Showing results by narrator "James Clamp" in All Categories

How do master storytellers compel us? There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story, but few have used a scientific approach. In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can tell better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers - and also our brains - create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change.

Author Mark Lawrence has won over audiences everywhere with Prince of Thorns, his exciting debut novel. Nine-year-old Prince Jorg is forced to watch as his mother and brother are slaughtered. Fleeing the palace, Jorg joins a bloodthirsty band of thugs. But he’s determined to take back what’s rightfully his, so he returns to the castle a few years later - unaware of the dark and powerful magic that awaits.

The follow-up to Mark Lawrence' s thrilling debut novel Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns continues the tale of antihero Jorg Ancrath. After wresting back control of his kingdom from those who murdered his family, Jorg sees the land erupt with hundreds of battles fought by lords and petty kings. More daunting still, he faces an enemy many times his own strength. Jorg may not be able to win this battle in a fair fight, but he wields a rage and cunning that just might even the odds.

As an executive with decades of management experience at top Silicon Valley companies including YouTube, Google, and Twitter, Bruce Daisley has given a lot of thought to what makes a workforce productive and what factors can improve the workplace to benefit a company’s employees, customers, and bottom line. In his debut book, he shares what he’s discovered, offering practical, often counterintuitive, insights and solutions for reinvigorating work to give us more meaning, productivity, and joy at the office.

Few things in life are more satisfying than beating a rival. We love to win and hate to lose, whether it's on the playing field or at the ballot box, in the office or in the classroom. In this bold new look at human behavior, award-winning journalist and Olympian Matthew Syed explores the truth about our competitive nature: why we win, why we don't, and how we really play the game of life.

Jorg would be emperor. It is a position not to be gained by the sword but rather by vote. And never in living memory has anyone secured a majority of the vote, leaving the Broken Empire long without a leader. Jorg has plans to change that - one way or the other. He’s uncovered even more of the lost technology of the land, and he won’t hesitate to use it. But he soon finds an adversary standing in his way, a necromancer unlike any he has ever faced - a figure hated and feared even more than himself: the Dead King. The boy who would rule all may have finally met his match....

Oliver Sharpe, the Marquess of Stoneville, has been London's most notorious rake for years. Fed up with his behavior, his grandmother threatens to disinherit him if he doesn't tame his wild ways and wed within the year. Outraged, Oliver decides to hire a woman from a brothel to pose as his fiancée to prove that he can't be forced into marriage.

When Helen and Sean Phillips go out for the evening, leaving their teenage daughter babysitting little Frankie, they have no idea that they are about to face every parent's greatest fear. Detective Inspector Patrick Lennon is hopeful that the three children who have been abducted in this patch of south-west London will be returned safe and well. But when a body is found in a local park, Lennon realizes that time is running out - and that nothing in this case is as it seems.…

Christopher and His Kind covers the most memorable 10 years in the writer's life, from 1929, when Isherwood left England to spend a week in Berlin and decided to stay there indefinitely, to 1939, when he arrived in America. When the book was published in 1976, readers were deeply impressed by the courageous candor with which he describes his life in gay Berlin of the 1930s and his struggles to save his companion, Heinz, from the Nazis.

It's been eighteen years since Josh Peters left dreary, dying Derton - the seaside town where he grew up - and headed for the bright lights of London. Now his dad is sick and his mum needs him, so he's back - though he's promised himself he won't be staying for long.... Then Josh finds himself unexpectedly detained in Derton, living in his cramped teenage bedroom, with simmering family tensions a little too close for comfort.

Hector is very good at treating patients in need of his help. But he can’t do much for those who are simply dissatisfied with life, and that is beginning to depress him. When a patient tells him he looks in need of a vacation, Hector takes a trip around the world to learn what makes people happy—and sad. As he travels from Paris to China to Africa to the United States, he lists his observations about the people he meets. Is there a secret to happiness, and will Hector find it? Hector’s journey ventures around the globe and into the human soul.

With one sweet, seductive kiss, Megan Kinkead is no longer the impudent child Justin Brant remembers. She was a girl when she left Maam’s Cross Court for school, but she has returned a woman, body and soul. Once Megan’s guardian, Justin, the sixth Earl of Weston, is soon her heart’s obsession. Desire smolders between them, and then he tells her he is married….

The precious Dragon’s Eye jewel has the power to reflect the true Dragon Master, the keeper of the fates of all dragons. When evil dragonologist Ignatius Crook sets his sights on the jewel, Dr. Ernest Drake must put a stop to his criminal plans. Luckily, Dr. Drake has help: his two newest students, 12-year-old Daniel and his sister, Beatrice, have carefully studied dragonology and are ready to use their knowledge to find the jewel. But only true dragonologists will be able to win this race against time....

Gerald Wilkins never considered himself a particularly exceptional 13-year-old. But that was before he inherited 20 billion pounds, a Caribbean island, a yacht, and three estates from a great-aunt he never knew. With this fortune, however, comes a letter. One from his great-aunt Geraldine. One that tells Gerald that she was murdered, and that it's up to him to find out why.

Marie Colvin, described as "the greatest war correspondent of her generation", was killed in a rocket attack in February 2012 while reporting on the desperate suffering of civilians inside Syria's besieged Homs. Paul Conroy, who had forged a close bond with Colvin as they put their lives on the line time and time again to report from some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, was with her.

One of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies has employed Hector to track down their brilliant scientist, Professor Cormorant, who has disappeared abroad with the secret of a modern-day love potion. Leaving behind his troubled relationship with girlfriend Clara, Hector's adventure takes him to the Far East and into the arms of beautiful Vayla, forcing our hero to think deeply about what love really is/means.

Brother and sister dragonology students Daniel and Beatrice Cook are looking forward to returning to their studies with Dr. Ernest Drake and Erasmus, their dragon tutor. But when they discover that the evil dragonologist Alexandra Gorynytchka is searching for the fearsome Hammer of the Dragons – an ancient weapon that can kill hundreds of dragons in a single stroke – Dr. Drake and the children pursue her all the way to the Lost Island of the Dragons, where she is amassing an army of enslaved dragons.

Daniel and Beatrice Cook, along with their parents and their dragon chick, Torcher, are getting ready to open an orphan dragon sanctuary near Castle Drake in St. Leonard’s Forest. But then Dr. Drake brings news that several dragon members of the Society of Dragons have been attacked and it looks to be the work of the Dragonsbane Knights, a secret society of dragon killers that was thought to have been eradicated centuries ago. If Dragonsbane is resurfacing, then no dragons in Britain are safe!

Written while Hans Keilson was in hiding during World War II, The Death of the Adversary is the self-portrait of a young man helplessly fascinated by an unnamed “adversary” whom he watches rise to power in 1930s Germany. It is a tale of horror, not only in its evocation of Hitler’s gathering menace but also in its hero’s desperate attempt to discover logic where none exists. A psychological fable as wry and haunting as Badenheim 1939, The Death of the Adversary is a lost classic of modern fiction.

It should be an open-and-shut case. Samuel Szajkowski, a recently hired history teacher, walked into a school assembly with a gun and murdered three students and a colleague before turning the weapon on himself. It was a tragedy that could not have been predicted. Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Yet as Detective Inspector Lucia May begins to piece together the testimonies of the various witnesses, an uglier and more complex picture emerges.