Showing results by narrator "Peter Kenny" in All Categories

In the fading days of late summer, 2011, self-taught astrophysicist Petra has calculated that the atmosphere will collapse in a few weeks’ time—on September 21, at approximately 9:20 pm—ending the world as we know it. But the distraught Petra will not have to carry the burden of this terrible news alone for long. Fate intervenes, bringing her into the orbit of a pair of unlikely companions: Johan, a man whose intellectual prowess is remarkably overshadowed by his culinary skills, and Agnes, a seventy-five-year-old widow who has made a fortune posing as a young influencer on social media.

It is the place where fortunes can be made and lost though chess, backgammon - every game under the sun. But those whom fortune favours may be invited to compete in the higher league...where the games played are of politics and nations, of economics and kings. It is a contest where Capture the Castle involves real castles and where hide and seek takes place on the scale of a continent. Among those worthy of competing in the higher league, three unusually talented contestants play for the highest stakes of all....

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.

Eighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, socially disabled, on a spectrum that stretches from "highly gifted" at one end, to "nutter" at the other. At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy live together in a decaying country house on the unstable brink of a vast quarry. His mother's identity is another matter. Now, though, his father's dying, and old friends are gathering for one last time.

The dazzling new Culture novel from a modern master of science fiction - a tour de force of brilliant storytelling, world-building and imagination.It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.

The Outworld Ranger crew has dodged government forces, criminal guilds, and bounty hunters numerous times since fleeing Ekaran IV. But with the warships of the Dark Messiah closing in on them, their mission has never been in greater jeopardy. Cornered, their options and allies are few. And the Outworld Ranger suffered extensive damage getting them this far.

In a tradition that runs from R. M. Williamson’s Bits from an Old Bookshop in 1904 to Jen Campbell’s Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops in 2012 (with George Orwell’s 1936 Bookshop Memories in between), here is the latest and perhaps most complete attempt to classify people who shop in bookstores. It does take all kinds. Employing something like Linnaean taxonomic groups, there’s the Expert (divided into subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person), the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational), and more.

Two years after his parents' sudden disappearance, Ben Greenwood stumbles upon a cryptic letter that could shed some light on their whereabouts. But before he can track them down, he'll need to find the mysterious organization that sent the letter: The Royal Institute of Magic. To succeed, Ben will have to navigate a land filled with fantastic creatures and spellshooters, where magic can be bought and sold, to unravel an ancient family secret that could hold the key to defeating an evil the institute has been fighting for the last 500 years.

The first ever collection of Iain Banks's short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art. This is a striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks's staggering talent.

Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher, one of the few capable of hunting the monsters that prey on humanity. He uses magical signs, potions, and the pride of every Witcher—two swords, steel and silver. But a contract has gone wrong, and Geralt finds himself without his signature weapons. Now he needs them back, because sorcerers are scheming, and across the world clouds are gathering. The season of storms is coming.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Doctor Who: 12 Doctors 12 Stories. A brand-new 12th Doctor story for a brand-new 12th Doctor! Following on from the success of the 50th anniversary paperback anthology, 11 Doctors 11 Stories, this highly-acclaimed collection of short Doctor Who stories contains all of the original 11 adventures plus an exciting new 12th Doctor story written by best-selling US author Holly Black.

Ken McNab's in-depth look at the Beatles' acrimonious final year is a detailed account of the breakup featuring the perspectives of all four band members and their roles. A must to add to the collection of Beatles fans, And in the End is full of fascinating information available for the first time. McNab reconstructs for the first time the seismic events of 1969, when the Beatles reached new highs of creativity and new lows of the internal strife that would destroy them.

Consider Phlebas: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! The first audiobook in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces listeners to a utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination.

The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization. An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture 10,000 years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations: They are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence.

Tobias Smollett, in his creation of the Scot Roderick Random, exposes the sheer incompetence and injustice of the Royal Navy, as well as the snobbery and hypocrisy prevalent in English middle-class society at the time. Set in the mid-18th century, this picaresque novel follows the life and adventures of Roderick, the eponymous hero who has been shunned by his gentleman father's family on the basis of the lowliness of his mother's family.

Ven was once a holy man, a keeper of ancient archives. It was his duty to interpret archaic texts, sorting useful knowledge from the heretical ideas of the Burning Age - a time of excess and climate disaster. For in Ven's world, such material must be closely guarded so that the ills that led to that cataclysmic era can never be repeated.

When renowned archeologist Gav Gendin discovers the wreck of an Ancient starship, with a stasis pod and a still living member of the extinct aliens inside, it should be the greatest triumph of his career. Instead, it ends in disaster and leads to his son, Siv, being placed in cryogenic sleep. A century later, Siv Gendin wakes to a world in decline, a world where you do what you must to survive. With the help of a snarky, sentient AI companion named Silky, Siv becomes a top procurement specialist.

Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921), one of the most individual political figures of his time, is best known as an influential anarchist communist. But he was also a scientist, geographer and philosopher, a man who, having grown up on his aristocratic father’s extensive country estate in Russia, had a deep understanding of and love for animals (wild and domesticated), the countryside and wildernesses. And all this was underpinned by a life committed to work for the good of humanity.

Spellswords, Wardens, Traders, Scholars, Diplomats - the five departments of the Royal Institute of Magic an apprentice must master to become a full member. Ben Greenwood has no idea what to expect when he begins his apprenticeship, but he quickly realizes his family history is going to make life difficult. On his very first day, a Shadowseeker - a mysterious and dangerous dark elf - surfaces, and Ben suspects the dark elves might be trying to capture him again in an effort to flush out his parents.

Peter Ratcliffe served in the SAS for 25 years. Blooded in Oman in the 1970s, he also saw action in Northern Ireland, in the Falklands War, and in the Gulf campaign. From his early days in the Paras to his time as Regimental Sergeant-Major in the Gulf, he has lived and fought by the motto 'who dares wins'. Eye of the Storm is his insider's account of that exceptional career.