Showing results by narrator "Ben Onwukwe" in All Categories

With opportunities for black men limited in post-World War II London, Rick Braithwaite, a former Royal Air Force pilot and Cambridge-educated engineer, accepts a teaching position that puts him in charge of a class of angry, unmotivated, bigoted white teenagers whom the system has mostly abandoned. When his efforts to reach these troubled students are met with threats, suspicion, and derision, Braithwaite takes a radical new approach. He will treat his students as people poised to enter the adult world.

Nnamdi's father was a good chief of police, perhaps the best Kalaria had ever had. He was determined to root out the criminals that had invaded the town. But then he was murdered, and most people believed the Chief of Chiefs, most powerful of the criminals, was responsible. Nnamdi has vowed to avenge his father, but he wonders what a 12-year-old boy can do. Until a mysterious nighttime meeting, the gift of a magical object that enables super powers, and a charge to use those powers for good changes his life forever.

Jake Barton is an American engineer, Gareth Swales a stylish Englishman with a nose for a quick deal. Both have always moved from one escapade to another. Now, as Mussolini prepares to annihilate the people of Ethiopia, the two adventurers come up against Vicky Camberwell, the beautiful but fiery reporter bent on espousing their cause. Striking a bargain with a beleaguered Ethiopian prince, the trio dares to run gauntlet, guns and a batch of run-down armoured cars in a final, desperate gamble for freedom....

Gabriel García Márquez's great masterpiece is the story of seven generations of the Buendía family and of Macondo, the town they built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and its miracles. A microcosm of Columbian life, its secrets lie hidden, encoded in a book, and only Aureliano Buendía can fathom its mysteries and reveal its shrouded destiny.

Arguably the most influential force in Jamaican music, Lee Perry brought Bob Marley to international stardom and collaborated with artists such as Sir Paul McCartney, The Clash and The Beastie Boys. The book delves behind the myth of Perry to give a fuller examination of his life and work through extensive interviews with family members, fellow artists, friends, lovers, enemies, as well as the man himself to present a complex portrait of a unique soul driven by unseen spiritual forces.

If you’re going to get ahead in the battlefield salvage business, you have to regard death as a means to an end. In other words, when the blood flows, so will the cash. Unfortunately, even though war is on the way, Saevus Corax has had enough.

The Knights of the Gabala were legendary protectors of the Nine Duchies - until they disappeared through a demon-haunted gateway between worlds. Manannan, the Coward Knight, held back. Now he lives in torment. Yet war is coming to the Duchies - and with it Manannan's chance for redemption. But to regain his honour and save his land, he will have to confront his deepest fear. He must ride through the gateway and seek out his lost companions in the unknown world beyond. And the secret he will learn there will tear his soul apart.

In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Birdpaints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun, friendship, and fulfillment. But it's a lie. In reality, Hubert's days are all the same, dragging on without him seeing a single soul. Until he receives some good news - good news that in one way turns out to be the worst news ever, news that will force him out again, into a world he has long since turned his back on.

September 29, 1923. Once the Palestine Mandate officially takes effect, the British Empire—now covering a quarter of the world’s land and boasting a population of 460 million—is the largest the world has ever seen. But it is also an empire in rapid transition. Nationalist and Pan-African movements are gaining momentum throughout West Africa, thanks as much to Marcus Garvey as to the sustained efforts of local activists and politicians. Moving from London to Kuala Lumpur, Australia to the West Indies, One Fine Day is a breathtaking and unflinching tour of the British Empire at its pinnacle.

In this best-selling book, one of America's most distinguished psychologists crystallises the great progress that has been made in the development of the techniques and basic philosophy of counselling. Carl Rogers gives a clear exposition of procedures by which individuals who are being counselled may be assisted in achieving for themselves new and more effective personality adjustments. Contemporary psychology derives largely from the experimental laboratory or from Freudian theory. It is preoccupied with minute aspects of animal and human behaviour or with psychopathology.

Sixteen-year-old Charlie Ovid, despite a brutal childhood in Mississippi, doesn't have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When a jaded female detective is recruited to escort them to safety, all three begin a journey into the nature of difference, and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous. What follows is a story of wonder and betrayal.

It’s important to look after your crew when you’re in the battlefield salvage business. It’s stressful work at the best of times, and although your employees are unlikely to be happy it makes sense to keep them alive. So when Saevus Corax finds himself having to capture a castle to stop his men from being killed, he has no choice but to give it a try. Needless to say, the conventional rules of siegecraft are unlikely to be followed.

In today's throwaway culture, there's a counter movement growing that urges us to 'make do and mend'. The Repair Shop has brought this waste-conscious message to an even wider audience, with its regular viewing figures of seven million in the UK alone, cementing itself as a classic series in the vein of Antiques Roadshow. This new book concentrates on the show's much-loved experts. Each of the experts shares their own stories and their repairs, capturing in the process the magic and ethos of the barn.

The End of Enlightenment offers a radical re-evaluation of one of the most important moments in human history. Tracing around the world the changing perspectives of economists, philosophers, politicians and polemicists, historian Richard Whatmore argues that, for figures as diverse as David Hume, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft, the Enlightenment was a profound failure. They had strived to replace superstition with reason, fanaticism with toleration, but witnessed instead terror and revolution, corruption, gross commercial excess and the continued growth of violent empire.

There's no formal training for battlefield salvage. You just have to pick things up as you go along. Swords, armour, arrows - and the bodies, of course. Over the years, Saevus Corax has picked up a lot of things. Some of them have made him decent money, others have brought nothing but trouble. But it's a living, and somebody has to deal with the dead. Something else that Saevus has buried is his past. Unfortunately, he didn't quite succeed.

Is it possible for books to dream? For books to dream within books? Is there a literary subterranean that would facilitate ingress and exit points through these dreams? These are some of the questions posed by David Keenan's masterly fifth novel, Monument Maker, an epic romance of eternal summer and a descent, into history, into the horrors of the past; a novel with a sweep and range that runs from the siege of Khartoum and the conquest of Africa in the 19th century through the Second World War and up to the present day.

From atop the choppy waves to the choking darkness of the abyss, the seas are full of mystery and rife with tales of inexplicable events and encounters with the unknown. In this anthology we see a thrilling spread of narratives: sailors are pitched against a nightmare from the depths, invisible to the naked eye, a German U-boat commander is tormented by an impossible transmission via Morse Code, a ship ensnares itself in the kelp of the Sargasso Sea and dooms a crew of mutineers, seemingly out of revenge for her lost captain.

The Hunt Begins…

Two men are responsible for the death of Hector Cross’ wife and only one is left alive: Johnny Congo – psychopath, extortionist, murderer, and the bane of Cross’s life. He caught him before and let him go. Now, Hector wants him dead. So does the US government.

Harry Freedman uncovers the spiritual traditions that lie behind Leonard Cohen's profound and unmistakable lyrics. The singer and poet Leonard Cohen was deeply learned in Judaism and Christianity, the spiritual traditions that underpinned his self-identity and the way he made sense of the world. In this book Harry Freedman, a leading author of cultural and religious history, explores the mystical and spiritual sources Cohen drew upon, discusses their original context and the stories and ideas behind them.

Classic Tales Of Horror offers up fifteen slices of powerful story-telling from the world's great mystery & classic horror authors. From Henry James and Ambrose Bierce to Bram Stoker and Charles Dickens. Read by John Waite (BBC Radio 4), Sarah Douglas (Superman I & II), Michael Fenton-Stevens (Spitting Image, KYTV, Hitch-Hiker's Guide) and Ben Onwukwe (London's Burning, Othello).