Showing results by narrator "Matthew Lloyd Davies" in All Categories

The people who call End of the Line need hope. They need reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn’t want them to hope. She wants them to die. Laura hasn’t had it easy: she's survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry. She doesn't love talking to people worse off than she is. She craves it. But now someone’s on to her - Ryan, whose world falls apart when his pregnant wife ends her life, hand in hand with a stranger.

James Patterson tells the most heartbreaking story of our time, as only he can—Diana’s life as a princess and a mother—timed to the 25th anniversary of her death. From the moments William and Harry are born into the House of Windsor, they become their young mother’s whole world. Diana’s faced with a seemingly impossible challenge: one son destined to be King of England and another determined to find his own way. She teaches them to honor royal tradition, even while daring to break it.

The plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the 14th century has been of never-ending interest to both scholars and the general public. Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story. In The Great Mortality, author John Kelly lends an air of immediacy and intimacy to his telling of the journey of the plague as it traveled from the steppes of Russia, across Europe, and into England, killing 75 million people—one third of the known population—before it vanished.

Twenty-six-year-old single mum Brianna Lewis (a.k.a. Bree) doesn't believe in fairy tales - not after being abandoned by the father of daughter, Isabelle. Suddenly finding herself in dire straits, she converts her garden shed into a rental suite in hopes of climbing out of the financial hole she's in. But when the only person interested in renting the suite turns out to be to Leopold Davenport, the ridiculously good-looking co-worker she loves to hate, she knows she must choose between being happy and being broke.

In 1939, tiny Finland waged war - the kind of war that spawns legends - against the mighty Soviet Union, and yet, their epic struggle has been largely ignored. Guerrillas on skis, heroic single-handed attacks on tanks, unfathomable endurance, and the charismatic leadership of one of this century's true military geniuses - these are the elements of both the Finnish victory and a gripping tale of war.

At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria’s wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the battlefield.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant.

Effective altruism is built upon the simple, but profound, idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the "most good you can do". Such a life requires an unsentimental view of charitable giving: To be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more good with our money or our time than other options open to us. Singer introduces us to an array of remarkable people who are restructuring their lives in accordance with these ideas and shows how living altruistically often leads to greater personal fulfillment.

MI6's man in Havana is Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true....

New adventures of the iconic sleuth, an icon of detective fiction. Readers, listeners, investigators, and artists have come across Sherlock Holmes and his mythical stories of crime and adventure for generations. Now comes an outstanding anthology of never-before-seen short fiction stories featuring the much-loved powers of deduction and unerring quest for the truth - however improbable it might first appear. The Book of Extraordinary New Sherlock Holmes Stories brings together some of the most renowned American and British crime and thriller authors of today.

In this eye-opening book, angelologist Father Marcello Stanzione tells the fascinating story of Father Amorth and his life as an exorcist. You'll learn of his daily schedule and how he managed to perform dozens of exorcisms each week. You'll find out what his exorcism room looked like, and how various devils responded to his bold practice. Best of all, you'll hear Father Amorth's own startling explanations of many truths about the Devil that our culture has forgotten and about the canny methods the Deceiver has adopted in recent years to corrupt believers and unbelievers alike.

In exchange for a vial of dragon's blood to save her brother's life, Melanie Hall offers herself up as a sacrifice to one of the British dragon-shifter clans. Being a sacrifice means signing a contract to live with the dragon-shifters for six months to try to conceive a child. Her assigned dragonman, however, is anything but easy. He's tall, broody, and alpha to the core. There's only one problem - he hates humans.

The Nysis is unlike any other river. Mysteries unfold with each port of call. Not many can navigate these channels; not many know of its whirlpools and sandbanks, of the ravenous creatures that lurk beneath the surface. Cady used to have the necessary knowledge and the powers of spectral navigation, but her glory days are well behind her now. This might well be her final journey.

London, 1815. Amateur sleuth Atlas Catesby is about to discover the dark side of the bright lights. His long-awaited night at the opera with Lady Lilliana ends abruptly when a notorious courtesan is shot to death in Covent Garden. The infamous victim was the mistress of the powerful Marquess of Vessey. Atlas believes that the marquess - his former brother in law - is responsible for the long-ago death of Atlas' sister, Phoebe. Atlas seizes the opportunity to potentially avenge his sister's death.

The latest Scandinavian publishing phenomenon is not a Stieg Larsson-like thriller; it's a book about chopping, stacking, and burning wood that has sold more than 200,000 copies in Norway and Sweden and has been a fixture on the best seller lists there for more than a year. Norwegian Wood provides useful advice on the rustic hows and whys of taking care of your heating needs, but it's also a thoughtful attempt to understand man's age-old predilection for stacking wood and passion for open fires.

In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers the question of how Jewish missionaries ended up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life.

Though best known now for his collection of lively and vivid Parallel Lives from ancient Greece and Rome, Plutarch (c46 CD-120 CE) was, for centuries, more respected for his Moralia, a remarkable and wide-ranging collection of essays and speeches. No fewer than 78 in total, they range over a broad list of topics in which Plutarch observes, dispenses wisdom, admonishes, entertains and informs: covering social issues and politics, manners and religion - in short, life in general.  

Robert Plant: The Voice that Sailed the Zeppelin follows the iconic singer through his heights of fame with classic rock giant Led Zeppelin, his second life as a multi-million-selling solo artist, and his more idiosyncratic pursuits. A wealth of former associates lend their voices and recollections to an account that steps far beyond the tried and tested tales of Zeppelin's life and times.

Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words.

Who invented beds? When did we start cleaning our teeth? How old are wine and beer? Which came first: the toilet seat or toilet paper? What was the first clock? Every day, from the moment our alarm clock wakes us in the morning until our head hits our pillow at night, we all take part in rituals that are millennia old. Structured around one ordinary day, A Million Years in a Day reveals the astonishing origins and development of the daily practices we take for granted.