Showing results by narrator "Simon Vance" in All Categories

Now bonded to the goddess of death, Kael’s magic and new mental abilities continue to increase with each day that passes. Wanting nothing more than to pick up the broken pieces of his life after Ember’s devastating decision, he refuses to accompany Max and Queen Bale as they desperately try to unify Talohna against the coming Ri’Tek threat. With Lady Coleta’s words from the Stillwater battlefield weighing heavily on his mind, a suspicious new ally arrives at Solikyr Castle, convincing Kael to set out for Albynor with Kenna and Lycori at his side.

Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities. In 100 short essays, music journalist John O'Connell studies each book on Bowie's list and contextualizes it in the artist's life and work. Heartfelt, analytical, and totally original, Bowie's Bookshelf is one part epic reading guide and one part biography of a music legend.

The American Revolution is America’s first Civil War. “Loyalists’—those in the American colonies loyal to the British Crown and the colonial governments—see the self-styled “Patriots” as traitorous Rebels. Communities, even families, are split into two hostile warring camps. “The Monmouth Manifesto” takes you into this seldom-seen Loyalist world in a novel based on true historical characters and events.

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy is widely acknowledged to be, as Robertson Davies pronounced, "a classic of our age." In these extraordinary novels, Peake created a world where all is like a dream - lush, fantastical, and vivid. Yet it was incomplete. Parkinson's disease took Peake's life in 1968, depriving his fans of the fourth and final volume of the series, Titus Awakes except for a few tantalizing pages, after which his writing became indecipherable. Or so it seemed....

Just seventeen years old, Henry IX, known as William, is a king bound by the restraints of the regency yet anxious to prove himself. With the French threatening battle and the Catholics sowing the seeds of rebellion at home, William trusts only three people: his older sister Elizabeth; his best friend and loyal counselor, Dominic; and Minuette, a young orphan raised as a royal ward by William’s mother, Anne Boleyn.

For the Sake of the Game is the latest volume in the award-winning series from New York Times best-selling editors Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, with stories of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and friends in a variety of eras and forms. King and Klinger have a simple formula: Ask some of the world's greatest writers-regardless of genre - to be inspired by the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The results are surprising and joyous.

Everyone deplores narcissism, especially in others. The vain are by turns annoying or absurd, offending us whether they are blissfully oblivious or proudly aware of their behavior. But are narcissism and vanity really as bad as they seem? Can we avoid them even if we try? In Mirror, Mirror, Simon Blackburn, the author of such best-selling philosophy books as Think, Being Good, and Lust, says that narcissism, vanity, pride, and self-esteem are more complex than they first appear and have innumerable good and bad forms.

Journalist Liv Adamsen has escaped from the highly secretive Citadel at the heart of the ancient city of Ruin and now lies in isolation, staring at hospital walls as blank as her memory. Despite her inability to recall her past, something strange is stirring within her. She feels possessed by a sensation she can't name and plagued by whispers only she can hear: "KuShiKaam", the key. Worlds collide in a race to uncover a revelation dating from the creation of man in this electrifying follow-up to the best seller Sanctus.

This last novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series involves Mr. Crawley, the impoverished curate of Hogglestock, who is accused of theft when he uses a large check to pay off his debts. The scandal fiercely divides the citizens of Barsetshire and threatens to tear apart Mr. Crawley's family.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first issues of Weird Tales Magazine, 100 Years of Weird is a masterful compendium of new and classic stories, flash fiction, essays, and poems from the giants of speculative fiction, including R. L. Stine, Laurell K. Hamilton, Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, Tennessee Williams, and Isaac Asimov.

A groundbreaking masterpiece of early European modernism, originally published in 1910, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge unspools the vivid reflections of the titular young poet and nobleman. From his Paris garret, Brigge records his encounters with the city and its people, muses on his family history, and lays bare an alternately exquisite and grotesque atmosphere of death. With a poet’s attention to language, Rainer Maria Rilke forges a dazzlingly visual coming-of-age narrative, kaleidoscopic in its approach to time and its portraits of Parisian life.

It was an outlawed book, a text so dangerous "it could only be countered by the most vicious burnings, of books and men and women." But what book could incite such violence and bloodshed? The year is 1526. It is the age of Henry VIII and his tragic Anne Boleyn, of Martin Luther and Thomas More. The times are treacherous. The Catholic Church controls almost every aspect of English life, including access to the very Word of God. And the church will do anything to keep it that way.

Improve Your Communication Skills is your practical guide to effective verbal, non-verbal, and written communication in business. Full of proven tips and techniques, it will help you keep the interest of a large audience, impress a potential employer, or simply win the argument at an important meeting. Better communication skills can have a direct impact on your career development. This book provides vital guidance on improving your conversations, building rapport with colleagues, learning skills of persuasion, and more.

Crime, mystery, adventure, thrills - all are to be found in this short-story collection commencing with "The Ship That Died of Shame", in which a former navy gunboat is used for smuggling by ex-servicemen down on their luck in postwar society. In "The Reconciliation", a husband employs private detectives but then changes his mind about a divorce once their findings are revealed.

The Tudor royal family has barely survived a disastrous winter. Now English ships and soldiers prepare for the threat of invasion. But William Tudor - known as Henry IX - has his own personal battles to attend to. He still burns for Minuette, his longtime friend, but she has married William’s trusted advisor, Dominic, in secret - an act of betrayal that puts both their lives in danger. Princess Elizabeth, concerned over her brother’s erratic, vengeful behavior, imperils her own life by assembling a shadow court in an effort to protect England.

It's AD 123, and the sun is shining on southern Gaul. Ex-military medic Ruso and his British wife, Tilla, are back after a long absence - but it's not the reunion anyone had hoped for. Ruso's brother has left him in charge of a farm he has no idea how to manage, a chronic debt problem, and a gaggle of accident-prone small children. Meanwhile his sister Flora has run away to rescue her boyfriend, who's accused of murdering a wealthy guest at a party.

A week before Christmas, a young photographer discovers a plastic-wrapped corpse amid the sand dunes north of Cape Town. The only thing found on the corpse is a dead iPhone, but it doesn't take long for the police to identify the body as that of Ernst Richter - the tech whiz behind MyAlibi, an Internet service that provides unfaithful partners with sophisticated cover stories to hide affairs.

In different corners of the world four high-profile figures are assassinated in less than a week. Nobody links the deaths but one thing is certain: each of them has been stalked, sought out, and killed with care and preparation. Then a sinister connection is established: a single, blood-tipped rose is sent to each funeral and an unremarkable female agent is murdered in Switzerland.

In September of 1940, during the Blitz in London, Audrey Stocking is blending in with other civilians who are trying to survive the nightly bombings, but she has a secret. She’s not British; she’s German. Her fake passport and nearly perfect English allow her to blend in as she works hard to help evacuate British children into the countryside. Audrey longs to reunite with her family in Hamburg, but her double life, the bombings, and the watchful British Military Intelligence have forced her to stay put. And then there are the paralyzing nightmares.

Welcome to the Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures, an institution run by evil Miss Carbunkle, a cunning villainess who believes her terrified young charges exist only to serve and suffer. Part animal and part human, the groundlings toil in classroom and factory, forbidden to enjoy anything regular children have, most particularly singing and music. For the Wonderling, an innocent-hearted, one-eared, fox-like eleven-year-old with only a number rather than a proper name - a 13 etched on a medallion around his neck - it is the only home he has ever known.