Showing results by narrator "Ric Jerrom" in All Categories

If you've ever wondered why Putin is so obsessed with Crimea, why the USA was destined to become a global superpower or why China's power base continues to expand ever outwards, the answers are all here. In 10 chapters, using essays and occasionally the personal experiences of the widely travelled author, Prisoners of Geography looks at the past, present and future to offer an essential insight into one of the major factors that determines world history.

Robbed of his wife and ousted from his huge shipping empire, Nick Berg is hell-bent on vengeance. It is the sea which gives him his opportunity. When his arch-rival's luxury liner is trapped in the tempestuous Antarctic, Nick stakes all to pit his powerful salvage tug, the Warlock, in a desperate race against time and the elements....

Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America - where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain - the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences.

In The Mauritius Command, Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half-pay without a command until his friend, occasional intelligence agent Stephen Maturin, arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope under a Commodore's pennant. But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains: one a pleasure-seeking dilettante, the other liable to provoke the crew to mutiny. Based on an actual campaign of 1810 in the Indian Ocean.

The Long Night is Ernst Israel Bornstein's first-hand account of what he witnessed in seven concentration camps. Written with remarkable insight and raw emotion, The Long Night paints a portrait of human psychology in the darkest of times. Bornstein tells the stories of those who did all they could do to withstand physical and psychological torture, starvation, and sickness, and openly describes those who were forced to inflict suffering on others.

Detectives Sloan and Crosby find themselves assigned two rather puzzling cases. First, there's the young woman's body which has been discovered in the River Alm. And then there's the mysterious break-in at the Berebury Nursing Home. To be precise, it's Josephine Short's room at the nursing home that's been entered, although nothing seems to be missing. What could the intruder have been after? It becomes apparent to Sloan and Crosby that the two cases are connected—but who can the killer be?

"Brother, do not try to follow me once you have read this. No good can come of it..." When Clifford Fox QC receives a desperate letter from his estranged younger brother, Simon, he departs his comfortable Yorkshire home to locate him. The letter outlines the harrowing events that have led Simon to the very edge of sanity.

Endeavour is the story of a ship, an idea, and a way of looking at the world. It is grounded in the Enlightenment, an age of endeavors, with Britain consumed by the impulse for grand projects undertaken at speed. Endeavour was also the name given to a collier - a commonplace coal-carrying vessel - made of oak, bought by the Royal Navy in 1768. No one could have guessed it would go on to become the most significant ship in the chronicle of British exploration. Endeavour also had a role in American history, witnessing the bloody birth of the republic.

Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world.

During the long 18th century, Europe's travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, and openness. In this panoramic book, author Jürgen Osterhammel tells the story of the European Enlightenment's nuanced encounter with the great civilizations of the East, from the Ottoman Empire and India to China and Japan. A momentous work by one of Europe's most eminent historians, Unfabling the East takes listeners on a thrilling voyage to the farthest shores, bringing back vital insights for our own multicultural age.

Soldiers is a very personal gathering of sparkling, gripping tales by many writers, about men and women who have borne arms, reflecting best-selling historian Max Hastings’ lifetime of studying war. It rings the changes through the centuries, between the heroic, tragic and comic; the famous and the humble. The nearly 350 stories illustrate vividly what it is like to fight in wars, to live and die as a warrior, from Greek and Roman times through to recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Great Contemporaries profiles towering figures ranging from Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling and George Bernard Shaw. Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, the essays in Great Contemporaries focus on the challenges of statecraft at a time when the democratic revolution was toppling older regimes based on tradition and aristocratic privilege.

This third edition of the bestselling textbook has been fully revised, continuing to provide a concise introduction to the key concepts of semiotics in accessible and jargon-free language.

Mourinho is both a sumptuous celebration of The Special One's managerial career so far, and an enigmatic insight into his unique brand of football wisdom and philosophy. In the legendary manager's very first audiobook, and in his own images and captions, José Mourinho charts the peaks and troughs of the opening 15 years of what has been a stellar rise to the summit of the global game.

H.M.S. Surprise, the third in O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin series, follows the variable fortunes of Captain Jack Aubrey's career in Nelson's navy, as he attempts to hold his ground against admirals, colleagues, and the enemy, and accepts a commission to convey a British ambassador to the East Indies. The voyage leads him and his friend Stephen Maturin to the strange sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, and through the archipelago of Spice Islands where the French have superiority.

In 1897, a young and untested cavalry lieutenant named Winston Churchill, more than a little keen to see action, got himself attached as a press correspondent to an expeditionary force newly formed to restore order on the North West Frontier of India. His dispatches to the London Daily Telegraph were later expanded into this audiobook.

No one would have described Manningtree Grove as fashionable. Few would have found it especially interesting. But it was not an unpleasant place to live: the old railway line lay in a valley, and the gardens looked onto it. It was the kind of place where nothing ever happened. Yet it was here that Peter Yearman first sold his soul to the devil....

The Polity Collective stretches from Earth Central into the unfathomable reaches of the galactic void. But when the Polity finally encounters alien life in the form of massive, hostile, crablike carnivores known as the Prador, there can only be one outcome - total warfare. Chaos reigns as, caught unawares, the Polity struggles to regain its foothold and transition itself into a military society. Starships clash, planets fall and space stations are overrun.

On a bitterly cold day in 1904, the Deravenel family's future changes forever. When Cecily Deravenel tells her eighteen-year-old son Edward of the death of his father, brother, uncle, and cousin in a fire, a part of him dies as well. Edward and his cousin Neville Watkins are suspicious of the deaths. They vow to seek the truth, avenge the deaths, and retake control of their family's business empire. As he grows into a handsome, charismatic man, Edward is torn between duty and desire. There are women in his life for whom he'll risk everything—and one woman who might destroy him.

What lies beneath? Things are not right at Crowfield Abbey. The building has begun to crumble. And what Will finds beneath the floor of the side chapel is truly terrifying. Is this the end of Crowfield forever? Read by Ric Jerrom.