Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

Paris, 1393. Recent widow Christine de Pizan became a scribe to support her family, but when she is called to the palace to work, she dreads going. There, everyone fears the king's attacks of unreason and they believe the charlatans who claim they can cure him with vile potions. But when a mysterious book of magic leaves a trail of real murdered bodies in its wake, Christine has more than black magic to worry about. Then one of the king's favorites, Hugues de Precy, is found murdered and his wife Alix de Clairy is blamed.

A rickshaw driver dreams of being a Bombay movie star; Indian diplomats, who as childhood friends hatched Star Trek fantasies, must boldly go into a hidden universe of conspiracy and violence; and Hamlet's jester is caught up in murderous intrigues. In Rushdie's hybrid world, an Indian guru can be a redheaded Welshman, while Christopher Columbus is an immigrant, dreaming of Western glory. Rushdie allows himself, like his characters, to be pulled now in one direction, then in another.

In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction - the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas - has long been the symbol of Cortés' bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched off a wave of colonial invasions across the hemisphere. But is this really what happened?

Your argument is valid and you know it; yet once again you find yourself leaving a debate feeling defeated and embarrassed. The matter is only made worse when you realize that your defeat came at the hands of someone's abuse of logic - and that with the right skills you could have won the argument. The ability to recognize logical fallacies when they occur is an essential life skill. Mastering Logical Fallacies is the clearest, boldest, and most systematic guide to dominating the rules and tactics of successful arguments.

Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In this dramatic audiobook, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. Benjamin Carter Hett is one of America’s leading scholars of 20th-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of the feckless politicians of the Weimar Republic show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it.

Alan Rickman remains one of the most beloved actors of all time across almost every genre, from his breakout role as Die Hard's villainous Hans Gruber to his heart-wrenching run as Professor Severus Snape, and beyond. But Rickman's artistry wasn't confined to just his performances. Fans of memoirs at large will delight in the intimate experience of Rickman detailing the extraordinary and the ordinary in a way that is 'anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid'.

In the town of Segontium a wild storm washes a fugitive ashore. He brutally rapes the granddaughter of the ruler of the Deceangli tribe, leaving her to bear his son, Myrddion Merlinus (Merlin). Spurned as a demon seed, the child is raised by his grandmother and, as soon as he turns nine, he is apprenticed to a skilled alchemist who hones the boy’s remarkable gift of prophecy. Meanwhile, the High King of the Britons, Vortigern, is rebuilding the ancient fortress at Dinas Emrys.

Journalist Joe Oakes makes a living exposing supernatural hoaxes, but when he visits a secretive religious cult on a remote Scottish island, everything he thought he knew is overturned. While investigating a strange apparition caught briefly on film wandering the lonely beaches of Pig Island, so deformed it can hardly be human, Oakes crosses a border of electrical fencing, toxin-filled oil drums, and pigs' skulls to infiltrate the territory of the group's isolated founder, Malachi Dove.

Myrddion Merlinus is a product of a brutal rape, and in the second book of this epic trilogy, he embarks on a quest to uncover his father’s identity and sets sail from Celtic Briton with his band of loyal companions. Their journey through war-ravaged France, Rome, and Ravenna to Constantinople will test their skills and strength to the limit. Roman control over Europe is weakening. Attila’s barbaric army is causing death and destruction and, bound by a healer’s oath to relieve suffering, Merlin must serve under General Flavius Aetius at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

Celebrated for his playwriting, British author Michael Frayn has also written screenplays and several acclaimed novels. Headlong, a Booker Prize finalist, combines a heavy dose of humor with a fascinating glimpse into the world of priceless art.

This panoramic book shows how the Greek Revolution was a demographic upheaval more consequential than the overthrow of a ruler. Drawing on Ottoman sources together with archival evidence from Greece, Britain, France, Russia, and Switzerland, the book reframes the birth of modern Greece within the imperial history of the global nineteenth century.

It is 1540 and the hottest summer of the sixteenth century. Matthew Shardlake, believing himself out of favour with Thomas Cromwell, is busy trying to maintain his legal practice and keep a low profile. But his involvement with a murder case, defending a girl accused of brutally murdering her young cousin, brings him once again into contact with the king's chief minister - and a new assignment.

Barbary Coast pirates - the Saraceni - are capturing slaves and terrorizing fishing villages along the coast of Sicily. Ramage and his crew are sent to track them down before they can devastate another town.

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.

Everything goes according to procedure when a patient, Isaac, is released into the community from a high-security mental health ward. But when the staff realizes that he was connected to a series of unexplained episodes of self-harm among the ward's patients, and furthermore that he was released in error, they call on Detective Jack Caffery to investigate and to track Isaac down before he can kill again.

Twelve long, blood-soaked years, have passed since Artor fulfilled his destiny and was crowned the High King of the Britons. Against all odds, Artor has united Celtic Britain and with a last great campaign, has banished the Saxon scourge. The legend of Camlann has begun. But even as Artor's kingdom is at its zenith, even as he has succeeded in conquering all external threats to his rule, his kingdom is being undermined from within. For Artor has chosen Wenhaver (Guenevere) as a second wife.

The best-selling author of Atonement and Enduring Love, Ian McEwan is known as one of contemporary fiction’s most acclaimed writers. This Booker Prize-winning novel by McEwan finds two men connecting at the funeral of their ex-lover. Distressed by how she was slowly destroyed by an illness, the two make a pact to save each other from enduring such a fate.

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.

Unfortunately, unlike his siblings, Arthur hasn't broken a single, solitary world record! But when the Whipples suffer a spate of catastrophes and a curious amount of attention from a pair of irregularly sized and unusually menacing clowns, Arthur might be the only one who can save his family from losing their collective crown… or worse.

There have been numerous books about the why, when, and where of slavery in America, but there is a dearth of material exposing what slavery was actually like. In The Great Stain, researcher Noel Rae frames firsthand accounts from former slaves, slave owners, and even African slavers. Rae exposes the commerce and culture of slavery, not only from an economic or moral standpoint but also through multitudinous perspectives within it: a young girl is beaten after being accused of stealing a piece of candy, a slave ship's surgeon recounts brutal treatment and squalid conditions.