an era of climate change, many of us fear we’ve lost our connection to nature - but Peter Wohlleben is convinced that age-old ties linking humans to the forest remain alive and intact. We just have to know where to look. 

The tramp is a friend of society; a seeker, they pay their way if they can. One includes in the category 'tramp' all true Bohemians, pilgrims, explorers afoot, walking tourists, and the like. Tramping is a way of approach, to nature, to your fellow man, to a nation, to beauty, to life itself. It is a gentle art and there is much to learn; illusions to overcome, prejudices and habits to be shaken off.

Ted Hughes, poet laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron.

When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his 37-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder's notebooks - filled with pearls of wisdom - and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire.

Across the lush plains of Egypt, Taita, a freed eunuch slave, wears his authority lightly. Not only is he the close advisor to the Pharaoh, but he is guardian to Pharaoh Tamose's two teenage sisters, the young beauties Tehuti and Bekatha. But the kingdom is not at peace. They have been fighting Southern Egypt's constant and historic enemy, the Hyksos people in the north, since time began. To finally crush them, Pharaoh must turn to his most trusted friend.

In his beloved book The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben revealed astonishing discoveries about the social networks of trees and how they communicate. Now, in The Power of Trees, he turns to their future, with a searing critique of forestry management, tree planting, and the exploitation of old growth forests. At the heart of The Power of Trees lies Wohlleben's passionate plea: that our survival is dependent on trusting ancient forests, and allowing them to thrive.

Tom Courtney, one of four sons of master mariner Sir Hal Courtney, once again sets sail on a treacherous journey that will take him across the vast reaches of the ocean and pit him against dangerous enemies in exotic destinations. But just as the winds propel his sails, passion drives his heart. Turning his ship toward the unknown, Tom Courtney will ultimately find his destiny - and lay the future for the Courtney family.

Stephen Munro, a demobbed army officer, reconciles himself to taking a job as a footman to make ends meet. Employed at Wintringham Hall, the delightful but decaying Sussex country residence of the elderly Lady Susan Carey, his first task entails welcoming her eccentric guests to a weekend house-party, at which her bombastic nephew—who recognises Stephen from his former life—decides that an after-dinner séance would be more entertaining than bridge. Then Cicely disappears!

Game of Thrones meets Ancient Egypt in this magnificent, action-packed epic. On the gleaming banks of the Nile, the brilliant Taita - slave and advisor to the Pharaoh - finds himself at the center of a vortex of passion, intrigue, and danger. His quest to destroy the Hyksos army and form an alliance with Crete takes him on an epic journey up the Nile, through Arabia and the magical city of Babylon, and across the open seas.

Singapore, 1939: Life on the eve of World War II just isn't what it used to be for Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. No matter how forcefully the police break one strike, the natives go on strike somewhere else. His daughter keeps entangling herself with the most unsuitable beaus, while her intended match, the son of Blackett's partner, is an idealistic sympathizer with the League of Nations and a vegetarian.

For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west—in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure and riches. The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China and India, is taking centre stage in international politics, commerce and culture—and is shaping the modern world. This region, the true centre of the earth, is obscure to many in the English-speaking world. Yet this is where civilization itself began, where the world’s great religions were born and took root. 

As England enters World War II's dark early days, spirited music professor Primrose Trent, recently arrived to the village of Chilbury, emboldens the women of the town to defy the Vicar's stuffy edict to shutter the church's choir in the absence of men and instead carry on singing. Resurrecting themselves as The Chilbury Ladies' Choir, the women of this small village soon use their joint song to lift up themselves and the community as the war tears through their lives.

What is it about Middle-Earth and its inhabitants that has captured the imagination of millions of people around the world? And why does Tolkien's creation continue to fascinate and inspire us eighty-five years on from its first appearance? Beginning with Tolkien's earliest influences and drawing on key moments from his life, Twenty-First-Century Tolkien is an engaging and radical reinterpretation of the beloved author's work. Not only does it trace the genesis of the original books, it also explores the later adaptations and reworkings that cemented his reputation as a cultural phenomenon.

Richard Sorge was a man with two homelands. Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of the First World War, Sorge became a fanatical communist - and the Soviet Union’s most formidable spy.