Showing results by narrator "Simon Vance" in All Categories

At age 24 Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He believed that to achieve his goal, he had to do something spectacular on the battlefield. Despite deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British army officer in colonial wars in India and Sudan and as a journalist covering a Cuban uprising against the Spanish, glory and fame had eluded him.

A year has passed since Auric Manteo descended into the haunted depths of a Djao ruin to return a lethal artifact, only to face down a bloodthirsty, imprisoned god. Now, his daughter, Agnes, comes to bring him back to the capital with promises of hidden secrets finally revealed. But the city decays, poisonous disorder is rife, and whispered prophecy foretells of cataclysm and doom. Summoned by their no-longer human queen, Auric and Agnes are commanded to carry out an impossible task, one that can be accomplished only with the mysterious blade, Szaa’da’shaela.

Enter the fantastical world of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy, one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. Novelist C.S. Lewis called Peake's books "actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."

Dion, now king of Xanthos, is finally in command of the naval fleet he's always dreamed of. But his hopes for peace are jeopardized when King Palemon, in dire need of ships to rescue his starving people from the frozen wastelands of the north, invades the Salesian city of Malakai. Too weak to confront Dion directly, Palemon turns to magic: mysterious copper chains from the lost civilization of Aleuthea, which have the potential to control dragons...and Dion.

The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of 19th-century British exploration. After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the 16th century: Find the fabled Northwest Passage, a shortcut to the Orient via a sea route over Northern Canada. For the next 35 years the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route.

When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and inhuman characters alike. In his transcendent fourth novel, Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason delivers a magisterial and highly inventive tale brimming with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we're connected to our environment, to history and to each other.

Mats Sverin was Fjällbacka's financial director on a regeneration project worth millions. When he's found dead, detective Patrik Hedström must find answers. It seems Mats was a man who everybody liked yet nobody really knew - a man with something to hide. Is it just a coincidence that his high school sweetheart, Nathalie, has returned to the area? Does she know who Mats really was?

Alec Milius is young, smart, and ambitious. He also has a talent for deception. He is working in a dead-end job when a chance encounter leads him to MI6, the elite British Secret Intelligence Service, handing him an opportunity to play center stage in a dangerous game of espionage.

Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down.

A local woman is killed in a tragic car crash, but while the victim’s blood contains high alcohol levels, she rarely drank a drop. Meanwhile, a reality TV show begins shooting in Fjällbacka, and as cameras shadow the stars’ every move, tempers flare. When a drunken party ends with an unpopular contestant’s murder, all eyes turn to the cast and crew. Could there be a murderer among them? The ratings spike as the country tunes in to a real life murder mystery.

London, 1385: Surrounded by ruthless courtiers - including his powerful uncle, John of Gaunt, and Gaunt's artful mistress, Katherine Swynford - England's young king, Richard II, is in mortal peril. Songs are heard across London - catchy verses said to originate from an ancient book that prophesies the ends of England's kings - and among the book's predictions is Richard's assassination. Only a few powerful men know that the cryptic lines derive from a "burnable book", a seditious work that threatens the stability of the realm.

Each of us, even the most simple, is called to a journey. We may be asked to leave behind everything we have grown dependent on. And when this is the case, the tale of Frodo and his friends offers hope that we will be given the strength and the help we need to overcome every obstacle and defeat every foe. This book is meant to help you find the way.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room is Gaston Leroux's masterpiece, and it turned out to be his most successful book during his lifetime. It is one of the classics of early twentieth century detective fiction.

In Daniel Defoe’s 17th century masterpiece of English literature, hero Robinson Crusoe relates his story of shipwreck, perseverance, hope, and redemption. Full of adventure, suspense, and daring heroics, this celebration of Robinson Crusoe, updated for the modern young reader, retains all of the classic elements of Defoe’s original tale of courage, insight and the power of endurance.

Ten years ago, Mary Morstan’s father, an officer in an Indian regiment, vanished. Four years later, elegant pearls began to arrive, six in total, and now she holds an invitation to meet her mysterious anonymous benefactor. As Miss Morstan shares this peculiar tale with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, she urges the detectives to accompany her. Her only clues to her father’s disappearance: a map of a fortress with the names of four strangers and an assertion that she’s been dreadfully wronged.

To many thousands of listeners world-wide, Titus Crow is the psychic sleuth - the cosmic voyager and investigator - of Brian Lumley's Cthulhu Mythos novels, from The Burrowers Beneath to Elysia. But before The Burrowers and Crow's transition, his exploits were chronicled in a series of short stories and novellas uncollected in the USA, except in limited editions.

A ranger’s duty. The rotten heart of a king. Rebellion spilled from the blood of family. Rew, the king’s ranger, accepted a role on the far edge of the realm to avoid the morass of intrigue and betrayal that bleeds from the heart of the kingdom. His only desire is to shoulder the burden he’s taken, to protect the village of Eastwatch, and to monitor the wilderness beyond. When three youths are arrested for petty theft in the village and beg for his help, Rew’s oldest friend insists he take responsibility for them.

Merle Johnson has here gathered together in one volume all of the nineteenth-century author-artist's classic pirate stories that had been scattered through many magazines and books. Well researched and with richly drawn characters, Pyle's work will appeal to students of history and adventure lovers alike.

On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was to "proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America 70 years before Columbus.

The Little Stranger follows the strange adventures of Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. One dusty postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline - its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at 20 to nine.