Showing results by narrator "John Lee" in All Categories

Here is the tale of a family dealing with the death of their father, of a son who goes to law for his inheritance, a son who agonizes over his father's deathbed confession, a daughter who falls in love, a daughter who becomes involved in the abolition movement, and a daughter sacrificing herself for her husband.... Except that everyone in the story is a dragon, red in tooth and claw.

Disorder and chaos ravage London when thousands are contaminated by the accidental discharge of an experimental bio-weapon. The disease robs its hosts of rational thought, giving them a singular desire - find more living flesh to infect. Cut off from information and senior leadership, one squadron of soldiers under the command of their senior NCO, Sergeant Major Johnson, finds itself forced to operate independently until the remnants of military and government command re-establish themselves safely at sea in the English Channel.

It is winter 1863, and Richard Shenstone, aged 17, has been sent down - "rusticated" - from Cambridge under a cloud of suspicion. Addicted to opium and tormented by sexual desire, he finds temporary refuge in a dilapidated old mansion on the southern English coast inhabited by his newly impoverished mother and his sister, Effie. Soon, graphic and threatening letters begin to circulate among his neighbors, and Richard finds himself the leading suspect in a series of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from vivisection to murder.

Martin Wolf has long been one of the wisest voices on global economic issues. He has rarely been called an optimist, yet he has never been as worried as he is today. Liberal democracy is in recession, and authoritarianism is on the rise. The ties that ought to bind open markets to free and fair elections are threatened, even in democracy’s heartlands, the United States and England.

In the late summer of 1775, General George Washington discovers that his cache of gunpowder has dwindled to a mere nine shots per man. A desperate plan is hatched—to send a ship under the command of Captain Isaac Biddlecomb to Bermuda to capture the British powder known to be there. But the plan is a trap, set by a traitor among the patriots, and one from which even Biddlecomb cannot escape.

Funny and scary, romantic and gruesome - and featuring a childless queen who devours the heart of a sea monster cooked by a virgin, and who then gives birth the very next day; a lecherous king aroused by the voice of a woman whom he courts, unaware of her physical grotesqueness; and a king who raises a flea to monstrous size on his own blood, sparking a contest in which an ogre vies with men for the hand of the king's daughter - The Tale of Tales is a fairy-tale treasure that prefigures Game of Thrones and other touchstones of worldwide fantasy literature.

Britain's bestselling SF writer returns to outer space.In AD 2329, humanity has colonised over four hundred planets, all of them interlinked by wormholes. With Earth at its centre, the Intersolar Commonwealth now occupies a sphere of space approximately four hundred light years across.When an astronomer on the outermost world of Gralmond, observes a star 2000 light years distant - and then a neighbouring one - vanish, it is time for the Commonwealth to discover what happened to them.

What does it mean to be smart? To be human? What do we really want from life and the intelligence we have, or might create? With deep and exclusive reporting, across hundreds of interviews, New York Times Silicon Valley journalist Cade Metz brings you into the rooms where these questions are being answered. Where an extraordinarily powerful new artificial intelligence has been built into our biggest companies, our social discourse, and our daily lives, with few of us even noticing.

The police are constantly under scrutiny. They are criticized for failings, praised for successes, and hailed as heroes for their sacrifices. Starting from the premise that every society has norms and ways of dealing with transgressors, A Short History of Police and Policing traces the evolution of the multiple forms of "policing" that existed in the past. Professor Emsley explores the idea and reality of policing, and shows how an institution we now call "the police" came to be virtually universal in our modern world.

The Spartans of ancient Greece were a powerful and unique people, radically different from any civilization before or since. A society of warrior-heroes, they were living exemplars of self-sacrifice, community endeavor, and achievement against all odds, qualities that today signify the ultimate in heroism. Scholars even believe that Thomas More had Sparta specifically in mind when he coined the term "Utopia".

Assembled in the form of a “mountain journal,” written during a retreat in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais, CA, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown is Watts’s meditation on the art of feeling out and following the watercourse way of nature, known in Chinese as the Tao. Embracing a form of contemplative meditation that allows us to stop analyzing our experiences and start living in to them, the book explores themes such as the natural world, established religion, race relations, karma and reincarnation, astrology and tantric yoga, the nature of ecstasy, and much more.

When a whale beaches itself on the shore of the remote coastal town of Paradise Deep, the last thing any of the townspeople expect to find inside it is a man, silent and reeking of fish but remarkably alive. The discovery of this mysterious person, soon christened Judah, sets the town scrambling for answers as its most prominent citizens weigh in on whether he is man or beast, blessing or curse, miracle or demon.

The incomparable Booker Prize winner’s next great crime novel - the story of a family whose secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their ancestral home. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family.

Ever familiar and instructive, Davis shows why the ancient tales of gods and heroes, from Mount Olympus to Machu Picchu, from ancient Rome to the icy land of the Norse, continue to speak to us today, in our movies, art, language, and music. For mythology novices and buffs alike, and for anyone who loves a good story, Don't Know Much About Mythology is a lively and insightful look into the greatest stories ever told.

In his most dazzling novel since the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier and arms dealer, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries, and indeed entire countries and continents.

This tale takes place in Iscium, an isolated Roman village in Britain. Most of the town senators and officials are primarily concerned with keeping a low profile with the neighboring barbarians - with the exception of the crotchety old bishop. But when young Falx decides to run away to Rome and instead finds a lost barbarian girl, things begin to happen. The children are found by a merchant who returns them to Iscium. This is a zany mix of history, humor, and the miraculous - in the tradition of Don Camillo.

Since 1066, when William the Conqueror took the throne, English and Scottish kings have sired at least 150 children out of wedlock. Many were acknowledged at court and founded dynasties of their own. Others were only acknowledged grudgingly or not at all. In the 20th century, this trend for royals to father illegitimate children continued, but the parentage, while highly probable, has not been officially recognized. This book is a genuinely fresh approach to British kings and queens, examining their lives and times through the unfamiliar perspective of their illegitimate children.

Gretta Riordan wakes on a stultifying July morning to find that her husband of forty years has gone to get the paper and vanished, cleaning out his bank account along the way. Gretta’s three grown children converge on their parents’ home for the first time in years.

In Queen's Bench Courtroom Number Seven, famous author Abraham Cady stands trial. In his book The Holocaust - born of the terrible revelation that the Jadwiga Concentration camp was the site of his family's extermination - Cady shook the consciousness of the human race. He also named eminent surgeon Sir Adam Kelno as one of Jadwiga's most sadistic inmate/doctors. Kelno has denied this and brought furious charges. Now unfolds Leon Uris' riveting courtroom drama - one of the great fictional trials of the century.

May 1940. Britain is at war, Winston Churchill has unexpectedly been promoted to prime minister, and the horrors of Blitzkrieg witness one Western European democracy fall after another in rapid succession. Facing this horror, with pen in hand and typist-secretary at the ready, Churchill wonders what words could capture the public mood when the invasion of Britain seems mere hours away. It is this fascinating period that Anthony McCarten captures in this deeply researched and wonderfully written new book, The Darkest Hour.