Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

It is the autumn of 1367. Master Hugh de Singleton is enjoying the peaceful life of Bampton when a badly beaten man is found under the porch of St. Andrew’s Chapel. The dying man is a chapman - a traveling merchant. Before he is buried in the chapel grounds an ancient, corroded coin is found in the man’s mouth. Master Hugh’s quest for the chapman’s assailants, and his search for the origin of the coin, makes steady progress - but there are men of wealth and power who wish to halt his search, and an old nemesis, Sir Simon Trillowe, is in league with them.

Thomas atte Bridge, a man no one likes, is found hanging from a tree near Cowleys Corner. All assume he has taken his own life, but Master Hugh and Kate find evidence that this may not be so. Many of the town had been harmed by Thomas, and Hugh is not eager to send one of them to the gallows. Then he discovers that the priest John Kellet, atte Bridge’s partner in crime in A Corpse at St. Andrew’s Chapel, was covertly in Bampton at the time atte Bridge died.

In a daring foray, under the very nose of the French Mediterranean fleet, Lieutenant Lord Nicholas Ramage is to sail his tiny cutter close in to the Italian shore and rescue a party of stranded aristocrats from Napoleon's fast-advancing army.

Award-winning journalist and author Simon Winchester takes readers on a personal tour of the Balkans. Combining history and interviews with the people who live there, Winchester offers a fascinating glimpse into the complex issues at work in this chaotic region. Unrest in the Balkans has gone on for centuries. A seasoned reporter, Winchester visited the region twenty years ago. When Kosovo reached crisis level in 1997, Winchester thought a return visit to the beleaguered area would help to make sense out of the awful violence.

Ridmark Arban is the Gray Knight, outcast and exiled from the High King's realm. Yet he alone sees the danger of the terrible Frostborn, the creatures that will sheathe the world in ice and quench all life. But none of the lords of the realm believe his warnings. And his enemies want him dead...and the secret allies of the Frostborn wish to silence him forever. As old foes and new enemies close around him, Ridmark must fight for his life. Or else the Frostborn will return, bringing eternal ice and darkness with them.

Rasselas and his companions escape the pleasures of the "happy valley" in order to make their "choice of life". By witnessing the misfortunes and miseries of others they come to understand the nature of happiness and value it more highly. Their travels and enquiries raise important practical and philosophical questions concerning many aspects of the human condition, including the business of a poet, the stability of reason, the immortality of the soul, and how to find contentment.

Considered Keith Roberts' masterwork, this novel consists of linked short stories (six measures and a coda) of a 20th century in which the Roman Catholic Church controls the Western world, and has done so since Queen Elizabeth of England was assassinated in 1588. The Protestant Reformation never happened, and the world is kept in a Dark Age of steam-power transportation, with no allowance for electrical power, by a tyrannical Rome.

The object of this audiobook is to introduce listeners to a whole range of military history which has all the drama, dangers, horrors and excitement that we associate with Stalingrad or the Somme. Battles are acute moments of history whenever and wherever they have been fought. Through them we can understand how warfare and world history have evolved. Choosing just 100 battles from recorded human history is a challenge.

Ridmark Arban is the Gray Knight, questing to stop the return of the terrible Frostborn to the High King's realm. Yet the soulstone, the instrument of the return of the Frostborn, has been stolen by a ruthless cult and secured within the grim fortress of the Iron Tower. And Ridmark must risk everything to retrieve it. Mara wishes only to live peacefully. Yet her father was a dark elven wizard of power, and his shadow-tainted blood flows through her veins, threatening to transform her into a monster.

Iran and Iraq served as the first WWII theater in which the US, the UK, and the USSR fought alongside each other. Historian Ashley Jackson charts the intense Allied military activity in Iran and Iraq and reveals how deeply the war impacted common people's lives. He also provides revelations about the true nature of Anglo-American relations in the region, the beginnings of the Cold War, and the continuing corrosive legacy of Western influence in these lands.

England, 1546: King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant and Catholic councillors are engaged in a final and decisive power struggle; whoever wins will control the government of Henry's successor, eight-year-old Prince Edward. As heretics are hunted across London, and the radical Protestant Anne Askew is burned at the stake, the Catholic party focus their attack on Henry's sixth wife, Matthew Shardlake's old mentor, Queen Catherine Parr.

Ridmark Arban is the Gray Knight, and he quests for the ruined citadel of Urd Morlemoch, seeking a way to stop the return of the dreaded Frostborn. For if he does not find a way to stop them, the Frostborn shall entomb the world in ice forever. Morigna is the cunning Witch of the Hills, feared and mistrusted by the townsmen of Moraime. Yet darker things stir in the hills. A trap that might devour both her and the Gray Knight...

What is your subconscious telling you - and why? In his groundbreaking 1899 work, the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, explores the mysteries of dreams. According to Freud, dreams are puzzles to be solved, with their manifestations of everything from long-forgotten memories to unspoken, hidden desires. Including dozens of case histories and detailed dream analyses, The Interpretation of Dreams remains a fascinating and revealing exploration of the vast and enigmatic human mind.

Below a dark and angry sea, men in the submarines of the British Navy prowl. Explosive spherical mines lie silently in wait for their weathered vessels. At any time, the abyssals of the Atlantic can be rocked by the terrifying din of a mine exploding and a boat imploding. Manning these cramped vessels is a fulltime hardship, with myriad risks and sometimes terrifying emergencies.

Framed by the historical journey and teachings of the Buddha, Siddhartha's Brain shows how meditative and Buddhist practices anticipated the findings of modern neuroscience. Moving from the evolutionary history of the brain to the disorders and neuroses associated with our technology-driven world, James Kingsland explains why the ancient practice of mindfulness has been so beneficial to and so important for human beings across time.

“When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals,” Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most puzzling murder investigations. Incredibly, at the time the words of the world’s most famous fictional detective appeared in print in the Strand Magazine, a real-life Canadian doctor, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, was stalking and murdering women in London’s downtrodden Lambeth neighborhood. In this book, Dean Jobb reveals how bungled investigations, corrupt officials and failed prosecutions allowed Cream to evade detection or freed him to kill, again and again.

Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them just fine. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather forecasts, and tins of pineapple chunks---not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.'s small fox-terrier Montmorency.

With elegance and unsparing honesty, special correspondent for The Times of London, Anthony Loyd records this harrowing account of modern war. My War Gone By, I Miss It So exposes the unspeakable terror, visceral thrill of combat, and countless lives laid waste in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II. Unsatisfied by a brief stint in the British army and driven by the despair of drug dependence, the author was searching for excitement when he set out for Bosnia in 1993.

Oscar Hopkins, the hydrophobic, noisy-kneed son of a preacher, renounces his father's stern religion in favour of the Anglican Church. Lucinda Leplastrier, a frizzy-haired heiress, impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. When the two finally meet, on board a ship to New South Wales, Australia, they are bound by their affinity for gambling and risk, their loneliness and their awkwardly blossoming mutual affection.

It is 1537, a time of revolution that sees the greatest changes in England since 1066. Henry VIII has proclaimed himself Supreme Head of the Church. The country is waking up to savage new laws, rigged trials and the greatest network of informers ever seen. And under the orders of Thomas Cromwell, a team of commissioners is sent throughout the country to investigate the monasteries.