Showing results by narrator "Derek Perkins" in All Categories

This is a short story about a young man who wants to be a wizard. Within, you will encounter one of the most powerful, life-transforming, secrets ever revealed. If you find it, you are ready for The Journey.

In the 1970s, a small group of leading psychiatrists met behind closed doors and literally rewrote the book on their profession. Revising and greatly expanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short), they turned what had been a thin, spiral-bound handbook into a hefty tome. Almost overnight the number of diagnoses exploded. The result was a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry and a massive conflict of interest for psychiatry at large.

In 1900 the global average life expectancy at birth was 31 years. By 2000 it was 66. Yet, alongside unprecedented improvements in longevity and material well-being, the 20th century also saw the rise of fascism and communism and a second world war followed by a cold war. This book tells the story of the battles between economic systems that defined the last century and created today's world. The 19th century was a period of rapid economic growth, but it also brought great inequality.

We all have questions about death. Despite the strong assurance the Bible gives us about life beyond the grave, Christians are often troubled by other questions. What will happen on the day of judgment? Will we have bodies in heaven? Will there be rewards? This short, simple book is designed to help Christians understand what God has said about these questions in the scripture. Suitable for all Christians - especially those with questions about death.

Eighteen days after the action closes in An Air of Treason, courtier Sir Robert Carey and Carey's surly, larcenous, and loyal henchman, Henry Dodd, are back in Carlisle and the Debateable Lands. A Chorus of Innocents ushers forward Lady Elizabeth Widdrington, a married woman whom Carey adores but respects. It opens when a very pregnant young woman rides to Lady Widdrington's tower, crying that her minister husband has been murdered and she herself has been raped.

Auguste Dupin is one of the few persons in Paris who can identify the rare Cthulhu Encryption inscribed in the flesh of a dying madwoman. The Comte de Saint-Germain has a second cryptogram that's a partner to the one Dupin now owns, and believes it to be the key to a fabulous treasure hoard buried by the pirate Levasseur. Harassed by shoggoths and tracked by Saint-Germain, Dupin must find the key to the complex puzzle. Can the might of Cthulhu be held at bay? And will any answer that Dupin finds enable him and his friends to escape with their lives?

A short story about a mysterious man who arrives in a small 19th century Orkney Island fishing village. He has the air of an aristocrat, the clothes of a beggar and a leather pouch filled with the biggest pearls anyone has ever seen. The women can't take their lustful eyes off him, the men are jealous, but he only has one woman and one purpose on his mind.

When Holmes gives up the adventurous life of a consulting detective and retires to the Sussex countryside to raise bees, little does he or his old friend Dr. John Watson realize that their greatest adventures lies ahead - an adventure spanning centuries and extending across the solar system.... For nothing less than human civilization lies at state as Sherlock Holmes finds himself moving inexorably toward the final and most terrible confrontation with his ancient enemy, the time-jumping Napoleon of crime, professor Moriarty!

Nine-year-old Laddy Merridew, sent to live with his grandmother for reasons he does not understand, stumbles off the bus in a small Welsh town where he begins an unlikely friendship with old Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the town beggar-storyteller. Through Ianto, Laddy learns of the collapse decades earlier of a coal mine called Kindly Light - a disaster whose legacy has echoed through generations, shaping lives in unexpected ways. And while Ianto spins the lively stories of so many men and women in this town, it's his own history in Kindly Light that is the story he can't tell.

Food trucks announcing "halal" proliferate in many urban areas but how many non-Muslims know what this means, other than cheap lunch? In this audiobook, Febe Armanios and Bogac Ergene provide an accessible introduction to halal (permissible) food in the Islamic tradition. Historically, Muslims used food to define their identities in relation to co-believers and non-Muslims. Food taboos are rooted in the Quran and prophetic customs, as well as writings from various periods and geographical settings.

Years before the Whispering War, there was a girl named Olivia. Her family murdered, her home destroyed -- a darkness she can't control. Olivia has never quite fit in amongst the lords and ladies of the seas... but things are about to get worse. Forced into the service of a powerful enemy, she must use her gifts to kill. The darkness grows fiercer with every step; each murder drags her closer to edge of villainy. Only one force in the Kingdom might have the power to save her, but she knows it's too late. Olivia has already fallen to the darkness -- into the jaws of a monster she calls The Poison.

We meet our unnamed narrator in Paris in the 20s, where he finds himself an expat after the Russian Revolution. At a friend's request he meets the beautiful, clever socialite Lyolya, also a recent exile from Russia. What begins as casual friendship quickly turns into fascination and obsession, as Lyolya gives mixed signals and pursues other men. Our narrator, emerging from a depression, is soon overwhelmed by the very idea of her, which begins to contour all of his observations, thoughts, and feelings.

In late November 1942, Soviet forces surrounded Paulus' Sixth Army in a pocket outside the Russian city of Stalingrad. In response the Germans planned a relief operation, Operation Winter Storm, intended to break through the Soviet forces and open the pocket, releasing the encircled units. The 6th Panzer Division was the spearhead of the German relief force. The attack started on December 12th, 1942 and was aborted on December 23rd after heavy Soviet counterattacks. This failure sealed the fate of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad.

In this scholarly study, Charles Stephenson describes the political, diplomatic, and military build-up to the Soviet offensive and its decisive outcome. He also considers to what extent Japan's capitulation is attributable to the atomic bomb or the stunningly successful entry of the Soviet Union into the conflict.

Duchess Amelia’s cutthroat “rats” have saved her hometown. But the new crown prince of the Grand Kingdom, Daven Marcus, now drags her along in a vain winter crusade into the wilderness, seeking the origin of the mysterious invaders from the West. Surrounded by the prince’s toadying lackeys and scheming nobility, Amelia has no allies.

The stage is set for the final stroke to be unleashed upon Vale. The survivors of the slaughter must now decide whether to fight on or abandon their home. Drake has not returned with Bomar weapons and soldiers leaving the chance for victory seemingly out of reach. A decision must be made. But Prince Salazar has no intention of leaving the choice with his enemies. He is determined to be the hand that guides the fate of humanity. If that means Vale should burn...so be it.

Fourteen centuries ago, Irish saints brought the Word of God to the Hebrides and Scotland's Atlantic shore. These "white martyrs" sought solitude, remoteness, even harshness, in places apart from the world where they could fast, pray, and move closer to an understanding of God: places where they could see angels. Columba, who founded the famous monastery at Iona, was the most well-known of these courageous men who rowed their curraghs towards danger and uncertainty in a pagan land, but the many others are now largely forgotten by history.

Trained as a knight, condemned as a heretic, exiled as a convict, Prentice’s every moment is a struggle just to survive. The Duke is dead and now Duchess Amelia, his young and inexperienced bride, must rule the Western Reach alone. But when an unknown enemy invades her lands, slaughtering all in their path, her knights are too eager for glory to see the danger. She must turn to Prentice, a convict, wise in the art of war and the only one she can trust despite the dishonor it brings.

After 1660, English governments aimed to convert scattered overseas dominions into a coordinated territorial power base. Stuart monarchs encouraged schemes for expansion in America, Africa, and Asia, tightened control over existing territories, and endorsed systems of slave labor. But English power was precarious, and colonial designs were subject to regular defeats and failed experimentation. Recovering from recent Civil Wars at home, England was shaken by unrest and upheaval through the later seventeenth century.

Led by convict-captain Prentice Ash, the Duchess’s army has driven off the invaders from the west and Prentice has won his freedom. But the Reach is far from safe. Rats are lurking in the Duchess’s capital and they mean to destroy her. Merchants and noblemen plot to rob Amelia of her province’s wealth while criminals and mercenaries prowl through the streets. Meanwhile, the new prince, Daven Marcus, comes west with foolish plans that threaten to rip the Reach out of Amelia’s hands.