Simon Shepherd

The Panama Papers: How the World's Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 3 mins)
• By Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

Late one evening investigative journalist Bastian Obermayer receives an anonymous message offering him access to secret data. Through encrypted channels he then receives documents showing a mysterious bank transfer for $500 million in gold. This is just the beginning. Obermayer and fellow Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Frederik Obermaier find themselves immersed in a secret world where complex networks of shell companies help to hide people who don't want to be found.

The Churchill Factor: How One Man Changed History

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 11 mins)
• By Boris Johnson
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

On the 50th anniversary of Churchill's death, Boris Johnson celebrates the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the 20th century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized reality, he portrays - with characteristic wit and passion - a man of contagious bravery, breathtaking eloquence, matchless strategizing, and deep humanity.

Mr. Rochester

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 42 mins)
• By Sarah Shoemaker
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd
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For 170 years Edward Fairfax Rochester has stood as one of literature's most romantic, most complex, and most mysterious heroes. Sometimes haughty, sometimes tender - professing his love for Jane Eyre in one breath and denying it in the next - Mr. Rochester has for generations mesmerized, beguiled, and, yes, baffled fans of Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece. But his own story has never been told.

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 4 mins)
• By Adam Phillips
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd
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We all have two lives - the life we live and the life of our fantasies. But it is the life unlived - the person we have failed to be - that can trouble and even haunt us. In Missing Out acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips delves into the gap between who we are and who we are not, to discover whether not getting what we want may be the unlikely key to the fully lived life. Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and the author of several previous books, all widely acclaimed.

The Greats on Leadership: Classic Wisdom for Modern Managers

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 49 mins)
• By Jocelyn Davis
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd
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From Plato to Plutarch, Shakespeare to Churchill, Machiavelli to Melville, Jane Austen to Carl Jung, Pericles to Peter Drucker and many more - here are the best leadership ideas of the past 25 centuries. You don't need a big title or a business degree in order to lead with impact. What you need is practical wisdom: the insight, judgment and strength of character that all great leaders have but that most business schools and corporate workshops don't teach.

On the Map

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 43 mins)
• By Simon Garfield
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

Maps fascinate us. They chart our understanding of the world and they log our progress, but above all they tell our stories. From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to Google Maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history. His compelling narratives range from the quest to create the perfect globe to the challenges of mapping Africa and Antarctica, from spellbinding treasure maps to the naming of America, from Ordnance Survey to the mapping of Monopoly and Skyrim and from rare map dealers to cartographic frauds.

Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 24 mins)
• By Robert McCrum
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

What were the beginnings of the English language? Why has American culture spread so successfully and will it continue to do so even as the country’s power apparently wanes? Why are the West Indies no longer any good at cricket? What difference did slavery make to the way we speak English today?

My Outdoor Life

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 25 mins)
• By Ray Mears
• Narrated By Ray Mears, Simon Shepherd

Ray Mears is a household name through his television series Tracks, World of Survival, Bushcraft Survival, The Real Heroes of Telemark, and many more.

He is a private individual who shuns publicity whenever possible and would prefer to let his many skills tell their own tale - until now. In My Outdoor Life, Ray tells of his childhood and the formative years when he first developed a passion for both bushcraft and the martial arts skills that are central to his life.

The House of Sleep

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 14 mins)
• By Jonathan Coe
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events; Robert has his life changed forever by the misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac, spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which must be eradicated...A group of students sharing a house. They fall in and out of love, they drift apart.

The Outstanding Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 45 mins)
• By Gerard Kelly
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

This compilation, comprising a Baker's (Street) Dozen of his adventures, re-creates the gas-lit, fog-enshrouded world of Victorian London as once more Sherlock Holmes urges, 'Come, Watson, the game is afoot!'

The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 9 mins)
• By Boris Johnson
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

The point of The Churchill Factor is that one man can make all the difference. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill's death, Boris Johnson explores what makes up the 'Churchill Factor' - the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the 20th century.

Horowitz Horror

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Anthony Horowitz
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

Welcome to a world where everything seems normal. At least, at first. But the sinister and truly terrifying lurk just beneath the surface. Like a bathtub with a history so haunted, no one dares get in it ... or an ordinary-looking camera that does unspeakable things to its subjects ... or a mysterious computer game that has terrible consequences if you lose ...

The Elements of Eloquence

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 42 mins)
• By Mark Forsyth
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

In an age unhealthily obsessed with substance, this is a book on the importance of pure style, from the best-selling author of The Etymologicon and The Horologicon. From classic poetry to pop lyrics and from the King James Bible to advertising slogans, Mark Forsyth explains the secrets that make a phrase - such as 'Tiger, Tiger, burning bright', or 'To be or not to be' - memorable. In his inimitably entertaining and witty style he takes apart famous lines and shows how you, too, can write like Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde.

Beryl Bainbridge: Love by All Sorts of Means

• UNABRIDGED (20 hrs and 16 mins)
• By Brendan King
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd
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Dame Beryl Bainbridge was one of the best loved and most recognisable English novelists of her generation. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, and her critically acclaimed novels The Dressmaker (1973), The Bottle Factory Outing (1974), An Awfully Big Adventure (1990), Every Man for Himself (1996) and Master Georgie (1998) confirmed her status as one of the major literary figures of the last 50 years.

More Horowitz Horror

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 19 mins)
• By Anthony Horowitz
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd
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Enter the dark and scary world of Horowitz Horror, and expect the unexpected! It's a world where everything might seem pretty normal. But the weird, the surprising and the truly terrifying are lurking just out of sight. Like a hitchhiker who isn't quite all he seems, a spooky cottage with a grisly secret and a mobile phone that lets you contact the dead! Each story has a shocking sting in the tale... Warning: Not for the nervous or frail!

The Papers of Sherlock Holmes: Volume 1

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 14 mins)
• By David Marcum
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd
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Spanning events over thirty years, Volume I of The Papers of Sherlock Holmes relates narratives of Holmes and Watson's days in Baker Street, as well as particulars of Holmes's supposed retirement. Follow along as The Master and his Boswell travel from the streets of London to the Kent countryside, to Oxford and Sussex. Written in traditional canonical style, these stories provide fresh details of Holmes's world. Join us as we climb the seventeen steps to the Baker Street sitting room, where Holmes and Watson prepare to begin their next adventure. The game is afoot!

Election Notebook

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 25 mins)
• By Nick Robinson
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

Just after 10 o’clock on Thursday, 7th May 2015, Nick Robinson stared down the lens of camera five in the BBC’s Election Night Studio to explain to millions the significance of an exit poll that shocked the country and heralded an earthquake in British politics. That moment was a personal milestone for the BBC’s political editor, who had been discharged from hospital just hours earlier following weeks of treatment for cancer and the loss of his voice after surgery.

The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 42 mins)
• By Mark Forsyth
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

A quirky, entertaining and thought-provoking tour of the unexpected connections between words, read by Simon Shepherd. What is the actual connection between disgruntled and gruntled? What links church organs to organised crime, California to the Caliphate, or brackets to codpieces? The Etymologicon springs from Mark Forsyth's Inky Fool blog on the strange connections between words.

The Horologicon

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 16 mins)
• By Mark Forsyth
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The Horologicon - which means 'a book of things appropriate to each hour' - follows a day in the life of unusual, beautiful, and forgotten English words. From the moment you wake to the second your head hits the pillow, there's a cornucopia of hidden words ready for every aspect of your day.