Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley Crossley" in All Categories

Three Brothers follows the fortunes of Harry, Daniel, and Sam Hanway, a trio of brothers born on a postwar council estate in Camden Town. Marked from the start by curious coincidence, each boy is forced to make his own way in the world - a world of dodgy deals and big business, of criminal gangs and crooked landlords, of newspaper magnates, backbiters, and petty thieves.

An ice age strikes a chain of islands, and thousands come to seek sanctuary at the gates of Villjamur: a city of ancient spires and bridges, a place where banshees wail the deceased, cultists use forgotten technology for their own gain, and where, further out, the dead have been seen walking across the tundra.

“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.

No Man's Land is Simon Tolkien's first literary novel - it's a picture of early 20th-century England torn apart by the First World War, as seen through the eyes of a working-class boy whose turbulent life is finally coming together when he is posted to the Somme in 1916.

Taking the lessons Machiavelli recorded in his political masterpiece The Prince, Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's Chief of Staff, shows how they can still apply today. Illustrating each of Machiavelli's maxims with a description of events that occurred during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister, Powell provides a gripping account of life inside Number 10 and draws lessons from those experiences for anyone today who has access to the levers of power.

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

Examining the espionage and intelligence stories in World War II on a global basis, bringing together the British, American, German, Russian and Japanese histories. In The Secret War, Max Hastings examines the espionage and intelligence machines of all sides in World War II, and the impact of spies, code breakers and partisan operations on events.

James owns a shipping fleet and half a London gaming house and is a ruthlessly effective spymaster. He is seldom self-indulgent...except when it comes to the indomitable beauty who was once his wife. Laurel gave James her heart - until she saw him perform an act of shocking violence before her very eyes. That night she left her husband. Now, 10 years later, a chance encounter turns passionate, with consequences that cannot be ignored. They must face common enemies and a very uncommon love.

Two corpses. A country on the edge of a political precipice. A conspiracy so bold it would make Machiavelli wince. Andrew Marr's debut novel imagines what really might be going on behind the door of 10 Downing Street. When a young investigative reporter is found dead on the streets of London few people notice. But when another body - minus its head and hands - is washed up on the banks of the Thames, its grisly condition arouses a little more interest.

Wisecracking PI Kemal Kayankaya cares more about sausage and beer than politics, but when he's hired to defend four eco-terrorists charged with murdering a chemical plant owner, he finds himself stuck in the middle of Germany's culture wars. It doesn't take long for Kayankaya to realize that the whole situation stinks and that both the Left and the Right have blood on their hands. And is the fiery journalist Carla Reedermann dogging his steps because she smells a story, or is she after something more? A hardboiled noir in the Chandler tradition....

From the great biographer of the Romantics, This Long Pursuit is a sweeping exploration of a career devoted to the art of life-writing. Thirty years ago Richard Holmes published Footsteps - a revolutionary novel that would become a best seller and influence profoundly a whole generation of younger writers. The Long Pursuit is a companion audiobook in that it ranges widely over the arts, science, poetry and inspiration to reflect upon the practice and importance of biographical writing.

> The Liar’s Gospel is the story of Yehoshuah, a Jewish man who wandered Roman-occupied Judea giving sermons and healing the sick. Now, a year after his death, four people tell their stories, recalling their memories of a man battling with a loss of faith in a land on the brink of conflict. It was a time of brutal tyranny and occupation, of rebellion and riots, of rumour and betrayal. And in the midst of it all, one inconsequential preacher died. And either something miraculous happened, or someone lied…

Brooding Hawk St Claire, Duke of Stourbridge, believes Jane Smith to be a mere servant girl. So when genteel Miss Jane is wrongly turned out of her home, the Duke takes her in as his ward. Although Hawk is the first man to make Jane's pulse race, she knows she cannot risk falling for him. A marriage between them would be forbidden - especially if he were to discover the shameful truth about her....

When his loving wife, Betty, plans a trip to Ireland for Fatty O’Leary’s 40th birthday things go wrong almost immediately: the seats in economy class on the plane are too small; Irish bathroom furniture is not as commodious as he'd have liked. And all the time Fatty must put up with the unthinking cruelty of strangers.

Love is never easy - especially when your girlfriend is an illegal Thai prostitute who has been kidnapped (again) by a gang of sex traffickers. Fortunately for the hapless fiancé, wisecracking gumshoe Kemal Kayankaya is on the case. The son of a Turkish garbage collector, he knows a thing or two about living in the ethnic fringes of the ugliest German city of them all: Frankfurt. Kayankaya plunges into the city's underbelly, where the police don't care if you live or die, and the powerful view an illegal alien as just another paycheck.

The year is 2130. The first-ever expedition is sent to Mercury to search for the cause of an unknown source of electromagnetic radiation that can destroy spaceships passing by the planet. Thought to be inhospitable and lifeless, the surface of Mercury provides startling surprises for the crew that endanger their lives and challenge their established notions of what it means to be a sentient being. And some of the crew members have their own separate agendas.

Introducing Kemal Kayankaya, a wise-cracking private detective in Frankfurt - or, as Kayankaya calls it, "the ugliest town in Germany." As a Turkish immigrant raised by Germans, he's regularly subjected to racism in the gritty, working class town, and getting work isn't easy. So when his immigrant friend Rosario asks Kayankaya to protect him against some thugs demanding protection money from his restaurant, the down-and-out Kayankaya takes the job. Except these are no ordinary thugs.

In a Parisian restaurant Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist, chances on Major-General Sir Hector McDonald, who is facing ruin in a shocking scandal, and vulnerable to Crowley's curious offer of help. Follow this unlikely pair on an extraordinary night of revelation and transgression. Be transported to the battlefields of Sudan, the backstreets of Edinburgh, and the sultry tropics of Ceylon. And discover Sir Hector's tragic secret....

Autumn, 1541. King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to attend an extravagant submission of his rebellious subjects in York. Already in the city are lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak. As well as assisting with legal work processing petitions to the King, Shardlake has reluctantly undertaken a special mission - to ensure the welfare of an important but dangerous conspirator being returned to London for interrogation.

Everyone is good at something. But at Lizzie's school this has been taken to extremes. Her classmate Ethan, who previously had no interest in sport, is now incredible at football; her brother's suddenly an expert in robotics; and Lizzie has become really good at being bad. It's as though they have no power over their own actions. Could this be something to do with the mysterious new headmaster?