Showing results by narrator "Simon Vance" in All Categories

When a cyber-attack disables the Hubble telescope and the Nobel Prize-winning scientist in charge disappears, the only clues left behind are a cryptic countdown clock and a chilling message displayed on the missing man's computer: Mankind Must Look No Further. Newly appointed FBI agent Joe Shepherd, with degrees in astrophysics and computer science, is uniquely qualified to handle the investigation. He discovers a note in the missing scientist's handwriting that reads "end of days." But what does it really mean for humankind?

The Battle of Hastings has been lost and the iron fist of William the Bastard has begun to squeeze the life out of England, but there is one who still stands against the foreign invasion - Hereward, the winter warrior. 1067. Following the devastating destruction of the Battle of Hastings, William the Bastard and his men have descended on England. Villages are torched; men, women and children are put to the sword as the Norman king attempts to impose his cruel will upon this unruly nation.

In this moving and intimate look at the final days of our most enigmatic president, Andrew Burstein sheds new light on what Thomas Jefferson actually thought about sexuality, race, gender, and politics.

For Alisa Brimley, editor of the small magazine Christian Voice, receiving a letter from a longtime subscriber might otherwise be a perfectly normal occasion—except Stella Rode, the reader in question, writes that her husband is planning to kill her. Brimley calls upon an old wartime friend to help her investigate: retired Circus spy, George Smiley. Before Smiley can begin, Rode is found murdered, and Brimley asks Smiley to venture to the small town of Carne, home of the elite Carne School where Rode's husband is a public school junior master.

In 1612, William Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case at Westminster; it is the only occasion on which his actual spoken words were recorded. The case seems routine - a dispute over an unpaid marriage dowry - but it opens an unexpected window into the dramatist's famously obscure life. Using the court testimony as a springboard, acclaimed nonfiction writer Charles Nicholl examines this fascinating period in Shakespeare's life.

Rudyard Kipling's Kim is the story of Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, who spends his childhood as a vagabond in Lahore. With an old Tibetan lama, he travels through India, enthralled by the "roaring whirl" of the landscape and cities of richly colored bazaars and immense diversity of people. The novel is a masterpiece of careful organization and skillfully manipulated narrative techniques.

He's been cursed, left for dead, and deposited at the world's end. Now the infamous pirate Captain Jack Sparrow sets sail on stranger tides for his most dangerous voyage yet - to the fabled Fountain of Youth. On this doomed quest, Jack will meet a lost love - the gorgeous but mysterious pirate Angelica - and be held prisoner on the horrifying Queen Anne's Revenge, the ship captained by the evil and dreaded Blackbeard!

Convicted of treason and stripped of rank and standing, Temeraire and Lawrence are transported to the prison colony at New South Wales. With them travel three dragon eggs destined to be handed over to second-rate officers willing to accept so remote an assignment - including one former acquaintance, Captain Rankin, whose cruelty once cost a dragon its life. They arrive at a young Australian colony in turmoil after the overthrow of the military governor, William Bligh - formerly Captain Bligh, late of HMS Bounty.

On a dark night along a lonely stretch of coast, a small ship, the Silver Wake, sends two people ashore to a stony strand. Their purpose is assassination. They have been hired to do this by two of the most dangerous men alive. The consequences will affect so many lives both great and small, and possibly alter the balance of power in the world. One of those arriving on that night strand is a woman abducted by corsairs from her home as a child, escaping that fate, that destiny, years after, now trying to chart her own course—and bent upon revenge.

Edgar Allan Poe is an American boy in England, a child standing on the edge of mysteries. In 1819, two Americans arrive in London. Soon afterward a bank collapses. A man is found horribly mutilated on a building site and an heiress flirts with her inferiors. All the while, Poe's young schoolmaster struggles to understand what is happening before he and his loved ones are destroyed. But the truth has its origins in the New World and the Old, in a bitter episode of corruption during the War of 1812.

With the Cold War at a fever pitch, though, a potential assignment is only ever one defector-turned-informant away. Alerted to the possibility of missile activity from the Soviets on the West German border, the long stagnant Department leaps at the chance to restore some of their cache in the intelligence community. Director Leclerc hunts down former field agent Fred Leiser and sends him beyond the wall to East Germany—tying the Department's fate to his.

Dorothy L Sayers was a woman of contrasts. A strong Christian, she had a baby by a man she did not love - out of wedlock. Possessing a fierce intellect, she translated Dante - and also created one of the most popular fictional detectives ever, in Lord Peter Wimsey. With no new biographies on Sayers having been published for some time, Colin Duriez reassesses her, her life, her writings, her studies and her faith. Drawing on previously unpublished material, particularly her collected letters, he brings to life a fascinating woman.

More than five centuries after Camelot, a new king heralded by prophecy has appeared. As one of the last sorceresses of a dying order sworn to protect the new ruler at all costs, Alwen must answer a summons she thought she might never receive. Bound by oath, Alwen returns to Fane Gramarye, the ancient bastion of magic standing against the rise of evil. For alongside the prophecy of the benevolent king, a darker foretelling envisions the land overrun by a demonic army and cast into ruin.

It could have happened to any of us, but it happened to a man named Flavieres. His days as a detective were over, and everyone knew he had his reasons. But when an old friend appeared out of nowhere with concerns about his withdrawn and mysterious wife, Flavieres didn't have the heart to refuse. Soon, he would be scouring the streets of Paris in search of an answer - in search of a girl who belonged to no one, not even to herself. Intrigue would be replaced by obsession, and dreams replaced by nightmares.

A mad priest, a vagabond playwright, a social-climbing soldier, and a deformed bell-ringer—all are captivated by a gypsy girl's beauty and charm. Two of them will betray her, but the others will remain loyal, even in the shadow of the gallows. These outlaws find sanctuary within the walls of medieval Paris' greatest monument, the grand Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Perhaps the most important book on military strategy ever written, Carl von Clausewitz's On War has influenced generations of generals and politicians, has been blamed for the unprecedented death tolls, and is required reading at military academies to this day. But On War, which was never finished and was published posthumously, is obscure and fundamentally contradictory. Hew Strachan, one of the world's foremost military historians, answers these problems in this fascinating book.

Holly is desperate to be sleuthing with her partner-in-solving-crime, dragon Dirk Dilly, but instead she's stuck at her exclusive boarding school for children of the rich and famous. She's determined to escape, until she meets Callum, the son of the Prime Minister, who claims he was kidnapped by dragons a year ago and hasn't been the same since. And when Dirk's own investigation into dragon activity brings him to the school, the two cases collide. What if Callum isn't as crazy as he seems?

London: The week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters: A hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on reality TV and genetically altered pot; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop.

Reggie and Nigel Heath are relatively close in age but worlds apart in personality. The older of the two brothers, Reggie is a successful attorney with charisma to spare. Nigel has always struggled to step out of his shadow. When Reggie leases space in an office building on London's Baker Street, he finds that the paperwork comes with an odd stipulation: his firm must receive and respond with a standard reply to letters sent to Sherlock Holmes, who had occupied the same famous address.

An antiques dealer robbed and killed, and the only clues are a scrap of blank paper and the unusual weapon used. Now ex-cop Zatopek "Zed" van Heerden has 14 days in which to fill in the blanks in this dead man's past - a past which only seems to begin in 1983.