Showing results by narrator "Michael Page" in All Categories

Having achived so much, Marius don Hellespont was finding life just a little boring. But now something, or maybe someone, has stopped the dead from, well, dying. So wouldn’t you know it, it’s up to Marius, incorrigible sidekick Gerd, and Gerd’s not-dead-enough Granny, to journey across the continent and put the marching dead back in the afterlife, where they belong.

Told in a variety of narrative voices, what at first appears to be a constellation of random events begins to cohere as the work of a shadow organization - or is it justcoincidence? Tying the strands together is Larry Zagorski, an early pulp-fiction writer turned U.S. airman turned "American gnostic", who looks back on his long and eventful life, searching for connections between the seemingly disparate parts. The teeming network of interlaced secrets he uncovers has personal relevance...

If you have ever been touched with a profound mystical experience, the daily grind of ordinary life can feel soul-crushing at times. How can you thrive in the here and now - managing image, career, and family - while surrendering the ego and embracing a power from beyond? Guided: Journey into the Unknown to Awaken the Soul and Live in Truth reveals an unexpected passage from fragmentation to wholeness, from hiding to being seen, and from fear to love.

British expatriate Paul Chavasse is about as tough as they come. For years, he has made a dangerous living running men and intelligence across the Adriatic Sea from Italy to the communist country of Albania. But his ideals are about to be tested – more than he ever thought possible. The Albanian government, seeking to crush a religious resurgence within its borders, wants to find and destroy the Madonna of Scutari – a legendary statue of ebony and gold that has protected the faithful for a thousand years.

This riveting war story introduces us to beautiful Kate Zweig, the English widow of a German surgeon, and Claus Murphy, an exiled American with German roots - two lovers with complicated loyalties. In 1918, Kate and her husband, Horst, are taken for spies by Russian soldiers and forced to flee their field hospital on the eastern front, barely escaping with their lives.

The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secret police, the Soviet state had seemingly unprecedented capabilities based on its near monopoly of productive capital, monolithic authority, and secretive decision making. But behind the scenes, Soviet secrecy was double-edged. Mark Harrison combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to evaluate the impact of secrecy on Soviet state capacity from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Marius dos Hellespont and his apprentice, Gerd, are professional looters of battlefields. When they stumble upon the corpse of the King of Scorby and Gerd is killed, Marius is mistaken for the monarch by one of the dead soldiers and is transported down to the Kingdom of the Dead. Just like the living citizens, the dead need a king - after all, the king is God’s representative, and someone needs to remind God where they are. And so it comes to pass that Marius is banished to the surface with one message: If he wants to recover his life he must find the dead king.

Humans and elves, dwarves and gnomes, wizards and warriors all live and do business in the thriving, overcrowded port city of Cliff's End, to say nothing of the tourists and travelers who arrive by land and sea, passing through the metropolis on matters of business or pleasure-or on quests. The hard-working, under-appreciated officers of the Cliff's End Castle Guard work day and night to maintain law and order as best they can.

Humans and elves, dwarves and gnomes, wizards and warriors all live and do business in the thriving, overcrowded port city of Cliff's End, to say nothing of the tourists and travelers who arrive by land and sea, passing through the metropolis on matters of business or pleasure - or on quests. The hard-working, under-appreciated officers of the Cliff's End Castle Guard work day and night to maintain law and order as best they can. A new drug called Bliss is sweeping across the slums of Goblin Precinct.

Sent to execute the king’s cryptic command to destroy an evil sorcerer, capture his castle, and take his daughter to wife, Alain De Crency expects a hard siege. Instead, the castle is undefended, the daughter vanished, and the sorcerer dead, shrouded in a purple cloak. Alain lays claim to the cloak and searches for the missing daughter. But soon he faces a new dilemma: How can he marry the missing lady when a beautiful, evasive servant has captured his desire?

The President is coming to London, but not to an entirely warm welcome. A fanatical mullah is offering a blessing to anyone who will assassinate the President, and though most London Muslims think the mullah has crossed the line, a few think otherwise. Urgently, Sean Dillon, General Charles Ferguson, and the rest of the small band known as the “Prime Minister’s private army” are called in, augmented by an extra-ordinary new recruit, an intelligence captain and Afghan war hero named Sara Gideon.

Russian writer and ex-paratrooper named Alexander Kurbsky has gotten fed up with the Putin government, and decides he wants to "disappear" into the West. He is under no illusions, however, about how the news will be greeted at home, having seen too many of his countrymen die mysteriously at the hands of the thuggish Russian security services....

Originally published in the 1851 Christmas edition of Dickens's journal Household Words, "What Christmas Is as We Grow Older" is an essay suggesting that Christmas should be a time of gratitude and forgiveness. This version of "What Christmas Is as We Grow Older" was recorded as part of Dreamscape's The Christmas Stories of Charles Dickens.

The best-selling author of The Weather Makers returns to the subject of climate change with a thought-provoking and powerful argument for immediate global action and a wide range of innovative, deeply pragmatic ideas to help solve the crisis.

When Tudor explorers returned from the New World, they brought back a name out of half-forgotten Viking legend: skraylings. Red-sailed ships followed in the explorers’ wake, bringing Native American goods - and a skrayling ambassador – to London. But what do these seemingly magical beings really want in Elizabeth I’s capital? Mal Catlyn, a down-at-heel swordsman, is appointed to the ambassador’s bodyguard, but assassination attempts are the least of his problems.

In the fall of 1888, Jack the Ripper slaughtered five prostitutes in London's seamy Whitechapel District. He did not just kill - he ripped with a butcher's glee - and then, after the particularly gruesome slaying of Mary Jane Kelly, he disappeared. For 127 years, Jack has haunted the dark corners of our imagination, the paradigm of the psychotic killer. We remember him not only for his crimes, but because, despite one of the biggest dragnets in London history, he was never caught.

In the past few years, the killing and capture of many Al-Qaeda leaders has left the terrorist organization wounded - but by no means dead. And they intend to prove it. On a dark summer night, two Chechen mercenaries emerge from the waters off Nantucket to kill a high-value target, the former president of the United States, Jake Cazalet. Unfortunately for them, Cazalet has guests with him, including black ops specialist Sean Dillon and his colleague, Afghan war hero Captain Sara Gideon.

This is a very timely study of Russia's development into a global energy power from the Russian Revolution to the present day. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russia emerged not only as a key producer but also as one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Russia's transformation into a modern global power was connected to its ability to make use of its vast natural resources and produce energy in increasing quantities.

An eminent Iranian scientist has made a startling breakthrough in nuclear weapons research, but he can’t stand the thought of his country owning the bomb. He would run if he could, but if he does, his family dies. He is desperate, he doesn’t know what to do. It is up to Sean Dillon and the rest of the small band known as the “Prime Minister’s private army” to come up with a plan. Most particularly, it is up to their newest member, an intelligence captain and Afghan war hero named Sara Gideon, who thinks there just might be a way to bring it off.

The Known World is a sprawling realm ruled by mortals, protected by gods, and plied by magicians and warriors, merchants and beggars, royals and scoundrels. In Kaul, the Council of Mothers upholds the great Ancestress; Odrel, the god of Sadness, unites the suffering of the Upper Kingdoms; and everywhere the lethal minions of Zuïa, the cold-blooded judiciary goddess, do her fearsome bidding. But for all the Known World’s wonders and terrors, what has endured most powerfully is the legacy of Ji.