Showing results by narrator "Nicholas Guy Smith" in All Categories

Goon Squad, Volume 2: Without Sin is composed of "A Star in Strange Ways", "Holy Fool", "Dead Man Tells Tale", "A Brief History of the Goon Squad", "Tale of Terror", and "Pomona Island", as well as an introduction read by the author.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in London in 1775. His father was a barber, and his mother came from a family of London butchers. "His speech was recognizably that of a Cockney, and his language was the language of the streets." As his finest paintings show, his language was also the language of light. Turner’s landscapes - extraordinary studies in light, colour, and texture - caused an uproar during his lifetime and earned him a place as one of the greatest artists in history.

In 11th-century France, Vigdis Adelaïs, a young woman from a prosperous Christian family, falls in love with David Todros, a rabbi’s son and yeshiva student. To be together, the couple must flee their city, and Vigdis must renounce her life of privilege and comfort. Pursued by her father’s knights and in constant danger of betrayal, the lovers embark on a dangerous journey to the south of France, only to find their brief happiness destroyed by the vicious wave of anti-Semitism sweeping through Europe with the onset of the First Crusade.

Since 9/11, more than 300 Americans - born and raised in Minnesota, Alabama, New Jersey, and elsewhere - have been indicted or convicted of terrorism charges. Some have taken the fight abroad: An American was among those who planned the attacks in Mumbai, and more than 80 US citizens have been charged with ISIS-related crimes. Others have acted on American soil, as with the attacks at Fort Hood, at the Boston Marathon, and in San Bernardino. What motivates them, how are they trained, and what do we sacrifice in our efforts to track them?

Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his tiny Mediterranean town for his music, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days. Then one night, Busi is viciously attacked by an intruder in his own courtyard - bitten and scratched. He insists his assailant was neither man nor animal. Soon, Busi’s account of what happened is being embellished to fan the flames of old rumor - of an ancient race of people living in the surrounding forest.

The life of Urbain Martien - artist, soldier, survivor of World War I - lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died in 1981. His grandson, a writer, retells his story, the notebooks giving him the impetus to imagine his way into the locked chambers of Urbain's memory. He vividly recounts a whole life: Urbain as the child of a lowly church painter, retouching his father's work; dodging death in a foundry; fighting in the war that altered the course of history, and much more.

Rudyard Kipling’s best loved book, full of timeless and beloved tales of adventure. The story of Mowgli, the abandoned "man-cub" who is brought up by wolves in the jungles of Central India, is one of the greatest literary myths ever created. As he embarks on a series of thrilling escapades, Mowgli encounters such unforgettable creatures as the bear Baloo, the graceful black panther Bagheera, and Shere Khan, the tiger with the blazing eyes.

When monster-hunter Malcolm MacFarlane comes across the gruesome aftermath of a ritual murder in a London church, he enlists the help of magician-scribe Simon Archer and alchemist extraordinaire Kate Anstruther. Studying the macabre scene, they struggle to understand obscure clues in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics carved into the victim’s heart—as well as bizarre mystical allusions to the romantic poetry of William Blake. One thing is clear: Some very potent black magic is at work.

Written between 2015-16, with color images of well-known old masters and contemporary art as well as some of the Bergers’ own drawings and watercolors, Over to You is an informal back and forth not unlike the ping-pong games father and son used to play in the barn of their house. It begins when John—who is in a Parisian suburb—sends Yves—who is in Haute Savoie—an envelope of reproductions of art that have moved him. And so they begin to reveal their thoughts looking at a Goya, Watteau, Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Durer, Caravaggio, Manet, and Euan Uglow, among many others.

Whether sailing across the ocean, hiking through the jungle, or climbing the highest volcanic peaks, everywhere Alexander went, he observed the land, animals, and culture. And where others saw differences, Alexander spotted connections.

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea comes a mesmerizing novel that is both a literary thriller and a love story as sumptuously perverse as Lolita.

When terrorists try to shoot down a plane carrying Libyan prince Ibrahim al-Senussi, it is clear that someone wants him dead. But the CIA has its own plot for the prince: Now that Qaddafi has been overthrown, al-Senussi is their best bet to set up a constitutional monarchy and stem the Islamist tide in Libya. The CIA, which needs Malko as much as he needs them, sends the Austrian aristocrat to Cairo to learn more about al-Senussi’s plans by seducing his companion, a ravishing British model.

From an early age, there was something different about Tommy and David Nutter. Growing up in an austere apartment above a café catering to truck drivers, both boys seemed destined to lead rather humble lives in postwar London - Tommy as a civil servant, David as a darkroom technician. Yet the strength of their imagination (plus a little help from their friends) transformed them instead into unlikely protagonists of a swinging cultural revolution.

The Crown and Key Society face their most terrifying villain yet: Gaios, a deranged demigod with the power to destroy Britain. To avenge a centuries-old betrayal, Gaios is hell-bent on summoning the elemental forces of the earth to level London and bury Britain. The Crown and Key Society, a secret league consisting of a magician, an alchemist, and a monster-hunter, is the realm’s only hope—and to stop Gaios, they must gather their full strength and come together as a team, or the world will fall apart.

The year is 2113. In Jenna Strong’s world, ACID - the most brutal controlling police force in history - rule supreme. No throwaway comment or whispered dissent goes unnoticed - or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a horrendous crime she struggles to remember. But Jenna’s violent prison time has taught her how to survive by any means necessary. When a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed, and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID and try to uncover the truth about what really happened.

In 1979 Stefan Hertmans became obsessed with a rundown townhouse in Ghent. The previous owners were mentioned only in passing during the acquisition, and it wasn’t until the new millennium, long after he had sold the house, that he came across a memoir by the owner’s son Adriaan Verhulst, a distinguished history professor and a former teacher of Hertmans’, which revealed that his father was a former SS officer.

How far are we willing to go to stay young? Hanif Kureishi - acclaimed author of The Buddha of Suburbia and Intimacy - explores the possibilities in this provocative story of an older man whose brain is surgically placed in a younger man's body by a network of underground doctors. Adam is offered the chance to trade in his sagging flesh for a much younger and more pleasing model. He tells his wife and son that he is going on an extended vacation.

It’s 1942 in Nazi-occupied Paris. Mori Rothstein, an art dealer and expert in master paintings from Rococo to Realism, has been sought after for his expertise, by every major museum in the world. Also seeking his knowledge is Reichmarshall Hermann Goering. As his friends and fellow Jews disappear one by one, Mori struggles to protect his family by cooperating with the Germans to catalog stolen paintings for the Fuhrer’s museum.

Ben and Fee MacTavish and their schoolmates onboard the School Ship Tobermory are headed thousands of miles from their base in Mull to a small island in the Caribbean. They will learn extraordinary details about Captain Macbeth's past and come face to face with modern-day pirates. The students and crew aboard the Tobermory will have to band together and use their wits to escape harm and overcome the evil pirates.

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea comes a brilliantly haunting novel that forges an unforgettable amalgam of enchantment and menace that suggests both The Tempest and his own acclaimed The Book of Evidence.